send Members to Parliament. The consequence of the immediate extension of the elective franchise to every male adult, would be to place power in the hands of men who have been rendered brutal, and torpid, and ferocious, by ages of slavery. It is to suppose that the qualities belonging to a demagogue are such as are sufficient to endow a legislator. I allow Major Cartwright's arguments to be unanswerable; abstractedly it is the right of every human being to have a share in the government. But Mr. Paine's arguments are also unanswerable: a pure republic may be shewn, by inferences the most obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order the fittest to produce the happiness, and promote the genuine eminence of man. Yet nothing can be less consistent1 with reason, or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue, than the plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical branches of our constitution, before the public mind, through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived at the maturity which disregard those symbols of its childhood.”

can

I need not point out to the reader's attention the singular and happy anticipations contained in the above extract; neither shall I stop to inquire how far Mr. Shelley would have thought the feasibilities of improvement hastened by the events that have taken place of late years-events, one of them in particular, (the Glorious Three Days) which it would have repaid him for all his endurances, had he lived to see.

And who shall say that he has not seen them? For if ever there was a man upon earth, of a more spiritual nature than ordinary, partaking of the errors and perturbations of his species, but seeing and working through them with a seraphical purpose of good, such an one was Percy Bysshe Shelley.

1 So in Hunt's extract, but can less consist in the Pamphlet.

II.

PETER BELL.1

A LYRICAL BALLAD.

"I do affirm that I am the REAL Simon Pure."

PREFACE.

Bold Stroke for a Wife.

It is now a period of one-and-twenty years since I first wrote some of the most perfect compositions (except certain pieces I have written in my later days) that ever dropped from poetical pen. My heart hath been right and powerful all its years. I never thought an evil or a weak thought in my life. It has been my aim and my achievement to deduce moral thunder from buttercups, daisies,* celandines, and (as a poet, scarcely inferior to myself, hath it)" such small deer." Out of sparrows' eggs I have hatched great truths, and with sextons' barrows have I wheeled into human hearts, piles of the weightiest philosophy. I have persevered

* A favourite flower of mine. It was a favourite with Chaucer, but he did not understand its moral mystery as I do.

"Little Cyclops, with one eye."

1 The story of this poem (by John Hamilton Reynolds) is given in brief at p. 178 of the present volume. The imprint on the title-page is "LONDON PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY, 93, FLEET STREET. 1819." There is a page of Taylor and Hessey's advertisements at the end, wherein Keats's Endymion is offered for sale at the price of 9s. This page

Poems by ME.

is dated "April, 1819," in the first and second editions, and "May, 1819," in the third, from which the poem is here given. It is hardly necessary to add that the preface, notes, and "Supplementary Essay," wherein the character of Wordsworth is assumed, are all by Reynolds. I have not thought it necessary to distinguish them with the usual mark, " Author's Note."

with a perseverance truly astonishing, in persons of not the most pursy purses;-but to a man of my inveterate morality and independent stamp, (of which Stamps I am proud to be a Distributor) the sneers and scoffings of impious Scotchmen, and the neglect of my poor uninspired countrymen, fall as the dew upon the thorn, (on which plant I have written an immortal stanza or two) and are as fleeting as the spray of the waterfall, (concerning which waterfall I have composed some great lines which the world will not let die.)— Accustomed to mountain solitudes, I can look with a calm and dispassionate eye upon that fiend-like, vulture-souled, adder-fanged critic, whom I have not patience to name, and of whose Review I loathe the title, and detest the contents. -Philosophy has taught me to forgive the misguided miscreant, and to speak of him only in terms of patience and pity. I love my venerable Monarch and the Prince Regent.1 My Ballads are the noblest pieces of verse in the whole range of English poetry: and I take this opportunity of telling the world I am a great man. Mr. Milton was also a great man. Ossian was a blind old fool. Copies of my previous works may be had in any numbers, by application at my publisher.

Of PETER BELL I have only thus much to say it completes the simple system of natural narrative, which I began so early as 1798. It is written in that pure unlaboured style, which can only be met with among labourers; -and I can safely say, that while its imaginations spring beyond the reach of the most imaginative, its occasional meaning occasionally falls far below the meanest capacity. As these are the days of counterfeits, I am compelled to

1 Mr. Vansittart, the great Chancellor of the Exchequer, is a noble character and I consecrate this note to that illustrious financier.

2 The White Doe of Rylstone is not of my writing. If it be a serious imitation of my style, I venerate the author; but if it be meant as a joke against me,-I cannot but weep at its remorseless cruelty. I neither know

caution my readers against them, "for such are abroad." However, I here declare this to be the true Peter; this to be the old original Bell. I commit my Ballad confidently to posterity. I love to read my own poetry1: it does my heart good.

W. W.

N. B. The novel of Rob Roy is not so good as my Poem on the same subject.

the tragic Doe, nor am I acquainted with the tragic Buck,-though both these poetical creatures have of late piteously moaned over their buffettings of fortune-" But let the stricken deer go weep," as Bacon philosophically hath it.

2

My eyes are grey.

Venus is said to have had grey eyes. Grey eyes please me well,-being, as a friend of mine finely saith, beautiful exceedingly."

5. He hath a noticeable look,1

This old man hath-this grey old man;
He gazes at the graves, and seems,
With over waiting, over wan,

Like Susan Harvey's2 pan of creams.

6. "Tis Peter Bell-'tis Peter Bell,
Who never stirreth in the day;
His hand is wither'd-he is old!
On Sundays he is us'd to pray,
In winter he is very cold.3

7. I've seen him in the month of August,
At the wheat-field, hour by hour,

Picking ear, by ear,-by ear,

Through wind,-and rain,—and sun,-and shower,
From year, to year,-to year,—to year.

8. You never saw a wiser man,

He knows his Numeration Table;

He counts the sheep of Harry Gill,4
Every night that he is able,

When the sheep are on the hill.

9. Betty Foy-My Betty Foy,

Is the aunt of Peter Bell;

And credit me, as I would have you,
Simon Lee was once his nephew,

And his niece is Alice Fell. 5

1 "A noticeable man with large grey eyes."

Dairy-maid to Mr. Gill.

Lyrical Ballads.

3 Peter Bell resembleth Harry Gill in this particular :

"His teeth they chatter, chatter, chatter."

I should have introduced this fact in the text, but that Harry Gill would not rhyme. I reserve this for my blank verse.

4 Harry Gill was the original proprietor of Barbara Lewthwaite's petlamb; and he also bred Betty Foy's celebrated poney, got originally out of a Night-mare, by a descendant of the great Trojan horse.

5 Mr. Sheridan, in his sweet poem of the Critic, supplies one of his heroes with as singularly clustering a relationship.