.' All these
repulsive images are of course here applied to critics of wilfully
obtuse or malignant mind, such as Shelley accounted the _Quarterly_
reviewer of Keats to be.

1. 5, &c. _'How they fled When, like Apollo,'_ &c. The allusion is to
perfectly well-known incidents in the opening poetic career of Lord
Byron. His lordship, in earliest youth, published a very insignificant
volume of verse named _Hours of Idleness_. The _Edinburgh
Review_--rightly in substance, but with some superfluous harshness of
tone--pronounced this volume to be poor stuff. Byron retaliated by
producing his satire entitled _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. With
this book he scored a success. His next publication was the generally
and enthusiastically admired commencement of _Childe Harold_, 1812;
after which date the critics justly acclaimed him as a poet--although in
course of time they grew lavishly severe upon him from the point of view
of morals and religion. I reproduce from the Pisan edition the
punctuation--'When like Apollo, from his golden bow'; but I think the
exact sense would be better brought out if we read--'When, like Apollo
from his golden bow, The Pythian,' &c.

11. 7, 8. _'The Pythian of the age one arrow sped, And smiled.'_
Byron is here assimilated to Apollo Pythius--Apollo the
Python-slayer.
The statue named Apollo Belvedere is regarded as representing
the god at the moment after he has discharged his arrow
at the python (serpent), his countenance irradiated with a half-smile
of divine scorn and triumph. The terms employed by Shelley
seem to glance more particularly at that celebrated statue: this
was the more appropriate as Byron had devoted to the same
figure two famous stanzas in the 4th canto of _Childe Harold_--

'Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life and poesy and light,' &c.

1. 9. _'They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.'_ In the
Pisan edition we read 'that spurn them as they go.' No doubt the change
(introduced as in other instances named on pp. 105 and 113) must be
Shelley's own. The picture presented to the mind is more consistent,
according to the altered reading. The critics, as we are told in this
stanza, had at first 'fled' from Byron's arrow; afterwards they 'fawned
on his proud feet.' In order to do this, they must have paused in their
flight, and returned; and, in the act of fawning on Byron's feet, they
must have crouched down, or were 'lying low.' (Mr. Forman