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Wakefield bellowing vociferation, such an impudent attempt to screen the imbecility of argument under a fictitious passion, and a volley of empty sounds, sunk him ten times deeper than before, even in my opinion.’ In 1795 he wrote to Dr. Parr: ‘I regard the present system of government in this country, civil and ecclesiastical, as that bond of iniquity which must be loosed before social happiness can be secured, and which I am sure natural causes will loose in a very short period indeed.’ With an impetuous temper, and with opinions such as these, it was inevitable that Wakefield should incur a prosecution for seditious libel.

In 1798 Richard Watson (1737–1816) [q. v.], bishop of Llandaff, wrote an ‘Address to the People of Great Britain,’ an ordinary party tract in defence of Pitt and the war and the new ‘tax upon income.’ Wakefield instantly published a ‘Reply,’ which, as he says, ‘was never written over twice, and was finished for the press in the compass of a single day.’ The ‘Reply’ was a remarkable tour de force of mingled eloquence and enthusiasm. Wakefield contended that the poor and the labouring classes would lose nothing by a French invasion, and declared that if the French came they would ‘find him at his post among the illustrious dead.’ It also contained charges of corruption against the civil and ecclesiastical system of the day, and detailed numerous accusations against the bishop of Llandaff as an absentee and pluralist. A prosecution followed of Wakefield, his publisher (Cuthell), and his printer, and all three were convicted. After the conviction of the printer and publisher Wakefield was tried separately in February 1799. Erskine offered to defend him for nothing, Wakefield having exhausted his means in paying the expenses of his publisher; but the offer was declined, and he defended himself in an able and outspoken address. On conviction he was released on bail, and a few weeks later he appeared for judgment, and again addressed the court. No judgment, however, was then delivered, and he was committed to the king's bench prison, where Fox, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Bedford, and others of his political and private friends visited him. In May he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Dorchester gaol, and to give security for good behaviour for five years. On his conviction Fox wrote to him as follows: ‘The liberty of the press I consider as virtually destroyed by the proceedings against Johnson and Jordan, and what has happened to you I cannot but lament therefore the more, as the sufferings of a man whom I esteem in a cause that is no more.’ In May 1799 Wakefield was taken to Dorchester gaol, where his family, who had removed to Dorchester were allowed to visit him frequently; and his confinement, thanks to influential friends, was rendered fairly supportable. A long correspondence, since published, passed between him and Fox, chiefly on matters of scholarship. The large sum of money (5,000l.) that was raised for him by his friends and sympathisers—for Wakefield was never rich—relieved him and his family of pecuniary anxiety. He devoted part of his time to the poorer prisoners and part to literature. The Greek dictionary did not progress, but he wrote constantly to Fox, and sometimes to Parr; translated select essays of Dio Chrysostom, and prepared a work on Greek metres, which was published, under the title of ‘Noctes Carcerariæ’ (London, 1801, 4to), shortly after his release. On this happy event, 29 May 1801, he returned to Hackney, and projected a series of lectures on Virgil. He died at Hackney of typhus fever on 9 Sept. 1801, and was buried near the east end of St. Mary Magdalene's Church, Richmond. The church contains a marble tablet erected to his memory by his brother, Thomas Wakefield, B.A., ‘minister of this parish.’ An engraved portrait is prefixed to his ‘Life.’ He left a widow (who died in 1819), four sons (one of whom served in the Peninsular war), and two daughters.

Wakefield was a man of singular humanity, hating cruelty of all kinds, and sensitive to the misery of others. He abandoned his favourite sports as soon as he conceived that they involved cruelty, and vainly attempted to persuade Fox to do the same. Ἀλήθειαν κὰι ἐλευθερίαν was the motto of his bookplate, and of his life. He holds a distinct position in the history of English scholarship. As a scholar, he had decided merits and conspicuous defects. He had abundance of good taste, extensive general knowledge, and great industry; but these qualifications were counterbalanced by the excessive haste and temerity of his conclusions. His reputation would be higher if he had been a severer critic of himself. He measured swords with Porson with a light heart, and when Porson published his ‘Hecuba’ in 1797, Wakefield immediately assailed the work in a ‘Diatribe Extemporalis.’ The result was a more or less discourteous controversy, which went on simmering in Porson's notes to the ‘Orestes’ and in the second edition of the ‘Hecuba;’ and an estrangement followed. Porson revenged himself by his famous toast, ‘Gilbert