BY

SHAKSPEARE.

DEDICATION.

TO THOMAS 'BROWN, ESQ., THE YOUNGER, H.F.

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 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 pre

senting 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 cameleon, 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

-The world of all of us, and where
We find our happiness, or not at all.

Let me observe that I have spent six or seven days in composing this sublime piece; the orb of my moonlike 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 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

PETER BELLS, one, two and three,
O'er the wide world wandering be.-
First, the antenatal Peter,

Wrapt 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)
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.*
And the last is Peter Bell,

Damned since our first parents fell,
Damned eternally to Hell-
Surely he deserves it well!

*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.

There are mincing women, mewing,
(Like cats, who amant miserè,*)
Of their own virtue, and pursuing
Their gentler sisters to that ruin,

Without which-what were chastity.+

*One of the attributes in Linnæus's description of the Cat. To a similar cause the caterwauling of more than one species of this genus is to be referred ;-except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only to quarrel with those of others.

What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be

Lawyers-judges-old hobnobbers
Are there bailiffs-chancellors-
Bishops-great and little robbers—
Rhymesters-pamphleteers-stock-jobbers—
Men of glory in the wars,—

Things whose trade is, over ladies

To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper, Till all that is divine in woman

Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.

Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
Frowning, preaching-such a riot!
Each with never-ceasing labour,
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,
Cheating his own heart of quiet.

And all these meet at levees ;

Dinners convivial and political ;— Suppers of epic poets ;-teas, Where small talk dies in agonies;Breakfasts professional and critical;

Lunches and snacks so aldermanic

That one would furnish forth ten dinners, Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic,

Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic
Should make some losers, and some winners

At conversazioni-balls

Conventicles-and drawing-roomsCourts of law-committees-calls Of a morning-clubs-book-stallsChurches-masquerades-and tombs.

And this is Hell-and in this smother All are damnable and damned; Each one damning, damns the other; They are damned by one another,

By none other are they damned.

'Tis a lie to say, " God damns !"*
Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams,

They are mines of poisonous mineral.

without its kernel prostitution, or the kernel prostitution without this husk of a virtue? I wonder the women of the town do not form an association, like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what may be called the "King, Church, and Constitution" of their order. But this subject is almost too horrible for a joke. * This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of