"One of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, is, that
the present is not a high age of English poetry. There are _more_ poets
(soi-disant) than ever there were, and proportionally _less_ poetry.

"This _thesis_ I have maintained for some years, but, strange to say, it
meeteth not with favour from my brethren of the shell. Even Moore shakes
his head, and firmly believes that it is the grand age of British
poesy."]

[Footnote 5: Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis
Hodgson.]

[Footnote 6: The strange verses that follow are from a poem by
Keats.--In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated
November 12. 1821, Lord Byron says, "Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year
after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a
blood-vessel on reading the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly
Review. I have read the article before and since; and, although it is
bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by
it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in
the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr.
Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to
his own genius, which, malgrè all the fantastic fopperies of his style,
was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems
actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a
loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his
death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right
line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the
language."]