His friend, Dallas, who had been favored with the perusal of the poem in manuscript, had suggested as a title, _The Parish Poor of Parnassus_, but Byron, with some wisdom, rejected this as too humorous,[59] and chose _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_. The present title indicates clearly the double object of the satire; for though it is, in one sense, an attempt at retaliation upon the editors of the _Edinburgh Review_, it is, in another, an eager and deliberate defence of the Popean tradition in poetry. It combines the motives of Churchill’s _Apology_ and Gifford’s _Baviad_ in that it aims, like the first, to castigate hostile critics, and like the second, to ridicule contemporary poets. Personal spite urged him to assail the “Scotch marauders,” Jeffrey, Horner, and their coterie; but he had no individual grudge to pay in satirising the “Southern dunces,” Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and others. His attack upon them was actuated by the same sort of narrow spirit which he had condemned in his critics. The spectacle of Byron posing as an overthrower of intolerant reviewers, and in the same poem outdoing them in unjust and prejudiced criticism is not likely to leave the reader with an exalted opinion of the author’s consistency. Presumably influenced by the example of Gifford, Byron deluded himself into believing that it was his mission to protest against the excesses of romanticism in poetry, and to engage “the swarm of idiots” who were infecting literature. He was to be “self-constituted judge of poesy”; and in pursuance of his design, the satire became a gallery of many figures, some sketched graphically, others merely limned in a line or a phrase. It is to Byron’s credit that his chosen victims were not, like those of Pope and Gifford, all poetasters. Doubtless there was a certain amount of chance in the causes that led him to be the opponent of men who have since been recognized as representative poets of their age; but in spite of the fact that Wordsworth and Coleridge, Southey and Moore, may not have been fully appreciated in 1809, they were, nevertheless, authors of reputation whom it was not altogether discreet to attack. As for Scott, he was the favorite writer of the period and no mean antagonist. Herford points out the daring character of the satire in saying: “It is a kind of inverted _Dunciad_; the novice falls upon the masters of his day, as the Augustan Master upon the nonentities of his.”