Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  Mr Escot. I contend that the original unsophisticated man was by no means constructive. He lived in the open air, under a tree.

  The Reverend Doctor Gaster. The tree of life. Unquestionably. Till he had tasted the forbidden fruit.

  Mr Jenkison. At which period, probably, the organ of constructiveness was added to his anatomy, as a punishment for his transgression.

  Mr Escot. There could not have been a more severe one, since the propensity which has led him to building cities has proved the greatest curse of his existence.

  Squire Headlong. (taking the skull.) Memento mori. Come, a bumper of Burgundy.

  Mr Nightshade. A very classical application, Squire Headlong. The Romans were in the practice of adhibiting skulls at their banquets, and sometimes little skeletons of silver, as a silent admonition to the guests to enjoy life while it lasted.

  The Reverend Doctor Gaster. Sound doctrine, Mr Nightshade.

  Mr Escot. I question its soundness. The use of vinous spirit has a tremendous influence in the deterioration of the human race.

  Mr Foster. I fear, indeed, it operates as a considerable check to the progress of the species towards moral and intellectual perfection. Yet many great men have been of opinion that it exalts the imagination, fires the genius, accelerates the flow of ideas, and imparts to dispositions naturally cold and deliberative that enthusiastic sublimation which is the source of greatness and energy.

  Mr Nightshade. Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus.

  Mr Jenkison. I conceive the use of wine to be always pernicious in excess, but often useful in moderation: it certainly kills some, but it saves the lives of others: I find that an occasional glass, taken with judgment and caution, has a very salutary effect in maintaining that equilibrium of the system, which it is always my aim to preserve; and this calm and temperate use of wine was, no doubt, what Homer meant to inculcate, when he said: Παρ δε δεπας οινοιο, πιειν ‘οτε ϑυμος ανωγοι.

  Squire Headlong. Good. Pass the bottle. (Un morne silence). Sir Christopher does not seem to have raised our spirits. Chromatic, favour us with a specimen of your vocal powers. Something in point.

  Mr Chromatic, without further preface, immediately struck up the following

  SONG

  In his last binn Sir Peter lies,

  Who knew not what it was to frown:

  Death took him mellow, by surprise,

  And in his cellar stopped him down.

  Through all our land we could not boast

  A knight more gay, more prompt than he,

  To rise and fill a bumper toast,

  And pass it round with THREE TIMES THREE.

  None better knew the feast to sway,

  Or keep Mirth’s boat in better trim;

  For Nature had but little clay

  Like that of which she moulded him.

  The meanest guest that graced his board

  Was there the freest of the free,

  His bumper toast when Peter poured,

  And passed it round with THREE TIMES THREE.

  He kept at true good humour’s mark

  The social flow of pleasure’s tide:

  He never made a brow look dark,

  Nor caused a tear, but when he died.

  No sorrow round his tomb should dwell:

  More pleased his gay old ghost would be,

  For funeral song, and passing bell,

  To hear no sound but THREE TIMES THREE.

  (Hammering of knuckles and glasses and shouts of bravo!)

  Mr Panscope. (Suddenly emerging from a deep reverie.) I have heard, with the most profound attention, every thing which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considerable degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the authority of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the controversy; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St Chrysostom, St Jerome, St Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Cibber, Bojardo, Gregory Nazianzenus, Locke, D’Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a-Kempis.

  Mr Escot. I presume, sir, you are one of those who value an authority more than a reason.

  Mr Panscope. The authority, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.

  Squire Headlong. Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.

  Mr Escot. It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible.

  Mr Panscope. I am not obliged, sir, as Dr Johnson observed on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.

  Mr Escot. I fear, sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock.

  Mr Panscope. ‘Sdeath, sir, do you question my understanding?

  Mr Escot. I only question, sir, where I expect a reply; which, from things that have no existence, I am not visionary enough to anticipate.

  Mr Panscope. I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd.

  Mr Escot. I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd.

  Mr Panscope. Death and fury, sir ——

  Mr Escot. Say no more, sir. That apology is quite sufficient.

  Mr Panscope. Apology, sir?

  Mr Escot. Even so, sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the worst of the argument.

  Mr Panscope. Lightning and devils! sir ——

  Squire Headlong. No civil war! — Temperance, in the name of Bacchus! — A glee! a glee! Music has charms to bend the knotted oak. Sir Patrick, you’ll join?

  Sir Patrick O’Prism. Troth, with all my heart; for, by my soul, I’m bothered completely.

  Squire Headlong. Agreed, then; you, and I, and Chromatic. Bumpers! Come, strike up.

  Squire Headlong, Mr Chromatic, and Sir Patrick O’Prism, each holding a bumper, immediately vociferated the following

  GLEE

  A heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!

  So fill me a bumper, a bumper of claret!

  Let the bottle pass freely, don’t shirk it nor spare it,

  For a heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!

  No skylight! no twilight! while Bacchus rules o’er us:

  No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus:

  Let us moisten our clay, since ’tis thirsty and porous:

  No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus!

