University of Virginia Library

Thomas Love Peacock's Manuscript "Poems" of 1804
by
Nicholas A. Joukovsky

Thomas Love Peacock began writing poetry as a schoolboy at Englefield Green, submitted a prize-winning poem to a juvenile magazine as a fourteen-year-old clerk in the City of London, and published his first volume of poetry in November or December 1805, shortly after his twentieth birthday.[1] Although most reviewers treated Palmyra, and Other Poems indulgently, the volume was a financial failure, and Peacock later dismissed it as "a very juvenile production."[2] When he published a combined "Second Edition" of The Genius of the Thames, Palmyra, and Other Poems in 1812, he included only the two longest poems from his first volume, and even these were heavily revised. On 11 November 1811, he remarked in a letter to his friend Thomas Forster: "Ballantyne is printing a second edition of the Genius of the Thames, Palmyra, and Fiolfar, together with an Inscription for a mountain-dell, being its first appearance on any stage. Palmyra is quite a new thing, about half as long as before, and containing little more than a fifth of the original lines. The King of Norway too stalks forth in a new suit of armour. All my other poems I consign to the tomb of the Capulets."[3] If nearly all his earliest published poems were thus consigned to oblivion, it is hardly surprising that the same fate should have overtaken Peacock's unpublished juvenilia, the bulk of which remained wholly unknown until the 1920s, when two important manuscript collections came to light. Unfortunately, only one of these sources was available for inclusion in the standard Halliford edition of Peacock's Works, which was in progress from 1924 to 1934.

The first of these manuscript collections was appended to a copy of the first edition of Palmyra, and Other Poems in a contemporary calf binding, purchased by Michael Sadleir from a "country bookseller" in August 1923 and now in the Robert H. Taylor Collection of the Princeton University Library. Bound at the back of this volume are 104 extra leaves, the first thirty-seven of which contain transcripts of twenty-three "Additional Poems | by | Thomas Love Peacock | Chiefly written at an | early age"—all dated in a list

of "Contents." Since the additional poems are dated from January 1801 to January 1804 and the extra leaves contain an 1806 watermark, it seems likely that the transcripts were made within a few years of the publication of Palmyra by or for someone in Peacock's family who had access to a large quantity of his early verse in manuscript.[4] From this volume the Halliford editors derived texts of twenty previously unknown poems by Peacock. However, their satisfaction with the discovery was somewhat dampened by their inability to gain access to another manuscript volume that was advertised by a Southend bookseller in the Publisher's Circular on 4 February 1928, and "promptly bought by a London dealer, who refused to let it be seen, but stated in May that he had sold it to an American customer."[5] This manuscript book—which has now been available to scholars for more than half a century in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, but has not hitherto been described in detail—contains twenty-eight early poems in Peacock's own hand, all arranged in chronological order and carefully dated from June 1798 to September 1804. While only four of the poems are hitherto unpublished, the Berg MS makes valuable additions to our knowledge of the canon, chronology, text, and literary antecedents of Peacock's juvenilia.[6]

The Berg MS is a large quarto manuscript book entitled "Poems, | by | T. L. Peacock." The entire volume consists of seventy-eight leaves measuring 11 5/8 inches by 9 3/16 inches, bound in full diced calf, with gilt tooling, gilt edges, and marbled endpapers. The title "POEMS" is stamped in gilt on the spine. Peacock's original manuscript evidently consisted of sixty-eight leaves of wove paper containing the watermark "John Hays | 1803". To these the binder added ten leaves of laid paper (five at the beginning and five at the end) with the watermark "Russell & Edmeads | 1799". The recto of the second leaf of wove paper contains the title, followed by an epigraph from Martial. The first and third leaves of wove paper are blank, as is the verso of the title leaf. The text of the twenty-eight poems is written in Peacock's neat copperplate hand on both sides of the next forty-one leaves, which are paginated from 1 to 82. Each poem begins on a new page, and each is dated at the end. The handwriting resembles that of Peacock's fair copy of his contemporaneous verse drama "The Circle of Loda," which is also written on

both sides of the leaf, with similar page numbering.[7] The remaining twenty-four leaves of wove paper were left blank by Peacock, though he may at first have intended to reserve them for additional poems. The style of the binding and the date of the watermark in the binder's leaves both suggest that the manuscript was bound at an early date—probably not long after Peacock finished copying the poems in September or October 1804.

The subsequent history of the volume is obscure. Almost the only thing that can be concluded with certainty is that the Berg MS was not available to the copyist of the Sadleir-Taylor MS. A pair of brief penciled notes on pages 34 and 35 appear to have been added by someone familiar with the neighborhood of Chertsey, for one of them identifies the subject of Peacock's poem "On the Death of Mr Pembroke" as the father of the Rev. Charles Pembroke, who became Rector of Weybridge and Curate of Chertsey in 1827 and died around 1847.[8] Some time after 1847, an unidentified antiquary used eleven blank leaves at the end of the book—turning it upside down and beginning from the back on the third binder's leaf—for a manuscript index to Michel-Ange de La Chausse's Romanum Museum, sive Thesaurus Eruditae Antiquitatis, originally published in 1690, followed by transcriptions of the title pages of two books: an edition of Tasso's Aminta published at Oxford in 1726 and the second edition of Thomas Forster's Original Letters of John Locke, Alg. Sidney, and Lord Shaftesbury, privately printed in London in 1847. The handwriting—or rather hand printing—of this second set of additions is very different from that of the penciled notes; it does not appear to be Forster's, and it is certainly not Peacock's.

