William Hone's 'New Vision of Judgement'

William Hone and Robert Southey had a complex relationship. Hone, now best known for publications such as The Political House that Jack Built (1820) and The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder (1820), pirated Southey’s works, released competing versions of his poems and opposed his politics. Southey called for the imprisonment of pressman of Hone’s kind and yet, toward the end of his life, used his influence to help Hone financially. The two men came closest to each other in the post-Waterloo years of depression, poverty and radicalism, when Southey feared revolution and called for writers expressing opinions similar to his own of the 1790s to be gagged, and when Hone parodied his poem praising the old and new king — A Vision of Judgement (1821). Although now eclipsed by Byron’s better-known response, Hone’s 'A New Vision, by Robert Southey Esq! LL.D.!! Poet Laureate!!! &c. !!!! &c. !!!!! &c.!!!!!!' was the first poetic reply to Southey’s sycophantic hexameters. It was published by Hone, in A Slap at Slop and the Bridge Street Gang, as a poem of 142 lines, written in hexameters, and printed alongside a corresponding cut by George Cruikshank, entitled 'Doctor Southey’s New Vision', in August 1821. Hone’s 'New Vision' raises, with particular directness, the question of who can properly claim ownership of a narrative?