It is the poem in which his genius first begins to be apparent. Most of the judgments expressed in it were unjust--most of them were afterwards retracted by their author; but that does not matter. One does not expect sound criticism from poets--least of all does one expect it from poets of one-and-twenty. The essence of the thing is that now, in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" a new personality spoke--and spoke loud enough to be heard. The note of Byron--the note which gained him his large and attentive audience--was his reckless audacity. He was not afraid of saying things; he did not wrap them up, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, but said them in plain language which all the world could understand--said them, moreover, in a manner which made them appear true even to those who thought, or wished to think, them false. His readers never knew what he would be saying next. They only knew that, whatever it was, he would say it effectively, and, as has already been remarked, with the air of one who damned the consequences. That was the note which was, in later years, to ring through "Don Juan." We can already hear it ringing, as it were in anticipation, through the couplets of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Many examples might be cited; for the Satire, after the way of Satires, is almost entirely composed of damnatory clauses. Any piece of gossip was good enough for Byron to lay hold of and use as a missile when running amok among literary reputations. The best instance, however, may be found in the passage in which he turned and rent Carlisle. His original intention was to make himself pleasant to his guardian. He had no particular reason for liking him, but he had no definite case against him. There was the letter, of course, in which Carlisle had patronised the poet instead of praising his poetry; but he had got over his irritation about that, and did not bear malice; and so he prepared for publication these lines of fulsome eulogy: "_Ah, who would take their titles from their rhymes? On one alone Apollo deigns to smile, And crowns a new Roscommon in Carlisle._" But then, before the day of publication, occurred his quarrel with Carlisle. He thought that his guardian ought to have volunteered to introduce him when he took his seat in the House of Lords; he had the more reason for thinking so because his guardian was the only Peer of the Realm whom he knew. Carlisle, however, did not do so, contenting himself with instructing his ward as to the formalities to be fulfilled. The slight, whether intentional or not, was keenly felt--the more keenly because Byron was, at the moment, at war with all the world except Carlisle. _Et tu, Brute_, may very well have been his reflection.