ABSTRACT
The satirical attacks on the Della Cruscan school 1 have granted it, in Crane Brinton’s fine phrase, an ‘immortality of scorn’. 2 Gifford’s intemperate but entertaining wrath in The Baviad is followed by later efforts such as Southey’s ‘The Amatory Poems of Abel Shufflebottom’ and the brothers Smith’s ‘Drury’s Dirge. By Laura Matilda’ (in the Rejected Addresses). Whilst Gifford’s work is motivated as much by his loathing for Della Cruscan liberal politics as his impatience with its rhetorical extravagance, Southey and the Smiths focus on the latter aspect of the group’s work.
