This stanza, which was deleted from every edition of Peter Bell after the two of 1819, was prefixed by Shelley to his poem of Peter Bell the Third, and many of his contemporaries thought that it was an invention of Shelley's. See the note which follows this poem, p. 50. Crabb Robinson wrote in his Diary, June 6, 1812:
"Mrs. Basil Montagu told me she had no doubt she had suggested this image to Wordsworth by relating to him an anecdote. A person, walking in a friend's garden, looking in at a window, saw a company of ladies at a table near the window, with countenances fixed. In an instant he was aware of their condition, and broke the window. He saved them from incipient suffocation."
Wordsworth subsequently said that he had omitted the stanza only in deference to the "unco guid." Crabb Robinson remonstrated with him against its exclusion.—Ed.
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