It is this sincere and unostentatious love of letters, and anxiety to spread the love of letters, that is the redeeming point of Leigh Hunt throughout: he is saved _quia multum amavit_. It was this which prompted that rather grandiose but still admirable palinode of Christopher North, in August 1834,--"the Animosities are mortal: but the Humanities live for ever,"--an apology which naturally enough pleased Hunt very much. He is one of those persons with whom it is impossible to be angry, or at least to be angry long. "The bailiff who took him was fond of him," it is recorded of Captain Costigan; and in milder moments the same may be said of the critical bailiffs who are compelled to "take" Leigh Hunt.
Even in his least happy books (such as the "Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla," where all sorts of matter, some of it by no means well known to the writer, have been hastily cobbled together) this love, and for the most part intelligent and animated love, for literature appears. If in another of his least happy attempts, the critical parts of the already mentioned _Stories from the Italian Poets_, he is miles below the great argument of Dante, and if he is even guilty to some extent of vulgarising the lesser but still great poets with whom he deals, he never comes, even in Dante, to any pa.s.sage he can understand without exhibiting such a warmth of enthusiasm and enjoyment that it softens the stoniest readers. He can gravely call Dante"s h.e.l.l "geologically speaking a most fantastical formation" (which it certainly is), and joke clumsily about the poet"s putting Cunizza and Rahab in Paradise. He can write, in the true spirit of vulgarising, that "the Florentine is thought to have been less strict in his conduct in regard to the s.e.x than might be supposed from his platonical aspirations," heedless of the great confessions implied in the swoon at Francesca"s story, and the pa.s.sage through the fire at the end of the seventh circle of Purgatory.
But when he comes to things like "Dolce color d"oriental zaffiro," and "Era gia l"ora," it is hardly possible to do more justice to the subject. The whole description of his Italian sojourn in the Autobiography is an example of the best kind of such writing. Again, of all the people who have rejoiced in Samuel Pepys, Leigh Hunt "does it most natural," being indeed a kind of nineteenth-century Pepys himself, whom the G.o.ds had made less comfortable in worldly circ.u.mstances and no man of business, but to whom as a compensation they had given the feeling for poetry which Samuel lacked. At different times Dryden, Spenser, and Chaucer were respectively his favourite English poets; and as there was nothing faithless in his inconstancy, he took up his new loves without ceasing to love the old. It is perhaps rather more surprising that he should have liked Spenser than that he should have liked the other two; and we must suppose that the profusion of beautiful pictures in the "Faerie Queen" enabled him, not to appreciate (for he never could have done that), but to tolerate or pa.s.s over the deep melancholy and the occasional philosophisings of the poet. But the attraction of Dryden and Chaucer for him is very easily understood. Both are eminently cheerful poets, Dryden with the cheerfulness born of manly sense, Chaucer with that of youth and abounding animal spirits. Leigh Hunt seems to have found this cheerfulness as akin to his own, as the vigour of both was complementary and satisfactory to his own, I shall not say weakness, but fragility. Add yet again to this that Hunt seems--a thing very rarely to be said of critics--never to have disliked a thing simply because he could not understand it. If he sometimes abused Dante, it was not merely because he could not understand him, though he certainly could not, but because Dante trod (and when Dante treads he treads heavily) on his most cherished prejudices. Now he had not very many prejudices, and so he had an advantage here also.
Lastly, as he may be read with pleasure, so he may be skipped without shame. There are some writers whom to skip may seem to a conscientious devotee of letters both wicked and unwise--wicked because it is disrespectful to them, unwise because it is quite likely to inflict loss on the reader. Now n.o.body can ever think of respecting Leigh Hunt; he is not unfrequently amiable, but never in the least venerable. Even at his best he seldom or never affects the reader with admiration, only with a mild pleasure. It is at once a penalty for his sins and a compliment to his good qualities, that to make any kind of fuss over him would be absurd. Nor is there any selfish risk run by treating him, in the literary sense, in an unceremonious manner. His writing of all kinds carries desultoriness to the height, and may be begun at the beginning, or at the end, or in the middle, and left off at any place, without the least risk of serious loss. He is excellent good company for half an hour, sometimes for much longer; but the reader rarely thinks very much of what he has said when the interview is over, and never experiences any violent hunger or thirst for its renewal, though such renewal is agreeable enough in its way. Such an author is a convenient possession on the shelves: a possession so convenient that occasionally a blush of shame may suggest itself at the thought that he should be treated so cavalierly. But this is quixotic. The very best things that he has done hardly deserve more respectful treatment, for they are little more than a faithful and fairly lively description of his own enjoyments; the worst things deserve treatment much less respectful. Yet let us not leave him with a harsh mouth; for, as has been said, he loved the good literature of others very much, and he wrote not a little that was good literature of his own.
