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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 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,

MICHING MALLECHO.

December 1, 1819.

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 5
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 learned from Aldric’s themes) 10
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, 15
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 20
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,– 25
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. 30
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, 35
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! 40

NOTES: 10 Aldric’s] i.e. Aldrich’s–a spelling adopted here by Woodberry.

(36 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.–[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])

PART 1.

DEATH.

1.
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. 5