No More Learning

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

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

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.