VIII
PEAc.o.c.k
In the year 1875 Mr. Bentley conferred no small favour upon lovers of English literature by reprinting, in compact form and good print, the works of Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k, up to that time scattered and in some cases not easily obtainable. So far as the publisher was concerned, nothing more could reasonably have been demanded; it is not easy to say quite so much of the editor, the late Sir Henry Cole. His editorial labours were indeed considerably lightened by a.s.sistance from other hands. Lord Houghton contributed a critical preface, which has the ease, point, and grasp of all his critical monographs. Miss Edith Nicolls, the novelist"s granddaughter, supplied a short biography, written with much simplicity and excellent good taste. But as to editing in the proper sense--introduction, comment, ill.u.s.tration, explanation--there is next to none of it in the book. The princ.i.p.al thing, however, was to have Peac.o.c.k"s delightful work conveniently accessible, and that the issue of 1875 accomplished. The author is still by no means universally or even generally known; though he has been something of a critic"s favourite. Almost the only dissenter, as far as I know, among critics, is Mrs. Oliphant, who has not merely confessed herself, in her book on the literary history of Peac.o.c.k"s time, unable to comprehend the admiration expressed by certain critics for _Headlong Hall_ and its fellows, but is even, if I do not mistake her, somewhat sceptical of the complete sincerity of that admiration. There is no need to argue the point with this agreeable pract.i.tioner of Peac.o.c.k"s own art. A certain well-known pa.s.sage of Thackeray, about ladies and _Jonathan Wild_, will sufficiently explain her own inability to taste Peac.o.c.k"s persiflage. As for the genuineness of the relish of those who can taste him there is no way that I know to convince sceptics. For my own part I can only say that, putting aside scattered readings of his work in earlier days, I think I have read the novels through on an average once a year ever since their combined appearance. Indeed, with Scott, Thackeray, Borrow, and Christopher North, Peac.o.c.k composes my own private Paradise of Dainty Devices, wherein I walk continually when I have need of rest and refreshment. This is a fact of no public importance, and is only mentioned as a kind of justification for recommending him to others.
Peac.o.c.k was born at Weymouth on 18th October 1785. His father (who died a year or two after his birth) was a London merchant; his mother was the daughter of a naval officer. He seems during his childhood to have done very much what he pleased, though, as it happened, study always pleased him; and his gibes in later life at public schools and universities lose something of their point when it is remembered that he was at no university, at no school save a private one, and that he left even that private school when he was thirteen. He seems, however, to have been very well grounded there, and on leaving it he conducted his education and his life at his own pleasure for many years. He published poems before he was twenty, and he fell in love shortly after he was twenty-two. The course of this love did not run smooth, and the lady, marrying some one else, died shortly afterwards. She lived in Peac.o.c.k"s memory till his death, sixty years later, which event is said to have been heralded (in accordance with not the least poetical of the many poetical superst.i.tions of dreaming) by frequent visions of this shadowy love of the past. Probably to distract himself, Peac.o.c.k, who had hitherto attempted no profession, accepted the rather unpromising post of under-secretary to Admiral Sir Home Popham on board ship. His mother, in her widowhood, and he himself had lived much with his sailor grandfather, and he was always fond of naval matters. But it is not surprising to find that his occupation, though he kept it for something like a year, was not to his taste. He gave it up in the spring of 1809, and returned to leisure, poetry, and pedestrianism. The "Genius of the Thames," a sufficiently remarkable poem, was the result of the two latter fancies. A year later he went to Wales and met his future wife, Jane Griffith, though he did not marry her for ten years more. He returned frequently to the princ.i.p.ality, and in 1812 made, at Nant Gwillt, the acquaintance of Sh.e.l.ley and his wife Harriet. This was the foundation of a well-known friendship, which has supplied by far the most solid and trustworthy materials existing for the poet"s biography.
