On 12th March, 1800 Charles James Fox wrote thus to Gilbert Wakefield, imprisoned for seditious libel in Dorchester Gaol. ‘I have lately read Lycophron, and am much obliged to you for recommending it to me to do so: besides there being some very charming poetry in him, the variety of stories is very entertaining. … There remain, after all, some few difficulties, which if you can clear up to me, I shall be much obliged to you. … The most important of these is, that which belongs to the part where he speaks of the Romans in a manner that could not be possible for one who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, that is, even before the first Punic war.’ Fox accordingly inferred that either the Roman passages (1226–80, 1446–50) were interpolated (which he thought the more probable hypothesis) or the poem as a whole was not the work of the author to whom it was traditionally ascribed, Lycophron the tragedian, who organised the texts of comedy for the Alexandrian library under Philadelphus. Wakefield, though normally a far from conservative critic, was not convinced: ‘Is it incredible, that an attentive observer of the times, and the rising greatness of the Romans, might venture to predict the extent of their future sway in the general terms of ver. 1229?’ Fox thought this ‘morally impossible’, and the subject continued to occupy their letters during the remaining months of Wakefield's incarceration. In this remarkable correspondence we find clearly adumbrated the main lines on which the Lycophron Question was to develop. If our hearts sink before the considerable bibliography generated by this controversy, we may find reassurance in the characteristic air of invincible common sense with which its initiator, having hit on a peculiarly happy expedient for cheering the enforced leisure of his imprudent friend, steadily maintained his position, armed against Wakefield's superior erudition by better judgement and a stronger sense of style.