ce, 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 Peacock'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 Peacockians. 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 Peacock'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 coarser 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 dyke-warden, whose carelessness lets in the inundation, is by
far Peacock'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 n