182 of] from Wise MS. only. 186 wills Hunt MS., edd. 1832, 1839; will Wise MS. 198 their Wise MS., Hunt MS., edd. 1839; the ed. 1832. 216 cave Wise MS., Hunt MS., edd. 1839; caves ed. 1832, Hunt MS. cancelled. 220 In Wise MS., edd. 1832, 1839 ; To Hunt MS.

1 The following stanza is found in the Wise MS. and in edd. 1839, but is wanting in the Hunt MS. and in ed. 1832 :

:

'Horses, oxen, have a home, When from daily toil they come;

Household dogs, when the wind roars,
Find a home within warm doors.'

LV

make

LXII

250

'Thou art clothes, and fire, and food'Or turn their wealth to arms, and
For the trampled multitude-
No-in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.

LVI

To the rich thou art a check, When his foot is on the neck Of his victim, thou dost make That he treads upon a snake.

LVII

225

Thou art Justice-ne'er for gold 230
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England-thou
Shield'st alike the high and low.

LVIII

'Thou art Wisdom-Freemen never
Dream that God will damn for ever
All who think those things untrue
Of which Priests make such ado. 237

LIX

"Thou art Peace-never by thee
Would blood and treasure wasted be
As tyrants wasted them, when all 240
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.

LX

'What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty,
To dim, but not extinguish thee. 245

LXI

'Thou art Love-the rich have kissed Thy feet, and like him following Christ,

Give their substance to the free And through the rough world follow thee,

War for thy beloved sake
On wealth, and war, and fraud-
whence they

Drew the power which is their

233 the Hunt MS., edd. 1832, 1839; both Wise MS. 234 Freemen Wise MS., Hunt MS., edd. 1839; Freedom ed. 1832. 235 Dream Wise MS., Hunt MS., edd. 1839; Dreams ed. 1832. damn] doom edd. 1839 only. Given Wise MS., Hunt MS. cancelled, edd. 1839. 250 Or Wise MS., Hunt MS.; Oh edd. 1832, 1839. Hunt MS.; Science, and Poetry edd. 1832, 1839. they curse their Maker not Wise MS., edd. 1839. and ed. 1832 only.

1 The following stanza is found (cancelled) at this place in the Wise MS. :—

From the cities where from caves,

Troops of starvelings gilding come,

Like the dead from putrid graves,

Living Tenants of a tomb.'

For those who groan, and toil, and Weapons of unvanquished war,

wail

LXXX

'And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armed steeds

320

325

Pass, a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.

1832, 1839.

297 measured Wise MS., 322 of unvanquished Wise MS.; of an

And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek. 351

LXXXVII

'Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand-
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street. 355

LXXXVIII

And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company.

LXXXIX

'And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration, 361
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

XC

'And these words shall then become Like Oppression's thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain,

Heard again-again-again—

XCI

366

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many-they are few.'

NOTE ON THE MASK OF ANARCHY, BY

MRS. SHELLEY

370

years after, made him long to teach his injured countrymen how to resist. Inspired by these feelings, he wrote the Mask of Anarchy, which he sent to his friend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in the Examiner, of which he was then the Editor.

THOUGH Shelley's first eager desire | compassion. The great truth that the to excite his countrymen to resist openly many, if accordant and resolute, could the oppressions existent during the control the few, as was shown some good old times' had faded with early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people. He was a republican, and loved a democracy. He looked on all human beings as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our nature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labour, and intellectual instruction. His hatred of any despotism that looked upon the people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and ignorance, was intense. He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, writing The Cenci, when the news of the Manchester Massacre reached us; it roused in him violent emotions of indignation and

346 slay Wise MS., Hunt MS., edd. 1839; Hunt MS., ed. 1832; in the wars edd. 1839.

'I did not insert it,' Leigh Hunt writes in his valuable and interesting preface to this poem, when he printed it in 1832, 'because I thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.' Days of outrage have passed away, and with them the exasperation that would stay ed. 1832.

357 in wars Wise MS.,

cause such an appeal to the many to be

and unpolished, but many stanzas are injurious. Without being aware of all his own. I heard him repeat, and admired, those beginning

them, they at one time acted on his suggestions, and gained the day. But they rose when human life was respected by the Minister in power; such was not the case during the Administration which excited Shelley's abhor

rence.

'My Father Time is old and gray,' before I knew to what poem they were to belong. But the most touching passage is that which describes the blessed effects of liberty; it might make a patriot of any man whose heart was not wholly closed against his humbler

The poem was written for the people, and is therefore in a more popular tone than usual: portions strike as abrupt | fellow-creatures.

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.

[Composed at Florence, October, 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (Nov. 2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author's name; ultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the Poetical Works, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, a Tale. These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt's criticisms the composition of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is chiefly owing.]

DEDICATION

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

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.

DEAR TOM-Allow me to request | from this introduction to his brothers. 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

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