py
thing of the piece if it did not give occasion for a capital serious
burlesque of Byronic verse, the lines, "There is a fever of the spirit,"
which, as better known than most of Peacock's verse, need not be quoted.
Mr. Flosky, a fresh caricature of Coleridge, is even less like the
original than Mr. Mystic, but he is much more like a human being, and in
himself is great fun. An approach to a more charitable view of the
clergy is discoverable in the curate Mr. Larynx, who, if not extremely
ghostly, is neither a sot nor a sloven. But the quarrels and
reconciliations between Scythrop and Marionetta, his invincible
inability to make up his mind, the mysterious advent of Marionetta's
rival, and her residence in hidden chambers, the alternate sympathy and
repulsion between Scythrop and those elder disciples of pessimism, his
father and Mr. Toobad--all the contradictions of Shelley's character, in
short, with a suspicion of the incidents of his life brought into the
most ludicrous relief, must always form the great charm of the book. A
tolerably rapid reader may get through it in an hour or so, and there is
hardly a more delightful hour's reading of anything like the same kind
in the English language, either for the incidental strokes of wit and
humour, or for the easy mastery with which the whole is hit off. It
contains, moreover, another drinking-catch, "Seamen Three," which,
though it is, like its companion, better known than most of Peacock's
songs, may perhaps find a place:--

Seamen three! What men be ye?
Gotham's three wise men we be.
Whither in your bowl so free?
To rake the moon from out the sea.
The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine,
And our ballast is old wine;
And your ballast is old wine.

Who art thou so fast adrift?
I am he they call Old Care.
Here on board we will thee lift.
No: I may not enter there.
Wherefore so? 'Tis Jove's decree
In a bowl Care may not be;
In a bowl Care may not be.

Fear ye not the waves that roll?
No: in charmed bowl we swim.
What the charm that floats the bowl?
Water may not pass the brim.
The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine,
And our ballast is old wine;
And your ballast is old wine.

A third song sung by Marionetta, "Why are thy looks so blank, Grey
Friar?" is as good in another way; nor should it be forgotten that the
said Marionetta, who has been thought to have some features of th