Byron’s _Monody on the Death of Sheridan_, written at Diodati on July 17, 1816, and recited in Drury Lane Theatre on September 7, was followed by a period of several years in which he ceased to employ the heroic couplet in poetry of any sort. The reasons for this temporary abandonment of what had been, hitherto, a favorite measure, are not altogether clear, although his action may be ascribed, in part, to his renunciation of things English and to the influence upon him of his study of the Italians. During his residence in Italy, Byron used many metrical forms: the Spenserian stanza, ottava rima, terza rima, blank verse, and other measures in some shorter lyrics and ephemeral verses. Not until _The Age of Bronze_, which he began in December, 1822, did he return to the heroic couplet of _English Bards_. On January 10, 1823, Byron, then living in Genoa, wrote a letter to Leigh Hunt, in which, among other things, he said: “I have sent to Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a poem of about seven hundred and fifty lines length--_The Age of Bronze_--or _Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, with this Epigraph--‘Impar _Congressus_ Achilli’.” By way of description, he added: “It is calculated for the reading part of the million, being all on politics, etc., etc., etc., and a review of the day in general,--in my early _English Bards_ style, but a little more stilted, and somewhat too full of ‘epithets of war’ and classical and historical allusions.”[377] The work as revised and completed contains 18 sections and 778 lines. Originally destined for _The Liberal_, it was eventually published anonymously by John Hunt, on April 1, 1823. _The Age of Bronze_ is, then, entirely a political satire, intended chiefly as a counterblast to the recent stringent regulations of the reactionary Congress of Verona (1822). It comprises, however, other material: an introductory passage on the great departed leaders, Pitt, Fox, and Bonaparte; frequent digressions treating of the struggles for constitutional government then taking place in Europe; and some lines attacking the landed proprietors in England for their luke-warm opposition to foreign war. It is, in nearly every sense, a timely poem, although the note of “Vanitas Vanitatum” sounded in the early sections gives the satire a universal application.