E. Prothero's edition of Byron's _Letters and
Journals_. We know definitely that the article was written by Henry
Brougham. (See Prothero, op. cit., II, p. 397, and Sir M.E. Grant Duff's
_Notes from a Diary_, II, p. 189.)
It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with
hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter
of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great
poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that
the _Hours of Idleness_ gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully
intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of
abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a
volume of _Juvenilia_ and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's
could not overlook the effrontery of the _Edinburgh Review_. The
proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing
tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling
than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering
contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"?
Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:--"I recollect the effect on me
of the _Edinburgh_ on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and
redress--but not despondency nor despair.
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