Among the nondescript formal satires of the time should be mentioned Ireland’s _Stultifera Navis_ (1807), a spiritless, impersonal, and general satire, which revives the form of Brandt’s _Narrenschiff_ (1494), introduced into English in Barclay’s _Ship of Fools_ (1508). A later satire of Ireland’s, _Chalcographimania_ (1814), in feeble octosyllabics, satirises collectors and bibliophiles. _The Children of Apollo_ (1794), an anonymous satire of an earlier period, seems to have afforded Byron more than a suggestion for his _English Bards_; but he was influenced still more by the _Simpliciad_ (1808), published anonymously, but actually written by Richard Mant (1776–1848), which is dedicated to the three revolutionary poets, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, and contains some unmerciful ridicule of their more absurd poems. Mant’s work, the frank criticism of “a man of classical culture and of some poetic impulse,”[50] merits attention as being an almost contemporary outburst of the same general character as _English Bards_. The ballad form reappeared in many satires arising from the troubled condition of politics[51]; but the usual tone of this work is scurrilous and commonplace, and dozens of such broadsides were composed and forgotten in a day. That any one of them had any definite influence on Byron, or on the course of satire in general, is highly improbable. What is important is that the literary atmosphere for a few years before 1809, although it produced no great satires, was surcharged with the satiric spirit, and that Byron, in his youth, must have been accustomed to the abusive personalities then common in the daily press. Conditions in his day encouraged rather than repressed destructive criticism. This summary of English satiric verse between Dryden and Byron ends naturally with the year 1809, when the latter poet first revealed his true genius as a satirist. Something has been suggested of the wide scope and varied character of satire from the death of Pope until the end of the eighteenth century; the example of Pope has been traced through its influence on satire to the time when it degenerated in the work of Mathias and the minor rhymsters of the first decade of the new century; and the lighter classes of satire have been followed until the date when they became artistic in the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_. With many of these English predecessors Byron had something in common; from a few he drew inspiration and material. Although it will be possible to point out only a few cases in which he was indebted to them directly for his manner and phraseology, it was their work which determined very largely the course which he pursued as a satirist in verse.