W. Aldis Wright, possesses a very interesting volume, into which
the whole mass of them has been carefully and consecutively pasted,
with copious illustrative matter, by the hand of Edward FitzGerald,
whose interest in and curiosity about Thomas Green were unflagging.
PETER BELL AND HIS TORMENTORS
PETER BELL: _A Tale in Verse, by William Wordsworth. London: Printed
by Strahan and Spottiswoode, Printers-Street: for Longman, Hurst,
Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row_. 1819.
None of Wordsworth's productions are better known by name than _Peter
Bell_, and yet few, probably, are less familiar, even to convinced
Wordsworthians. The poet's biographers and critics have commonly
shirked the responsibility of discussing this poem, and when the
Primrose stanza has been quoted, and the Parlour stanza smiled at,
there is usually no more said about _Peter Bell_. A puzzling obscurity
hangs around its history. We have no positive knowledge why its
publication was so long delayed; nor, having been delayed, why it was
at length determined upon. Yet a knowledge of this poem is not merely
an important, but, to a thoughtful critic, an essential element in the
comprehension of Wordsworth's poetry.
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