loses
with a disquisition on Warton's criticism of the poets. The curtain
rises for three years on a smooth stream of intellectual reflection,
unruffled by outward incident, and then falls again before we are
weary of the monotonous flow of undiluted criticism. _The Diary of a
Lover of Literature_ is at once the pleasing record of a cultivated
mind, and a monument to a species of existence that is as obsolete as
nankeen breeches or a tie-wig.

Isaac D'Israeli said that Green had humbled all modern authors to the
dust, and that he earnestly wished for a dozen volumes of _The Diary_.
At Green's death material for at least so many supplements were placed
in the hands of John Mitford, who did not venture to produce them.
From January 1834 to May 1843, however, Mitford was incessantly
contributing to _The Gentleman's Magazine_ unpublished extracts from
this larger _Diary_. These have never been collected, but my friend,
Mr. 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. No one who examines that body of
literature with sympathetic attention should be content to overlook
the piece in which Wordsworth's theories are pushed to their furthest
extremity.

When _Peter Bell_ was published in April 1819, the author remarked
that it had "nearly survived its _minority_; for it saw the light i