An excellent illustration of this is to be found in Byron’s unprovoked attack upon Scott, in which the younger poet, seizing upon the well-known fact that Scott had received money for his verses, terms him “hireling bard” and “Apollo’s venal son.” Perhaps Byron may have shared with Young the snobbish notions about money expressed in the latter’s couplet: “His [Apollo’s] sacred influence never should be sold; ’Tis arrant simony to sing for gold.”[87] It is more probable, however, that he had in mind a passage from _Epics of the Ton_, in which Scott’s “well-paid lays” had been mentioned in a contemptuous manner.[88] Even in his charge that the plot of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ was “incongruous and absurd,” Byron had been anticipated in a note to _All the Talents_.[89] The whole tirade against Scott in _English Bards_ was particularly unfortunate because, as was revealed later, that author had remonstrated with Jeffrey on the “offensive criticism” of _Hours of Idleness_. Byron’s antagonism to the so-called Lake School of poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, began early and continued long. In 1809 it is improbable that he had any acquaintance with any one of the three; yet he placed them in a conspicuous and unenviable position in _English Bards_. His primary motives in attacking them have already been indicated. Considering them as faddists who were lowering the dignity of the author’s calling and degrading poetic style, he followed the _Simpliciad_ in condemning them for the contemptible nature of their subject-matter, for their simple diction, for their fondness for the wild and unnatural, and for their studied avoidance of conventionality. Southey’s first verse had appeared in 1794; while Wordsworth and Coleridge had been really introduced to the public through _Lyrical Ballads_. Opposition to them and their theories had begun to be shown almost immediately, allusions to Southey, in particular, being fairly common in satiric literature before 1809. Mathias had said ironically with reference to Southey’s first poem: “I cannot ... Quit the dull Cam, and ponder in the Park A six-weeks Epick, or a Joan of Arc.”[90] In the _Anti-Jacobin_ Southey’s poetry had been ludicrously parodied, and the members of the Lake School had been branded as revolutionists. _Epics of the Ton_ had ridiculed Southey and Wordsworth,[91] and the _Simpliciad_ had accused all three of “childish prattle.”[92] Byron, then, was no pioneer in his satire on the romanticists, nor did he contribute anything original to the controversy. The frequency and rapidity with which Southey had published long epics had impressed others before Byron cried in _English Bards_: “Oh, Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song! A bard may chaunt too often and too long.”[93]