Collection of satirical--even scurrilous in some cases-- commentaries in verse form on writers of the period by William Henry Ireland, the audacious late 18th-century forger of numerous manuscripts purported to have been written by Shakespeare, including four plays, two of them previously unknown. There are chapters on authors such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Robert Southey, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and Clio Rickman, as well as sections on classes of writers such as "Novelists", "Dramatists," "Topographers," "Travellers and Tourists," "Catalogue Makers," and "Commentators on ancient lore."