The first and second editions of Peter Bell (1819) contained, as frontispiece, an engraving by J. C. Bromley, after a picture by Sir George Beaumont. In 1807, Wordsworth wrote to Sir George:
"I am quite delighted to hear of your picture for Peter Bell .... But remember that no poem of mine will ever be popular, and I am afraid that the sale of Peter would not carry the expense of engraving .... The people would love the poem of Peter Bell, but the public (a very different thing) will never love it."
Some days before Wordsworth's Peter Bell was issued in 1819, another 'Peter Bell' was published by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. It was a parody written by J. Hamilton Reynolds, and issued as 'Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad', with the sentence on its title page, "I do affirm that I am the real Simon Pure." The preface, which follows, is too paltry to quote; and the stanzas which make up the poem contain allusions to the more trivial of the early Lyrical Ballads (Betty Foy, Harry Gill, etc.). Wordsworth's Peter Bell was published about a week later; and Shelley afterwards published his Peter Bell the Third. Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, in May 1819:
"Dear Wordsworth—I received a copy of 'Peter Bell' a week ago, and I hope the author will not be offended if I say I do not much relish it. The humour, if it is meant for humour, is forced; and then the price!—sixpence would have been dear for it. Mind, I do not mean your 'Peter Bell', but a Peter Bell, which preceded it about a week, and is in every bookseller's shop window in London, the type and paper nothing differing from the true one, the preface signed W. W., and the supplementary preface quoting, as the author's words, an extract from the supplementary preface to the 'Lyrical Ballads.' Is there no law against these rascals? I would have this Lambert Simnel whipt at the cart's tail."
(The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by A. Ainger, vol. ii. p. 20.)
Barron Field wrote on the title-page of his copy of the edition of Peter Bell, 1819,
"And his carcase was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it."
1 Kings xiii. 24.
—Ed.