Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/157

 Popham [q. v.] on board the fleet before Flushing, an uncongenial situation which his friends had probably procured for him, in the hopes of its leading to a permanent appointment. Still an idle man, though always an industrious student, he spent a great part of 1810 and 1811 in North Wales, publishing meanwhile, in 1810, a new and more ambitious poetical effort, ‘The Genius of the Thames.’ While in Wales he made the acquaintance of his future wife, Jane Gryffydh, whose personality and family relations he seems to have shadowed forth in his fragmentary romance, ‘Sir Calidore.’ The heroines of his other fictions are commonly adumbrations of his early love. In 1812 he published another poem, ‘The Philosophy of Melancholy,’ and in the same year was introduced to Shelley by his publisher, Thomas Hookham, then proprietor of an extensive circulating library, who lent books to Shelley and sold them for Peacock. There is no trace for some time of any peculiar closeness of intimacy, but in the winter of 1813 Peacock accompanied Shelley and Harriet on their visit to Edinburgh, which he is said to have prompted. In 1814, in which year Peacock published a satirical ballad, ‘Sir Proteus,’ which appeared under the pseudonym ‘P. M. O'Donovan, Esq.,’ Shelley resorted to him during the agitation of mind which preceded his separation from Harriet, and after his return from the continent Peacock was an almost daily visitor. By the time that Shelley had taken up his residence at Bishopsgate, near Windsor (September 1815), Peacock had settled at Great Marlow, and spent great part of the winter in visiting Shelley. When Shelley settled at Great Marlow, after his return from the continent in the autumn of 1816, Peacock's intimacy with him continued very close; but, as Peacock still declined to follow any profession (‘he seems an idly inclined man,’ writes Charles Clairmont; ‘indeed, he is professedly so in the summer’), it is not surprising that Shelley's munificence had to be resorted to. Peacock for a time received from Shelley a pension, which he may have more than repaid if, as Miss Mitford affirms, he was put into requisition to keep off wholly unauthorised intruders upon Shelley's hospitable household. Peacock was consulted respecting the alterations in Shelley's ‘Laon and Cythna,’ and Peacock's enthusiasm for Greek poetry undoubtedly exercised a most beneficial influence upon the poet. Something of Shelley's influence upon Peacock may be traced in the latter's poem of ‘Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell,’ published in 1818; it is much superior to his other elaborate compositions, and Shelley wrote a eulogistic review of it just before his final departure for Italy. The friends' agreement for mutual correspondence produced Shelley's magnificent descriptive letters from Italy, which otherwise might never have been written.

Peacock had meanwhile discovered the true field for his literary gift in the satiric novel, interspersed with delightful lyrics, amorous, narrative, or convivial. ‘Headlong Hall’ was published in 1816, ‘Melincourt’ in 1817, ‘Nightmare Abbey’ in 1818. ‘Calidore’ was begun about this time, but never completed. These brilliant prose extravaganzas, overflowing with humour both of dialogue and situation, obtained a certain vogue. ‘Headlong Hall’ went through two editions; ‘Melincourt’ was translated into French. They cannot, however, have been productive of much profit.

Peacock told Shelley that ‘he did not find this brilliant summer,’ of 1818, ‘very favourable to intellectual exertion;’ but before it was quite over ‘rivers, castles, forests, abbeys, monks, maids, kings, and banditti were all dancing before me like a masked ball.’ He was, in fact, writing his romance of ‘Maid Marian,’ which he had completed with the exception of the last three chapters when, at the beginning of 1819, he was unexpectedly summoned to London to undergo a probation for an appointment in the India House. The East India Company had seen the necessity of reinforcing their staff with men of talent, and had summoned to their service James Mill and three others, among whom Peacock was included at the recommendation of Peter Auber, the historian of the company. His test papers earned the high commendation, ‘Nothing superfluous and nothing wanting.’ The amount of his entrance salary is not stated, but it justified him in marrying in the following year ‘his Carnarvonshire nymph,’ Jane Gryffydh, daughter of the vicar of Elwys Vach, whom he had thought in 1811 ‘the most innocent, the most amiable, the most beautiful girl in existence,’ but whom he had never seen since. He proposed by letter, and was accepted. ‘The affair,’ remarked Shelley, ‘is extremely like the dénouement of one of your own novels.’ His mother continued to live with him in Stamford Street, Blackfriars; a few years later he acquired a country residence at Lower Halliford, near Shepperton, Middlesex, constructed out of two old cottages, where he could gratify the love of the Thames, which was with him as strong a partiality as his zest for classical literature. In 1820 he contributed to Ollier's ‘Literary Pocket Book’ ‘The Four Ages of Poetry,’ which provoked Shelley's ‘Defence of Poetry.’