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 passage he can understand without
exhibiting such a warmth of enthusiasm and enjoyment that it softens the
stoniest readers. He can gravely call Dante's Hell "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 sex
than might be supposed from his platonical aspirations," heedless of the
great confessions implied in the swoon at Francesca's story, and the
passage 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 già 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 gods had made less comfortable in worldly circumstances 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 pass 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 nobody 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
PEACOCK
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 Peacock, 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 assistance 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, illustration, explanation--there is next
to none of it in the book. The principal thing, however, was to have
Peacock'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 Peacock'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 practitioner of Peacock's own art. A certain
well-known passage of Thackeray, about ladies and _Jonathan Wild_, will
sufficiently explain her own inability to taste Peacock'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, Peacock 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.
Peacock 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 Peacock'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 superstitions of dreaming) by frequent visions of this shadowy
love of the past. Probably to distract himself, Peacock, 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 principality, and in 1812 made, at Nant
Gwillt, the acquaintance of Shelley 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 Peacock lived at Marlow, where his intercourse with Shelley 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 Shelley 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,
Peacock 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 institutions, 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 Peacock 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 Shelley
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 Shelley's death he seems never to have had any very
intimate friend except Lord Broughton, with whose papers most of
Peacock's correspondence is for the present locked up.
There is a passage in Shelley's "Letter to Maria Gisborne" which has
been often quoted before, but which must necessarily be quoted again
whenever Peacock'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 learnèd 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 passage (where it is undisputed that "English P----"
is Peacock) 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 Peacock'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 Peacock'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 Peacock 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 Shelley throughout the
Scythrop of _Nightmare Abbey_, but there Peacock 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 Peacock, 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. Peacock 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 Peacock's works, it is very easy to see in them a
general and not inconsistent political attitude--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 Peacock--especially with his noble 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 Peacock,
there are few also who are more regular in the particular fashion in
which they disdain plot. Peacock 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
passion, and makes his profit out of it. Generally (and almost always in
Peacock'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 Peacock'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 Peacock says, in the earliest of his gibes at the
universities, that there are no such things as men of taste and
philosophy in Oxford, assembles 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
repetitions 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 analysis.
But each contains characteristics which contribute too much to the
knowledge of Peacock's idiosyncrasy to pass 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 passages of
arms with representatives of the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_
(which Peacock always hated), and the satire on "improving," craniology,
and other passing fancies of the day. The book also contains the first
and most unfriendly of those sketches of clergymen of the Church of
England which Peacock gradually softened till, in Dr. Folliott and Dr.
Opimian, his curses became blessings altogether. The Reverend Dr. Gaster
is an ignoble 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 Peacock 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
class. 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 Peacock
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 _roué_ Lord Anophel
Achthar gets her. On the other hand, detached passages 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 constituency,
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.