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From the review of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)
In The Eclectic Review,May 1809
We understand this poem has already attained a large circulation; - a circumstance by no means surprising,
when we consider its high seasoning of invective and sarcasm, its humour and spirited versification, and the
peculiarity of its subject and its occasion, combined with the rank of its reputed author. The world is said to
be indebted for this effusion of "the milk of human kindness" to no less a personage than Lord Byron, on no less
an occasion than the discipline bestowed on the said Lord, for certain 'Hours of Idleness,' by the Busby hands of
the Edinburgh Reviewers. This is just as it should be. For equitable discrimination, for devotedness to truth,
for gentlemanly deportment, and the genuine Christian spirit of candour, amenity, forgiveness of injuries, and
reluctance to inflict pain, the combatants are pretty fairly matched. The literary canaille will gaze on this
game-cock spectacle with a delight, which happily need not be diminished by any compunction for the cause, or
apprehension for the consequences. If, however, the noble lord, and the learned advocate, have the courage
requisite to sustain their mutual insults, we shall probably soon hear the explosions of another kind of paper-war,
after the fashion of the ever-memorable duel which the latter is said to have fought, or seemed to fight, with
'Little Moore'. We confess there is sufficient provocation, if not in the critique, at least in the satire, to
urge a 'man of honour' to defy his assailant to mortal combat, and perhaps to warrant a man of law to declare war
in Westminster-Hall. Of this, no doubt, we shall bear more in due time. The lines we principally allude to are these; - from the opening hemistich, which seems to have been copied frorn the celebrated 'Epistle to Warburton.' though the acknowledgement of the imitation is accidentally omitted, we should guess that the noble lord has been for sorne time under training for this attack, and has both strengthened and encouraged his stomach for fighting by a course of Churchill; and we must confess he does credit to his feeding.......
The sheer folly of the author's criticisms on many of our living poets will very much defeat the effect of those strictures, in his poem, which are both spirited and just. There is so little discretion and taste In rnany of his decisions, such total insensibility to indisputable merit in others, such unmitigated and arrogant reprobation when there was only need for partial and judicious reproof, that he will be regarded, not as a severe and indignant Censor, but as a petulant school-boy, smarting and exasperated almost to madness with his flagellation, blind with rage and anguish, and dealing out his indiscriminate revenge in kicks and blows preposterously excessive in malice and deficient in power. The influence of this satire will be no less diminished by the absurdity of the praise, which the angry nobleman, for no imaginable reason, condescends in some Instances to bestow. What will any considerate man care for the opinions, decrees, or censures of a writer, who can extol Macneil as a genuine son of Poesy, while he degrades Southey and Scott to the dust, and can find nothing but vulgar ridicule to requite the sublimity of Coleridge or the pathos and vivid painting of Grahame! His premature requiem over the 'lost works' of Montgomery, whose genius he nevertheless acknowledges, and whose fame both lives and flourishes, is equally childish.
The utmost we can promise the noble lord is, that his wrath will be very entertaining to the public for several weeks to come; by the end of that period, the same public will perhaps be called upon to deplore his fall in the fleld of honour, and it may be our melancholy office to criticise elegies on his untimely fate.