that he inherited from a Graeco-Roman
civilization, his bookishness, his archaeology, his conscious Paganism,
would have looked queer in an Athenian of the fifth century B.C. The
author of "Love and Age" was no Greek; but he was Greek enough to stand
out above his fellows, from whom he is most honourably distinguished by
his Athenian open-mindedness.

That Peacock cultivated prejudices is not disputed; for instance, he
could not abide tobacco-smoke, Lord Brougham, or the Great Exhibition of
1851. But his prejudices were as peculiar to himself as were the
principles of Sir Thomas Browne. They were not the prejudices of his age
and state, neither were they of the kind that is fatal to free thinking
and plain speaking. Unlike the popular dogmas of the muscular Christians
and their rivals the muscular agnostics, his whims and fancies were
superficial and involved no intellectual confusion. He compelled no one
to build on unproved hypotheses, nor would he suffer himself to be
compelled. Though sceptical about progress and mistrustful of democracy,
to the end of his life he disliked the Conservative party; and perhaps
his finest flights of sarcasm occur in "The Misfortunes of Elphin,"
where he ridicules Canning's florid rhetoric in defence of the
Constitution.

"'Reports have been brought to me [says Elphin], that the
embankment, which has been so long entrusted to your care, is in a
state of dangerous decay.'

"'Decay,' said Seithenyn, 'is one thing, and danger is another.
Everything that is old must decay. That the embankment is old, I am
free to confess; that it is somewhat rotten in parts, I will not
altogether deny; that it is any the worse for that, I do most
sturdily gainsay. It does its business well: it works well: it
keeps out the water from the land, and it lets in the wine upon the
High Commission of Embankment. Cupbearer, fill. Our ancestors were
wiser than we: they built it in their wisdom; and, if we should be
so rash as to try to mend it, we should only mar it.'

"'The stonework,' said Teithrin, 'is sapped and mined: the piles
are rotten, broken, and dislocated: the floodgates and sluices are
leaky and creaky.'

"'That is the beauty of it,' said Seithenyn. 'Some parts of it are
rotten, and some parts of it are sound.'

"'It is well,' said Elphin, 'that some parts are sound: it were
better that all were so.'