deal of burgundy and sing songs during the process, appears to
them at the best childish, at the worst horribly wrong. The
prince-butler Seithenyn is a reprobate old man, who was unfaithful to
his trust and shamelessly given to sensual indulgence. Dr. Folliott, as
a parish priest, should not have drunk so much wine; and it would have
been much more satisfactory to hear more of Dr. Opimian's sermons and
district visiting, and less of his dinners with Squire Gryll and Mr.
Falconer. Peacock's irony on social and political arrangements is all
sterile, all destructive, and the sentiment that "most opinions that
have anything to be said for them are about two thousand years old" is a
libel on mankind. They feel, in short, for Peacock the animosity,
mingled with contempt, which the late M. Amiel felt for "clever
mockers."

It is probably useless to argue with any such. It might, indeed, be
urged in all seriousness that the Peacockian attitude is not in the
least identical with the Mephistophelian; that it is based simply on the
very sober and arguable ground that human nature is always very much the
same, liable to the same delusions and the same weaknesses; and that the
oldest things are likely to be best, not for any intrinsic or mystical
virtue of antiquity, but because they have had most time to be found out
in, and have not been found out. It may further be argued, as it has
often been argued before, that the use of ridicule as a general
criterion can do no harm, and may do much good. If the thing ridiculed
be of God, it will stand; if it be not, the sooner it is laughed off the
face of the earth the better. But there is probably little good in
urging all this. Just as a lover of the greatest of Greek dramatists
must recognise at once that it would be perfectly useless to attempt to
argue Lord Coleridge out of the idea that Aristophanes, though a genius,
was vulgar and base of soul, so to go a good deal lower in the scale of
years, and somewhat lower in the scale of genius, everybody who rejoices
in the author of "Aristophanes in London" must see that he has no chance
of converting Mrs. Oliphant, or any other person who does not like
Peacock. The middle term is not present, the disputants do not in fact
use the same language. The only thing to do is to recommend this
particular pleasure to those who are capable of being pleased by it, and
to whom, as no doubt it is to a great number, it is pleasure yet
untried.

It is w