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.
Of Peter Bell I have only thus much to say: it completes the simple system of natural narrative which I began so early as 1798.
It is written in that pure unlaboured style which can only be met with among labourers; and I can safely say that its occasional meaning occasionally falls far below the meanest capacity. I commit my ballad confidently to posterity. I love to read my own poetry: it does my heart good.”
W. W.
The parody consists of 42 stanzas, and relates how Peter Bell, visiting the churchyard, comes across a gravestone on which is engraved W. W.
I.
It is the thirty-first of march,
A gusty evening—half past seven;
The moon is shining o’er the larch,
A simple shape—a cock’d up arch,