English Bards and Scotch Reviewers is Byron's first major work after his volume of juvenilia Hours of Idleness. It is a satire (just over a thousand lines long) written in heroic couplets and largely in imitation of Alexander Pope. Byron would later admit he did not have the “cunning” for this form. The foundation for English Bards was a poem called British Bards, written by Byron in October 1807. By December 1807 it was over 400 lines long and was initially intended to be a satire on contemporary poetry and a lament for the lost models of the neoclassical era. Byron expanded the poem following the publication of a particularly venomous critique of Hours of Idleness in the influential Scottish journal, the Edinburgh Review in February 1808. Byron thought the review had been written by...
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Citation: O'Connell, Mary. "English Bards, And Scotch Reviewers". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 April 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16884, accessed 09 June 2026.]
