ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, III, 21 January 1810, pp. 33–4. The occasion of this piece is the publication of the poet laureate Pye’s poem for the new year following George III’s Jubilee celebrating his fifty-year reign. As Hunt writes this satirical response to Pye’s attempts to praise the King and his government, which he claims are so exaggerated as to be ‘libels on the good sense of the nation’, he and his brother were again under a charge of seditious libel (see headnote above, p. 119); they would be under a different prosecution at year’s end (see headnotes below, pp. 151 and 170–1). The year would also close with the King’s final illness, which would bring on the Regency (see headnote below, p. 155). Hunt contrasts Pye’s strenuous adulation of the monarch with the scandals that had rocked the government, including accusations against Castlereagh for seat-buying and concerns about the machinations of the Wellesleys, but particularly the uproar surrounding the Walcheren Expedition (see headnote above, pp. 84–5) which was subject to an inquiry by the House of Commons. As more damning evidence was produced, Hunt referred again and again to this Expedition as an example of the failure of the Pittite policy that pursued war at any cost and without concern for the men who served their country. Irritated by Pye’s fawning verse, Hunt is moved to condemn George III’s reign in its entirety, from the war with America and the oppression of Ireland to the destruction of the economy. Hunt also questions the purpose of the office of poet laureate, as he will do again when Southey takes the post (see The Examiner, VI, 15 August 1813, pp. 513–14 and below, pp. 193–5; 29 August 1813, pp. 545–7; 26 September 1813, pp. 609–11 and below, pp. 296–300; below, VII, 16 January 1814, pp. 41–2; X, 13 April 1817, pp. 236–7, and Vol. 2, pp. 106–9; and 11 May 1817, pp. 300–3).
