Byron’s path as an aspiring author was not always a smooth one, even before his name became generally known. _Fugitive Pieces_ had been harshly criticised by several of his acquaintances, and, as we have seen, the objections of the hypercritical Becher had led to the destruction of the entire edition. But the proud young lord was not always tamely submissive to correction. In December, 1806, he wrote in Hudibrastic couplets the verses _To a Knot of Ungenerous Critics_, which express the same sort of injured pride and resentment that he afterwards showed toward Jeffrey and the Edinburgh reviewers: “Rail on, rail on, ye heartless crew! My strains were never meant for you; Remorseless rancour still reveal, And damn the verse you cannot feel.” Byron’s anger in these lines was directed apparently at certain ladies of Southwell, the little town where most of his Harrow vacations were spent; but though he mentioned one “portly female,” he had not yet reached the point where he ventured to call his enemies by name. This reserve, however, did not prevent him from breaking out in some caustic personal satire, in the course of which he did not spare the characters of the ladies in question. The same provocation led him to compose the _Soliloquy of a Bard in the Country_ (1806), in heroic couplets, in which he seems to pick three persons--“physician, parson, dame”--as responsible for the adverse comment on _Fugitive Pieces_. In these satires the occasional sharpness of single phrases does not conceal a boyish timidity, which is evidence that Byron had not yet been stung enough to make him realize or display his full power. Neither of the poems was published during his lifetime, and they probably served only to gratify his revenge in private among his friends. Possibly the last, and certainly the most cynical, of these early satires is the well-known _Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog_, dated by Byron from Newstead Abbey, October 30, 1808, though the animal did not die until November 18th. The twenty-six lines of the poem are now carved on a monument at Newstead, with an elaborate prose epitaph. Their misanthropy and savagery recall the contempt which Swift expressed for humanity in such poems as _The Beasts’ Confession_ and the _Lines on the Day of Judgment_. An appropriate text for Byron’s verses might have been taken from Swift’s letter to Pope, September 29, 1725: “I heartily hate and detest that animal called man.” Doubtless Byron’s mood is due in part to an affectation of cynicism which reappeared frequently throughout his life; his hatred of mankind, if not actually assumed, was by no means the deep-seated emotion that agitated Swift.