With the appearance of _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_, English satire regained something of the standing which it had once had in the days of Pope and Swift. Men of the highest genius were soon to employ satire as a weapon. Moore, the Smiths, Praed, Hood, and Hook were to carry raillery and mockery almost to the point of perfection; Shelley was to unite satire with idealism and a lofty philosophy; and Byron himself, the last master in the school of Pope, was to introduce a new variety of satire, borrowed from the Italians, and to gain for himself the distinction of being perhaps the greatest of our English verse-satirists. CHAPTER III BYRON’S EARLY SATIRIC VERSE _Fugitive Pieces_, Byron’s first volume of verse, actually printed in November, 1806, was almost immediately suppressed at the instance of his elder friend and self-appointed mentor, Rev. J. T. Becher, who somewhat prudishly expostulated with him on the sensuous tone of certain passages. Of the thirty-eight separate poems which the collection contains, eight, at least, may be classed as legitimate satires. The arrangement of the different items is, however, unsystematic and inconsistent. The lines _On a Change of Masters at a Great Public School_, comprising a prejudiced and impulsive diatribe, are followed by the _Epitaph on a Beloved Friend_, a sincere and heartfelt elegy; while the conventionally sentimental _Lines to Mary, On Receiving Her Picture_ are preceded and followed by satiric poems. These unexpected juxtapositions, inexplicable even on the theory of an adherence to chronology, suggest at once the curious way in which Byron’s versatile and complex nature tended to show itself at various times in moods apparently antithetical, permitting them often to follow each other closely or even to exist at practically the same moment. In his early book two characteristic moods, if not more, may be recognized: the romantic, whether melancholy, sentimental, or mysterious; and the satiric, whether savage or mocking. It is, of course, only with the manifestations of the latter mood that we have here to do.