The best-selling poet whom Southey accused of leading a Satanic school of writers which corrupted readers’ morality. Byron, in Italy, thought of returning to Britain to challenge Southey to a duel; instead, he satirised the Poet Laureate’s A Vision of Judgement (1821). He had earlier, however, been influenced by Southey’s Oriental romances and continued to admire Roderick Last of the Goths (1814).