An odd freak of fancy led Byron to pose in _English Bards_ as a watchful guardian of morality in literature, though even at that date he was the author of verses which are not altogether blameless. That he should upbraid Monk Lewis, Moore, and Strangford as “melodious advocates of lust” may well seem extraordinary to the reader who recalls the poem which Byron sent to Pigot, August 10, 1806, asking that it be printed separately as “improper for the perusal of ladies.”[99] The truth is that Byron was again treading in the steps of others. The virtuous but somewhat prurient Mathias, excited by Lewis’s novel _Ambrosio, or the Monk_ (1795), which has given the writer notoriety and a nickname, had assailed the author in _Pursuits of Literature_,[100] and the supposed voluptuousness of the story had not escaped the notice of the _Anti-Jacobin_ and _Epics of the Ton_. Byron had thus more than one precedent for his ironic reference to Lewis’s “chaste descriptions.” Moore’s _Epistles, Odes, and other Poems_ (1806) had been censured by the _Edinburgh Review_ in an article which described Moore as “the most licentious of modern versifiers.” _All the Talents_ had questioned Moore’s morality, and _Epics of the Ton_ had mentioned a writer who, “Like Tommy Moore has scratch’d the itching throng, And tickled matrons with a spicy song.” Byron had been a delighted reader of the Irish poet and had been influenced by him in the more sentimental verses of _Hours of Idleness_; nevertheless he repeated the imputations of the other satirists in referring to him as “Little! young Catullus of his day, As sweet, but as immoral, as his lay.” To Viscount Strangford (1780–1855), of whose translation of Camoëns he had formerly been very fond, Byron offered advice: “Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste.” In the same vein as this grave admonition are the remarks which the poet makes upon the Argyle Institution, founded by Colonel Greville as a resort for gambling and dancing. Digressing for a while without any logical reason, Byron proceeds to condemn social follies, especially those fostered by “blest retreats of infamy and ease.” The passage includes some lines on round dancing, which anticipate Byron’s attack on that amusement in his later satire, _The Waltz_. Gifford’s _Mæviad_, after making some final thrusts at the Della Cruscans, had shifted its attack to contemporary actors and dramatists. That satire upon them was justified may be gathered from Gifford’s remark in his Preface: “I know not if the stage has been so low since the days of Gammer Gurton as at this hour.”[101] During the fifteen years following the date of this statement it cannot be averred that circumstances made it any the less applicable to the theatrical situation in England, and Byron, in 1809, in ridiculing the “motley sight” which met his eyes on the stage of his time, had perhaps even more justification than Gifford had had in 1794.[102]