ior 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 Peacock 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 coarsely 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 Shelley); 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 hap