It was Wales, too, that furnished the scene of his first and far from worst novel _Headlong Hall_, which was published in 1816. From 1815 to 1819 Peac.o.c.k lived at Marlow, where his intercourse with Sh.e.l.ley was resumed, and where he produced not merely _Headlong Hall_ but _Melincourt_ (the most unequal, notwithstanding many charming sketches, of his works), the delightful _Nightmare Abbey_ (with a caricature, as genius caricatures, of Sh.e.l.ley for the hero), and the long and remarkable poem of "Rhododaphne."
During the whole of this long time, that is to say up to his thirty-fourth year, with the exception of his year of secretaryship, Peac.o.c.k had been his own master. He now, in 1819, owed curtailment of his liberty but considerable increase of fortune to a long-disused practice on the part of the managers of public inst.i.tutions, of which Sir Henry Taylor gave another interesting example. The directors of the East India Company offered him a clerkship because he was a clever novelist and a good Greek scholar. He retained his place ("a precious good place too," as Thackeray with good-humoured envy says of it in "The Hoggarty Diamond") with due promotion for thirty-seven years, and retired from it in 1856 with a large pension. He had married Miss Griffith very shortly after his appointment; in 1822 _Maid Marian_ appeared, and in 1823 Peac.o.c.k took a cottage, which became after a time his chief and latterly his only residence, at Halliford, near his beloved river. For some years he published nothing, but 1829 and 1831 saw the production of perhaps his two best books, _The Misfortunes of Elphin_ and _Crotchet Castle_. After _Crotchet Castle_, official duties and perhaps domestic troubles (for his wife was a helpless invalid) interrupted his literary work for more than twenty years, an almost unexampled break in the literary activity of a man so fond of letters.
In 1852 he began to write again as a contributor to _Fraser"s Magazine_.
It is rather unfortunate that no complete republication, nor even any complete list of these articles, has been made. The papers on Sh.e.l.ley and the charming story of _Gryll Grange_ were the chief of them. The author was an old man when he wrote this last, but he survived it six years, and died on 23d January 1866, having latterly lived very much alone. Indeed, after Sh.e.l.ley"s death he seems never to have had any very intimate friend except Lord Broughton, with whose papers most of Peac.o.c.k"s correspondence is for the present locked up.
There is a pa.s.sage in Sh.e.l.ley"s "Letter to Maria Gisborne" which has been often quoted before, but which must necessarily be quoted again whenever Peac.o.c.k"s life and literary character are discussed:--
And there Is English P----, with his mountain Fair Turned into a flamingo, that shy bird That gleams i" the Indian air. Have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him? But you Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, With his milk-white Snowdonian Antelope Matched with his Camelopard. _His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;_ A strain too learned for a shallow age, Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page Which charms the chosen spirits of his time, Fold itself up for a serener clime Of years to come, and find its recompense In that just expectation.
The enigmas in this pa.s.sage (where it is undisputed that "English P----"
is Peac.o.c.k) have much exercised the commentators. That Miss Griffith, after her marriage, while still remaining a Snowdonian antelope, should also have been a flamingo, is odd enough; but this as well as the "camelopard" (probably turning on some private jest then intelligible enough to the persons concerned, but dark to others) is not particularly worth illuminating. The italicised words describing Peac.o.c.k"s wit are more legitimate subjects of discussion. They seem to me, though not perhaps literally explicable after the fashion of the duller kind of commentator, to contain both a very happy description of Peac.o.c.k"s peculiar humour, and a very sufficient explanation of the causes which have, both then and since, made that humour palatable rather to the few than to the many. Not only is Peac.o.c.k peculiarly liable to the charge of being too clever, but he uses his cleverness in a way peculiarly bewildering to those who like to have "This is a horse" writ large under the presentation of the animal. His "rascally comparative" fancy, and the abundant stores of material with which his reading provided it, lead him perpetually to widen "the wound," till it is not surprising that "the knife" (the particular satirical or polemical point that he is urging) gets "lost in it." This weakness, if it be one, has in its different ways of operation all sorts of curious results. One is, that his personal portraits are perhaps farther removed from faithful representations of the originals than the personal sketches of any other writer, even among the most deliberate misrepresenters. There is, indeed, a droll topsy-turvy resemblance to Sh.e.l.ley throughout the