ot one of
the greatest, results of whimsical imagination and study of human
nature. "They have not"--says the somewhile prince, now King Melvas's
butler, when Taliesin discovers him twenty years after his supposed
death--"they have not made it [his death] known to me, for the best of
all reasons, that one can only know the truth. For if that which we
think we know is not truth, it is something which we do not know. A man
cannot know his own death. For while he knows anything he is alive; at
least, I never heard of a dead man who knew anything, or pretended to
know anything: if he had so pretended I should have told him to his face
that he was no dead man." How nobly consistent is this with his other
argument in the days of his princedom and his neglect of the embankment!
Elphin has just reproached him with the proverb, "Wine speaks in the
silence of reason." "I am very sorry," said Seithenyn, "that you see
things in a wrong light. But we will not quarrel, for three reasons:
first, because you are the son of the king, and may do and say what you
please without any one having a right to be displeased; second, because
I never quarrel with a guest, even if he grows riotous in his cups;
third, because there is nothing to quarrel about. And perhaps that is
the best reason of the three; or rather the first is the best, because
you are the son of the king; and the third is the second, that is the
second best, because there is nothing to quarrel about; and the second
is nothing to the purpose, because, though guests will grow riotous in
their cups in spite of my good orderly example, God forbid that I should
say that is the case with you. And I completely agree in the truth of
your remark that reason speaks in the silence of wine."

_Crotchet Castle_, the last but one of the series, which was published
two years after _Elphin_ and nearly thirty before _Gryll Grange_, has
been already called the best; and the statement is not inconsistent with
the description already given of _Nightmare Abbey_ and of _Elphin_. For
_Nightmare Abbey_ is chiefly farce, and _The Misfortunes of Elphin_ is
chiefly sardonic persiflage. _Crotchet Castle_ is comedy of a high and
varied kind. Peacock has returned in it to the machinery of a country
house with its visitors, each of whom is more or less of a crotcheteer;
and has thrown in a little romantic interest in the suit of a certain
unmoneyed Captain Fitzchrome to a noble damsel who is expected to marr