I met Murder on the way— He had a mask like Castlereagh.
ATTRIBUTION:
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), British poet. The Mask of Anarchy, st. 2 (written 1819, published 1832).
In common with other critics of the Tory administration of the day, Shelley despised above all Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, though there is nothing to suggest that the latter had any specific role in the “Peterloo Massacre” in August 1819, when military forces fired on a Reform meeting in Manchester—an event that stirred Shelley to write “The Mask.” See Byron on epitaphs.