  GRAND CHORUS

  By Squire Headlong, Mr Chromatic, Sir Patrick O’Prism, Mr Panscope, Mr Jenkison, Mr Gall, Mr Treacle, Mr Nightshade, Mr Mac Laurel, Mr Cranium, Mr Milestone, and the Reverend Dr Gaster.

  A heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!

  So fill me a bumper, a bumper of claret!

  Let the bottle pass freely, don’t shirk it nor spare it,

  For a heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!

  ‘ΟΜΑΔΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΔΟ�
�ΠΟΣ ΟΡΩΡΕΙ’

  The little butler now waddled in with a summons from the ladies to tea and coffee. The squire was unwilling to leave his Burgundy. Mr Escot strenuously urged the necessity of immediate adjournment, observing, that the longer they continued drinking the worse they should be. Mr Foster seconded the motion, declaring the transition from the bottle to female society to be an indisputable amelioration of the state of the sensitive man. Mr Jenkison allowed the squire and his two brother philosophers to settle the point between them, concluding that he was just as well in one place as another. The question of adjournment was then put, and carried by a large majority.

  Chapter VI

  The Evening

  MR PANSCOPE, HIGHLY irritated by the cool contempt with which Mr Escot had treated him, sate sipping his coffee and meditating revenge. He was not long in discovering the passion of his antagonist for the beautiful Cephalis, for whom he had himself a species of predilection; and it was also obvious to him, that there was some lurking anger in the mind of her father, unfavourable to the hopes of his rival. The stimulus of revenge, superadded to that of preconceived inclination, determined him, after due deliberation, to cut out Mr Escot in the young lady’s favour. The practicability of this design he did not trouble himself to investigate; for the havoc he had made in the hearts of some silly girls, who were extremely vulnerable to flattery, and who, not understanding a word he said, considered him a prodigious clever man, had impressed him with an unhesitating idea of his own irresistibility. He had not only the requisites already specified for fascinating female vanity, he could likewise fiddle with tolerable dexterity, though by no means so quick as Mr Chromatic (for our readers are of course aware that rapidity of execution, not delicacy of expression, constitutes the scientific perfection of modern music), and could warble a fashionable love-ditty with considerable affectation of feeling: besides this, he was always extremely well dressed, and was heir-apparent to an estate of ten thousand a-year. The influence which the latter consideration might have on the minds of the majority of his female acquaintance, whose morals had been formed by the novels of such writers as Miss Philomela Poppyseed, did not once enter into his calculation of his own personal attractions. Relying, therefore, on past success, he determined to appeal to his fortune, and already, in imagination, considered himself sole lord and master of the affections of the beautiful Cephalis.

  Mr Escot and Mr Foster were the only two of the party who had entered the library (to which the ladies had retired, and which was interior to the music-room) in a state of perfect sobriety. Mr Escot had placed himself next to the beautiful Cephalis: Mr Cranium had laid aside much of the terror of his frown; the short craniological conversation, which had passed between him and Mr Escot, had softened his heart in his favour; and the copious libations of Burgundy in which he had indulged had smoothed his brow into unusual serenity.

  Mr Foster placed himself near the lovely Caprioletta, whose artless and innocent conversation had already made an impression on his susceptible spirit.

  The Reverend Doctor Gaster seated himself in the corner of a sofa near Miss Philomela Poppyseed. Miss Philomela detailed to him the plan of a very moral and aristocratical novel she was preparing for the press, and continued holding forth, with her eyes half shut, till a long-drawn nasal tone from the reverend divine compelled her suddenly to open them in all the indignation of surprise. The cessation of the hum of her voice awakened the reverend gentleman, who, lifting up first one eyelid, then the other, articulated, or rather murmured, “Admirably planned, indeed!”

  “I have not quite finished, sir,” said Miss Philomela, bridling. “Will you have the goodness to inform me where I left off?”

  The doctor hummed a while, and at length answered: “I think you had just laid it down as a position, that a thousand a-year is an indispensable ingredient in the passion of love, and that no man, who is not so far gifted by nature, can reasonably presume to feel that passion himself, or be correctly the object of it with a well-educated female.”

  “That, sir,” said Miss Philomela, highly incensed, “is the fundamental principle which I lay down in the first chapter, and which the whole four volumes, of which I detailed to you the outline, are intended to set in a strong practical light.”

  “Bless me!” said the doctor, “what a nap I must have had!”

  Miss Philomela flung away to the side of her dear friends Gall and Treacle, under whose fostering patronage she had been puffed into an extensive reputation, much to the advantage of the young ladies of the age, whom she taught to consider themselves as a sort of commodity, to be put up at public auction, and knocked down to the highest bidder. Mr Nightshade and Mr Mac Laurel joined the trio; and it was secretly resolved, that Miss Philomela should furnish them with a portion of her manuscripts, and that Messieurs Gall & Co. should devote the following morning to cutting and drying a critique on a work calculated to prove so extensively beneficial, that Mr Gall protested he really envied the writer.

