Byron's Poetical Works, Volume 1

The article upon ‘Hours of Idleness’ “which Lord Brougham … after denying it for thirty years, confessed that he had written” (’Notes from a Diary’, by Sir M. E. Grant Duff, 1897, ii. 189), was published in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ of January, 1808.  ’English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’ did not appear till March, 1809.  The article gave the opportunity for the publication of the satire, but only in part provoked its composition.  Years later, Byron had not forgotten its effect on his mind.  On April 26, 1821, he wrote to Shelley:  “I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem:  it was rage and resistance and redress:  but not despondency nor despair.”  And on the same date to Murray:  “I know by experience that a savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; and the one on me (which produced the ‘English Bards’, etc.) knocked me down, but I got up again,” etc.  It must, however, be remembered that Byron had his weapons ready for an attack before he used them in defence.  In a letter to Miss Pigot, dated October 26, 1807, he says that “he has written one poem of 380 lines to be published in a few weeks with notes.  The poem … is a Satire.”  It was entitled ’British Bards’, and finally numbered 520 lines.  With a view to publication, or for his own convenience, it was put up in type and printed in quarto sheets.  A single copy, which he kept for corrections and additions, was preserved by Dallas, and is now in the British Museum.  After the review appeared, he enlarged and recast the ‘British Bards’, and in March, 1809, the Satire was published anonymously.  Byron was at no pains to conceal the authorship of ‘English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’, and, before starting on his Pilgrimage, he had prepared a second and enlarged edition, which came out in October, 1809, with his name prefixed.  Two more editions were called for in his absence, and on his return he revised and printed a fifth, when he suddenly resolved to suppress the work.  On his homeward voyage he expressed, in a letter to Dallas, June 28, 1811, his regret at having written the Satire.  A year later he became intimate, among others, with Lord and Lady Holland, whom he had assailed on the supposition that they were the instigators of the article in the ‘Edinburgh Review’, and on being told by Rogers that they wished the Satire to be withdrawn, he gave orders to his publisher, Cawthorn, to burn the whole impression.  A few copies escaped the flames.  One of two copies retained by Dallas, which afterwards belonged to Murray, and is now in his grandson’s possession, was the foundation of the text of 1831, and of all subsequent issues.  Another copy which belonged to Dallas is retained in the British Museum.

Towards the close of the last century there had been an outburst of satirical poems, written in the style of the ‘Dunciad’ and its offspring the ‘Rosciad’, Of these, Gifford’s ‘Baviad’ and ‘Maviad’ (1794-5), and T. J. Mathias’ ‘Pursuits of Literature’ (1794-7), were the direct progenitors of ‘English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’, The ‘Rolliad’ (1794), the ‘Children of Apollo’ (circ. 1794), Canning’s ‘New Morality’ (1798), and Wolcot’s coarse but virile lampoons, must also be reckoned among Byron’s earlier models.  The ministry of “All the Talents” gave rise to a fresh batch of political ‘jeux d’ésprits’, and in 1807, when Byron was still at Cambridge, the air was full of these ephemera.  To name only a few, ‘All the Talents’, by Polypus (Eaton Stannard Barrett), was answered by ‘All the Blocks, an antidote to All the Talents’, by Flagellum (W.  H. Ireland); ’Elijah’s Mantle, a tribute to the memory of the R. H. William Pitt’, by James Sayer, the caricaturist, provoked ‘Melville’s Mantle, being a Parody on …  Elijah’s Mantle’.  ’The Simpliciad, A Satirico-Didactic Poem’, and Lady Anne Hamilton’s ’Epics of the Ton’, are also of the same period.  One and all have perished, but Byron read them, and in a greater or less degree they supplied the impulse to write in the fashion of the day.

‘British Bards’ would have lived, but, unquestionably, the spur of the article, a year’s delay, and, above all, the advice and criticism of his friend Hodgson, who was at work on his ’Gentle Alterative for the Reviewers’, 1809 (for further details, see vol. i., ‘Letters’, Letter 102, ‘note’ 1), produced the brilliant success of the enlarged satire.  ‘English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’ was recognized at once as a work of genius.  It has intercepted the popularity of its great predecessors, who are often quoted, but seldom read.  It is still a popular poem, and appeals with fresh delight to readers who know the names of many of the “bards” only because Byron mentions them, and count others whom he ridicules among the greatest poets of the century.