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    Peter Bell the Third
    Peter Bell the Third
    Peter Bell the Third
    Ebook71 pages31 minutes

    Peter Bell the Third

    By Percy Bysshe Shelley

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 2004
    Peter Bell the Third
    Author

    Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet. Born into a prominent political family, Shelley enjoyed a quiet and happy childhood in West Sussex, developing a passion for nature and literature at a young age. He struggled in school, however, and was known by his colleagues at Eton College and University College, Oxford as an outsider and eccentric who spent more time acquainting himself with radical politics and the occult than with the requirements of academia. During his time at Oxford, he began his literary career in earnest, publishing Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810) and St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (1811) In 1811, he married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he lived an itinerant lifestyle while pursuing affairs with other women. Through the poet Robert Southey, he fell under the influence of political philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary soon fell in love with the precocious young poet. In the summer of 1814, Shelley eloped to France with Mary and her stepsister Claire Claremont, travelling to Holland, Germany, and Switzerland before returning to England in the fall. Desperately broke, Shelley struggled to provide for Mary through several pregnancies while balancing his financial obligations to Godwin, Harriet, and his own father. In 1816, Percy and Mary accepted an invitation to join Claremont and Lord Byron in Europe, spending a summer in Switzerland at a house on Lake Geneva. In 1818, following several years of unhappy life in England, the Shelleys—now married—moved to Italy, where Percy worked on The Masque of Anarchy (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821), now considered some of his most important works. In July of 1822, Shelley set sail on the Don Juan and was lost in a storm only hours later. His death at the age of 29 was met with despair and contempt throughout England and Europe, and he is now considered a leading poet and radical thinker of the Romantic era.

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      Book preview

      Peter Bell the Third - Percy Bysshe Shelley

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peter Bell the Third, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Peter Bell the Third

      Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley

      Release Date: January 20, 2010 [EBook #4697]

      Last Updated: February 6, 2013

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER BELL THE THIRD ***

      Produced by Sue Asscher, and David Widger

      PETER BELL THE THIRD.

      By Percy Bysshe Shelley

      (Miching Mallecho)

      Is it a party in a parlour,

      Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,

      Some sipping punch—some sipping tea;

      But, as you by their faces see,

      All silent, and all—damned!

      Peter Bell, by W. WORDSWORTH.

      OPHELIA.—What means this, my lord?

      HAMLET.—Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.

      SHAKESPEARE.

      Contents

      DEDICATION.

      TO THOMAS BROWN, ESQ., THE YOUNGER, H.F.

      DEAR TOM—Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dulness.

      You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well—it was he who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And in presenting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three.

      There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance with any one of the Peter Bells, that if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell.

      Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull—oh so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dulness.

      You will perceive

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