+Stanza 28,+ 1. 1. _'The herded wolves,'_ &c. These same 'monsters' are now pictured under three aspects. They are herded wolves, which will venture to pursue a traveller, but will not face him if he turns upon them boldly; and obscene ravens, which make an uproar over dead bodies, or dead reputations; and vultures, which follow in the wake of a conqueror, and gorge upon that which is already overthrown. In the succeeding stanza, 29, two other epithetal similes are bestowed upon the monsters--they become 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects.' All these repulsive images are of course here applied to critics of wilfully obtuse or malignant mind, such as Shelley accounted the _Quarterly_ reviewer of Keats to be. 1. 5, &c. _'How they fled When, like Apollo,'_ &c. The allusion is to perfectly well-known incidents in the opening poetic career of Lord Byron. His lordship, in earliest youth, published a very insignificant volume of verse named _Hours of Idleness_. The _Edinburgh Review_--rightly in substance, but with some superfluous harshness of tone--pronounced this volume to be poor stuff. Byron retaliated by producing his satire entitled _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. With this book he scored a success. His next publication was the generally and enthusiastically admired commencement of _Childe Harold_, 1812; after which date the critics justly acclaimed him as a poet--although in course of time they grew lavishly severe upon him from the point of view of morals and religion. I reproduce from the Pisan edition the punctuation--'When like Apollo, from his golden bow'; but I think the exact sense would be better brought out if we read--'When, like Apollo from his golden bow, The Pythian,' &c. 11. 7, 8. _'The Pythian of the age one arrow sped, And smiled.'_ Byron is here assimilated to Apollo Pythius--Apollo the Python-slayer. The statue named Apollo Belvedere is regarded as representing the god at the moment after he has discharged his arrow at the python (serpent), his countenance irradiated with a half-smile of divine scorn and triumph. The terms employed by Shelley seem to glance more particularly at that celebrated statue: this was the more appropriate as Byron had devoted to the same figure two famous stanzas in the 4th canto of _Childe Harold_-- 'Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life and poesy and light,' &c.