him and fling it into the midst of the Sahara Desert.' In a letter to Mr. Garnett written in 1818, Ritchie says"If you have not seen the poems of J. Keats, a lad of about 20, they are well worth your reading. If I am not mistaken, he is to be the great poetical luminary of the age to come." Had Keats lived, Ritchie might not have been far wrong. H. BUXTON FORMAN 1 See page xxiii, foot-note, and also page lviii, where Keats refers to this matter. [The story of John Hamilton Reynolds's brilliant squib, Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad, is agreeably told by Keats at pages lxxxix and xciii of this volume; and the draft of the following review appears at pages xciii and xciv. The review itself was published in The Examiner for Sunday the 25th of April 1819, and reappeared in the issue of Monday the 26th. Some of the variations from the draft seem to me to indicate that Keats himself made changes in copying it; but it is probable that Hunt is responsible for some of the alterations. Reynolds's Peter Bell ("the ante-natal Peter," as Shelley called it) is a scarce pamphlet, although there were three editions of it in a very short time. It is no longer out of currency; for it was reprinted, totidem verbis, as an appendix to the third volume of my library edition of Shelley's Poetical Works,the volume containing Peter Bell the Third. In the genesis of that poem, it now appears, Keats took part; for it was this review, with Hunt's notice a week later of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, that so amused Shelley as to induce him to contribute to the Bell literature. The title-page of Reynolds's jeu d'esprit reads thus"PETER BELL. A LYRICAL BALLAD. 'I do affirm that I am the REAL SIMON PURE.' Bold Stroke for a Wife. LONDON: PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY, 93, FLEET STREET. 1819." There is a page of advertisements at the end, wherein Endymion is offered for sale at 9s. This page is dated "April, 1819,” in the first and second editions, and “May, 1819,” in the third.-H. B. F.] REVIEW OF JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS'S "PETER BELL, A LYRICAL BALLAD." THERE have been lately advertised two books, both Peter Bell by name: what stuff one of them was made of may be seen by the motto,-"I am the real Simon Pure." This false Florimel has hurried from the press, and obtruded herself into public notice, while, for ought we know, the real one may be still wandering about the woods and wildernesses. Let us hope she may soon appear, and make good her right to the Magic Girdle. The pamphleteering Archimage, we can perceive, has rather a splenetic love, than a downright hatred, to real Florimels; he has, it seems, a fixed aversion to those three rising Graces, Alice Fell, Susan Gale, and Betty Foy; and now especially to Peter Bell, the fit Apollo. It is plainly seen by one or two passages in this little skit, that the writer of it has felt the finer parts of Mr. WORDSWORTH'S poetry, and perhaps expatiated with his more remote and sublimer Muse. This, as far as it relates to Peter Bell, is unlucky: the more he may love the sad embroidery of the Excursion, the more will he hate the coarse sample[r]s of Betty Foy and Alice Fell; and, as they come from the same hand, the better will he be able to imitate that which we see can be imitated, to wit, Peter Bell, as far as that hero can be imagined from his obstinate name. : We repeat, it is very unlucky this Simon Pure is in points the very man there is such a pernicious likeness in the scenery, such a pestilent humour in the rhymes, and such an inveterate cadence in some of the stanzas. If we are one part amused with this, we are three parts sorry that any one who has any appearance of appreciating WORDSWORTH, should show so much temper at this really provoking name of Peter Bell. The following are specimens of the Preface and the Poetry : It is now a period of one-and-twenty years since I first wrote some of the most perfect compositions (except certain pieces I have written in my later days) that ever dropped from poetical pen. My heart hath been right and powerful all its years. I never thought an evil or a weak thought in my life. It has been my aim and my achievement to deduce moral thunder from buttercups, daisies, celandines, and (as a poet, scarcely inferior to myself, hath it) "such small deer." Out of sparrows' eggs I have hatched great truths, and with sextons' barrows have I wheeled into human hearts, piles of the weightiest philosophy. My Ballads are the noblest pieces of verse in the whole range of English poetry and I take this opportunity of telling the world I am a great man. Milton was also a great man. Ossian was a blind old fool. Copies of my previous works may be had in any numbers, by application at my publisher. He hath a noticeable look †, This old man hath-this grey old man ; He gazes at the graves, and seems, * A favourite flower of mine. It was a favourite with Chaucer, but he did not understand its moral mystery as I do, "Little Cyclops, with one eye." Poems by ME. "A noticeable man with large grey eyes." Lyrical Ballads. |