In 1827, when the poet had been dead between four and five years, the publisher took his revenge on the perpetrator of so monstrous an injustice. By that time the embittered knave had dropt from the ways of decent trade, and was falling to the deeper disrepute in which he soon passed from view. A fabricator of scandalous literature as well as a publisher of it, he had already produced the _Memoirs of Harriet Wilson_, when he started the _Budget_, that bears his name, as a vehicle for airing a vanity, which had in some degree deranged a mind long fretted by imaginary grievances, and as an instrument for venting his spite on those who had provoked his displeasure, no less than as means of drawing relief to his indigence from the lovers of personal gossip. In this sordid serial, the broken and utterly discredited libeller produced a mendacious narrative of his transactions with Shelley and Shelley's father. As he could get nothing in 1827 by abusing Shelley, it is not surprising that he spoke well of him at the instigation of self-interest, vanity, and spite. The man knew enough of the literary coteries to know the tide of social feeling had so far turned in Shelley's favour that, whilst disparagement of the poet would not fail to offend, praise of him would not fail to conciliate the readers, most capable of commending the _Budget_ to public favour. For the same reason vanity prompted the fellow to represent himself as the original discoverer and earliest fosterer of the poet's genius. In praising the poet he was also actuated by spite against the poet's father, whose treatment of his son would appear harsh and hateful, in proportion to the strength of the reader's conviction that the poet deserved different usage. On the other hand, though chiefly actuated by malice, the libeller was also animated by vanity and self-interest in what he wrote to Sir Timothy Shelley's discredit; for whilst it afforded him a pleasant sense of his own importance to speak authoritatively of a baronet's misdemeanour, the slanderer knew the growing appetite for words to the poet's credit was attended with an even keener appetite for evidence to his father's discredit. Hence, whether he spoke of the poet or the poet's father, he spoke at the instance of self-interest, vanity, and malice. Such was the man, such were the motives of the man, in whose malignant and nauseous gossip about the poet and his father, Mr. Garnett discovers 'traces of sincere affection' for the author of _Laon and Cythna_. Not content with gushing over Stockdale's 'sincere affection for the young author whose acquaintance was certainly anything but advantageous to him in a pecuniary point of view,' Mr. Garnett deals with the words of this professional slanderer as good evidence, that in their bitter differences the poet was guiltless of serious offence, and that the poet's father was greatly to blame.