1 Vox populi, vox dei. As Mr. Godwin truly observes of a more famous saying, of some merit as a popular maxim, but totally destitute of philosophical accuracy.—[SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

2 Quasi, Qui valet verba:-i. e. all the words which have been, are, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on him. A sufficient proof of the utility of this history. Peter's progenitor who selected this name seems to have possessed a pure anticipated cognition of the nature and modesty of this ornament of his posterity.[SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

602-3 See Editor's Note.

1 A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophylic Pantisocratists.[SHELLEY'S NOTE.] 2 See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the agonizing death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in blank verse, published within a few years. [The Excursion, VIII. 11. 568-71.-ED.] That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion of a penetrating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet and sublime verses :

'This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

*

Taught both by what she shows and what conceals,

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'-[SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

* Nature.

As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre 631
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessed day.'

XXXVI

cue.

Soon as he read the ode, he drove To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's,

655

A man of interest in both houses,
And said:- For money or for love,

II

Pray find some cure or sinecure; To feed from the superfluous taxes A friend of ours-a poet-fewer 660 Then Peter wrote odes to the Have fluttered tamer to the lure Than he.' His lordship stands and racks his

Devil;

In one of which he meekly said:

1 It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one ridiculous and odious.

If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied in the moral perversion laid to their charge.-[SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew
tired;-

730

And every neighbouring cottager Stupidly yawned upon the other: No jackass brayed; no little cur 755 To dream of what they should be Cocked up his ears;-no man would

Gaping and torpid they retired,

doing.

stir

NOTE ON PETER BELL THE THIRD, BY
MRS. SHELLEY

In this new edition I have added Peter Bell the Third. A critique on Wordsworth's Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley exceedingly, and suggested this poem.

I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of Peter Bell is

intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's poetry more ;he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He conceived the idealism of a poet-a man of lofty and creative