Scythrop of _Nightmare Abbey_, but there Peac.o.c.k was hardly using the knife at all. When he satirises persons, he goes so far away from their real personalities that the libel ceases to be libellous. It is difficult to say whether Mr. Mystic, Mr. Flosky, or Mr. Skionar is least like Coleridge; and Southey, intensely sensitive as he was to criticism, need not have lost his equanimity over Mr. Feathernest. A single point suggested itself to Peac.o.c.k, that point suggested another, and so on and so on, till he was miles away from the start. The inconsistency of his political views has been justly, if somewhat plaintively, reflected on by Lord Houghton in the words, "the intimate friends of Mr. Peac.o.c.k may have understood his political sentiments, but it is extremely difficult to discover them from his works." I should, however, myself say that, though it may be extremely difficult to deduce any definite political sentiments from Peac.o.c.k"s works, it is very easy to see in them a general and not inconsistent political att.i.tude--that of intolerance of the vulgar and the stupid. Stupidity and vulgarity not being (fortunately or unfortunately) monopolised by any political party, and being (no doubt unfortunately) often condescended to by both, it is not surprising to find Peac.o.c.k--especially with his n.o.ble disregard of apparent consistency and the inveterate habit of pillar-to-post joking, which has been commented on--distributing his shafts with great impartiality on Trojan and Greek; on the opponents of reform in his earlier manhood, and on the believers in progress during his later; on virtual representation and the telegraph; on barouche-driving as a gentleman"s profession, and lecturing as a gentleman"s profession. But this impartiality (or, if anybody prefers it, inconsistency) has naturally added to the difficulties of some readers with his works. It is time, however, to endeavour to give some idea of the gay variety of those works themselves.
Although there are few novelists who observe plot less than Peac.o.c.k, there are few also who are more regular in the particular fashion in which they disdain plot. Peac.o.c.k is in fiction what the dramatists of the school of Ben Jonson down to Shadwell are in comedy--he works in "humours." It ought not to be, but perhaps is, necessary to remind the reader that this is by no means the same thing in essence, though accidentally it very often is the same, as being a humourist. The dealer in humours takes some fad or craze in his characters, some minor ruling pa.s.sion, and makes his profit out of it. Generally (and almost always in Peac.o.c.k"s case) he takes if he can one or more of these humours as a central point, and lets the others play and revolve in a more or less eccentric fashion round it. In almost every book of Peac.o.c.k"s there is a host who is possessed by the cheerful mania for collecting other maniacs round him. Harry Headlong of Headlong Hall, Esquire, a young Welsh gentleman of means, and of generous though rather unchastened taste, finding, as Peac.o.c.k says, in the earliest of his gibes at the universities, that there are no such things as men of taste and philosophy in Oxford, a.s.sembles a motley host in London, and asks them down to his place at Llanberis. The adventures of the visit (ending up with several weddings) form the scheme of the book, as indeed repet.i.tions of something very little different form the scheme of all the other books, with the exception of _The Misfortunes of Elphin_, and perhaps _Maid Marian_. Of books so simple in one way, and so complex in others, it is impossible and unnecessary to give any detailed a.n.a.lysis.
But each contains characteristics which contribute too much to the knowledge of Peac.o.c.k"s idiosyncrasy to pa.s.s altogether unnoticed. The contrasts in _Headlong Hall_ between the pessimist Mr. Escot, the optimist Mr. Foster, and the happy-mean man Mr. Jenkison (who inclines to both in turn, but on the whole rather to optimism), are much less amusing than the sketches of Welsh scenery and habits, the pa.s.sages of arms with representatives of the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_ (which Peac.o.c.k always hated), and the satire on "improving," craniology, and other pa.s.sing fancies of the day. The book also contains the first and most unfriendly of those sketches of clergymen of the Church of England which Peac.o.c.k gradually softened till, in Dr. Folliott and Dr.
Opimian, his curses became blessings altogether. The Reverend Dr. Gaster is an ign.o.ble brute, though not quite life-like enough to be really offensive. But the most charming part of the book by far (for its women are mere lay figures) is to be found in the convivial scenes. _Headlong Hall_ contains, besides other occasional verse of merit, two drinking-songs--"Hail to the Headlong," and the still better "A Heel-tap! a heel-tap! I never could bear it"--songs not quite so good as those in the subsequent books, but good enough to make any reader think with a gentle sigh of the departure of good fellowship from the earth.
