ABSTRACT
S.’s address to the chief figures of ‘The Lake School’, half mock-prayer and half challenge, is drafted on f. 27v rev of Nbk 10. Mary transcribed it into Mary Copybk 2 but did not publish it. The abandoned fragment, in rhyming couplets of seven- or eight-syllable lines, extends to all three poets a principal theme of the attack on Wordsworth under the character of Peter Bell in PB3 as set out in the Dedication 32–3:
Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter.
