Title:  Peter Bell the Third

Author:  Percy Bysshe Shelley

Release Date:  November, 2003 [Etext #4697] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 3, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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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.

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.