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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."

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

1 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."-ED.

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,
Yours sincerely

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,
O'er the wide world wandering be.—
First, the antenatal Peter,

Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,
The so long predestined raiment
Clothed in which to walk his way meant
The second Peter; whose ambition
Is to link the proposition,

As the mean of two extremes

(This was learnt from Aldric's' themes)

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Although the author referred to was doubtless Aldrich, it seems scarcely warrantable to spoil the

Shielding from the guilt of schism
The orthodoxal syllogism;
The First Peter-he who was
Like the shadow in the glass
Of the second, yet unripe,
His substantial antitype.--
Then came Peter Bell the Second,

Who henceforward must be reckoned
The body of a double soul,

And that portion of the whole

Without which the rest would seem
Ends of a disjointed dream.-
And the Third is he who has
O'er the grave been forced to pass
To the other side, which is,—
Go and try else,-just like this.

Peter Bell the First was Peter
Smugger, milder, softer, neater,
Like the soul before it is

Born from that world into this.
The next Peter Bell was he,

Predevote, like you and me,
To good or evil as may come;
His was the severer doom,—
For he was an evil Cotter,
And a polygamic Potter.'

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rhythm by turning a dissyllable into a trisyllable. Perhaps Shelley was taught at school to pronounce the name as if written without the final h.-ED. 1 The oldest scholiasts read

A dodecagamic Potter.

This is at once more descriptive and more megalophonous, but the alliteration of the text had captivated the vulgar ear of the herd of later commentators.

And the last is Peter Bell,
Damned since our first parents fell,
Damned eternally to Hell-

Surely he deserves it well!

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PART THE FIRST.

DEATH.

I.

AND Peter Bell, when he had been

With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed, Grew serious-from his dress and mien 'Twas very plainly to be seen

Peter was quite reformed.

II.

His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
His accent caught a nasal twang;

He oiled his hair;1 there might be heard
The grace of God in every word

Which Peter said or sang.

III.

But Peter now grew old, and had
An ill no doctor could unravel;
His torments almost drove him mad

Some said it was a fever bad-

Some swore it was the gravel.

;

To those who have not duly appreciated the distinction between Whale and Russia oil, this attribute might rather seem to belong to the Dandy than the Evangelic. The effect, when to the windward, is indeed so similar, that it requires a subtle naturalist to discriminate the animals. They belong, however, to distinct genera.

IV.

His holy friends then came about,
And with long preaching and persuasion,
Convinced the patient that, without
The smallest shadow of a doubt,
He was predestined to damnation.

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V.

They said- Thy name is Peter Bell;

Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;
Alive or dead-aye, sick or well-
The one God made to rhyme with hell;
The other, I think, rhymes with you."

VI.

Then Peter set up such a yell!

The nurse, who with some water gruel Was climbing up the stairs, as well As her old legs could climb them—fell, And broke them both-the fall was cruel.

VII.

The Parson from the casement leapt
Into the lake of Windermere—
And many an eel-though no adept
In God's right reason for it-kept
Gnawing his kidneys half a year.

VIII.

And all the rest rushed through the door,
And tumbled over one another,

And broke their skulls.-Upon the floor
Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,

And cursed his father and his mother;

IX.

And raved of God, and sin, and death,
Blaspheming like an infidel;

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