No More Learning

"What, then," he asks (ed. 1838, x. 204), "should be said of those for
whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton youth can no longer be
pleaded, but who have written in sober manhood, and with deliberate
purpose? . . . Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who,
forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of
conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society,
and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and
bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others
as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus that
eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be
called the Satanic school; for, though their productions breathe the
spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in
those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to
represent, they are more especially characterized by a Satanic pride and
audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of
hopelessness wherewith it is allied. "

Byron was not slow to take up the challenge. In the "Appendix" to the
_Two Foscari_ (first ed. , pp. 325-329), which was written at Ravenna,
June-July, but not published till December 11, 1821, he retaliates on
"Mr. Southey and his 'pious preface'" in many words; but when it comes
to the point, ignores the charge of having "published a lascivious
book," and endeavours by counter-charges to divert the odium and to
cover his adversary with shame and confusion. "Mr. S.
," he says, "with a
cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated 'death-bed repentance' of
the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision
of Judgment,' in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. . . . I
am not ignorant," he adds, "of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different
occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his
return from Switzerland against me and others. . . . What _his_ 'death-bed'
may be it is not my province to predicate; let him settle it with his
Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and
blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all works sitting down to deal
damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the
Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the regicide,
all shuffled together in his writing-desk. "

Southey must have received his copy of the _Two Foscari_ in the last
week of December, 1821, and with the "Appendix" (to say nothing of the
Third Canto of _Don Juan_) before him, he gave tongue, in the pages of
the _Courier_, January 6, 1822. His task was an easy one. He was able to
deny, _in toto_, the charge of uttering calumnies on his return from
Switzerland, and he was pleased to word his denial in a very
disagreeable way. He had come home with a stock of travellers' tales,
but not one of them was about Lord Byron. He had "sought for no staler
subject than St.