He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,

The spirit of evil well may be : A drone too base to have a sting; Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing, And calls lust, luxury.

Now he was quite the kind of wight

Round whom collect, at a fixed æra, Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,

Good cheer-and those who come to share itAnd best East Indian madeira!

It was his fancy to invite

Men of science, wit and learning, Who came to lend each other light;

He proudly thought that his gold's might Had set those spirits burning.

And men of learning, science, wit,
Considered him as you and I
Think of some rotten tree, and sit
Lounging and dining under it,
Exposed to the wide sky.

And all the while with loose fat smile,

The willing wretch sat winking there, Believing 'twas his power that made That jovial scene-and that all paid Homage to his unnoticed chair.

Though to be sure this place was Hell; He was the Devil-and all theyWhat though the claret circled well, And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?— Were damned eternally.

AMONG the guests who often staid
Till the Devil's petits-soupers,
A man there came, fair as a maid,
And Peter noted what he said,
Standing behind his master's chair.

He was a mighty poet-and

A subtle-souled psychologist; All things he seemed to understand, Of old or new-of sea or landBut his own mind-which was a mist.

This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heaven-and so in gladness
A heaven unto himself have earned;
But he in shadows undiscerned
Trusted, and damned himself to madness.

He spoke of poetry, and how

"Divine it was a light-a loveA spirit which like wind doth blow As it listeth, to and fro;

A dew rained down from God above.

"A power which comes and goes like dream, And which none can ever traceHeaven's light on earth-Truth's brightest beam."

And when he ceased there lay the gleam

Of those words upon his face.

Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a broken pate,
Stand like a man asleep, or baulk
Some wishing guest of knife or fork,

Or drop and break his master's plate.

At night he oft would start and wake
Like a lover, and began

In a wild measure songs to make On moor, and glen, and rocky lake, And on the heart of man.

And on the universal sky

And the wide earth's bosom green,And the sweet, strange mystery Of what beyond these things may lie, And yet remain unseen.

For in his thought he visited

The spots in which, ere dead and damned, He his wayward life had led;

Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed, Which thus his fancy crammed.

And these obscure remembrances

Stirred such harmony in Peter, That whensoever he should please, He could speak of rocks and trees In poetic metre.

For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he remembered well
Many a ditch and quick-set fence;
Of lakes he had intelligence,

He knew something of heath, and fell. He had also dim recollections

Of pedlers tramping on their rounds; Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections

Old parsons make in burying-grounds. But Peter's verse was clear, and came

Announcing from the frozen hearth Of a cold age, that none might tame The soul of that diviner flame

It augured to the Earth.

66

And this short notice Pray abuse."

Then seriatim, month and quarter,

Appeared such mad tirades.-One said-
"Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter,
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed."
Another "Let him shave his head!
Where's Dr. Willis?-Or is he joking?
What does the rascal mean or hope,
No longer imitating Pope,

In that barbarian Shakspeare poking?"

One more, "Is incest not enough?

And must there be adultery too? Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire Is twenty times too good for you.

"By that last book of yours we think

You've double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink

You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn."

All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
Safely to Peter's house conveyed.
For carriage, ten-pence Peter paid-

Untied them-read them-went half mad. "What!" cried he, "this is my reward

For nights of thought, and days of toil?
Do poets, but to be abhorred
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits' oil?

"What have I done to them?-and who
Is Mrs. Foy? "Tis very cruel
To speak of me and Emma so!
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!

I've half a mind to fight a duel.

"Or," cried he, a grave look collecting, "Is it my genius, like the moon, Sets those who stand her face inspecting, That face within their brain reflecting,

Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?" For Peter did not know the town,

But thought, as country readers do,
For half a guinea or a crown,
He bought oblivion or renown
From God's own voice* in a review.

All Peter did on this occasion

Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
It is a dangerous invasion
When poets criticise; their station
Is to delight, not pose.

The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair,
For Born's translation of Kant's book;
A world of words, tail foremost, where
Right-wrong-false-true-and foul-and fair,
As in a lottery-wheel are shook.

Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics,―he
Who his furor verborum assuages
Thereon, deserves just seven month's wages
More than will e'er be due to me.

I looked on them nine several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,-
He never read them;-with amaze

I found Sir William Drummond had.

Vox populi, vox dei. As Mr. Godwin truly observes of a more famous saying, of some merit as a popular maxim, but totally destitute of philosophical accuracy.

When the book came, the Devil sent

It to P. Verbovale,* Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment,

By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.

Fire, which ex luce præbens fumum,

Made him beyond the bottom see

Of truth's clear well-when I and you Ma'am, Go, as we shall do, subter humum,

We may know more than he.

Now Peter ran to seed in soul

Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole,
Nor good, nor bad-nor knave nor fool,
-Among the woods and rocks.

Furious he rode, where late he ran,

Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;

Turned to a formal puritan,

A solemn and unsexual man,

He half believed White Obi.

This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
Mocking and mowing by his side-
A mad-brained goblin for a guide-
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.
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.

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.

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;"

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.”

His morals thus were undermined:-
The old Peter-the hard, old Potter
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,

As when he tramped beside the Otter.†

* Quasi, Qui valet verba :-i. e. all the words which have been, are, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on him. A sufficient proof of the utility of this history. Peter's progenitor who selected this name seems to have possessed a pure anticipated cognition of the nature and modesty of this ornament of his posterity. † A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophylic Pantisocratists.

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."

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.

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 grave-clothes in the wind.

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, Chaunting those stupid staves.

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.
"He was a man, too great to scan;

A planet lost in truth's keen rays:—
His virtue, awful and prodigious ;—
He was the most sublime, religious,

Pure-minded Poet of these days."

See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the agonizing death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in blank verse, published within a few years. That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion of a pene trating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet and sublime verses.

This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what shef shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
+ Nature.

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:"6
«For money or for love,
"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 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:

"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."

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.

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?
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.

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.

But a disease soon struck into

The very life and soul of PeterHe walked about-slept-had the hue Of health upon his cheeks and few

Dug better-none a heartier eater.
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.

Peter was dull-he was at first

Dull-O, so dull-so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed-
Still with this dulness was he cursed-
Dull-beyond conception-dull.

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

*It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different purpose; Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the principles of legitimate murder whilst the other only makes a had one ridiculous and odious. If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied in the moral perversion laid to their charge.