[36] Byron said of the Pursuits of Literature: “It is notoriously, as far as the poetry goes, the worst written of its kind; the World has long been of but one opinion, viz., that it’s [sic] sole merit lies in the notes, which are indisputably excellent” (Letters, ii., 4).
[37] Examples are the Fables of Æsop (1692) of Roger L’Estrange (1616–1704); Æsop at Court, or Select Fables (1702) by Thomas Yalden (1671–1736); Æsop’s Fables (1722) by Samuel Croxall (1680–1752); Fables (1744) by Edward Moore (1711–1757); and collections by Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788) and William Wilkie (1721–1772).
[38] See the Spleen (1737) by Matthew Green (1696–1737); Variety, a Tale for Married People (1732); and the poems of Isaac Hawkins Browne (1705–1760), James Bramston (1694–1744), George Colman, the elder (1732–1794), John Dalton (1709–1763), David Garrick (1717–1779). John Duncombe (1729–1763), and many other poetasters.
[39] Probationary Odes also anticipate the more famous Rejected Addresses (1812), and the Poetic Mirror (1816) of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.
[40] For less reserved praise of the Rolliad, see Trevelyan’s Early History of Charles James Fox, page 285.
[41] In A Postscript he speaks of “the unmeaning and noisy lines of two things called Baviad and Mæviad”; while in a note to Out at Last, or the Fallen Minister, he presents a sketch of Gifford’s life, accusing him of heinous crimes, and speaking of the “awkward and obscure inversions and verbose pomposity” of the Baviad. Gifford replied in the Epistle to Peter Pindar (1800). Mathias and Canning invariably treated Pindar with contempt.
[42] Vision of Judgment, 92.
[43] See A Dream (1786), a bitterly satirical address to George III, and the Lines Written at Stirling, attacking the Hanoverians.
[44] Byron knew the New Bath Guide well, and admired it. In one of his youthful poems, an Answer to Some Elegant Verses sent by a Friend to the Author he uses four lines of Anstey’s poem as a motto. He also quotes from it not infrequently in his letters.
[45] See Letters from Simpson the Second to his Dear Brother in Wales (1788) and Groans of the Talents (1807), both of which deliberately appropriate Anstey’s scheme. Both are anonymous.