Peter Bell the Third | Page 5

what was due to gentlemen!'
PART 6.
DAMNATION.
1.?'O that mine enemy had written?A book!'--cried Job:--a fearful curse,?If to the Arab, as the Briton,?'Twas galling to be critic-bitten:--?The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
2.?When Peter's next new book found vent,?The Devil to all the first Reviews?A copy of it slyly sent,?With five-pound note as compliment,?And this short notice--'Pray abuse.'
3.?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.'
4.?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 Shakespeare poking?'
5.?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.
6.?'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.'
7.?All these Reviews the Devil made?Up in a parcel, which he had?Safely to Peter's house conveyed.?For carriage, tenpence Peter paid--?Untied them--read them--went half mad.
8.?'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?
9.?'What have I done to them?--and who?IS Mrs. Foy? 'Tis very cruel?To speak of me and Betty so!?Adultery! God defend me! Oh!?I've half a mind to fight a duel.
10.?'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?'
11.?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.
12.?All Peter did on this occasion?Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.?It is a dangerous invasion?When poets criticize; their station?Is to delight, not pose.
13.?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.
14.?Five thousand crammed octavo pages?Of German psychologics,--he?Who his furor verborum assuages?Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages?More than will e'er be due to me.
15.?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.
16.?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.
17.?Fire, which ex luce praebens 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.
18.?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
19.?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".
20.?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.
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--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