These words exchanged, the news sent off 1 It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one ridiculous and odious. If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied in the moral perversion laid to their charge. XVIII His servant-maids and dogs grew dull; All grew dull as Peter's self. XIX The earth under his feet-the springs, XX The birds and beasts within the wood, Near Peter's house took wing. XXI And every neighbouring cottager Stupidly yawned upon the other: No jack-ass brayed; no little cur Cocked up his ears;-no man would stir To save a dying mother. XXII Yet all from that charmed district went XXIII No bailiff dared within that space, XXIV Seven miles above-below-aroundThis pest of dulness holds its sway; A ghastly life without a sound; NOTE ON PETER BELL THE IN this new edition I have added Peter Bell the Third. A critique on Wordsworth's Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley exceedingly, and suggested this poem. I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of Peter Bell intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's poetry more;-he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He conceived the idealism of a poet-a man of lofty and creative genius-quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing the beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices and pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour for truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources of the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false and injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and force were the best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a man gifted, even as transcendently as the author of Peter Bell, with the highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be infected with dulness. This poem was written as a warning-not as a narration of the reality. He was unacquainted personally with Wordsworth, or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal;-it contains something of criticism on the compositions of those great poets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves. No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully written and, though, like the burlesque drama of Swellfoot, it must be In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree; The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves; On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire : With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, Which fishers found under the utmost crag So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, From the fine threads of rare and subtle And feed it with the asphodels of fame, Which in those hearts which must remember me Grow, making love an immortality. isles, Magical forms the brick floor overspread,― Whoever should behold me now, I Proteus transformed to metal did not Would think I were a mighty mechanist, More figures, or more strange; nor did More knacks and quips there be than I With ink in it;-a china cup that was am able To catalogise in this verse of mine :A pretty bowl of wood-not full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who Reply to them in lava-cry halloo ! What it will never be again, I think, A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink The liquor doctors rail at-and which I Will quaff in spite of them--and when we die We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, And cry out,-heads or tails? where'er we be. And call out to the cities o'er their Near that a dusty paint box, some odd Another rouse, and hold their sides and To great Laplace, from Saunderson and This quicksilver no gnome has drunk- Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures, disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, With lead in the middle-I'm conjecturing How to make Henry understand; but no Is still-blue heaven smiles over the I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many The thing I mean and laugh at me,-if so The self-impelling steam-wheels of the Traced over them in blue and yellow Ruffling the ocean of their self-content; paint. Then comes a range of mathematical Instruments, for plans nautical and statical; A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass I sit and smile or sigh as is my bent, |