While the strict chronological arrangement of the poems makes it seem most unlikely that the Berg MS was prepared with a view to publication, it would appear that the volume was intended as a more or less comprehensive collection of the poems that Peacock thought worthy of circulation and preservation in September or October 1804. Its contents include two-thirds of the poems he is known to have written during the period that it covers, and most of the omissions are relatively easy to explain. The "Answer to the Question, 'Is History or Biography the More Improving Study?'" was a mere exercise, and in any case it had been published in The Monthly Preceptor, or Juvenile Library for February 1800. The two "Epigrams" (January 1801) might have been rejected as too trifling, the verse letter "Liberty" (January 1801) as too full of personified abstractions or too politically outspoken, the verse letter to his grandfather Love (11 August 1801) as too topical or too crudely patriotic, and the fragment "From the Revelations" (? 1801) as too enthusiastic—if, indeed, they were not simply deemed inferior work. More personal considerations are likely to have influenced the omission of all eight of the poems that may be associated with Lucretia Oldham, "the beauty of Shacklewell Green," with whom Peacock appears to have been in love at

least from November 1802 to November 1803.[9] Perhaps Peacock looked back on his adolescent infatuation with some degree of regret or embarrassment, or perhaps he merely wished to avoid any exposure of his personal feelings or personal relationships. In any case, it is worth noting in this connection that even the four verse letters in the Berg MS contain almost no personal information about the writer or the unidentified recipients.

The twenty-eight poems that Peacock included in the Berg MS contain almost nine hundred lines of verse in a variety of genres as well as a variety of metrical and stanzaic forms. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the collection is the high proportion of satirical and humorous pieces—about a third of the total number, including most of the longer poems. In this respect, the Berg MS contrasts sharply with the Palmyra volume, in which the only two humorous pieces are relegated to a section of "Nugæ" at the end. Although the presence of three imitations of Ossian should not surprise anyone who has read Byron's Hours of Idleness, it is surprising to find no imitations or translations of the classics—which may be a sign of diffidence in the young self-educated scholar. Of the four new poems, the earliest—a schoolboy effusion entitled "Midsummer Holidays. | Written at twelve years of age."—is the most revealing, for it is the only poem Peacock is known to have written between the ages of nine and fourteen. Apart from this specimen of very early work, all the poems were written between his fifteenth and nineteenth birthdays.

As an independent collection in which the poems are chronologically arranged and carefully dated, the Berg MS is the only contemporary document that allows us to trace the development of Peacock's versification. Each poem is dated at the end, at least with the month and year, but in seven cases with the day of the month as well. Since more than half its dates are not recorded elsewhere, the Berg MS makes an important contribution to the chronology of Peacock's early work. For eleven of the poems the Berg MS confirms the dating of the Sadleir-Taylor MS or some other source, and for two more its dating differs only slightly from that of other manuscripts. On the other hand, for fourteen of the poems the Berg MS provides the only available evidence, or in two cases the only precise evidence, for dating. It also gives the correct date for "Peace," which is obviously misdated in the Sadleir-Taylor MS.[10] Perhaps the most important contribution of the Berg MS to the chronology of Peacock's verse is its establishment of early dates for seven of the eight poems that he later included in Palmyra, and Other Poems. With the exception of "To a Young Lady Netting," which is dated October 1803 in a separate manuscript in the Pforzheimer Collection,[11] the remaining poems in the Palmyra volume are all likely to have been written between October 1804 and October 1805, after the completion of the Berg MS.

The dating of two of the latest poems in the Berg MS also has significant

implications for dating the manuscript of "The Circle of Loda" and the private printing of The Monks of St. Mark. An "Ancient War-Song" dated August 1804 in the Berg MS also appears as the opening "Chorus of Bards" in Peacock's undated verse drama "The Circle of Loda," which is written on paper with an 1801 watermark.[12] Since it seems unlikely that Peacock would have included one, and only one, of the lyrics from a finished drama in a collection of his shorter poems, it is reasonable to suppose that the "Ancient War-Song" was originally written as an independent work and only later incorporated into "The Circle of Loda." This would suggest that "The Circle of Loda" was written late in 1804 or early in 1805, before Peacock recast some of the material from the drama in the narrative form of "Fiolfar, King of Norway," which was published with Palmyra.

The appearance of "The Monks of St Mark" in the Berg MS plays an important part in a more complex argument for redating the rare private printing of that poem.[13] The octavo half-sheet containing The Monks of St. Mark has always been dated 1804 because at the end the poem is dated September 1804. But Peacock often dated his manuscript poems in this manner, and the Berg MS confirms that September 1804 was the date of composition—not necessarily the date of printing. Indeed, if Peacock had printed the poem at that time, it is unlikely that he would have taken the trouble to copy it into the Berg MS. Moreover, the fact that The Monks of St. Mark was printed by Thomas Bensley, the printer of the Palmyra volume, in the same typographical style, on the same size paper, with the same font of type, the same measure, the same page length, and the same kind of headline strongly suggests that The Monks of St. Mark was printed at the same time as Palmyra, in the autumn of 1805. Since the typographical similarities are too striking to be a matter of coincidence, there would appear to be three possible ways to account for the relationship between the two works. (1) The Monks could have been set in type as a specimen of the typographical style to be employed in the Palmyra volume. (2) The Monks could have been originally intended for inclusion in the Palmyra volume but removed from the book after the poem had been set in type. (3) The Monks could have been deliberately printed in the same style as the Palmyra volume, either while the volume was being printed or shortly thereafter. The third supposition seems somewhat less plausible than the others, mainly because the lack of a separate title page, with the consequent odd placement of the printer's imprint at the bottom of the first page of text, suggests that The Monks of St. Mark was not planned as a separately printed work.

In addition to the texts of four wholly or partially unpublished poems, the Berg MS provides substantive variants in the text, title, or epigraph of all but one of the twenty-four previously published pieces. For the eight

poems published with Palmyra, as well as for The Monks of St. Mark, most of the textual variants in the Berg MS are early readings that Peacock subsequently rejected, but in the case of "Levi Moses" the Berg MS has two or three dialect spellings that are likely to have been unintentionally normalized, either by Peacock himself or by the compositor of the Palmyra volume. The textual situation is very different for the fifteen posthumously published poems, only three of which have survived in any other holograph manuscript. For the remaining twelve—and especially for the ten that are otherwise available only in the carelessly copied Sadleir-Taylor MS—the Berg MS offers many textual improvements, both in substantives and in accidentals. In several cases the Sadleir-Taylor MS appears to have been copied from early versions, if not rough drafts. Its texts of the satirical verse letters "Sir Peter Bohea" and "The Alarmists" are often corrupt, and its text of "Paddy's Lamentation" normalizes most of the dialect of the comic Irishman. The superiority of the Berg MS is particularly evident in the consistent texture of its accidentals, including its underlining for emphasis and its characteristically heavy punctuation. Although it has its share of errors incidental to copying, most of these involve such minor matters as omission of underlining or quotation marks. The Berg MS should, then, provide the copy-text for at least sixteen of the poems in any future edition of Peacock's poetical works.

At least a few of the dozen variant titles throw some kind of new light on the poems in question, most notably the subtitle identifying "The Monks of St Mark" as "A Tale of Wonder." But perhaps the most interesting additions to the existing text are thirteen otherwise unrecorded epigraphs. Taken as a group, these new epigraphs not only reflect Peacock's literary taste but also suggest that the range of his early reading may have been more limited than has often been thought. Of the nine new Latin epigraphs, six are from the first book of Horace's Odes, while two more are from Virgil's Eclogues (the other one is an anonymous tag). The only Greek epigraph is from the Anacreontea, the two Italian ones are from Ariosto and Metastasio, and the only English one is from Pope. Since most of the poems in the Berg MS survive in other manuscript or printed versions, it is surely surprising that only two of its fifteen epigraphs appear elsewhere: the passage from Juvenal that introduces "Levi Moses" in the Palmyra volume and the line from Il Pastor Fido that identifies the source of the "Translation from the Italian of Guarini" in the 1875 edition of Peacock's Works. The Palmyra volume is, to be sure, somewhat more sparing than the Berg MS in its use of epigraphs, but the omission of all epigraphs from the Sadleir-Taylor MS suggests that the copyist simply ignored them—either because she did not consider them important or because she did not know Latin or Italian. Even if many of the new epigraphs are more decorative than functional, they clearly testify to the care with which Peacock prepared the Berg MS.

Since it would be impractical to reproduce the entire text of the Berg MS, I instead provide a poem-by-poem description of its contents, including a detailed collation of the previously published poems with the texts in Volumes 6 and 7 of the Halliford edition of Peacock's Works. The entry for each

poem contains the following details, to the extent that they are applicable and/or available. (1) The title, followed by the page(s) of the MS on which the poem appears. (2) The epigraph, if any, with a line reference and a translation. (3) The date which appears at the end of the poem. (4) Details of other manuscript or printed texts, including variants in title, epigraph, or date. (5) Reference to the text in the Halliford edition with which the manuscript has been collated. (6) Substantive variants, followed by separate lists of variants in capitalization, underlining or italics, hyphenation, elision, or spelling—but only the most significant variants in punctuation.[14] (7) The full text of the poem if it is wholly or substantially unpublished. (8) Miscellaneous notes on sources, analogues, influences, quotations, or other matters of literary interest. In the case of substantive variants, the reading of the Berg MS follows a lemma containing the reading of the Halliford edition. In the separate lists of non-verbal variants, all readings are those of the Berg MS. The only silent changes I have made in quoting Peacock's MSS have been to omit the dots under superscript letters, to omit the superfluous quotation marks at the beginning of each new line of a quotation, and to regularize the number of ellipsis points to three.

Contents of the Manuscript

General title: "Poems, | by | T. L. Peacock." Epigraph (below title): "Nos hæc novimus esse nihil. | Mart:" [Epigrams, XIII.ii.8: "I know these things to be worthless"]. John Cam Hobhouse, who became one of the closest friends of Peacock's later years, used the same epigraph on the title page of his Imitations and Translations from the Ancient and Modern Classics, Together with Original Poems Never Before Published (1809). Both Peacock and Hobhouse would have expected their readers to remember that the passage in Martial continues for two more lines: "non tamen hoc nimium nihil est, si candidus aure | nec matutina si mihi fronte venis" ("and yet they are not absolutely worthless, if you come to me with a just ear, and not with an early morning frown").

• (1) "Midsummer Holidays. | Written at twelve years of age."—pp. 1-2. Date: "June 1798." Previously unpublished.
  The happy day at last is come,
  We're ready all to hasten home,
  We all in uproar are:
  French Greek and Latin! all adieu!
  We now no more remember you.
  We fly away from care.
  

  The boxes bring: the stage is here:
  To London now our course we steer,
  Devoid of grief and sorrow;
  We think not of our future fate,
  

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  But joyfully anticipate
  Where we shall be tomorrow.
  

  When now at last arriv'd in town,
  Deliver'd from the master's frown,
  We haste to meet our friends;
  No more we cry, no more we fret;
  We seem entirely to forget,
  That holidays have ends.
  
  The reference to "our future fate" is reminiscent of Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," 51-60. Biographically, it is interesting to note that Peacock was taking the stagecoach to London rather than some local conveyance to his grandfather's cottage at Chertsey, where he is said to have spent his vacations. Apparently he did not realize, when he wrote this carefree poem, that his schooldays, as well as his holidays, would soon come to an end. According to his own account in a letter to Thomas L'Estrange of 23 June 1862, he left John Harris Wicks's private school at Englefield Green before he turned thirteen on 18 October 1798 (Works, 8:259). For a summary of what little is known of his schooldays, see my "Peacock before Headlong Hall," pp. 10-12.

• (2) "The Lord's Prayer, | Paraphrased."—pp. 3-4. Epigraph: "Deo optimo maximo." ["To God the best and greatest"]. Date: "January 1801." Published with "A. Æ. 16." following the title (without epigraph or date) in Palmyra, pp. 106-107. Collated with Works, 6:70.

  13-14 Permit not in temptation's road | Our heedless steps to stray;] Oh, keep us from temptation's road, | Lest we should run astray:

  Not capitalized: "heav'n" (6). Leigh Hunt used the same Latin tag—in the abbreviated form "Deo Opt. Max."—as the epigraph to his hymn "To the Omnipotent God" in Juvenilia (1801), pp. 135-136.

• (3) "The Man of Fashion."—pp. 5-6. Epigraph: ". . . gracilis puer, | Perfusus liquidis odoribus . . ." [Horace, Odes, I.v.1-2, with omissions: "a slender youth, bedewed with liquid perfumes"]. Date: "June 1801". Transcript (without epigraph but with the same date) in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 17-18. Collated with Works, 7:162, 466.
  5 his knee] the knee
  11 only fit] always fit
  13-14 The order of these two lines is reversed.
  
  Not capitalized: "chap" (1), "cape" (3), "boots" (5), "gala" (11). Not underlined: "cheats" (8), "modern Man" (16). Not hyphenated: "tomorrow" (10).
• (4) "Sir Peter Bohea. | In a letter to a friend."—pp. 7-12. Date: "June 16: 1801." MS letter addressed "Mrs Love Senr, | Chertsey, | Surry." and dated "London July 16—1801—" in the Berg Collection. Transcript titled "Sir Peter Bohea | in a letter to a friend—" and dated "London | June 16. 1801." in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 50-57. Transcript of original letter by Harriet Love in the Pforzheimer Collection: Shelley and His Circle, 1:277-285. Collated with Works, 7:163-166, 466-467.
  Dear Grandmother,] Dear . . . ,
  7 knaves] rogues
  8 asses-head] ass's head
  46 such grace] more grace
  

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  Capitalized: "Alley" (47). Not capitalized: "modesty" (11), "cocknies" (26, 64), "alderman" (56, 57), "square" (70). Underlined: "quite" (11), "improv'd" (23), "worshipful" (24), "experienc'd" (29), "ward" (34), "villanous city" (66), "West" (68), "sweet" (70), "figures away" [no quotation marks] (86), "figure away" [no quotation marks] (88). Not underlined: "valiantly" (31), "fam'd dad" (33), "great" (34), "extinguish" (38), "damn'd farthing rushlight!" (42), "sweet" (46), "Wick" (54), "Bohea" (54), "Lord's Anointed" (58), "knighted" (60), "Peter" (61), "moderate" (62), "dear, pretty wife" (82), "affectionate" (83), "life-loving" (85), "to make both ends meet" [no quotation marks] (87), "in the Fleet" (88). Hyphenated: "Twopence-farthing's" (27), "Candlewick-ward" (34), "Grosvenor-square" (70). Not hyphenated: "tallow chandler" (34). Elided: "distress'd" (67). Not apostrophized: "twas" (42). Spelling: "pennyless" (4), "cocknies" (26, 64), "villanous" (66). Exclamation points after "Gad's curse!" and "Gad demme!" (77). New paragraph after line 60. Two blank lines between paragraphs. It is not clear whether this verse letter was written a month before it was sent to Peacock's grandmother, or whether the 16 June date in the Berg and Sadleir-Taylor MSS is a slip for 16 July taken over from earlier MSS. The text of the Berg MS is much closer to that of the letter than to that of the Sadleir-Taylor MS, which contains a number of corrupt readings and appears to have been based on an early version or rough draft.
• (5) "On the death of | Sir Ralph Abercromby."—pp. 13-14. Epigraph: "Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt. | Virg:" [Eclogues, v.78: "Always thy honor and name and glories shall abide"]. Date: "June 1801". Transcript by Harriet Love (without epigraph or date) in the Pforzheimer Collection: Shelley and His Circle, 1:251-253. Collated with Works, 7:171, 468.
  5 heart] breast
  
  Not capitalized: "chief" (1), "angels" (3), "fame" (14). The concluding quotation—"The deeds of days of other years!"—is from the opening of "Carthon: A Poem" in James Macpherson's Ossian, ed. Otto L. Jiriczek, 3 vols. (Heidelberg, 1940), 1:127, 128. General Sir Ralph Abercromby, the commander of British troops in the Mediterranean, died on 28 March 1801, as a result of a wound he received a week earlier in the campaign against Alexandria that followed his successful landing in force at Aboukir Bay on 8 March.
• (6) "The Storm."—pp. 15-18. Epigraph: "Permitte divis cætera, qui simul | Stravêre ventos æquore fervido | Deprœliantes, nec cupressi, | Nec veteres agitantur orni. | HOR:" [Odes, I.ix.9-12: "Leave the rest to the gods, for as soon as they have stilled the winds battling on the stormy sea, neither the cypresses nor the ancient ashtrees are shaken"]. Date: "October 1801." Transcript (without epigraph but with the same date) in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 2-6. Collated with Works, 7:168-170, 467-468.
  2 loudly] fiercely
  14 blue-forked] sulph'rous
  22 he gain] he gains
  34 The fields] These fields
  
  Capitalized: "Pleasure's" (40). Not capitalized: "hermit" (9, 19, 31), "whirlwind's" (10), "man" (19), "goal" (22), "west" (26), "sun" (26, 40). Elided: "tow'r" (20), "flow'rs" (28), "ev'ning" (35). Not contracted: "though" (37). Apostrophized: "it's" (11, 17, 39). Ellipsis points at the end of line 24 and at the beginning of line 25.
• (7) "Foldath. | Imitated from a little poem in Macpherson's notes on Ossian."—pp. 19-20. Date: "October 1801." Published as "Foldath in the Cavern of Moma. From the Same" (without date) in Palmyra, pp. 122-123, where it follows "Clonar and Tlamín" (no. 25, below). Collated with Works, 6:78.

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  10 while] whilst
  
  Not capitalized: "reflected beam" (11). Peacock's source is the note to Temora: An Epic Poem, Book V, beginning "The fall of Foldath . . ." (Ossian, ed. Jiriczek, 2: 93-94).
• (8) "Peace."—pp. 21-23. Epigraph: "Cara Deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum! | Aspice convexo nutantem pondere mundum, | Terrasque, tractusque maris, cælumque profundum; | Aspice, venturo lætentur ut omnia sæclo. | Virg:" [Eclogues, iv.49-52: "Dear child of the Gods, great offspring of Jove! behold the world with its massive dome vibrating, and the lands and the expanse of sea and the unfathomable sky; behold how all things rejoice in the age that is to be!"]. Date: "October 1801." Transcript (without epigraph) misdated January 1801 in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 14-15. Collated with Works, 7:161-162, 465-466.
  25 long-wish'd-for] all-cheering
  
  Capitalized: "Faction" (29). Not capitalized: "harpies" (3), "earth" (5), "suns" (19), "isle" (26), "prejudice" (28). Not underlined: "Liberty" (23), "Plenty" (23). Elided: "fled'st" (6), 'giv'n" (17), "Heav'n" (18), "Pow'r" (25), "suff'ring" (26). Spelling: "Oh" (12). On historical grounds, H. F. B. Brett-Smith recognized that the January 1801 date in the Sadleir-Taylor MS was too early and suggested that it was an error for January 1802—Works, l:xxviii, note. However, the October 1801 date in the Berg MS is certainly correct, for preliminary articles of peace were signed in London on 1 October 1801, leading eventually to the Treaty of Amiens on 27 March 1802.
• (9) "The Alarmists. | In a letter to a friend."—pp. 24-29. Date: "Decr 25: 1801." Transcript titled "The Alarmists | part of a Letter to a friend | Decr 25 1801—" in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 58-65. Collated with Works, 7:172-175, 468-469.
  7 mighty] weighty
  23 goodness] greatness
  25 Leather] leathers
  27 the polish'd] this polish'd
  34 nipp'd off] snipp'd off
  36 say they have] say they've
  37 shreds] sheers
  44 would bear] could bear
  49 bawl'd a stout] bawl'd out a
  52 Bony part] Bonypart
  68 curse me, 'tis] damme! it's
  69 forbids me] forbids us
  71 a fortnight's time] a little time
  75 in all their] in their
  78 So, my friends, let us all be] So let's all, my good friends, be
  
  Capitalized: "Sir" (20), "Fate" (42). Not capitalized: "peace" (4), "clubs" (5), "club" (8), "auctioneer" (12), "peace" (14, 20, 31, 35, 59, 65), "nation" (16, 64), "cobler" (19), "tailor" (28), "poulterer" (43), "oilman" (45), "cook" (49), "in" (49), "premier" (57), "devils" (59), "zounds" (63), "ministers" (65, 73), "chairman" (69). Underlined: "shameful, iniquitous peace" (4), "learned" (10), "lot" (14), "knock'd down" (16), "wax" (21), "melts away" (21), "tapp'd on the heel" (23), "pegging awls" (24), "in holes" (25), "last" (26), "soles" (26), "worn" (32), "bare" (32), "ready cut" (33), "cabbag'd" (34), "patch'd up" (35), "they" (35), "taken" (36), "measure" (36), "shred" (38), "cloth" (38), "needle" (39), "crack of a nit" (40), "pucker" (41), "choler" (41), "threads" (42), "clipp'd off" (42), "duck" (43), "foul" (44), "goose" (44), "flask" (46), "ooz'd out" (46), "oil" (46), "pickle" (48), "mess" (51), "smoke" (51), "rare" (52), "pot" (53), "sauce" (54), "stew" (54), "trifle" (55), "quake" [? unintentionally underlined

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  instead of "jelly"] (55), "Mounseer" (56), "roast beef" (56), "sop" (57), "suck'd up" (57), "cake" (58), "puff" (58), "sweets" (59), "devils" (59), "taste" (59), "baste" (60), "fat" (61), "over-done" (62), "done over" (62), "roasted" (63), "dish'd" (63), "broil" (63), "gravy" (64), "starve" (66), "feed" (66), "fat of the land" (66), "bubble-and-squeak" (68), "important" (70). Hyphenated: "a-going! a-going! ! a-going! ! !" (18), "ready-cut" [? underlining unintentionally omitted] (33), "over-done" (62), "bubble-and-squeak" (68). Elided: "conven'd" (8), "cabbag'd" (34), "patch'd" (35), "liv'd" (61). Not contracted: "Although" (39), "Though" (15, 47). Spelling: "woeful" (3), "villanous" (14), "shewing" (17). New paragraphs after lines 30 and 68. Two blank lines between paragraphs. The Berg MS reveals a number of textual corruptions in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, which may have been copied from an early version or rough draft.
• (10) "From the seventeenth chapter of Isaiah."—pp. 30-31. Date: "May 24: 1802." Transcript titled "Paraphrase from the 17 Chapr Isaiah | May 24, 1802." in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 12-13. Collated with Works, 7:175-176, 469. Not capitalized: "tempest" (3), "ocean" (3), "nations" (4), "world" (11), "eternal" (18). Hyphenated: "madly-rushing" (2), "long-resounding" (6), "loudly-eddying" (8), "thistle-down" (16). Elided: "pow'rful" (9), "driv'n" (19). Apostrophized: "it's" (6). Comma after "great" (18). Stanza break after line 6, and possibly after line 12 (where a page break occurs). Peacock's paraphrase is based on the Authorized Version of Isaiah 17:12-13, which he later quoted in a note to Palmyra, pp. 43-44.
• (11) "Mira's Tomb."—pp. 32-34. Epigraph: "Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. | Hor:" [Odes, I.iv.15: "Life's brief span forbids us to form distant hopes"]. Date: "May 26: 1802.—" Published as "Mira" (without epigraph or date) in Palmyra, pp. 112-114. Collated with Works, 6:73.
  5 ev'ning-close] ev'ning hours
  6 softly-mournful] sweetly-mournful
  7 The earth its earliest sweets bestows] The red-breast scatters fragrant flow'rs
  9 Summer's brightest flow'rs] Spring's first op'ning sweets
  
  Not hyphenated: "tomorrow" (24). The last two lines are annotated in pencil in an unknown hand: "Such as they are to day, | Such we, alas! may be tomorrow. | (Prior's Garland)" [Matthew Prior, "The Garland," 37-38: "Such as She is, who dy'd to Day; | Such I, alas! may be to Morrow"].
• (12) "On the death of Mr Pembroke."—pp. 35-36. Epigraph: "Quis desiderio sit pudor, aut modus, | Tam cari capitis? . . . Hor:" [Odes, I.xxiv.1-2: "What restraint, or limit, should there be to our grief for so dear a person?"]. Date: "Octr 1802." Published as "On the Death of Charles Pembroke, Esq." (without epigraph or date) in Palmyra, pp. 101-102. Collated with Works, 6:67. Not capitalized: "friendship" (2), "virtue" (5, 18). Hyphenated: "soft-eyed" (6). Spelling: "honor'd" (7). Within quotation marks, but not underlined: "Like Autumn's leaves the present race decays, | Another race succeeds." (16-17). I have not identified this quotation, which is strongly reminiscent of Homer, Iliad, vi.146-149. After the title, Mr. Pembroke is identified in pencil in an unknown hand: "(of Chertsey) | (Father of the Rev. Charles Pembroke)". An obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1802 indicates that "Charles Pembroke, esq. attorney at law" died on 25 September 1802, at Chertsey, "in his 45th year" (72:979). Peacock's change of title may have been prompted by Mrs. Sewell's poem "On the Death of Charles Pembroke, Esq. of Chertsey. 1802," published in her Poems, pp. 247-248 (see no. 16, below).
• (13) "Slender's Love-Elegy."—pp. 37-39. Epigraph: Xαλεòν Τò —ὴ øιλῆσαι, | Xαλεòν δέ Καί øιλῆσαι, | XαλεπΤερον δέ iáνΤων | AiοΤυγχáνειν øιλοῦνΤα. | ANAKPEΩN. [Anacreontea, 27B (Bergk) or 29 (Edmonds): 1-4: "It is painful not

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  to love, and also painful to love, but it is most painful of all to be unsuccessful in love"]. Date: "Jany 30: 1803." Published (without epigraph or date) in Palmyra, pp. 137-139. Collated with Works, 6:90-91. Elided: "am'rous" (36). Spelling: "splendour" (17). Quotation marks around the refrain in lines 16, 32, and 40. The refrain is, of course, from The Merry Wives of Windsor, III.i.70 and 114. However, Peacock's poem also owes something to William Shenstone's "Slender's Ghost," with its similar refrain, "O sweet! O sweet Anne Page!"—The Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone, Esq., 2 vols. (1764), 1:216-217.
• (14) "Translation | From the Italian of Guarini."—pp. 40-41. Epigraph: "O Primavera, gioventù del anno! . . . &c.—" [Il Pastor Fido, III.i.l: "O Spring, youth of the year!"]. Date: "Jany 31: 1803.—". Transcript (without epigraph or date) in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 37-38. Published from an unlocated MS dated 1 February 1803 (with the epigraph) in The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. Henry Cole, 3 vols. (1875), 3:2. Collated with Works, 7:177, 470. Capitalized: "Spring" (1, 9), "Winter's" (5), "Nature" (6, 7). This passage from Il Pastor Fido was a set piece, translated by Leigh Hunt as late as 1844—see The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, ed. H. S. Milford (1923), p. 466. Peacock translated another passage from Guarini's pastoral drama as "Amarillis; from the Pastor Fido" (IV.v.197-206, 222-224) in Palmyra, pp. 115-117.
• (15) "To a friend at Guernsey."—pp. 42-43. Date: "March 1803—". Previously unpublished.
  When hen-peck'd cit, in old scratch wig,
  Forsakes tea, sugar, prune, and fig,
  And down to Margate hastes, to lave
  His greasy carcase in the wave,
  With "dainty duck," supremely great,
  A lady of amazing weight,
  And darling Jacky, hopeful boy!
  So pleasant! stow'd on board the hoy; . . .
  When dapper cocknies (dext'rous crew!)
  Enjoy their Sunday's row to Kew,
  And, gliding down the silver stream,
  Beneath the cool meridian beam,
  Cry, as they tug the oar for pleasure,
  "Vell! this is charming beyond measure!"
  "How sweet the prospect on each side!
  It looks so monstrous countrified!
  I loves to see the fields and trees,
  And snuff the flagrant rular breeze!" . . .
  When Cuckoo sings his "note of fear,
  Unpleasing to a married ear;" . . .
  When raging Sirius fiercely burns; . . .
  In short . . . when Summer's reign returns; . . .
  Still on our shores should peace remain,
  Then may I see my friend again,
  Nor may he quickly bid farewell
  To London and to . . . Shacklewell!
  
  The quotations in lines 5 and 19-20 are from A Midsummer Night's Dream, V.i.281, and Love's Labor's Lost. V.ii.901-902 and 910-911 (with "note" for "word"). The village of Shacklewell, near Hackney, was the residence of Lucretia Oldham—"the beauty of Shacklewell Green"—for whom Peacock wrote a number of poems between November 1802 and November 1803. The "friend at Guernsey" was also the addressee of "Letter to a friend" (no. 20, below), which is titled "To a friend at Guernsey" in the Sadleir-Taylor MS. Since he was evidently a member of Peacock's circle of friends

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  in the vicinity of Hackney, I have speculated elsewhere that he may have been William de St. Croix, whose father was born in Jersey—see my "Peacock before Headlong Hall," pp. 13-14.
• (16) "To Mrs Sewell, | on her poems." —pp. 44-46. Date: "June 1803." Transcript titled "To Mrs. Sewell, on reading her poems." (with the same date) in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 26-28. Collated with Works, 7:179-180, 470. Not capitalized: "muse" (16), "virtue's" (25), "religion" (26). Hyphenated: "regularly-wild" (6), "many-sounding" (14). Elided: "tun'd" (3), "pow'r" (21), "giv'n" (27), "Heav'n" (30). Mary Sewell, née Young, was the author of Poems, by Mrs. G. Sewell, Relict of the Late Geo. Sewell, Rector of Byfleet, Surrey, published at Egham and Chertsey by R. Wetton and Sons in 1803. The list of subscribers includes "Mr. T. L. Peacock" as well as "Lieut. Wm. Love, R.N." (Peacock's uncle) and a "Mrs. Love" (either Peacock's aunt or his grandmother)—pp. xiv, xviii.
• (17) "Nina-thoma. | Imitated from Ossian."—pp. 47-48. Date: "July 1803." Transcript titled "Imitated from Ossian (Barrathan)." (with the same date) in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 29-31. Collated with Works, 7:180-181, 470-471.
  23 to-morrow] the morrow
  
  Not capitalized: "king's" (15), "harp's" (17), "virgin" (20). Hyphenated: "Blue-tumbling" (10). Apostrophized: "did'st" (20). No stanza break after line 5. Ellipsis points at the end of line 10 (where a page break occurs). Peacock's source is in Macpherson's "Berrathon: A Poem" (Ossian, ed. Jiriczek, 1:262-263).
• (18) "Levi Moses."—pp. 49-52. Epigraph: "Sed quò divitias hæc per tormenta coactas? | Cum furor haud dubius, cum sit manifesta phrenesis, | Ut locuples moriaris egenti vivere fato? | Juv:" [Satires, xiv.135-137: "But to what end do you heap up wealth by means of these torments, when it is sheer madness, when it is plain frenzy, to live in want so that you may die rich?"]. Date: "August 1803." Published (with epigraph but without date) in Palmyra, pp. 133-136. Collated with Works, 6:87-89 (after correcting "my laborsh" to "ma laborsh" in line 26 on the basis of the text in Palmyra).
  7 bargains two hundred] bargainsh tree hondred
  19 inshtructions] inshtructionsh
  20 ma bushinesh] my bushinesh [? unintentionally normalized]
  25 mashelf] myshelf [? unintentionally normalized]
  33-48 The order of the last two stanzas is reversed.
  33, 40 vit] vid
  29, 39, 47, 48 goot] good
  
  Not capitalized: "lane" (3), "fortune" (26). Underlined: "cleverly" (22), "cleverly cheated him" (23). Not underlined: "shent per shent" (31). Not hyphenated: "Roshemary lane" (3). Not elided: "shcraped" (27). Spelling: "Vich" (14), "laboursh" (26). Numerous examples of "Jews' Songs" can be found in The Universal Songster; or, Museum of Mirth, 3 vols. (1825-26).
• 19) "Paddy's Lamentation."—p. 53. Date: "Augt 1803." Transcript dated 1803 in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 46-47. Collated with Works, 7:183-184, 471.
  1 shoul's dearest] shoul's darest
  2 dear joy] best joy
  3 my dear] my sweet
  4 did ye] did you
  5 Oh! my] Ah! my
  

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  6 potatoes] porators,
  7 wish and nothing to cry for] wish, you had nothing to sigh for
  9 leave] lave
  11 dear creature] dare crater [? underlining unintentionally omitted]
  
  Not capitalized: "oh" (1), "jewel" (4, 8, 12). Spelling: "whisky" (6). The Berg MS restores the dialect of the comic Irishman, which is almost completely normalized in the Sadleir-Taylor MS.
• (20) "Jack Allspice. | Imitated from the French."—pp. 54-55. Date: "Octr 1803." Previously unpublished.
  Jack Allspice late in Wapping dwelt,
  In coffee, tea, and snuff he dealt,
  And all before him carried:
  He saw, and lov'd, a blithsome maid,
  With joy he found his love repaid,
  And little Jack was married.
  

  Three months pass on in love and joy:
  The fourth arrives: a chopping boy
  To Jacky's arms they bear:
  Jack look'd amaz'd: the doctor smil'd:
  "Doctor!" says Jack, "this pretty child
  Has come too soon, I fear!"
  

  "Friend Jack! amongst the sons of men,
  These things will happen now and then,
  Repine not thus at fate:
  But learn this truth, you silly loon,
  The child came not at all too soon,
  Your marriage came too late!"
  
  I have not identified Peacock's French source.
• (21) "Glee."—pp. 56-57. Epigraph: "Nunc est bibendum. | Hor:" [Odes, I.xxxvii.1: "Now it is time to drink"]. Date: "Decr 1803." Transcript (without epigraph but with the same date) in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 32-33. Collated with Works, 7:185-186, 472. Lines 1, 3, 9, and 11 are each divided into two lines of three and four syllables, respectively. Not hyphenated: "tomorrow" (4).
• (22) "Letter to a friend."—pp. 58-60. Date: "Decr 23: 1803—". Transcript titled "To a friend at Guernsey | Decr 23d 1803" in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 66-69. Collated with Works, 7:186-187, 472-473. Not capitalized: "this" (16), "turkies" (17), "season" (20), "bellman's" (22), "christmas" (25), "care" (26), "demons" (27), "aldermanic" (28), "turkey" (28), "muse" (29), "sir" (33), "answer" (34). Underlined: "I" (6), "reason" (19), "aldermanic" (28). Elided: "requir'd" (31), "tir'd" (32), "pr'ythee" (33). Not contracted: "Though" (3, 7), "Through" (23). Apostrophized: "'till" (35). Comma after "absent" (2). The concluding quotation—"Adieu! Adieu! remember me!"—is, of course, from Hamlet, I.v.91 and 111. The addressee was evidently the "friend at Guernsey" to whom Peacock had written no. 15, above.
• (23) "To Matilda."—pp. 61-62. Epigraph: "Che barbaro addio! | Che fato crudel! | Che attendono i rei | Dagli astri funesti, | Se i premi son questi | D'un alma fedel?— | Metastasio." [Demofoonte, II.xi.33-38: "What a rude farewell! What a cruel fate! What can the guilty expect from their fatal stars, if these are the rewards of a faithful soul?"]. Date: "Feby 1804." Holograph MS dated "Feb. 7 1804." (without epigraph) in the Pforzheimer Collection: Shelley and His Circle, 1:332-334. Transcript of an earlier version titled "To Matilda—on parting | Jany 24. 1804." (without

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  epigraph) in the Sadleir-Taylor MS, pp. 34-36. Collated with Works, 7:187-188, 473. Hyphenated: "storm-beaten" (2).
• (24) "To Rosalia."—pp. 63-64. Epigraph: ". . . Miseri quibus | Intentata nites! . . . | Hor:" [Odes, I.v.12-13: "Wretched they to whom thou, untried, seemest fair!"]. Date: "Feby 1804." First three stanzas published (with a different name, with a different epigraph, and without date) as the opening of the much longer "Farewell to Matilda" in Palmyra, pp. 108-111. See Works, 6:71-72. Last two stanzas previously unpublished.
  Rosalia . . . farewell! Fate has doom'd us to part;
  But the prospect occasions no pang to my heart;
  No longer is love with my reason at strife,
  Though once thou wert dearer, far dearer than life.
  

  As together we roam'd, I the passion confess'd,
  Which thy beauty and virtue had rais'd in my breast;
  That the passion was mutual, thou mad'st me believe,
  And I thought my Rosalia could never deceive!
  

