the _Decline and Fall_, and the severe beauties of _Laodamia_, to the
better influences of academic training on the minds of their authors.
Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work--from the date of _The Curse
of Minerva_ to that of the "Isles of Greece"--are brightened by lights and
adorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the
slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by
the sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, he
continued to rail as late as the publication of _Beppo_, in the 75th and
76th stanzas of which we find another cause of complaint,--

One hates an author that's all author, fellows
In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink--
So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous,
One don't know what to say to them, or think.

Then, after commending Scott, Bogers, and Moore for being men of the
world, he proceeds:--

But for the children of the "mighty mother's,"
The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen,
I leave them to the daily "Tea is ready,"
Snug coterie, and literary lady.

This attack, which called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocity
from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound
enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike,
of professional _littérateurs_, and was always haunted by a dread that
they would claim equality with him on the common ground of authorship. He
aspired through life to the superiority of a double distinction, that of a
"lord among wits, and among wits a lord." In this same spirit lie resented