Stone(d) Byron

-- And who is the best poet, Heron? asked Boland.
-- Lord Tennyson, of course, answered Heron.
-- O, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash.  We have all his poetry at home in a book.
At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been making and burst out:
-- Tennyson a poet!  Why he's only a rhymester!
-- O, get out! said Heron.  Everyone knows that Tennyson is the greatest poet.
-- And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Boland, nudging his neighbor.
-- Byron, of course, answered Stephen.



...but Heron went on:
-- In any case Byron was a heretic and immoral too.
-- I don't care what he was, cried Stephen hotly.
-- You don't care whether he was a heretic or not? said Nash.
-- What do you know about it? shouted Stephen.  You never read a line of anything in your life except a trans or Boland either.
-- I know that Byron was a bad man, said Boland.

It was the signal for their onset.  Nash pinioned his arms behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump which was lying in the gutter.  Struggling and kicking under the cuts of cane and the blows of the knotty stump Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire fence.
-- Admit that Byron was no good.
-- No.
-- Admit.
-- No.
-- Admit.
-- No.  No.

(Text excerpted from Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.)