Time was, ere these degenerate days


Photograph

Bequest of Francis Lewis Peck, 1966 – *EC8.H1800.807eb

O say shall these, who just so bright have shone,
Escape remembrance when they quit the Ton?

Lady Anne Hamilton (1766-1846). The Epics of the Ton, 2nd ed. (London, 1807).

Lady Hamilton, one of the few women satirists of the Romantic period, issued this anonymous attack on court figures after the “Delicate Investigation” of 1806 at which her patroness, Caroline of Brunswick, had been falsely accused of adultery. In the text she provides only the initial letters of the titles and surnames of her victims, leaving it to the reader to discern their identities. Her brief critical assessment of contemporary poets anticipates Byron’s own in English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers.