ABSTRACT
These lines are written in ink on page 1 of Nbk 13 amidst a draft for the penultimate paragraph of the Dedication to PB3 . As the prose draft breaks off in mid-sentence, then resumes after l. 7 of the verse draft, the latter was probably in place first. The fragment is likely to have been composed, as PB3 appears to have been, between mid-October and 2 November 1819; and—as the Dedication is likely to have been undertaken after the poem had been completed—probably towards the end of that period. S. may have meant to complete the lines as a short satirical jeu d'esprit or to develop them into a longer poem to accompany PB3; and he may well have intended to include them in (or in place of) the Dedication, which is addressed to ‘Thomas Brown, Esqr., the Younger’, i.e. the Irish poet Thomas Moore, who had adopted this nom de plume for two of his popular verse satires. See note to Dedication to PB3 To Thomas Brown, Esqor . For his part, Leigh Hunt had assumed the name ‘Harry Brown’ for a series of seven verse epistles that appeared in the Examiner in 1816 (30 June, 7, 14, 21, 28 July, 11 and 25 August), four of which are addressed to his ‘cousin’ Thomas Brown, Jun. S.’s rhyming couplets of twelve-syllable lines adopt the versification of these epistles. So the present fragment is addressed to Hunt under his ‘Harry Brown’ persona, and it is possible that S. meant at first to dedicate PB3 to him. After l. 4 the verse draft is interrupted by a list of four of the seven parts into which the poem was eventually divided (see note to PB3 Contents), then continues to l. 7, after which the prose draft of the Dedication takes up precisely where it left off. It seems likely that S. would have discarded ll. 5 and 6, which closely resemble the first sentence of the Dedication as he completed it. Certainly, l. 7 follows on more naturally from l. 4.
