entitled A Critique on the "Liberal" (London, 1822, 8vo, 16 pages), which devotes ten pages to an attack on the Vision of Judgment). The daily press was even more violent, The Courier for October 26 begins thus: "This scoundrel-like publication has at length made its appearance."
There was even a threat of prosecution. Byron offered to employ counsel for Hunt, to come over to England to stand his trial in his stead, and blamed Murray for not having handed over the corrected proof, in which some of the more offensive passages had been omitted or mitigated (see letter to Murray, December 25, 1822, and letter to John Hunt, January 8, 1823, Letters, 1901, vi. 155, 159). It is to be noted that in the list of Errata affixed to the table of Contents at the end of the first volume of the Liberal, the words, a "weaker king ne'er," are substituted for "a worse king never" (stanza viii. line 6), and "an unhandsome woman" for "a bad, ugly woman" (stanza xii. line 8). It would seem that these emendations, which do not appear in the MS., were slipped into the Errata as precautions, not as after-thoughts.
Nevertheless, it was held that a publication "calumniating the late king, and wounding the feelings of his present Majesty," was a danger to the public peace, and on January 15, 1824, the case of the King v. John Hunt was tried in the Court of King's Bench. The jury brought in a verdict of "Guilty," but judgment was deferred, and it was not till July 19, 1824, three days after the author of the Vision of Judgment had been laid to rest at Hucknall Torkard, that the publisher was sentenced to pay to the king a fine of one hundred pounds, and to enter into securities, for five years, for a larger amount.
For the complete text of section iii. of Southey's Preface, Byron's "Appendix" to the Two Foscari, etc., see Essays Moral and Political, by Robert Southey, 1832, ii. 183, 205. See, too, for "Quarrel between Byron and Southey," Appendix I. of vol. vi. of Letters of Lord Byron, 1901.
Note.
The following excerpt from H. C. Robinson's Diary is printed from the original MS., with the kind permission of the trustees of Dr. Williams' Theological Library (see "Diary," 1869, ii, 437):—
