by
a belief in the supreme wisdom of majorities in the nineteenth. But the
general principles--the cult of the Muses and the Graces for their own
sake, and the practice of satiric archery at the follies of the
day--appear in all the elect of this particular election, and they
certainly appear in Peacock. The results no doubt are distasteful, not
to say shocking, to some excellent people. It is impossible to avoid a
slight chuckle when one thinks of the horror with which some such people
must read Peacock's calm statement, repeated I think more than once,
that one of his most perfect heroes "found, as he had often found
before, that the more his mind was troubled, the more madeira he could
drink without disordering his head." I have no doubt that the United
Kingdom Alliance, if it knew this dreadful sentence (but probably the
study of the United Kingdom Alliance is not much in Peacock), would like
to burn all the copies of _Gryll Grange_ by the hands of Mr. Berry, and
make the reprinting of it a misdemeanour, if not a felony. But it is not
necessary to follow Sir Wilfrid Lawson, or to be a believer in
education, or in telegraphs, or in majorities, in order to feel the
repulsion which some people evidently feel for the manner of Peacock.
With one sense absent and another strongly present it is impossible for
any one to like him. The present sense is that which has been rather
grandiosely called the sense of moral responsibility in literature. The
absent sense is that sixth, seventh, or eighth sense, called a sense of
humour, and about this there is no arguing. Those who have it, instead
of being quietly and humbly thankful, are perhaps a little too apt to
celebrate their joy in the face of the afflicted ones who have it not;
the afflicted ones, who have it not, only follow a general law in
protesting that the sense of humour is a very worthless thing, if not a
complete humbug. But there are others of whom it would be absurd to say
that they have no sense of humour, and yet who cannot place themselves
at the Peacockian point of view, or at the point of view of those who
like Peacock. His humour is not their humour; his wit not their wit.
Like one of his own characters (who did not show his usual wisdom in the
remark), they "must take pleasure in the thing represented before they
can take pleasure in the representation." And in the things that Peacock
represents they do not take pleasure. That gentlemen should drink a
great