ABSTRACT
Though recent revisionist work 1 on the Della Cruscan school of Robert Merry (‘Della Crusca’), Hannah Cowley (‘Anna Matilda’), Edward Jerningham (‘Benedict’), Mary Robinson (‘Laura’), John Williams (‘Anthony Pasquin’) and others has sought to reassess its achievement, the members of the group, like Thomas Shadwell and Ambrose Philips before them, have tended to live in literary history more as a result of their representation in satire rather than as a consequence of the particular merits of their work (‘Such damning fame as Dunciads only give’ to use Byron’s phrase 2 ). This is mainly attributable to the attacks of T. J. Mathias in his Pursuits of Literature (1794–7) and, in particular, those of William Gifford in The Baviad (1791) and The Mæviad (1795). The Baviad, Gifford’s fearsome onslaught upon the Della Cruscans, was seen in its time as the greatest contemporary exercise in classical satire. The poem has been less admired in the twentieth century. Gifford’s intemperate tone (exemplified in the poem’s description of Joseph Weston as a ‘filthy toad’), misogyny, rancorous Toryism and personal spite which seems to go beyond formal Juvenalianism has won him few admirers. However, these issues should not blind us to the effectiveness of his performance.
