on 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 _roue_ 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, super