Boatswain, Lord Byron's Newfoundland

Byron's black-and-white Newfoundland died of rabies at Newstead Abbey in 1808, and the poet is said to have nursed him without fear of being bitten. The memorial he built in the abbey grounds is larger than Byron's own tomb, and it carries his poem "Epitaph to a Dog". Here is the twist for anyone who has quoted it: the famous prose tribute above the poem, praising a dog's virtues without man's vices, was written by Byron's friend John Cam Hobhouse. Byron preferred it to his own lines and let it take the top of the stone.