en of the insane root." He attacked a man of incomparably superior
powers, for whom his utter want of humour--save in its comparatively
childish forms--made him a ludicrously unequal match, and paid the penalty
in being gibbeted in satires that will endure with the language. The
strife, which seems to have begun on Byron's leaving England, rose to its
height when his lordship, in the humorous observations and serious defence
of his character against "the Remarks" in Blackwood, 1819 (August),
accused the Laureate of apostasy, treason, and slander.

In 1821, when the latter published his _Vision of Judgment_--the most
quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned--he prefixed to it a long
explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes _Don Juan_ as a
"monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety,"
regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes
the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of
Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his
death-bed. To which Byron, _inter alia_: "Mr. Southey, 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. What Mr. Southey's
sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of
existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume,
with most men of any reflection, _I_ have not waited for a death-bed to
repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which
this pitiful renegade in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him."
This dignified, though trenchant, rejoinder would have been unanswerable;
but the writer goes on to charge the Laureate with spreading calumnies. To
this charge Southey, in January, 1822, replies with "a direct and positive
denial," and then proceeds to talk at large of the "whip and branding
iron," "slaves of sensuality," "stones from slings," "Goliahs," "public
panders," and what not, in the manner of the brave days of old.

In February Byron, having seen this assault in the _Courier_, writes off
in needless heat, "I have got Southey's pretended reply; what remains to
be done is to call him out,"--and despatches a cartel of mortal defiance.
Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, through whom this was sent, judiciously suppressed
it, and the author's thirst