[ 400 ] [APRIL, 



CROTCHET CASTLE. 



WE noticed in detail some months since the numerous comic pro- 

 ductions of the author of the work now lying before us : we discussed 

 his powers of sarcasm and of irony, the range of his information, the 

 sprightliness of his fancy, and, above all, his singular we might almost 

 add his unequalled talents for ridicule and caricature. Our present 

 task is, therefore, comparatively speaking, a barren one. Crotchet 

 Castle is indeed little more than a various reading of Headlong Hall 

 and Nightmare Abbey. The same characters (or nearly so) appear on 

 the stage ; the same set of quaint opinions are burlesqued ; the same 

 truths developed ; the same sophistries exposed ; in a word, the same 

 predominant faculty pervades it throughout, from the alpha to the 

 omega of the book. Mr. Peacock, though he has much of Rabelais, and 

 something of Swift, in his manner, has (unlike these great writers) no 

 very extensive power of invention. He travels always in the same 

 track, halts always at the same goal. His mental vision is acute, but 

 limited in its range ; looking abroad over society, not from a height but 

 from a level. His knowledge of life, too, is chiefly drawn from books ; 

 the scholar predominates over the man of the world. Hence, even in 

 his most spirited illustrations, an air of languor, stiffness, and pedantry, 

 is perceptible. His characters do not live in his descriptions : they are 

 not vivid realities, but cold abstractions ; not flesh and blood, but opi- 

 nions personified. Were we to entitle his novels dramatic essays, we 

 should, we conceive, be giving them their most appropriate designation. 

 Thus designated, they may lay claim to decided originality, and, as a 

 lively satirical digest of the intellectual follies of the day, will be read 

 and admired long after the majority of our present popular publications 

 have been sent to line trunks, portmanteaus, and band-boxes. 



The plot of Crotchet Castle, like all Mr. Peacock's plots, possesses 

 the rare merit of conciseness and simplicity, and may be told in a 

 few words. 'Squire Crotchet, a most amusing Scotch pedant, and 

 so far an anomaly your genuine Pictish pedant being the great- 

 est ass, and the most interminable bore in creation having made a 

 fortune in the way peculiar to his countrymen, resolves, in his old 

 age, to enjoy the otium cum dignitate of rural life, so retires to a 

 valley on the banks of the Thames, where he purchases a castle, 

 and makes all possible haste to people it with guests of his own 

 way of thinking that is, with a set of men, each of whom is notorious 

 in metropolitan literary society for some peculiar absurdity. The story 

 opens with the arrival at Crotchet Castle of a squad of these learned 

 ignoramusses, among whom are Mr. McQuedy, the political economist, 

 a gentleman whose notions of civilized life are drawn from his recollec- 

 tions of the Modern Athens as Edinburgh has the incredible assurance 

 to style herself: the Rev. Dr. Folliott (a divine greatly to our taste), 

 who is fond of reading and good living, and is remarkable for his 

 shrewdness and causticity, and the strong sterling sense that pervades 

 his remarks ; Lord Bossnowl, a lord and nothing more ; Mr. Firedamp, 

 a philosopher, who thinks that water is the evil principle, who sees ague 

 in a duck-pond, malaria in the river Thames, and the semen of depo- 

 pulation in the British Channel who shrinks from a gutter as from a 

 fever, and from a shower of rain as from a pestilence ; Mr. Eavesdrop, 

 a smart, shewy, prattling idler, who hits off his personal friends in 