Undergraduates and Scotchmen (and even in their case the fashion is said to be dying) alone practise at the present day the full rites of Comus.
_Melincourt_, published, and indeed written, very soon after _Headlong Hall_, is a much more ambitious attempt. It is some three times the length of its predecessor, and is, though not much longer than a single volume of some three-volume novels, the longest book that Peac.o.c.k ever wrote. It is also much more ambitiously planned; the twice attempted abduction of the heiress, Anthelia Melincourt, giving something like a regular plot, while the introduction of Sir Oran Haut-ton (an orang-outang whom the eccentric hero, Forester, has domesticated and intends to introduce to parliamentary life) can only be understood as aiming at a regular satire on the whole of human life, conceived in a milder spirit than "Gulliver," but belonging in some degree to the same cla.s.s. Forester himself, a disciple of Rousseau, a fervent anti-slavery man who goes to the length of refusing his guests sugar, and an ideologist in many other ways, is also an ambitious sketch; and Peac.o.c.k has introduced episodes after the fashion of eighteenth-century fiction, besides a great number of satirical excursions dealing with his enemies of the Lake school, with paper money, and with many other things and persons. The whole, as a whole, has a certain heaviness. The enthusiastic Forester is a little of a prig, and a little of a bore; his friend the professorial Mr. Fax proses dreadfully; the Oran Haut-ton scenes, amusing enough of themselves, are overloaded (as is the whole book) with justificative selections from Buffon, Lord Monboddo, and other authorities. The portraits of Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Canning, and others, are neither like, nor in themselves very happy, and the heroine Anthelia is sufficiently uninteresting to make us extremely indifferent whether the virtuous Forester or the _roue_ Lord Anophel Achthar gets her. On the other hand, detached pa.s.sages are in the author"s very best vein; and there is a truly delightful scene between Lord Anophel and his chaplain Grovelgrub, when the athletic Sir Oran has not only foiled their attempt on Anthelia, but has mast-headed them on the top of a rock perpendicular. But the gem of the book is the election for the borough of One-Vote--a very amusing farce on the subject of rotten boroughs. Mr. Forester has bought one of the One-Vote seats for his friend the Orang, and, going to introduce him to the const.i.tuency, falls in with the purchaser of the other seat, Mr. Sarcastic, who is a practical humorist of the most accomplished kind. The satirical arguments with which Sarcastic combats Forester"s enthusiastic views of life and politics, the elaborate spectacle which he gets up on the day of nomination, and the free fight which follows, are recounted with extraordinary spirit. Nor is the least of the attractions of the book an admirable drinking-song, superior to either of those in _Headlong Hall_, though perhaps better known to most people by certain Thackerayan reminiscences of it than in itself:--
THE GHOSTS
In life three ghostly friars were we, And now three friendly ghosts we be.
Around our shadowy table placed, The spectral bowl before us floats: With wine that none but ghosts can taste We wash our unsubstantial throats.
Three merry ghosts--three merry ghosts--three merry ghosts are we: Let the ocean be port and we"ll think it good sport To be laid in that Red Sea.
With songs that jovial spectres chaunt, Our old refectory still we haunt.
The traveller hears our midnight mirth: "Oh list," he cries, "the haunted choir!
The merriest ghost that walks the earth Is now the ghost of a ghostly friar."
Three merry ghosts--three merry ghosts--three merry ghosts are we: Let the ocean be port and we"ll think it good sport To be laid in that Red Sea.
In the preface to a new edition of _Melincourt_, which Peac.o.c.k wrote nearly thirty years later, and which contains a sort of promise of _Gryll Grange_, there is no sign of any dissatisfaction on the author"s part with the plan of the earlier book; but in his next, which came quickly, he changed that plan very decidedly. _Nightmare Abbey_ is the shortest, as _Melincourt_ is the longest, of his tales; and as _Melincourt_ is the most unequal and the most clogged with heavy matter, so _Nightmare Abbey_ contains the most unbroken tissue of farcical, though not in the least coa.r.s.ely farcical, incidents and conversations.
The misanthropic Scythrop (whose habit of Madeira-drinking has made some exceedingly literal people sure that he really could not be intended for the water-drinking Sh.e.l.ley); his yet gloomier father, Mr. Glowry; his intricate entanglements with the lovely Marionetta and the still more beautiful Celinda; his fall between the two stools; his resolve to commit suicide; the solution of that awkward resolve--are all simply delightful. Extravagant as the thing is, its brevity and the throng of incidents and jokes prevent it from becoming in the least tedious. The pessimist-fatalist Mr. Toobad, with his "innumerable proofs of the temporary supremacy of the devil," and his catchword "the devil has come among us, having great wrath," appears just enough, and not too much.
