PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE (1785-1866), English nov elist and poet, was born at Weymouth on Oct. 18, 1785, the only son of a London glass merchant, who died soon after the child's birth. He was educated at a private school at Englefield Green, and after a brief experience of business determined to devote him self to literature. His first books were poetical, The Monks of St. Mark (1804), Palmyra (18o6), The Genius of the Thames (I8I0), The Philosophy of Melancholy (184 2)—works of no great merit. He also made several dramatic attempts, which were never acted. He served for a short time as secretary to Sir Home Popham at Flushing, and paid several visits to Wales. In 1812 he became acquainted with Shelley. In 1815 he showed his real bent by writing his novel Headlong Hall. It was published in 1816, and Melincourt followed in the ensuing year. During 1817 he lived at Great Marlow, enjoying the almost daily society of Shelley, and writing Nightmare Abbey and Rhododaphne, by far the best of his long poems. In 1819 he was appointed assistant examiner at the India House. About this time also he proposed marriage, by letter, to Jane Griffith, whom he had not seen for eight years. They had four children, only one of whom, a son, survived his father; one daughter was the first wife of George Meredith. His novel Maid Marian appeared in 1822, The Misfortunes of Elphin in 1829, and Crotchet Castle in 1831; and he would probably have written more but for the death in 1833 of his mother. He also contributed to the Westminster Review and the Examiner. His services to the East India Company, outside the usual official routine, were considerable. He was especially concerned with steam navigation to India, and after representing the company be fore parliamentary committees on the subject, superintended the construction of iron steamers which proved successful. He also drew up the instructions for the Euphrates expedition of 1835. In 1836 he succeeded James Mill as chief examiner, and in 1856 he retired upon a pension. During his later years he contributed several papers to Fraser's Magazine, including reminiscences of Shelley, whose executor he was. He also wrote in the same maga zine his last novel, Gryll Grange (186o). He died on Jan. 23, 1866, at Lower Halliford, near Chertsey, where so far as his London occupations would allow him, he had resided for more than forty years.
Novels.—Peacock's position in English literature is unique. There was nothing like his type of novel before his time ; though there might have been if it had occurred to Swift to invent a story as a vehicle for the dialogue of his Polite Conversation. Peacock speaks as well in his own person as through his puppets; and his pithy wit and sense, combined with remarkable grace and accuracy of natural description, atone for the primitive simplicity of plot and character. Of his seven fictions, Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle are perhaps on the whole the best, the former displaying the most vis comica of situation, the latter the fullest maturity of intellectual power, and the most skilful grouping of the motley crowd of "perfectibilians, deteriorationists, statu quo-ites, phrenologists, transcendentalists, political economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts, morbid visionaries, romantic enthusiasts, lovers of music, lovers of the picturesque and lovers of good dinners," who constitute the dramatis per sonae of the Peacockian novel. Maid Marian and The Misfor tunes of Elphin are hardly less entertaining. Both contain descrip tive passages of extraordinary beauty. Melincourt is a compara tive failure, the excellent idea of an orang-outang mimicking humanity being insufficient as the sole groundwork of a novel. Headlong Hall and Gryll Grange complete the list of his novels. The latter contains the most beautiful of his poems, "Years Ago," the reminiscence of an early attachment. The ballads and songs interspersed through his tales have much charm ; his longer poems have less interest.
Peacock's works were collected, though not completely, and published in three volumes in 1875, with an excellent memoir by his grand daughter Mrs. Clarke, and a critical essay by Lord Houghton. His prose works were collected by Richard Garnett in ten volumes (1891). The Halliford edition (H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones, 1924— ) will contain the whole of Peacock's works when completed. See A. B. Joung, The Life and Novels of Thomas Love Peacock (1904). For an interesting personal notice, see A Poet's Sketch Book, by R. W.
Buchanan (1884). (R. G.; X.)