Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/193

 veiled contemporary personalities. The next two, in the third decade, have at least the thicker veils of a historical perspective. In Crochet Castle (1831) the early symptoms recur, but in much lighter form; and in Peacock's last appearance, thirty years after, they have vanished, though the staging is current and local.

The characters in the first three and the sixth are a sort of stock company, who reappear in the different ''dramatis personæ''. Shelley has been identified with Foster of ''Headlong Hall, Scythrop of Nightmare Abbey, and Forester of Melincourt'', though this last might also be Lord Monboddo, as Peacock, like Spenser, had no objection to the economy of duplication. Southey plays the unenviable parts of Nightshade in Headlong Hall, Feathernest in Melincourt, and Sackbut in Crochet Castle. In the last story, however, he may be Mr. Rumblesack Shanstee, since Wordsworth is probably meant in Mr. Wilful Wontsee. The latter is also Mr. Paperstamp in Melincourt. Coleridge is another of triple incarnation, appearing as Mystic in Melincourt. Flosky in Nightmare Abbey, and Skionar in Crochet Castle. In this last volume Byron figures as Cypress, and is probably also the Honorable Mr. Listless of Nightmare Abbey. Either Gifford or Jeffrey may be intended in Gall, in Headlong Hall. In Melincourt, Canning is Mr. Anyside Antijack, and Malthus, Mr. Fax.

Of all these the most purely personal, in the sense that they are satires on the men as individuals and not as representatives of a philosophy or an organization, are the hits at Coleridge and Southey. The former is allowed to speak for himself: