nd it is absolutely impossible that he should have been
an Evangelical.

We must not dismiss without some special mention the episode--though it
is not properly an episode, inasmuch as it has throughout an important
connection with the working of the story--of 'Aristophanes in London.'
This has sometimes been adversely criticised as not sufficiently
antique--which seems to overlook the obvious retort that if it had been
more so it could not by any possibility have been sufficiently modern.
Those who know something of Aristophanes and something of London may
doubt whether it could have established the nexus much better. I
have elsewhere pointed out the curious connection with Mansel's
Phrontisterion, which was considerably earlier in date, and with the
sentiments of which Peacock would have been in the heartiest agreement.
But it is extremely unlikely that he ever saw it. His antipathy to the
English universities appears to have been one of the most enduring of
his crazes, probably because it was always the most unreasonable; and
though there is no active renewal of hostilities in this novel (or none
of importance), it is noticeable there is also no direct or indirect
palinode as there is in most other cases. As for the play itself, it
seems to me very good. Miss Gryll must have looked delightful as
Circe (we get a more distinct description of her personality here than
anywhere else), Gryllus has an excellent standpoint, and the dialogue,
though unequal, is quite admirable at the best. Indeed there is a
Gilbertian tone about the whole piece which I should be rather more
surprised at being the first to note, so far as I know, if I were not
pretty well prepared to find that the study of the average dramatic
critic is not much in Peacock. The choric trochees (which by the way
is a tautology) are of the highest excellence, especially the piece
beginning--

'As before the pike will fly'

in which Coeur-de-Lion's discomfiture of the 'septemvirate of quacks' is
hymned; and the finale is quite Attic. I do not know whether the thing
has ever been attempted as an actual show. Though rather exacting in its
machinery, it ought to have been.

The novel is rather full of other verse, but except 'Love and Age'--so
often mentioned, but never to be mentioned enough for its strange and
admirable commixture of sense and sentiment, of knowledge of the heart
and knowledge of life--this is not of the first class for Peacock,
certainly no