ng-robe view of literature, who appreciate the distinction which
literary cultivation gives them over the herd of mankind, but who by no
means take that distinction too seriously. Aristophanes, Horace, Lucian,
Rabelais, Montaigne, Saint-Evremond, these are all Peacock's literary
ancestors, each, of course, with his own difference in especial and in
addition. Aristophanes was more of a politician and a patriot, Lucian
more of a freethinker, Horace more of a simple _pococurante_. Rabelais
may have had a little inclination to science itself (he would soon have
found it out if he had lived a little later), Montaigne may have been
more of a pure egotist, Saint-Evremond more of a man of society, and of
the verse and prose of society. But they all had the same _ethos_, the
same love of letters as letters, the same contempt of mere progress as
progress, the same relish for the simpler and more human pleasures, the
same good fellowship, the same tendency to escape from the labyrinth of
life's riddles by what has been called the humour-gate, the same
irreconcilable hatred of stupidity and vulgarity and cant. The
eighteenth century has, no doubt, had its claim to be regarded as the
special flourishing time of this mental state urged by many others
besides Lord Houghton; but I doubt whether the claim can be sustained,
at any rate to the detriment of other times, and the men of other
times. That century took itself too seriously--a fault fatal to the
claim at once. Indeed, the truth is that while this attitude has in some
periods been very rare, it cannot be said to be the peculiar, still less
the universal, characteristic of any period. It is a personal not a
periodic distinction; and there are persons who might make out a fair
claim to it even in the depths of the Middle Ages or of the nineteenth
century.

However this may be, Peacock certainly held the theory of those who take
life easily, who do not love anything very much except old books, old
wine, and a few other things, not all of which perhaps need be old, who
are rather inclined to see the folly of it than the pity of it, and who
have an invincible tendency, if they tilt at anything at all, to tilt at
the prevailing cants and arrogances of the time. These cants and
arrogances of course vary. The position occupied by monkery at one time
may be occupied by physical science at another; and a belief in graven
images may supply in the third century the target, which is supplied