“Young tyrants, by themselves misplaced, Combined usurpers on the Throne of Taste.” Churchill, rash though he was, was cautious enough not to print his opponents’ names, and they are to be discovered only through definite allusions. Byron, on the other hand, brought his satire into the open, and ridiculed “smug Sydney,” “classic Hallam,” “paltry Pillans,” “blundering Brougham,” and other contributors to the _Edinburgh_, never hesitating to give a name in full. Even Lord and Lady Holland, later Byron’s close friends, were included among the victims, as patrons of the Whig _Review_. These resemblances between _English Bards_ and some earlier satires of a like nature do not prove Byron a mere imitator. Enough has been shown, perhaps, to make it clear that his work belongs to a definite school of poetry, and that his verses show no marked originality. At the same time he never stoops to direct plagiarism, and whatever similarities exist with other poems are largely those of style and spirit, not of phraseology. But there is much more in _English Bards_ than the outburst against critics; dexterously Byron proceeded himself to don the garb of judge and to pass sentence on men older and better known than he. He had early adopted a conservative attitude towards the versification and subject-matter of poetry, a position which he preserved in theory throughout his life.[84] Having learned to use glibly the catchwords of the Augustans, he ventured to praise Crabbe, Campbell, Rogers, and Gifford for adhering tenaciously to the principles of Sense, Wit, Taste, and Correctness established by Pope. Acting on this basis, he was justified in condemning his own age for its disregard of what he considered to be the standard models of poetic expression.[85] Under the tutelage of Gifford, he had acquired a distaste for novelty which led him to look upon the romanticists as Gifford looked upon the Della Cruscans, and which induced him to carry his defence of custom and tradition almost to the verge of bigotry. Something must be allowed, too, for the operation of contemporary ideas upon Byron. The leaders of the so-called Romantic Movement, partly because many of them had associated themselves with the Jacobin party in England, partly because their poetry seemed strange, were met from the first with opposition in many quarters.[86] Language of a tenor hostile to their work may be met with in Mathias, the _Anti-Jacobin_, _Epics of the Ton_, the _Simpliciad_, and Hodgson’s _Gentle Alterative_. The suggestions for many of the anti-romantic views since attributed to Byron alone came doubtless from other satirists, whose accusations Byron fitted into telling phrases.