a note little less severe than the verses.]

[Footnote 75: This first attempt of Lord Byron at reviewing (for it
will be seen that he, once or twice afterwards, tried his hand at this
least poetical of employments) is remarkable only as showing how
plausibly he could assume the established tone and phraseology of
these minor judgment-seats of criticism. For instance:--"The volumes
before us are by the author of Lyrical Ballads, a collection which has
not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause. The
characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's muse are simple and flowing,
though occasionally inharmonious, verse,--strong and sometimes
irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments.
Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the
poems possess a native elegance," &c. &c. &c. If Mr. Wordsworth ever
chanced to cast his eye over this article, how little could he have
suspected that under that dull prosaic mask lurked one who, in five
short years from thence, would rival even _him_ in poetry.]

[Footnote 76: This plan (which he never put in practice) had been
talked of by him before he left Southwell, and is thus noticed in a
letter of his fair correspondent to her brother:--"How can you ask if
Lord B. is going to visit the Highlands in the summer? Why, don't
_you_ know that he never knows his own mind for ten minutes together?
I tell _him_ he is as fickle as the winds, and as uncertain as the
waves."]

[Footnote 77: We observe here, as in other parts of his early letters,
that sort of display and boast of rakishness which is but too common a
folly at this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood
persuades himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily,
this boyish desire of being thought worse than he really was, remained
with Lord Byron, as did some other feelings and foibles of his
boyhood, long after the period when, with others, they are past and
forgotten; and his mind, indeed, was but beginning to outgrow them,
when he was snatched away.]

[Footnote 78: The poem afterwards enlarged and published under the
title of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." It appears from this
that the ground-work of that satire had been laid some time before the
appearance of the article in the Edinburgh Review.]

[Footnote 79: Sept. 1807. This Review, in pronouncing upon the young
author's future career, showed itself somewhat more "prophet-like"
than the g