It was once believed that Byron's publication of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was provoked by a scathing review of his book, Hours of Idleness, by Lord Brougham in the January 1808 issue of The Edinburgh Review. However, in October 1807 Byron already had 380 lines of a satire to be titled British Bards and, by the time the review appeared, 520 lines had been set in type and printed in quarto sheets by Ridge of Newark.1 After the review, Byron set out to rewrite and expand his satire, which he published anonymously in March 1809. It was such a success that Byron published the second edition under his own name, with an added Preface and nearly 400 new lines. Ninetysix of the new lines were at the beginning, starting with: Still must I hear? - shall hoarse *FITZGERALD bawl His croaking couplets in a tavern hall, And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch Reviews Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my Muse? (1-4) He then went on to identify the target of this attack in a footnote: Mr. Fitzgerald, facetiously termed by COBBETT the 'Small Beer Poet', inflicts his annual tribute of verse on the 'Literary Fund'; not content with writing, he spouts in person after the company have imbibed a reasonable quantity of bad port, to enable them to sustain the operation.2 William Thomas Fitzgerald (c.1759-1829) considered himself an unofficial poet laureate whose annual Literary Fund recitations were reported in the newspapers. He was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office by day, but also an author of patriotic effusions and other miscellany. He owes his fame to the first line in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and Byron's parody of him in Rejected Addresses. In his Works of Lord Byron, Thomas Moore added the following to Byron's footnote: (For a long period of thirty-two years, this harmless poetaster was an attendant at the anniversary dinners of the Literary Fund, and constantly honoured the occasion with an ode, which he himself recited with the most comical dignity and emphasis - Of all his numerous loyal effusions only a single line has survived its author: -)3 We now know that Moore was somewhat pessimistic, as a compilation of Fitzgerald's writings appeared as recently as 1979.4 But what was Fitzgerald's reaction to his sudden fame, when singled out by Byron for dubious attention? The contemporary poet and Byron's earliest agent, R. C. Dallas, transcribed the following humorous exchange on the blank leaf of the fifth edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: Written on a copy of English Bards at the 'Alfred' by W. T. Fitzgerald, Esq. -5 I find Lord Byron scorns my Muse, Our fates are ill agreed; The Verse is safe, I can't abuse Those lines, I never read. Signed W. T. F. Byron answered on the same page: 'What's writ on me', cries Fitz, 'I never read!' What's writ by thee, dear Fitz, none will, indeed. The case stands simply thus, then, honest Fitz, Thou and thine enemies are fairly quits; Or rather would be, if for time to come, They luckily were 'deaf', or thou wert dumb; But to their pens while scribblers add their tongues. The Waiters only can escape their lungs.6 There is no indication of when this exchange took place, but claiming never to have read 'those lines' was probably somewhat disingenuous on Fitzgerald's part. Fitzgerald owned a copy of the second edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in which he had inked a little hand next to his name and attached a manuscript copy of a different response to Byron on the blank page vii - opposite the first line of the poem. That same little hand is drawn on the top of the attached manuscript, indicating that it was in his hand and suggesting that it was probably written early in 1812, shortly after the publication of the first part of Childe Harold: If this attack upon Mr. …