ABSTRACT

Byron, Hours of Idleness (1807); Monthly Literary Recreations, III (July 1807), 67–71. Byron gloated over this review in a letter to Elizabeth Pigot (August 2,1807); “I knew nothing of the critic, but think him a very discerning gentleman, and myself a devilish clever fellow.” What Byron does not emphasize is that Crosby, publisher of Monthly Literary Recreations, was the London agent for Ridge, the Newark bookseller who published Hours of Idleness, and that there may have been some puffery in the favorable review appearing under Crosby’s auspices. Byron’s own review of Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes (1807) immediately preceded this review in the July 1807 issue of the magazine.