Aside from these more or less incidental aspersions, at least two entire satires had been written upon critics. Cuthbert Shaw, enraged by what he thought an unfair account of his _Race_ (1762) in the _Critical Review_, prefixed to the second edition of that poem an _Address to the Critics_, in which he heaped vituperation on all the reviewers of his time. Only a few months before this, Churchill in his _Apology Addressed to the Critical Reviewers_ (1761) had constructed a satire very similar in motive and plan to Byron’s _English Bards_. A fairly close parallel may, in fact, be evolved between the two poems. Both are replies to the severe comments of critics on an earlier work[77]; both assail Scotch editors, the victim being, in the one case, Smollett, in the other, Jeffrey; both digress from the main theme, the one to renew the controversy with actors begun in the _Rosciad_, the other to satirise a new movement in poetry. It is characteristic of both Churchill and Byron that, instead of attempting to defend their verses, they devote all their attention to reviling their reviewers. Byron’s retaliation is less vigorous than Churchill’s; indeed it may be said that _English Bards_ is weakest in the place where it should have been most effective--in the passage directed at Jeffrey. Byron compares his antagonist to the hangman Jeffries, and describes in burlesque fashion the duel between him and Moore; but he fastens on him no epithet worth remembering and abuses him in lines which are neither incisive nor witty. Churchill had made an especial point of the anonymous character of the articles in the _Critical Review_, and had said of the editors: “Wrapt in mysterious secrecy they rise, And, as they are unknown, are safe and wise.”[78] Hodgson, in his _Gentle Alterative_ (1809), had referred to a similar custom of the _Edinburgh Review_, by attacking, “Chiefly those anonymously wise, Who skulk in darkness from Detection’s eyes.” The allusion in _English Bards_ to “Northern Wolves, that still in darkness prowl”[79] may be explained by Byron’s objection to this practice, though he chooses to dwell on it very little. _The Apology_ had accused the critics of dissimulation and had alleged that their pages were full of misstatements-- “Ne’er was lie made that was not welcome there.”[80] Byron made the same charge in advising contributors to the _Edinburgh Review_ not to stick to the truth, “Fear not to lie, ’twill seem a sharper hit.”[81] It is quite apparent that the “self-elected monarchs” whom Churchill treated so cavalierly in 1761 had no more popularity among sensitive authors than did the body of critics whom Hodgson styled “self-raised arbiters of sense and wit”[82] whom Gifford spoke of as “mope-eyed dolts placed by thoughtless fashion on the throne of taste”[83] and whom Byron, in much the same phraseology, scorned as,