Diane -- Thanks. Thanks! I really appreciate your words and I've forwarded them to Mr.P. Maybe we'll get him to continue. I hope so, I was only sharing them with a2kers because I liked them myself.
Meanwhile... I noticed that I had completely missed this:
panzade wrote:explain that Piff
and also that Ms. Olga had asked for a better explanation of this quote from Byron.
Quote:"
for by many stories,/And true, we learn the angels all are Tories." - Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), The Vision of Judgement
What I found was interesting. First, I had assumed that the quote was a humorous cut against Tories, who were the conservatives of Byron's time. He's being ironic and making fun of Tories who believed that they were annointed by God to be leaders, but I decided to research a bit online & make sure I wasn't missing something. That's true, it was from a satire, but there is more to the story, so I'm giving you a taste of it.
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Here's a sidebar of history regarding Tories of the day:
Quote: In 1811 King George III suffered another bout of insanity. He was no longer able to continue with his royal duties and the Prince of Wales was appointed regent. For years the Prince of Wales had been making promises to the Whigs that he would favour their party when he replaced his Tory father. However, this did not happen, and he quickly became an ultra Tory supporting the policies of Lord Liverpool and his government.
In his youth the Prince of Wales agreed with his friend Charles Fox about the unfairness of the laws that discriminated against Roman Catholics and Protestant Nonconformists. Once in power George changed his views and became a strong opponent of Catholic Emancipation. He also abandoned his support for those Whigs who were arguing for parliamentary reform.
TORY:The word Tories was originally used to describe rural bandits in Ireland. In the 17th century it had become a term applied to monarchists in the House of Commons. By the 18th century the Tories were politicians who favoured royal authority, the established church and who sought to preserve the traditional political structure and opposed parliamentary reform. After 1834 this political group in the House of Commons preferred to use the term Conservative.
I found this
website which has the full text of the poem and explains that Byron wrote "The Vision of Judgement" following a previous publication by Robert Southey called "
A Vision of Judgement" -- with which he disagreed.
Here's what another author had to say:
Quote:Southey gradually lost his radical opinions and in 1807 he was rewarded by being granted an annual allowance by the Tory government.
In 1821 Southey commemorated the death of George III with his poem A Vision of Judgement. This included an attack on Lord Byron who replied with The Vision of Judgement, one of the great satirical parodies of English literature.
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Interesting, huh? And much more appropriate to our times than I would have known if you two hadn't asked. Thanks. History is so interesting... it sure would be good if we LEARNED from it!
If he INSISTS on this, then please thank him for months & months of wonderful, stimulating quotes. I'll miss them.
I suspect he felt a real horror that I might mess up the family quoting business. 
Anyway, he's back.