The introduced sketch of Byron as Mr. Cypress would be the least happy thing of the piece if it did not give occasion for a capital serious burlesque of Byronic verse, the lines, "There is a fever of the spirit,"
which, as better known than most of Peac.o.c.k"s verse, need not be quoted.
Mr. Flosky, a fresh caricature of Coleridge, is even less like the original than Mr. Mystic, but he is much more like a human being, and in himself is great fun. An approach to a more charitable view of the clergy is discoverable in the curate Mr. Larynx, who, if not extremely ghostly, is neither a sot nor a sloven. But the quarrels and reconciliations between Scythrop and Marionetta, his invincible inability to make up his mind, the mysterious advent of Marionetta"s rival, and her residence in hidden chambers, the alternate sympathy and repulsion between Scythrop and those elder disciples of pessimism, his father and Mr. Toobad--all the contradictions of Sh.e.l.ley"s character, in short, with a suspicion of the incidents of his life brought into the most ludicrous relief, must always form the great charm of the book. A tolerably rapid reader may get through it in an hour or so, and there is hardly a more delightful hour"s reading of anything like the same kind in the English language, either for the incidental strokes of wit and humour, or for the easy mastery with which the whole is. .h.i.t off. It contains, moreover, another drinking-catch, "Seamen Three," which, though it is, like its companion, better known than most of Peac.o.c.k"s songs, may perhaps find a place:--
Seamen three! What men be ye?
Gotham"s three wise men we be.
Whither in your bowl so free?
To rake the moon from out the sea.
The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine, And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.
Who art thou so fast adrift?
I am he they call Old Care.
Here on board we will thee lift.
No: I may not enter there.
Wherefore so? "Tis Jove"s decree In a bowl Care may not be; In a bowl Care may not be.
Fear ye not the waves that roll?
No: in charmed bowl we swim.
What the charm that floats the bowl?
Water may not pa.s.s the brim.
The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine, And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.
A third song sung by Marionetta, "Why are thy looks so blank, Grey Friar?" is as good in another way; nor should it be forgotten that the said Marionetta, who has been thought to have some features of the luckless Harriet Sh.e.l.ley, is Peac.o.c.k"s first lifelike study of a girl, and one of his pleasantest.
The book which came out four years after, _Maid Marian_, has, I believe, been much the most popular and the best known of Peac.o.c.k"s short romances. It owed this popularity, in great part, doubtless, to the fact that the author has altered little in the well-known and delightful old story, and has not added very much to its facts, contenting himself with ill.u.s.trating the whole in his own satirical fashion. But there is also no doubt that the dramatisation of _Maid Marian_ by Planche and Bishop as an operetta helped, if it did not make, its fame. The s.n.a.t.c.hes of song through the novel are more frequent than in any other of the books, so that Mr. Planche must have had but little trouble with it. Some of these s.n.a.t.c.hes are among Peac.o.c.k"s best verse, such as the famous "Bramble Song," the great hit of the operetta, the equally well-known "Oh, bold Robin Hood," and the charming s.n.a.t.c.h:--
For the tender beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may cut down which you will;
But this you must know, that as long as they grow, Whatever change may be, You never can teach either oak or beech To be aught but a greenwood tree.
This s.n.a.t.c.h, which, in its mixture of sentiment, truth, and what may be excusably called "rollick," is very characteristic of its author, and is put in the mouth of Brother Michael, practically the hero of the piece, and the happiest of the various workings up of Friar Tuck, despite his considerable indebtedness to a certain older friar, whom we must not call "of the funnels." That Peac.o.c.k was a Pantagruelist to the heart"s core is evident in all his work; but his following of Master Francis is nowhere clearer than in _Maid Marian_, and it no doubt helps us to understand why those who cannot relish Rabelais should look askance at Peac.o.c.k. For the rest, no book of Peac.o.c.k"s requires such brief comment as this charming pastoral, which was probably little less in Thackeray"s mind than _Ivanhoe_ itself when he wrote _Rebecca and Rowena_. The author draws in (it would be hardly fair to say drags in) some of his stock satire on courts, the clergy, the landed gentry, and so forth; but the very nature of the subject excludes the somewhat tedious digressions which mar _Melincourt_, and which once or twice menace, though they never actually succeed in spoiling, the unbroken fun of _Nightmare Abbey_.
