“His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated, and that he was thinking of the nobleman to whom he had once looked for a hand and countenance in his introduction.  There were very few persons in the House.  Lord Eldon was going through some ordinary business.  When Lord Byron had taken the oaths, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him; and, though I did not catch the words, I saw that he paid him some compliment.  This was all thrown away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and put the tips of his fingers into the Chancellor’s hand.  The Chancellor did not press a welcome so received, but resumed his seat; while Lord Byron carelessly seated himself for a few minutes on one of the empty benches to the left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords in Opposition.  When, on his joining me, I expressed what I had felt, he said ’If I had shaken hands heartily, he would have set me down for one of his party; but I will have nothing to do with them on either side.  I have taken my seat, and now I will go abroad.’”

A few days later the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers appeared before the public.  The first anonymous edition was exhausted in a month; a second, to which the author gave his name, quickly followed.  He was wont at a later date to disparage this production, and frequently recanted many of his verdicts in marginal notes.  Several, indeed, seem to have been dictated by feelings so transitory, that in the course of the correction of proof blame was turned into praise, and praise into blame; i.e. he wrote in MS. before he met the agreeable author,—­

  I leave topography to coxcomb Gell;

we have his second thought in the first edition, before he saw the Troad,—­

  I leave topography to classic Gell;

and his third, half way in censure, in the fifth,—­

  I leave topography to rapid Gell.

Of such materials are literary judgments made!

The success of Byron’s satire was due to the fact of its being the only good thing of its kind since Churchill,—­for in the Baviad and Maeviad only butterflies were broken upon the wheel—­and to its being the first promise of a now power.  The Bards and Reviewers also enlisted sympathy, from its vigorous attack upon the critics who had hitherto assumed the prerogative of attack.  Jeffrey and Brougham were seethed in their own milk; and outsiders, whose credentials were still being examined, as Moore and Campbell, came in for their share of vigorous vituperation.  The Lakers fared worst of all.  It was the beginning of the author’s life-long war, only once relaxed, with Southey.  Wordsworth—­though against this passage is written “unjust,” a concession not much sooner made than withdrawn,—­is dubbed an idiot, who—­

  Both by precept and example shows,
  That prose is verse and verse is only prose;