pejorative designation for the poets John Keats (Keats, John), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Shelley, Percy Bysshe), Leigh Hunt (Hunt, Leigh), and Lord Byron (Byron, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron), used of them by Robert Southey (Southey, Robert) in the preface to his A Vision of Judgement (1821). The term expressed Southey's disapproval of the unorthodox views and lifestyles of the poets.