is decision. But the obvious explanation is that a man who
lives by the head needs regular employment, and only he who lives by the
emotions has anything to lose by it. Peacock's feelings were not so fine
that routine could blunt them, nor so deep that an expression of them
could give a satisfactory purpose to life. He entered the Company's
service at the age of four-and-thirty; he found in it congenial friends,
congenial employment, and a salary that enabled him to indulge his
rather luxurious tastes. He kept chambers in London, a house on the
Thames, a good cellar we may be sure, and a wife. Of this part of his
life we know little beyond the fact that he was an able and industrious
official. Probably, we shall not be far wrong in supposing him to have
been much like other officials, only more intelligent, more witty, more
sceptical, more learned, and more "cranky": also he kept stored
somewhere at the back of his mind a spark of that mysterious thing
called genius. At any rate, his recorded opinion, "There has never been
anything perfect under the sun except the compositions of Mozart,"
smacks strongly of classical concerts and the Treasury.

Though during this period he wrote his most entertaining, and perhaps
his most brilliant novel, "Crotchet Castle," the years were heavy with
misfortune. His mother, the human being for whom he seems to have cared
most, died in 1833; before that date his wife had become a hopeless
invalid. Three of his four children were dead before he retired from
affairs. Already he had outlived many of his companions. Sorrow does not
seem to have embittered but neither did it sweeten greatly his temper.
His reticence stiffened, so did his prejudices. Only emotion enables a
man to make something noble and lovely of pain; but intellect teaches
him to bear it like a gentleman.

It is easy to draw a pleasant picture of Peacock's old age; deeply
considered, however, it is profoundly sad. He had stood for many great
causes but for none had he stood greatly. Good nature and benevolence
had done duty for love and pity. He had been more intimate with books
than with men. And so, at the end, he found himself alone. His tragedy
is not that he was lonely, but that he preferred to be so. He retired
with a handsome pension to a sheltered life at Halliford. The jolly old
pagan, the scholar, and the caustic satirist were still alive in him. He
wrote "Gryll Grange." He packed poor Robert Buchanan out of the hou