[26] See An Apology, 376–387.
[27] In his Letters, Byron refers once to Churchill’s Times (Letters, ii., 148). His Churchill’s Grave (1816), a parody of Wordsworth’s style, contains a reference to Churchill as “him who blazed the comet of a season.” Otherwise Churchill’s actual influence on Byron was not great.
[28] Byron praised Crabbe in English Bards as “Nature’s sternest painter, but her best.” In a letter to Moore, February 2, 1818, he termed Crabbe and Rogers “the fathers of present Poesy,” and in his Reply to Blackwood’s (1819) he said publicly: “We are all wrong except Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell.” Crabbe, whom Horace Smith called “Pope in worsted stockings,” seemed, to Byron, to represent devotion to Pope.
[29] Byron said of Gifford in 1824: “I have always considered him as my literary father, and myself as his ‘prodigal son’” (Letters, vi., 329).
[30] The movement represented by this clique, Gli Oziosi, originated in Florence with a coterie of dilettanti, among whom were Robert Merry (1755–1799), Mrs. Piozzi (1741–1831), Bertie Greathead (1759–1826), and William Parsons (fl. 1785–1807). They published two small volumes, The Arno Miscellany (1784) and The Florence Miscellany (1785), both marred by affectation, obscurity, tawdry ornamentation, and frantic efforts at sublimity. The printing of Merry’s Adieu and Recall to Love started a new series of sentimental verses, in the writing of which other scribblers took part: Hannah Cowley (1743–1809), Perdita Robinson (1752–1800), and Thomas Vaughan (fl. 1772–1820). Their combined contributions were gathered in Bell’s British Album (1789).
[31] Merry had written a Wreath of Liberty (1790) in praise of revolutionary principles.
[32] Scott said of Gifford: “He squashed at one blow a set of humbugs who might have humbugged the world long enough.” New Morality has a reference to “the hand which brushed a swarm of fools away.” Byron inserted a similar passage in English Bards, 741–744.
[33] Letters, iv., 485.
[34] English Bards, 701.
[35] Moore speaks sarcastically of this custom in the Preface to Corruption and Intolerance (1808): “The practice which has been lately introduced into literature, of writing very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me a very happy invention, as it supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to account.”