ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, VI, 26 September 1813, pp. 609–11. Following the death of the poet laureate, Henry James Pye, in August 1813, the position was initially offered to Walter Scott. He declined, but recommended Robert Southey, whom John Wilson Croker also endorsed. Southey received the offer and accepted in the first week of September. In the Political Examiners of 15 August 1813 (see above, pp. 293–5) and 29 August 1813, pp. 545–7, Hunt had attacked the institution of the laureateship as a corrupt government sinecure. His infuriation at Southey’s appointment stemmed more particularly, however, from Southey’s notorious repudiation of his own liberal politics of the 1790s, a turnaround ironically highlighted by Hunt’s opening quotation of Southey’s 1796 poem about his resistance to established power. Finding this apostasy a duplication of the Prince Regent’s betrayal of his liberal associates when assuming power, Hunt expresses intensifying concern about the deep links between art and politics. For additional details on this perception, see head-note above, pp. 269–70. For Hunt’s continuing disputes with Southey, see below, pp. 309–13, and Vol. 2, pp. 106–9, 186–90.
