Collection of poems written mostly in 1876 and published that July by Smith, Elder. The first main poem, ‘Of Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper’, satirises RB’s reviewers and particularly *Austin, in the guise of the Sienese painter and ‘turbulent’ (P 2.1039) political figure Giacomo Pacchiarotti or Pacchiarotto (1474–1540). Pacchiarotto makes the mistake of thinking he can treat real people as abusively as he treats those he has painted for the purpose only of haranguing them, just as RB believed Austin misrepresented his work in order to condemn it; fleeing his enemies, Pacchiarotto is trapped for two days with a rotting corpse whose imagined words bring home to him his vanity. The ridicule is ‘heavily Rabelaisian’ (CH 21). Rhymes like ‘domicile’, ‘promise I’ll’ (320–1) allude to, and are intended to out-do, Austin’s pale imitations of Byron (see Martens [2011], p. 219). More generally, the virtuoso use of metre and rhyme refutes Austin’s attacks on RB as unpoetic and unmusical (K&H 355; seeAustin, Alfred). The title puns on ‘distemper’ as painting ‘using colours mixed with some glutinous water-soluble substance’ and as ‘ill temper’ (P 2.1039).