O hand-in-hand! That tea-spoon, please, when you’ve done with it.
What butter-colour’d hair you’ve got; I don’t want to be personal.
All-right, then, you needn’t. You’re a stale-cadaver.
Eighteen-pence if the bottles are returned.
Allons, from all bat-eyed formules.
B. E. O. P.
PETER BELL.
Peter Bell: A Lyrical Ballad. London. Printed for Taylor & Hessey, 93, Fleet Street. 1819.
Such is the title of an amusing parody, contained in a small pamphlet of 29 pages, with Preface, Poem, and Foot-notes, all in ridicule of the vanity and egotism of the author of the real original “Peter Bell.” The Preface states:—
“It is now a period of one-and-twenty years since I first wrote some of the most perfect compositions 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.’ Accustomed to mountain solitudes, I can look with a calm and dispassionate eye upon that fiend-like, vulture-souled, adder-fanged critic, whom I have not patience to name, and of whose Review I loathe the title, and detest the contents. Philosophy has taught me to forgive the misguided miscreant, and to speak of him only in terms of patience and pity.