e
luckless Harriet Shelley, is Peacock'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 Peacock'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
illustrating 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 snatches 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 snatches are among Peacock'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 snatch:--

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 snatch, 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 Peacock 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 Peacock. For the rest, no book of Peacock'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
mena