66 LXXXVII. Every woman in the land Will point at them as they stand— LXXXVIII. "And the bold, true warriors LXXXIX. "And that slaughter to the Nation Shall steam up like inspiration, Eloquent, oracular; A volcano heard afar. 66 XC. And these words shall then become Like oppression's thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again-again-again XCI. "Rise like Lions after slumber Shake your chains to earth like dew PETER BELL THE THIRD.' BY MICHING MALLECHO, ESQ. 1819. Is it a party in a parlour, Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, But, as you by their faces see, All silent, and all -damned! Peter Bell, by W. WORDSWORTH. OPHELIA.-What means this, my lord? HAMLET.-Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.-SHAKESPEARE. DEDICATION. TO THOMAS BROWN, ESQ., THE DEAR TOM, Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges; although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more Wordsworth's Peter Bell having been announced, John Hamilton Reynolds forestalled its appearance by issuing Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad, a very witty satire upon Wordsworth. Keats reviewed his friend's pamphlet in The Examiner. Shelley's amusement at the episode ran so high that he wrote a third Peter Bell, also satirizing Wordsworth, but not very successfully. Moore's books, The Twopenny Postbag and The Fudge Family, issued under the pen-name of "Thomas Brown the Younger," were once popular, though probably not much read now. It has been suggested that the initials "H.F." affixed by Shelley to the name of the dedicatee mean 66 "Historian of the Fudges."-ED. active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dulness. You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well-it was he who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally, sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And in presenting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three. There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance with any one of the Peter Bells, that if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell. Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a camelion, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull-O, so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dulness. You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider Hell and the Devil as supernatural machinery. The whole scene of my epic is in this world which is ". '-so Peter informed us before his conversion to White Obi 66 -The world of all of us, and where Let me observe that I have spent six or seven days in composing this sublime piece; the orb of my moon-like genius has made the fourth part of its revolution round the dull earth which you inhabit, driving you mad, while it has retained its calmness and its splendour, and I have been fitting this its last phase 'to occupy a permanent station in the literature of my country.' 66 Your works, indeed, dear Tom, sell better; but mine are far superior. The public is no judge; posterity sets all to rights. Allow me to observe that so much has been written of Peter Bell, that the present history can be considered only, like the Iliad, as a continuation of that series of cyclic poems, which have already been candidates for bestowing immortality upon, at the same time that they receive it from, his character and adventures. In this point of view I have violated no rule of syntax in beginning my composition with a conjunction; the full stop which closes the poem continued by me, being like the full stops at the end of the Iliad and Odyssey, a full stop of a very qualified import. Hoping that the immortality which you have given to the Fudges, you will receive from These words are misquoted from Wordsworth's Dedication of Peter Bell to Southey :-"The Tale of Peter Bell, which I now introduce to your notice, and to that of the Public, has, in its Manuscript state, nearly survived it minority;-for it first saw the light in the summer of 1798. During this long interval, pains have been taken at different times to render the production less unworthy of a favourable reception; or, rather, to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the Literature of my Country."-Ep. them; and in the firm expectation that, when London shall be an habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo-Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians, I remain, dear Tom, December 1, 1819. MICHING MALLECHO. P.S.-Pray excuse the date of place; so soon as the profits of the publication come in, I mean to hire lodgings in a more respectable street. PROLOGUE. PETER BELLS, one, two and three, Wrapped in weeds of the same metre, As the mean of two extremes (This was learnt from Aldric's1 themes) ΙΟ Although the author referred to was doubtless Aldrich, it seems scarcely warrantable to spoil the |