_The Misfortunes of Elphin_, which followed after an interval of seven years, is, I believe, the least generally popular of Peac.o.c.k"s works, though (not at all for that reason) it happens to be my own favourite.
The most curious instance of this general unpopularity is the entire omission, as far as I am aware, of any reference to it in any of the popular guide-books to Wales. One piece of verse, indeed, the "War-song of Dinas Vawr," a triumph of easy verse and covert sarcasm, has had some vogue, but the rest is only known to Peac.o.c.kians. The abundance of Welsh lore which, at any rate in appearance, it contains, may have had something to do with this; though the translations or adaptations, whether faithful or not, are the best literary renderings of Welsh known to me. Something also, and probably more, is due to the saturation of the whole from beginning to end with Peac.o.c.k"s driest humour. Not only is the account of the sapping and destruction of the embankment of Gwaelod an open and continuous satire on the opposition to Reform, but the whole book is written in the spirit and manner of _Candide_--a spirit and manner which Englishmen have generally been readier to relish, when they relish them at all, in another language than in their own. The respectable domestic virtues of Elphin and his wife Angharad, the blameless loves of Taliesin and the Princess Melanghel, hardly serve even as a foil to the satiric treatment of the other characters. The careless incompetence of the poetical King Gwythno, the coa.r.s.er vices of other Welsh princes, the marital toleration or blindness of Arthur, the cynical frankness of the robber King Melvas, above all, the drunkenness of the immortal Seithenyn, give the humorist themes which he caresses with inexhaustible affection, but in a manner no doubt very puzzling, if not shocking, to matter-of-fact readers. Seithenyn, the drunken prince and d.y.k.e-warden, whose carelessness lets in the inundation, is by far Peac.o.c.k"s most original creation (for Scythrop, as has been said, is rather a humorous distortion of the actual than a creation). His complete self-satisfaction, his utter fearlessness of consequences, his ready adaptation to whatever part, be it prince or butler, presents itself to him, and above all, the splendid topsy-turviness of his fashion of argument, make Seithenyn one of the happiest, if not one of the greatest, results of whimsical imagination and study of human nature. "They have not"--says the somewhile prince, now King Melvas"s butler, when Taliesin discovers him twenty years after his supposed death--"they have not made it [his death] known to me, for the best of all reasons, that one can only know the truth. For if that which we think we know is not truth, it is something which we do not know. A man cannot know his own death. For while he knows anything he is alive; at least, I never heard of a dead man who knew anything, or pretended to know anything: if he had so pretended I should have told him to his face that he was no dead man." How n.o.bly consistent is this with his other argument in the days of his princedom and his neglect of the embankment!
Elphin has just reproached him with the proverb, "Wine speaks in the silence of reason." "I am very sorry," said Seithenyn, "that you see things in a wrong light. But we will not quarrel, for three reasons: first, because you are the son of the king, and may do and say what you please without any one having a right to be displeased; second, because I never quarrel with a guest, even if he grows riotous in his cups; third, because there is nothing to quarrel about. And perhaps that is the best reason of the three; or rather the first is the best, because you are the son of the king; and the third is the second, that is the second best, because there is nothing to quarrel about; and the second is nothing to the purpose, because, though guests will grow riotous in their cups in spite of my good orderly example, G.o.d forbid that I should say that is the case with you. And I completely agree in the truth of your remark that reason speaks in the silence of wine."
