, vol. i. p. 321,
note
3 [Footnote 3 of Letter 159]), ran from October, 1807, to 1814. Up to 1812 it was the property of George Manners, who sold it in that year to W. Jerdan. It reviewed
Childe Harold
in October, 1812 (pp. 344-358); and again in December of the same year (pp. 542-550). In the first of the two notices, the
Satirist
quotes the "judgment of our predecessors," that unless Byron "improved wonderfully, he could never be a poet," and continues thus:
"It is with unaffected satisfaction we find that he has improved wonderfully, and that he is a poet. Indeed, when we consider the comparatively short interval which has elapsed, and contrast the character of his recent with that of his early work, we confess ourselves astonished at the intellectual progress which Lord Byron has made, and are happy to hold him up as another example of the extraordinary effects of study and cultivation, even on minds apparently of the most unpromising description."
The reviewer severely condemns the morbid bitterness of the poet's thought and feeling, but yet affirms that the poems
"abound with beautiful imagery, clothed in a diction free, forcible, and various. Childe Harold, although avowedly a fragment, contains many fragments which would do honour to any poet, of any period, in any country."