large C--for the most prominent and well treated character is a
Churchman of the best academic Tory type.

It is not, however, in anything yet mentioned that Peacock's charm
consists, so much as in the intensely literary, but not in the least
pedantic, tone with which he suffuses his books, the piquant but not in
the least affected turn of the phrases that meet us throughout, the
peculiar quality of his irony (most quintessenced in _The Misfortunes of
Elphin_, which is different in scheme from the rest, but omnipresent),
and the crisp presentation of individual scene, incident, and character
of a kind. Story, in the general sense, there is none, or next to
none--the personages meet, go through a certain number of dinners
(Peacock is great at eating and drinking), diversions, and
difficulties, marry to a greater or less extent, but otherwise part. Yet
such things as the character of Scythrop in _Nightmare Abbey_ (a half
fantastic, half faithful portrait of Shelley, who was Peacock's intimate
friend), or of Dr. Folliott (a genial parson) in _Crotchet Castle_--as
the brilliant picture of the breaking of the dyke in _Elphin_, or the
comic one of the rotten-borough election in _Melincourt_--are among the
triumphs of the English novel. And they are present by dozens and
scores: while (though it is a little out of our way) there is no doubt
that the attraction of the books is greatly enhanced by the abundance of
inset verse--sometimes serious, more often light--of which Peacock,
again in an eccentric fashion, was hardly less a master than he was of
prose.

Here also it has seemed fit to dwell on a single writer, not perhaps
generally held to be of the absolutely first class, because these
"eccentrics" are of very great importance in the history of the English
novel. The danger of the kind--even more than of other literary