For the long poem he was envisaging, Byron chose not only the Spenserian stanza but also the archaising dialect in which "The Faerie Queene" was written, possibly following the example of Spenser's 18th century imitators. Thus in the "Pilgrimage's" first three stanzas we find "mote" (as past tense of the verb 'might'); "whilome" (once upon a time) and "ne" (not); "hight" (named) and "losel" (good-for-nothing). If such stylistic artificiality was meant to create a distance between hero and author, it failed - protest though Byron might in the preface that his protagonist was purely fictitious. No sooner had Walter Scott read the work than he was commenting in a private letter to Joanna Baillie that "the hero, notwithstanding the affected antiquity of the style in some parts, is a modern man of fashion and fortune, worn out and satiated with the pursuits of dissipation, and although there is a caution against it in the preface, you cannot for your soul avoid concluding that the author, as he gives an account of his own travels, is also doing so in his own character."