The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peter Bell the Third, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Title: Peter Bell the Third

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4697]
Posting Date: January 20, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER BELL THE THIRD ***

Produced by Sue Asscher

PETER BELL THE THIRD.

By Miching Mallecho

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;