_Crotchet Castle_, the last but one of the series, which was published two years after _Elphin_ and nearly thirty before _Gryll Grange_, has been already called the best; and the statement is not inconsistent with the description already given of _Nightmare Abbey_ and of _Elphin_. For _Nightmare Abbey_ is chiefly farce, and _The Misfortunes of Elphin_ is chiefly sardonic persiflage. _Crotchet Castle_ is comedy of a high and varied kind. Peac.o.c.k has returned in it to the machinery of a country house with its visitors, each of whom is more or less of a crotcheteer; and has thrown in a little romantic interest in the suit of a certain unmoneyed Captain Fitzchrome to a n.o.ble damsel who is expected to marry money, as well as in the desertion and subsequent rescue of Susannah Touchandgo, daughter of a levanting financier. The charm of the book, however, which distinguishes it from all its predecessors, is the introduction of characters neither ridiculous nor simply good in the persons of the Rev. Dr. Folliott and Lady Clarinda Bossnowl, Fitzchrome"s beloved. "Lady Clarinda," says the captain, when the said Lady Clarinda has been playing off a certain not unladylike practical joke on him, "is a very pleasant young lady;" and most a.s.suredly she is, a young lady (in the nineteenth century and in prose) of the tribe of Beatrice, if not even of Rosalind. As for Dr. Folliott, the author is said to have described him as his amends for his earlier clerical sketches, and the amends are ample. A stout Tory, a fellow of infinite jest, a lover of good living, an inveterate paradoxer, a pitiless exposer of current cants and fallacies, and, lastly, a tall man of his hands, Dr. Folliott is always delightful, whether he is knocking down thieves, or annihilating, in a rather Johnsonian manner, the economist, Mr. McQuedy, and the journalist, Mr. Eavesdrop, or laying down the law as to the composition of breakfast and supper, or using strong language as to "the learned friend" (Brougham), or bringing out, partly by opposition and partly by irony, the follies of the transcendentalists, the fops, the doctrinaires, and the mediaevalists of the party. The book, moreover, contains the last and not the least of Peac.o.c.k"s admirable drinking-songs:--
If I drink water while this doth last, May I never again drink wine; For how can a man, in his life of a span, Do anything better than dine?
We"ll dine and drink, and say if we think That anything better can be; And when we have dined, wish all mankind May dine as well as we.
And though a good wish will fill no dish, And brim no cup with sack, Yet thoughts will spring as the gla.s.ses ring To illumine our studious track.
O"er the brilliant dreams of our hopeful schemes The light of the flask shall shine; And we"ll sit till day, but we"ll find the way To drench the world with wine.
The song is good in itself, but it is even more interesting as being the last product of Peac.o.c.k"s Anacreontic vein. Almost a generation pa.s.sed before the appearance of his next and last novel, and though there is plenty of good eating and drinking in _Gryll Grange_, the old fine rapture had disappeared in society meanwhile, and Peac.o.c.k obediently took note of the disappearance. It is considered, I believe, a mark of barbarian tastes to lament the change. But I am not certain that the Age of Apollinaris and lectures has yet produced anything that can vie as literature with the products of the ages of Wine and Song.
_Gryll Grange_, however, in no way deserves the name of a dry stick. It is, next to _Melincourt_, the longest of Peac.o.c.k"s novels, and it is entirely free from the drawbacks of the forty-years-older book. Mr.
Falconer, the hero, who lives in a tower alone with seven lovely and discreet foster-sisters, has some resemblances to Mr. Forester, but he is much less of a prig. The life and the conversation bear, instead of the marks of a young man"s writing, the marks of the writing of one who has seen the manners and cities of many other men, and the personages throughout are singularly lifelike. The loves of the second hero and heroine, Lord Curryfin and Miss Niphet, are much more interesting than their names would suggest. And the most loquacious person of the book, the Rev. Dr. Opimian, if he is somewhat less racy than Dr. Folliott, is not less agreeable. One main charm of the novel lies in its vigorous criticism of modern society in phases which have not yet pa.s.sed away.
"Progress" is attacked with curious ardour; and the battle between literature and science, which in our days even Mr. Matthew Arnold waged but as one _cauponans bellum_, is fought with a vigour that is a joy to see. It would be rather interesting to know whether Peac.o.c.k, in planning the central incident of the play (an "Aristophanic comedy," satirising modern ways), was aware of the existence of Mansel"s delightful parody of the "Clouds." But "Phrontisterion" has never been widely known out of Oxford, and the bearing of Peac.o.c.k"s own performance is rather social than political. Not the least noteworthy thing in the book is the practical apology which is made in it to Scotchmen and political economists (two cla.s.ses whom Peac.o.c.k had earlier persecuted) in the personage of Mr. McBorrowdale, a candid friend of Liberalism, who is extremely refreshing. And besides the Aristophanic comedy, _Gryll Grange_ contains some of Peac.o.c.k"s most delightful verse, notably the really exquisite stanzas on "Love and Age."