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Title: Peter Bell the Third

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4697]
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PETER BELL THE THIRD.

BY MICHING MALLECHO, ESQ.

 Is it a party in a parlour,
 Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
 Some sipping punch--some sipping tea;
 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 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 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 chameleon, 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--oh 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 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


 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

 2.
 His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
 His accent caught a nasal twang;
 He oiled his hair; there might be heard
 The grace of God in every word
 Which Peter said or sang.                                       _10

 3.
 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.                                   _15

 4.
 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.                                _20

 5.
 They said--'Thy name is Peter Bell;
 Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;
 Alive or dead--ay, sick or well--
 The one God made to rhyme with hell;
 The other, I think, rhymes with you.                            _25

 6.
 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.                        _30

 7.
 The Parson from the casement lept
 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.                                _35

 8.
 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;                           _40

 9.
 And raved of God, and sin, and death,
 Blaspheming like an infidel;
 And said, that with his clenched teeth
 He'd seize the earth from underneath,
 And drag it with him down to hell.                              _45

 10.
 As he was speaking came a spasm,
 And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;
 Like one who sees a strange phantasm
 He lay,--there was a silent chasm
 Between his upper jaw and under.                                _50

 11.
 And yellow death lay on his face;
 And a fixed smile that was not human
 Told, as I understand the case,
 That he was gone to the wrong place:--
 I heard all this from the old woman.                            _55

 12.
 Then there came down from Langdale Pike
 A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;
 It swept over the mountains like
 An ocean,--and I heard it strike
 The woods and crags of Grasmere vale.                           _60

 13.
 And I saw the black storm come
 Nearer, minute after minute;
 Its thunder made the cataracts dumb;
 With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,
 It neared as if the Devil was in it.                            _65

 14.
 The Devil WAS in it:--he had bought
 Peter for half-a-crown; and when
 The storm which bore him vanished, nought
 That in the house that storm had caught
 Was ever seen again.                                            _70

 15.
 The gaping neighbours came next day--
 They found all vanished from the shore:
 The Bible, whence he used to pray,
 Half scorched under a hen-coop lay;
 Smashed glass--and nothing more!                                _75


 PART 2.

 THE DEVIL.

 1.
 The Devil, I safely can aver,
 Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;
 Nor is he, as some sages swear,
 A spirit, neither here nor there,
 In nothing--yet in everything.                                  _80

 2.
 He is--what we are; for sometimes
 The Devil is a gentleman;
 At others a bard bartering rhymes
 For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;
 A swindler, living as he can;                                   _85

 3.
 A thief, who cometh in the night,
 With whole boots and net pantaloons,
 Like some one whom it were not right
 To mention;--or the luckless wight
 From whom he steals nine silver spoons.                         _90

 4.
 But in this case he did appear
 Like a slop-merchant from Wapping,
 And with smug face, and eye severe,
 On every side did perk and peer
 Till he saw Peter dead or napping.                              _95

 5.
 He had on an upper Benjamin
 (For he was of the driving schism)
 In the which he wrapped his skin
 From the storm he travelled in,
 For fear of rheumatism.                                         _100

 6.
 He called the ghost out of the corse;--
 It was exceedingly like Peter,--
 Only its voice was hollow and hoarse--
 It had a queerish look of course--
 Its dress too was a little neater.                              _105

 7.
 The Devil knew not his name and lot;
 Peter knew not that he was Bell:
 Each had an upper stream of thought,
 Which made all seem as it was not;
 Fitting itself to all things well.                              _110

 8.
 Peter thought he had parents dear,
 Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,
 In the fens of Lincolnshire;
 He perhaps had found them there
 Had he gone and boldly shown his                                _115

 9.
 Solemn phiz in his own village;
 Where he thought oft when a boy
 He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage
 The produce of his neighbour's tillage,
 With marvellous pride and joy.                                  _120

 10.
 And the Devil thought he had,
 'Mid the misery and confusion
 Of an unjust war, just made
 A fortune by the gainful trade
 Of giving soldiers rations bad--                                _125
 The world is full of strange delusion--

 11.
 That he had a mansion planned
 In a square like Grosvenor Square,
 That he was aping fashion, and
 That he now came to Westmoreland                                _130
 To see what was romantic there.

 12.
 And all this, though quite ideal,--
 Ready at a breath to vanish,--
 Was a state not more unreal
 Than the peace he could not feel,                               _135
 Or the care he could not banish.

 13.
 After a little conversation,
 The Devil told Peter, if he chose,
 He'd bring him to the world of fashion
 By giving him a situation                                       _140
 In his own service--and new clothes.

 14.
 And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,
 And after waiting some few days
 For a new livery--dirty yellow
 Turned up with black--the wretched fellow                       _145
 Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.


 PART 3.

 HELL.

 1.
 Hell is a city much like London--
 A populous and a smoky city;
 There are all sorts of people undone,
 And there is little or no fun done;                             _150
 Small justice shown, and still less pity.

 2.
 There is a Castles, and a Canning,
 A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;
 All sorts of caitiff corpses planning
 All sorts of cozening for trepanning                            _155
 Corpses less corrupt than they.

 3.
 There is a
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