It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that the _Hours of Idleness_ gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a volume of _Juvenilia_ and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's could not overlook the effrontery of the _Edinburgh Review_. The proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"? Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:--"I recollect the effect on me of the _Edinburgh_ on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress--but not despondency nor despair." (Prothero, V, p. 267.) There was method in Byron's "rage and resistance and redress." For more than a year he labored upon a satire which he had begun even before the appearance of the _Edinburgh_ article. (See letter of October 26, 1807, in _Letters_, ed. Prothero, I, p. 147.) In the spring of 1809, _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ was given anonymously to the world. The publication of this vigorous satire virtually decided Byron's career. Not only did he abuse Jeffrey, whom he believed responsible for the offending critique, but he flung defiance in the face of almost all his literary contemporaries. The authorship of the satire was soon apparent, and in a flippant note to the second edition, Byron became still more abusive toward Jeffrey and his "dirty pack," and declared that he was ready to give satisfaction to all who sought it. A few years later he regretted his rashness in assailing the authors of his time. He also learned of the injustice done to Jeffrey and had ample reason to feel embarrassed by the tone of the eight reviews of his poems that Jeffrey did write for the _Edinburgh_. (See the list in Prothero, II, p. 248.) In _Don Juan_ (canto X, xvi), he made the following retraction:-- "And all our little feuds, at least all _mine_, Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe (As far as rhyme and criticism combine To make such puppets of us things below), Are over. Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!' I do not know you, and may never know Your face--but you have acted, on the whole, Most nobly; and I own it from my soul." The other reviews of _Hours of Idleness_ are of little interest. The _Monthly_ and the _Critical_ both praised the book; the _Literary Panorama_, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an incautious writer. 98. θελο λεγειν,--Anacreon, Ode I. (θέλο λέγειν Ἀτρείδας, κ. τ. λ.)