388

Satires.

1819.

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 ?
Hamle.. Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief."

SHAKSPEALE.

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 Beis they are not one, but three ; not three, but one. after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by grod.com enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated, to the sales faction 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. Ile changes cartes like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. ** was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound ; then dull; then prosy ziad dull; and now dull--oh, so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dulness.

An awful mystery, stich,

"to

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 15"-50 Peter informed us before bis 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 moonlight 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 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, Thapeless 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.

1,

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,
Clothed 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 Aldrich's themes) -
Shielding from the guilt of schism
The orthodox 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!

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.

JI.
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.

III.
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.

IV.

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.

V.
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."

VI.
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, sell,

And broke them both-the fall was cruel.

VII.
The parson from the casement leapt

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.

VIII.
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.

IX.
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.

X.
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

Betwixt his upper jaw and under.

XI.
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.

XII.
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.

XIII.
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.

XIV.
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.

XV.
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.

PART II.-THE DEVIL.

I.
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.

II.

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;

III.

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.

IV.

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.

V.

He had on an upper Benjamin

(For he was of the driving schism)