HAMMOND COLLECTION
Melincourt (1817)
Thomas Love Peacock
In a sea of romantics, the nineteenth-century writer Thomas Love Peacock stands apart. As one critic put it, "he was a satirist in all his fibers: in observation, thought and utterance." Peacock, it has been said, "shot down folly as it flew."
Peacock's reputation rests securely on seven satirical novels of opinion or talk. The plots generally involve a meeting of eccentric minds at a country house party. In the words of one critic, "they are unlike any other novels under the moon."
In Melincourt, the beautiful and brainy heroine Anthelia, modeled on Mary Godwin, is kidnapped by a nobleman and rescued by Sir Oran Haut-ton. He happens to be a mute ape running for the borough of Onevote. Along the way, Peacock, who makes an appearance as Mr. Sarcastic, sends up the scientific analysis of the Utilitarians and Malthus, as well as the humanism of Shelley. Saintsbury describes the comic rotten borough election as one of the "triumphs of the English novel."
By nature and training, Peacock was a child of the classical eighteenth century. When he was ten years old he wrote his mother a letter in Latin asking for money. A friend of the Lake poets, he went for long walks in the countryside with them, collecting ideas. Peacock was later remembered "as that young and brilliant personage we used to know when you would repeat poetry, drink champagne, and seem not to have a single link to heavy earth."
Of the legendary friendship between Peacock and Shelley, it has been noted that [Shelley's] poetical genius nearly withered the poet in Peacock and ripened the satirist. After his friend's death, Peacock, who served as an executor, wrote his Memoirs of the poet.
J.B. Priestley wrote of Peacock that "his mind lived in the kingdom of philosophic theories and systems and ideals, and if Shelley was its bard, Peacock was its Court Jester. It is this position, as the comedian of the life of ideas, that makes Peacock a unique figure in English literature."
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