poet's hand in the tale itself when dealing with the adventures of
Mr. Chainmail, while he stays at the Welsh mountain inn, if the
story did not again and again break out into actual song, for it
includes half-a-dozen little poems.

When Peacock wrote his attack on Poetry, he had, only two years
before, produced a poem of his own--"Rhododaphne"--with a Greek
fancy of the true and the false love daintily worked out. It was
his chief work in verse, and gave much pleasure to a few, among
them his friend Shelley. But he felt that, as the world went, he
was not strong enough to help it by his singing, so he confined his
writing to the novels, in which he could speak his mind in his own
way, while doing his duty by his country in the East India House,
where he obtained a post in 1818. From 1836 to 1856, when he
retired on a pension, he was Examiner of India Correspondence.
Peacock died in 1866, aged eighty-one.

H. M.

NOTE that in this tale Mac Quedy is Mac Q. E. D., son of a
demonstration; Mr. Skionar, the transcendentalist, is named from
Ski(as) onar, the dream of a shadow; and Mr. Philpot,--who loves
rivers, is Phil(o)pot(amos).




CROTCHET CASTLE

by Thomas Love Peacock