  While this amiable and enlightened quintetto were busily employed in flattering one another, Mr Cranium retired to complete the preparations he had begun in the morning for a lecture, with which he intended, on some future evening, to favour the company: Sir Patrick O’Prism walked out into the grounds to study the effect of moonlight on the snow-clad mountains: Mr Foster and Mr Escot continued to make love, and Mr Panscope to digest his plan of attack on the heart of Miss Cephalis: Mr Jenkison sate by the fire, reading Much Ado about Nothing: the Reverend Doctor Gaster was still enjoying the benefit of Miss Philomela’s opiate, and serenading the company from his solitary corner: Mr Chromatic was reading music, and occasionally humming a note: and Mr Milestone had produced his portfolio for the edification and amusement of Miss Tenorina, Miss Graziosa, and Squire Headlong, to whom he was pointing out the various beauties of his plan for Lord Littlebrain’s park.

  Mr Milestone. This, you perceive, is the natural state of one part of the grounds. Here is a wood, never yet touched by the finger of taste; thick, intricate, and gloomy. Here is a little stream, dashing from stone to stone, and overshadowed with these untrimmed boughs.

  Miss Tenorina. The sweet romantic spot! How beautifully the birds must sing there on a summer evening!

  Miss Graziosa. Dear sister! how can you endure the horrid thicket?

  Mr Milestone. You are right, Miss Graziosa: your taste is correct — perfectly en règle. Now, here is the same place corrected — trimmed — polished — decorated — adorned. Here sweeps a plantation, in that beautiful regular curve: there winds a gravel walk: here are parts of the old wood, left in these majestic circular clumps, disposed at equal distances with wonderful symmetry: there are some single shrubs scattered in elegant profusion: here a Portugal laurel, there a juniper; here a laurustinus, there a spruce fir; here a larch, there a lilac; here a rhododendron, there an arbutus. The stream, you see, is become a canal: the banks are perfectly smooth and green, sloping to the water’s edge: and there is Lord Littlebrain, rowing in an elegant boat.

  Squire Headlong. Magical, faith!

  Mr Milestone. Here is another part of the grounds in its natural state. Here is a large rock, with the mountain-ash rooted in its fissures, overgrown, as you see, with ivy and moss; and from this part of it bursts a little fountain, that runs bubbling down its rugged sides.

  Miss Tenorina. O how beautiful! How I should love the melody of that miniature cascade!

  Mr Milestone. Beautiful, Miss Tenorina! Hideous. Base, common, and popular. Such a thing as you may see anywhere, in wild and mountainous districts. Now, observe the metamorphosis. Here is the same rock, cut into the shape of a giant. In one hand he holds a horn, through which that little fountain is thrown to a prodigious elevation. In the other is a ponderous stone, so exactly balanced as to be apparently ready to fall on the head of any person who may happen to be beneath: and there is Lord Littlebrain walking under it.

  Squire Headlong. Miraculous, by Mahomet!

  Mr Milestone. T
his is the summit of a hill, covered, as you perceive, with wood, and with those mossy stones scattered at random under the trees.

  Miss Tenorina. What a delightful spot to read in, on a summer’s day! The air must be so pure, and the wind must sound so divinely in the tops of those old pines!

  Mr Milestone. Bad taste, Miss Tenorina. Bad taste, I assure you. Here is the spot improved. The trees are cut down: the stones are cleared away: this is an octagonal pavilion, exactly on the centre of the summit: and there you see Lord Littlebrain, on the top of the pavilion, enjoying the prospect with a telescope.

  Squire Headlong. Glorious, egad!

  Mr Milestone. Here is a rugged mountainous road, leading through impervious shades: the ass and the four goats characterise a wild uncultured scene. Here, as you perceive, it is totally changed into a beautiful gravel-road, gracefully curving through a belt of limes: and there is Lord Littlebrain driving four-in-hand.

  Squire Headlong. Egregious, by Jupiter!

  Mr Milestone. Here is Littlebrain Castle, a Gothic, moss-grown structure, half bosomed in trees. Near the casement of that turret is an owl peeping from the ivy.

  Squire Headlong. And devilish wise he looks.

  Mr Milestone. Here is the new house, without a tree near it, standing in the midst of an undulating lawn: a white, polished, angular building, reflected to a nicety in this waveless lake: and there you see Lord Littlebrain looking out of the window.

  Squire Headlong. And devilish wise he looks too. You shall cut me a giant before you go.

  Mr Milestone. Good. I’ll order down my little corps of pioneers.

  During this conversation, a hot dispute had arisen between Messieurs Gall and Nightshade; the latter pertinaciously insisting on having his new poem reviewed by Treacle, who he knew would extol it most loftily, and not by Gall, whose sarcastic commendation he held in superlative horror. The remonstrances of Squire Headlong silenced the disputants, but did not mollify the inflexible Gall, nor appease the irritated Nightshade, who secretly resolved that, on his return to London, he would beat his drum in Grub Street, form a mastigophoric corps of his own, and hoist the standard of determined opposition against this critical Napoleon.