  My Rosalia! no! false one! my claims I resign;
  Thou can'st not, thou must not, thou shalt not be mine!
  I now scorn thee as much as I lov'd thee before,
  Nor sigh when I think I shall meet thee no more.
  

  Thou love! no, Rosalia! debase not the name,
  Not in bosoms like thine glows so noble a flame;
  Thine was felt without pleasure, was lost without sorrow,
  Thou could'st love me to-day, and forget me tomorrow!
  

  Thy breast swells with joy at the thought of my pain,
  But I mourn not the loss of a heart I disdain,
  Though I once thought it death from Rosalia to sever,
  With a smile I can leave thee, and leave thee for ever!
  
  The interchangeability of the names Rosalia and Matilda—both of which were common in Gothic novels—suggests that they have no biographical significance.
• (25) "Clonar and Tlamín. | Imitated from a little poem in Macpherson's notes on Ossian."—pp. 65-68. Date: "July 1804." Holograph MS (with the same date) in the Pforzheimer Collection: Shelley and His Circle, 1:374-377. Published (without date) in Palmyra, pp. 118-121. Collated with Works, 6:76-77.
  The quotation from Macpherson's note is omitted.
  3 wind] breeze
  9 the war-tempest] war's stern tempest
  14 Ye blue mists of Lutha] Ye mists of the valley
  18 While fix'd on the mind] Whilst fix'd on the soul
  23 Then why] Oh why
  27 Towards green-vallied Erin] Tow'rds Erin's green vallies
  
  Capitalized: "Death's" (31). Elided: "E'en" (11). Apostrophized: "it's" (18), "'Till" (22). Question mark after "streams" (6). No comma after "hill" (13). The name Tlamín is accented in the title and the first heading, but not afterwards. The readings of the Berg MS almost always agree with those of the Pforzheimer MS. Peacock's source—misidentified in Shelley and His Circle—is the note to Temora: An Epic Poem, Book VIII, beginning "Tla-min, mildly soft . . ." (Ossian, ed. Jiriczek, 2:146).
• (26) "Ancient War-Song."—p. 69. Date: "Augt 1804." Included as the opening "Chorus of Bards" in the undated holograph MS drama "The Circle of Loda" (written

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  on paper with an 1801 watermark): British Library Additional MS 36816, fol. 104. Published by A. B. Young in "Unpublished Songs of T. L. Peacock," Notes and Queries, 10th series, 10 (5 December 1908); 442, and in his edition of The Plays of Thomas Love Peacock (1910), pp. 75-76. Collated with Works, 7:293. Not hyphenated: "Dimly seen" (3). Apostrophized: "it's" (10).
• (27) "The Monks of St Mark. | A Tale of Wonder."—pp. 70-77. Date: "Septr 1804." Epigraph: "In these deep solitudes and awful cells, | . . . | What means this tumult . . .? | Pope." [Eloisa to Abelard, 1, 4]. Privately printed (without subtitle or epigraph, but with the same date) by Thomas Bensley, in the same format and probably at the same time as Palmyra. Collated with Works, 7:189-192, 474-475.
  15 Or, all] All
  23-24 While Pedro protested, it vex'd him infernally | To see such good beverage taken "externally!"] Whilst Pedro declar'd, "he could pretty well guess, | That a parboil'd calf's foot was a very fine mess!"
  consented, but all] complied, but all yet
  50 did Pedro] poor Pedro
  53-54 And prone on the floor fell this son of the cowl, | And howl'd, deeply-smarting, a terrible howl!] Who, thus stretch'd on the floor, yell'd out ah!s and holloa!s, | As if half a score devils were tweaking his nose!
  55 Poor Augustine's bosom with terror was cold] Amaz'd and confounded did Augustine stand
  56 his hold] his hand
  
  Capitalized: "Brother" (34). Not capitalized: "abbot" (17, 25, 61), "brother" (63). Underlined: "held forth" (16), "flock" (17), "feelingly" (25), "heels" (46), "head" (46), "serpentin'd" (66). Not underlined: 'Te Deums" (13), "lend him a hand" (34), "boozing about" (61). Not hyphenated: "corridor stairs" (74). Elided: "begg'd" (34). Not elided: "Bewildered" (67). Apostrophized: "it's" (4, 20), "'Till" (17, 36). Not apostrophized: "Stead" (13). Spelling: "boozing" (61), "vapours" (82). No quotation marks around lines 26-30. The subtitle is helpful in establishing the literary origins of Peacock's poem, which is evidently an experiment in the comic vein of Matthew Gregory Lewis's Tales of Wonder, 2 vols. (1801). Lewis's celebrated collection contains a good deal of humor and self-parody, most notably in his parody of his own "Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine" in "Giles Jollop the Grave, and Brown Sally Green" (1:26-30), and in the anonymous parody of "The Erl-King" and "The Cloud King" in "The Cinder King" (2:416-418). The six-line anapestic stanza of The Monks of St. Mark is found in only one poem in Lewis's collection: H. Bunbury's "The Little Grey Man" (1:113-121).
• (28) "Maria's return to her native cottage."—pp. 78-82. Epigraph: "Che debbo far, che poss'io far qui sola? | Chi me da ajuto, oime! chi me consola? | Ariosto." [Orlando Furioso, X.xxvii.7-8: "What shall I do, what can I do here alone? Who will help me, alas! who will comfort me?"]. Date: "Septr 1804." Published (with a different epigraph and without date) in Palmyra, pp. 59-66. Collated with Works, 6:41-46. The first two lines of each stanza in the printed text are combined into one in the MS.
  4 While] Whilst
  13-18 Hope's visions wild . . . prospect blighting.] In hapless hour love's fatal pow'r | My too fond bosom cherish'd: | Oh! happier far, if, ere my heart | First felt the sharp envenom'd dart, | This wretched form had perish'd!
  25 fondest] firmest
  27 soul] heart
  28 in those] in youth's
  34 my days] each hour
  
  Not capitalized: "heav'n" (23), "disobedient daughter" (54). Not hyphenated: "tomorrow" (72). Elided: "wint'ry" (12).

Notes