ABSTRACT
In January 1808 Byron’s collection of lyrics, Hours of Idleness, received a scathing reading from Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux, in the The Edinburgh Review. Brougham's goes on to state that in writing inferior verse Byron should not fall back on his minority or his title as a lord to justify what is very bad poetry. All in all, Brougham counsels Byron to give up poetry entirely ‘and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account’. Much of Byron’s satire is aimed at the Lake poets, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, but also at Sir Walter Scott, and the contributors to The Edinburgh Review. Byron compares the cultural and intellectual poverty of modern poets with the great English poets of the past, notably Milton, Dryden and Pope. In this respect Byron was doing no more than aligning himself with the tenor of much contemporary satire.
