_Have I, these five years, spared the dog a stick,
Cut for his special use, and reasonably thick?_

It had been written in 1818, in consequence of the famous review in
the _Quarterly_ of Keats's _Endymion_, a fact which the biographers of
Keats do not seem to have observed. Why did Hunt not immediately print
it? Perhaps because to have done so would have been worse than useless
in the then condition of public taste and temper. What led Hunt to
break through his intention of suppressing the poem it might be
difficult to discover. At all events, in the summer of 1823 he
suddenly sent it home for publication; whether it was actually
published is doubtful, it was probably only circulated in private to a
handful of sympathetic Tory-hating friends.

_Ultra-crepidarius_ is written in the same anapaestic measure as _The
Feast of the Poets_, but is somewhat longer. As a satire on William
Gifford it possessed the disadvantage of coming too late in the day to
be of any service to anybody. At the close of 1823 Gifford, in failing
health, was resigning the editorial chair of the _Quarterly_, which he
had made so formidable, and was retiring into private life, to die in
1826. The poem probably explains, however, what has always seemed a
little difficult to comprehend, the extreme personal bitterness with
which Gifford, at the close of his career, regarded Hunt, since the
slayer of the Della Cruscans was not the man to tolerate being
treated as though he were a Della Cruscan himself. However narrow the
circulation of _Ultra-crepidarius_ may have been, care was no doubt
taken that the editor of the _Quarterly Review_ should receive one
copy at his private address, and Leigh Hunt returned from Italy in
time for that odd incident to take place at the Roxburgh sale, when
Barron Field called his attention to the fact that "a little man, with
a warped frame, and a countenance between the querulous and the angry,
was gazing at me with all his might." Hunt tells this story in the
_Autobiography_, from which, however, he omits all allusion to his
satire.

The latter opens with the statement that:

'_Tis now about fifty or sixty years since
(The date of a charming old boy of a Prince)--_

Mercury was in a state of rare fidget from the discovery that he had
lost one of his precious winged shoes, and had in consequence dawdled
away a whole week in company with Venus, not having dreamed that it
was that crafty goddess herself, who,