y
money, as well as in the desertion and subsequent rescue of Susannah
Touchandgo, daughter of a levanting financier. The charm of the book,
however, which distinguishes it from all its predecessors, is the
introduction of characters neither ridiculous nor simply good in the
persons of the Rev. Dr. Folliott and Lady Clarinda Bossnowl,
Fitzchrome's beloved. "Lady Clarinda," says the captain, when the said
Lady Clarinda has been playing off a certain not unladylike practical
joke on him, "is a very pleasant young lady;" and most assuredly she is,
a young lady (in the nineteenth century and in prose) of the tribe of
Beatrice, if not even of Rosalind. As for Dr. Folliott, the author is
said to have described him as his amends for his earlier clerical
sketches, and the amends are ample. A stout Tory, a fellow of infinite
jest, a lover of good living, an inveterate paradoxer, a pitiless
exposer of current cants and fallacies, and, lastly, a tall man of his
hands, Dr. Folliott is always delightful, whether he is knocking down
thieves, or annihilating, in a rather Johnsonian manner, the economist,
Mr. McQuedy, and the journalist, Mr. Eavesdrop, or laying down the law
as to the composition of breakfast and supper, or using strong language
as to "the learned friend" (Brougham), or bringing out, partly by
opposition and partly by irony, the follies of the transcendentalists,
the fops, the doctrinaires, and the mediaevalists of the party. The
book, moreover, contains the last and not the least of Peacock's
admirable drinking-songs:--

If I drink water while this doth last,
May I never again drink wine;
For how can a man, in his life of a span,
Do anything better than dine?
We'll dine and drink, and say if we think
That anything better can be;
And when we have dined, wish all mankind
May dine as well as we.

And though a good wish will fill no dish,
And brim no cup with sack,
Yet thoughts will spring as the glasses ring
To illumine our studious track.
O'er the brilliant dreams of our hopeful schemes
The light of the flask shall shine;
And we'll sit till day, but we'll find the way
To drench the world with wine.

The song is good in itself, but it is even more interesting as being the
last product of Peacock's Anacreontic vein. Almost a generation passed
before the appearance of his next and last novel, and though there is
plenty of good eating a