economized in Southwell, sponged on friends, and borrowed of Scrope Davis
at Cambridge. When a remittance again came, he explored the greenrooms,
took lessons from Professor Johnson, the pugilist (referred to as "my
corporeal pastor"), drank whole companies under the table, bought a tame
bear and a wolf to guard the entrance of Newstead, and roamed the country
as a gipsy, in company with a girl dressed in boy's clothes, thus
supplying Richard Le Gallienne an interesting chapter in his "Quest of the
Golden Girl."

But all this time his brain was active, and another book of poetry had
been printed, entitled "Hours of Idleness." This book was gotten out, at
his own expense, by the same country printer as the first.

Surely the verse must have had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the
great "Edinburgh Review," go after it with a slashing, crashing, damning
criticism?

When Byron read the review, a bystander has told us he turned red, then
livid green. He straightway ordered and drank two bottles of claret, said
nothing, but looked like a man who had sent a challenge.

A challenge! that was exactly what Byron proposed. He would fight Jeffrey
first, and then take up in turn every man who had ever contributed to the
magazine--he would kill them all. And to that end he called for his
pistols and went out to practise firing at ten paces. Wiser counsel
prevailed, and he decided to attack the enemy in their own citadel, and
with their own weapons. He ordered ink, and began "English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers."

It took time to get this enormous siege-gun into position and find the
range. Finally, it was loaded with more kinds of missiles, in the way of
what Augustine Birrell has called literary stinkpots, than were ever
before rammed home in a single charge.

It was an audacious move--to reverse the initiative and go after a whole
race of critics, scribblers and reviewers, who had been badgering honest
folks, and blow 'em into kingdom come.

But at the last moment Byron's heart failed him, his wrath gave way to
caution, and "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" appeared anonymously.

The edition was soon exhausted--the shot had at least raised a mighty
dust.

The author got his nerve back, fathered the book, made corrections; and
this edition, too, sold with a rush. Byron returned to Newstead, invited a
score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion
between the bear and the wolf, and were receive