progress; and if the public are equally so with the perusal, there's an
end of the matter.

[Footnote 1: Immediately on the appearance of The Corsair, (with those
obnoxious verses, "Weep, daughter of a royal line," appended to it,) a
series of attacks, not confined to Lord Byron himself, but aimed also at
all those who had lately become his friends, was commenced in the
Courier and Morning Post, and carried on through the greater part of the
months of February and March. The point selected by these writers, as a
ground of censure on the poet, was one which _now_, perhaps, even
themselves would agree to class among his claims to praise,--namely, the
atonement which he had endeavoured to make for the youthful violence of
his Satire by a measure of justice, amiable even in its overflowings, to
every one whom he conceived he had wronged.

Notwithstanding the careless tone in which, here and elsewhere, he
speaks of these assaults, it is evident that they annoyed him;--an
effect which, in reading them over now, we should be apt to wonder they
could produce, did we not recollect the property which Dryden attributes
to "small wits," in common with certain other small animals:--

"We scarce could know they live, but that they _bite_."

The following is a specimen of the terms in which these party scribes
could then speak of one of the masters of English song:--"They might
have slept in oblivion with Lord Carlisle's Dramas and Lord Byron's
Poems."--"Some certainly extol Lord Byron's Poem much, but most of the
best judges place his Lordship rather low in the list of our minor
poets."]