te 1: The word _unfortunate_ is omitted by the editor,
Thomas Sadler, perhaps in deference to the feelings of Wordsworth's
descendants.]

In 1819 much was changed. The poet was now in his fiftieth year. The
epoch of his true productiveness was closed; all his best works,
except _The Prelude_, were before the public, and although Wordsworth
was by no means widely or generally recognised yet as a great poet,
there was a considerable audience ready to receive with respect
whatever so interesting a person should put forward. Moreover, a new
generation had come to the front; Scott's series of verse-romances was
closed; Byron was in mid-career; there were young men of extraordinary
and somewhat disquieting talent--Shelley, Keats, and Leigh Hunt--all
of whom were supposed to be, although characters of a very
reprehensible and even alarming class, yet distinctly respectful in
their attitude towards Mr. Wordsworth. It seemed safe to publish
_Peter Bell_.

Accordingly, the thin octavo described at the head of this chapter
duly appeared in April 1819. It was so tiny that it had to be eked out
with the Sonnets written to W. Westall's Views, and it was adorned
by an engraving of Bromley's, after a drawing specially made by
Sir George Beaumont to illustrate the poem. A letter to Beaumont,
unfortunately without a date, in which this frontispiece is discussed,
seems to suggest that the engraving was a gift from the artist to the
poet; Wordsworth, "in sorrow for the sickly taste of the public
in verse," opining that he cannot afford the expense of such a
frontispiece as Sir George Beaumont suggests. In accordance with these
fears, no doubt, an edition of only 500 was published; but it achieved
a success which Wordsworth had neither anticipated nor desired. There
was a general guffaw of laughter, and all the copies were immediately
sold; within a month a ribald public received a third edition, only to
discover, with disappointment, that the funniest lines were omitted.

No one admired _Peter Bell_. The inner circle was silent. Baron Field
wrote on the title-page of his copy, which now belongs to Mr. J. Dykes
Campbell, "And his carcass was cast in the way, and the Ass stood by
it." Sir Walter Scott openly lamented that Wordsworth should exhibit
himself "crawling on all fours, when God has given him so noble a
countenance to lift to heaven." Byron mocked aloud, and, worse than
all, the young men from whom so much had been expected, _les