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In 1821, William Hone issued a pamphlet entitled “A Slap at Slop, and the Bridge Street Gang,” with some clever political caricatures by George Cruikshank. This pamphlet contains several amusing parodies, notably one on Canning’s U-niversity of Gottingen, and a very close imitation of part of Southey’s “Vision of Judgment.”
Hone’s object was not only to ridicule Southey’s poem, but also to attack the members of The Loyal Association, or, as it was afterwards styled, “The Constitutional Association,” a body formed with somewhat similar objects to those of The Primrose League of to-day. This society had its offices in New Bridge Street, Blackfriars, hence Hone’s term, “Bridge Street Gang,” its secretary was one Charles Murray, a thin, elderly man with a wooden leg; whilst “Dr. Slop” was a name borrowed by Hone from Tristram Shandy, and applied to Sir John Stoddart, M.D., a choleric physician, who had formerly been on the staff of The Times newspaper. He had therein attacked certain persons, and opinions, so intemperately that he was discharged, according to an article in The Times itself, in 1817, on account of “the virulence and indiscretion of his articles.”
He then started a journal of his own, called The New Times, in which the objects and proceedings of “The Constitutional Association” were constantly puffed and praised. Hone christened this paper, with doubtful taste, “The Muck Times, or Slop-pail,” and in the following parody he imitates Southey’s description of the hosts assembled in heaven to welcome George III, amongst whom only those were named whose political opinions were pleasing to the Poet Laureate.
A NEW VISION.
By Robert Southey, Esq.! l.l.d.!!
Poet Laureate!!! &c.!!!! &c.!!!! &c.!!!
’Twas at that sober hour when the light of day is receding,
I alone in Slop’s office was left; and, in trouble of spirit,
I mused on old times, till my comfort of heart had departed.