P. 202. _As the Prince Regent did with Sherry_--_i.e._, Richard
Brinsley Sheridan.
_'Twould make George Colman melancholy._ George Colman was author of
_Broad Grins_ and other humorous work.
P. 203. _May Carnage and slaughter._ The reference here is to lines in
Wordsworth's _Thanksgiving Ode on the Battle of Waterloo_ (later _Ode_,
1815), as originally published:
But Thy most dreaded instrument
In working out a pure intent,
Is Man--arrayed for mutual slaughter.
--Yea, Carnage is thy daughter!
P. 205. _The immortal Described by Swift._ Presumably a reference to
the undying Struldbrugs of _Gulliver's Travels_, 'despised and hated by
all sorts of people.'
P. 206. _'Twould have made Guatimozin doze._ Guatimozin or Cuauhtemoc
was the last of the Aztec emperors, executed with circumstances of
great cruelty by Cortes.
P. 206. _Like those famed Seven who slept three ages_--_i.e._, the
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus who, according to a Syrian legend, hid
themselves in a cave during the Decian persecution (A.D. 250), fell
asleep and awakened miraculously nearly two hundred years later.
P. 215. '_&c._' This ending is in accord with the original text.
P. 218. _He lived amidst th' untrodden ways._ Mr. Walter Hamilton,
whose large collection of parodies is well known, attributes this
parody to Hartley Coleridge, but efforts to trace it have failed.
P. 219. _Peter Bell: a Lyrical Ballad._ When Wordsworth's _Peter
Bell_ was announced in 1819, John Hamilton Reynolds wrote--it is said
in a single day--this _Lyrical Ballad_ and hurried it out before
Wordsworth's poem was issued. The fact that Reynolds used Wordsworth's
measure suggests that he had seen a copy of the original. It was a
criticism by Leigh Hunt of Wordsworth's _Peter Bell_ and Reynolds'
parody that moved Shelley to the writing of _Peter Bell the Third_.
To his _Peter Bell_ Reynolds attached a _Preface_ and a short
_Supplementary Essay_, also purporting to be written by W. W.
'It is now (the _Preface_ began) a period of one-and-twenty years
since I first wrote some of the most perfect compositions (except
certain pieces I have written in my later days) that ever dropped
from poetical pen.... It has been my aim and my achievement
to deduce moral thunder from buttercups, daisies, celandines, and
(as a poet scarcely inferior to myself, hath it) "such small deer."
Out of sparrows' eggs I have hatched great truths, and with sextons'
barrows have I wheeled into human hearts piles of the weightiest
philosophy.... Of _Peter Bell_ I have only thus much to say: It
completes the simple system of natural narrative, which I began so
early as 1798. It is written in that pure unlaboured style, which
can only be met with among labourers.... I commit my Ballad
confidently to posterity. I love to read my own poetry: it does
my heart good.'
In the _Supplementary Essay_ 'W. W.' was made to declare that he
proposed 'in the course of a few years to write laborious lives of all
the old people who enjoy sinecures in the text or are pensioned off in
the notes of my Poetry.'
P. 221. _As clustering a relationship._ See _The Critic_, Act II.,