The so-called Satanic school of poetry was a libel coined by the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, in the preface to his panegyric on George III’s assumption, A Vision of Judgement. Its history is well known, but its prodigious derogatory range less so. In part III, Southey sets out to chastise readers, authors and critics alike for their perpetuation of the “monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdness and impiety with which English poetry has … been polluted,” “intended as furniture for the brothel” (Southey X: 203). With the causticity of a manic street preacher, Southey deplores