Some liked it, but most got bogged down, and several gave up before the half-way mark. There were complaints of having too much info stuffed into the book, and also of skimping on details in some areas. The author's intent was not merely to give a synopsis of the scientific advances done in England between Banks and Darwin, but also to sketch portraits of those proto-scientists, and to show the intersection between science and the Romantic poets. And so he quoted Byron and others, when they included the new exciting scientific theories in their poetry, and Davy (and others) when they took a break from the lab to pen their own poems. Which weren't all that good.