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60 PEACOCK
was expected to inquire " Whither ?
necessarily out of sympathy.
"
he was
To the shouters
he seemed irrational and irrelevant. They
called him " immoral " when they were
solemn, and " whimsical " when they were
merry ; and " whimsical " is the epithet with
which we are tempted to label him,
if labelled
he must be. Genius makes strange bedfellows;
and Peacock's intellectual candour finds itself
associated with the emotional capriciousness of
Sterne. Truly, he is always unexpected, and
as often as not superficially inconsequent.
To state the three parts of a is syllogism not
in his way and ; by implication he challenged
half the major premises in vogue. His scorn
of rough-and-ready standards, commonplaces,
and what used to be called " the opinion of all
sensible men " made him disrespectful to
common sense. It was common sense once
to believe that the sun went round the earth,
and it is still the mark of a sensible man to
ignore, on occasions, the law of contradictions.
To that common sense which is compounded
of mental sluggishness and a taste for
being in the majority Peacock's wit was a
needle. He was intellectual enough to enjoy
pricking bladders, and so finished a performer
that we never tire of watching him at
his play.
HeTwas, in fact, an artist with intellectual