Mocking and mowing by his side-
A mad-brained goblin for a guide-
Over cornfields, gates, and hedges.
21. After these ghastly rides, he came

Home to his heart, and found from thence
Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
Of their intelligence.

22. To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;
He was no whig, he was no tory;
No deist and no Christian he ;—
He got so subtle that to be

Nothing was all his glory.

23. One single point in his belief

From his organization sprung,-
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That "happiness is wrong.'
24. So thought Calvin and Dominic;

So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might "do their do."

25. His morals thus were undermined:-
The old Peter Bell, the hard old potter,
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter.

26. In the death-hues of agony

Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.

27. So in his Country's dying face

He looked-and, lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:

28. And coolly to his own Soul said:

"Do you not think that we might make A poem on her when she's dead ?Or no! a thought is in my head!

Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take.

29. "My wife wants one.-Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you,
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,--
Ay, and at last desert me too."

30, And so his soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.

31. As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter's heart and mind
Now made his verses dark and queer;
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim graveclothes in the wind :-
32. For he now raved enormous folly,

Of baptisms, Sunday-schools, and graves.
"Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.

33. Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes tyranny,

Praise him, for those who feed 'em. 34. He was a man too great to scan;

A planet lost in truth's keen rays;
Ilis virtue, awful and prodigious;
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded poet of these days.
35. As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
"Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessed day.'

36. Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;-
In one of which he meekly said:

37.

38.

66

May Carnage and Slaughter,

Thy niece and thy daughter,

May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,

Glut thee with living and dead!

"May Death and Damnation
And Consternation

Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,

Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;

Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent !

"Let thy body-guard yeomen

Hew down babes and women,

And laugh with hold triumph till heaven be rent
When Moloch in Jewry

Munched children with fury,

It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent."

PART VII.-DOUBLE DAMNATION.

1. THE Devil now knew his proper cue.
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
To his friend Lord Mac Murderchouse's,
A man of interest in both houses,

And said:" For money or for love,

2. "Pray find some cure, or sinecure,
To feed from the superfluous taxes
A friend of ours-a poet : fewer
Have fluttered tamer to the lure

Than he." His lordship stands and racks his

3. Stupid brains, while one might count

As many beads as he had boroughs,
At length replies (from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows):

4. “It happens fortunately, dear sir,
I can. I hope I need require

No pledge from you that he will stir
In our affairs; like Oliver,

That he'll be worthy of his hire."

5. These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,-
Took to his bed. He had no cough,
No doctor,-meat and drink enough, -
Yet that same night he died.

6. The Devil's corpse was leaded down ;
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
Mourning-coaches many a one

Followed his hearse along the town :-
Where was the Devil himself?

7. When Peter heard of his promotion,
His eyes grew like two stars for bliss.
There was a bow of sleek devotion
Engendering in his back; each motion
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.

8. He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,-
As if defying all who said

Peter was ever poor.

9. But a disease soon struck into

The very life and soul of Peter.
He walked about-slept-had the hue
Of health upon his cheeks--and few
Dag better-none a heartier eater :-

Y

10. And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day.
Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in this my verse
I can find strength to say.

11. Peter was dull-(he was at first
Dull)-oh so dull, so very dull !
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed,
Still with his dullness was he cursed-
Dull-beyond all conception, dull.

12. No one could read his books-no mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him;
The parson came not near his portal ;
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swift-no man could bear him.

13. His sister, wife, and children, yawned,
With a long, slow, and drear ennui
All human patience far beyond;
Their hopes of heaven each would have pawned
Anywhere else to be.

14. But in his verse and in his prose
The essence of his dullness was
Concentred and compressed so close
'Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.

15. A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side,

Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy's vigil rages,

As opiates, were the same applied.

16. Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired ;-
Gaping and torpid they retired,

-

To dream of what they should be doing.

7. And worse and worse the drowsy curse Yawned in him till it grew a pest;

A wide contagious atmosphere

Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.

18. His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
The woods and lakes so beautiful
Of dim stupidity were full;

All grew dull as Peter's self.

19. The earth under his feet, the springs
Which lived within it a quick life-
The air, the winds of many wings
That fan it with new murmurings-

-

Were dead to their harmonious strife.

20. The birds and beasts within the wood,
The insects and each creeping thing,
Were now a silent multitude;

Love's work was left unwrought-no brood
Near Peter's house took wing.

21. And every neighbouring cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other;
No jackass brayed; no little cur
Cocked up his ears; no man would stir
To save a dying mother.

22. Yet all from that charmed district went
But some half-idiot and half-knave,
Who, rather than pay any rent,
Would live with marvellous content
Over his father's grave.

23. No bailiff dared within that space,
For fear of the dull charm, to enter;
A man would bear upon his face,
For fifteen months, in any case,

The yawn of such a venture.

24. Seven miles above-below-around-
This pest of dullness holds its sway;
A ghastly life without a sound.
To Peter's soul the spell is bound-
How should it ever pass away?