English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers is an 1809 satirical poem written by Lord Byron, and published by James Cawthorn in London.

The poem was first published anonymously, in March 1809, and a second, expanded edition followed in 1809, with Byron identified as the author.

[1] Byron was already working on a poem called "British Bards", but the review, which he (incorrectly) attributed to Francis Jeffrey, prompted him to expand its scope; he made Jeffrey "the central figure in a wide-ranging satire on contemporary practices both in writing and in reviewing".

In writing it, he drew on earlier satires, including the Baviad (1791) and Maeviad (1795) by William Gifford (1791), the texts published in the Anti-Jacobin (1797–1798), the Epics of the Ton (1807) by Lady Anne Hamilton and the Simpliciad (1808) by Richard Mant.

[2] Byron used heroic couplets in imitation of Alexander Pope's The Dunciad to attack the reigning poets of Romanticism, including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Francis Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review.