conventional as
the worst of Goldoni. Nevertheless they are readable; so we need not
stay to quarrel with the enthusiastic editor who claims that they are
"replete with fun, written in a flexible style, and bearing the imprint
of a scholarly discrimination."

English prose and humour are certainly the richer for one or two
speeches in this little book, but the service it performs, or can be
made to perform, is greater than that of rescuing a few fragments of
humorous prose or even of filling a gap on our shelves. It sends us back
to perhaps the least known of the great English, writers. The "Life" of
Peacock has yet to be written: an ineffectual memoir by Sir Henry Cole,
some personal recollections by the author's granddaughter Mrs. Clarke, a
critical essay from the versatile but vapid pen of Lord Houghton, the
gossip of Robert Buchanan, and editorial notices by Prof. Saintsbury and
the late Richard Garnett, together afford nothing more than a
perfunctory appreciation. Two writers, indeed, have attempted a more
elaborate estimate: James Spedding, an able prig,[5] reviewed Peacock's
novels in the _Edinburgh_ of January 1839, and more than half a century
later Mr. Herbert Paul contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_ a paper
on the same subject. Unluckily, the judgment of both is vitiated by a
common defect. Both are good journalists, but both are better party men;
consequently, neither can appreciate the attitude of one to whom
collective wisdom was folly, who judged every question in politics,
philosophy, literature, and art on its merits, and whose scorn for those
who judged otherwise was expressed without any of those obliging
circumlocutions that are prized so highly in political life. With the
possible exception of Prof. Saintsbury, not one of Peacock's
interpreters has understood his position or shared his point of view;
did not Dr. Arthur Button Young, the editor of these plays, himself
affirm that

"his stories deal with tangible realities, and not with obscure or
absurd situations, as is the case with those of many novelists....
For this reason alone they deserve to be widely known, as also
their author, for having helped to raise the tone of novel-writing
at a critical juncture in its development, by introducing into his
tales instruction and information"?

It is only fair to add that this bit of criticism occurs in his
"Inaugural Dissertation presented to the Philosop