ByronLord Byron Review, 1830

"His versification is so destitute of sustained harmony, many of his thoughts are so strained, his sentiments so unamiable, his misanthropy so gloomy, his libertinism so shameless, his merriment such a grinning of a ghastly smile, that I have always believed his verses would soon rank with forgotten things."

John Quincy Adams, Memoirs

 


Chaucer
Chaucer Review, 1835

"Chaucer, not withstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible: he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, which does not deserve so well as Piers Plowman or Thomas Erceldoune."

John Byron, The Works of Lord Byron