Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock (October 18, 1785 - January 23, 1866) was an English satirist and author.

Friendship with Shelley

In 1812 Peacock published another elaborate poem, "The Philosophy of Melancholy", and in the same year made the acquaintance of Shelley: he says in his memoir of Shelley, that he "saw Shelley for the first time just before he went to Tanyrallt", whither Shelley proceeded from London in November 1812 (Hogg's Life of Shelley, vol. 2, pp. 174, 175.) The medium of introduction was no doubt Mr Thomas Hookham, the publisher of all Peacock's early writings, whose circulating library ministered to Shelley's intellectual hunger for many years. He had sent "The Genius of the Thames" to Shelley, and in the "Shelley Memorials", pp. 38-40, will be found a letter from the poet under date of August 18, 1812, extolling the poetical merits of the performance and with equal exaggeration censuring what he thought the author's misguided patriotism. Personal acquaintance almost necessarily ensued, and hence arose an intimacy not devoid of influence upon Shelley's fortunes both before and after his death.

Related Topics:
Shelley - Hogg

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For some years, the course of Peacock's life is only known from its connection with his illustrious friend. In the winter of 1813 he accompanies Shelley and Harriet to Edinburgh; throughout the winter of 1814-15 he is an almost daily visitor of Shelley and Mary at their London lodgings. In 1815 he shares their voyage to the source of the Thames. "He seems," writes Charles Clairmont, a member of the party, "an idly-inclined man; indeed, he is professedly so in the summer; he owns he cannot apply himself to study, and thinks it more beneficial to him as a human being entirely to devote himself to the beauties of the season while they last; he was only happy while out from morning till night". During the winter of 1815-16 Peacock was continually walking over from Marlow, where he had established himself some time in this year, to visit Shelley at Bishopgate. There he met Hogg, and "the winter was a mere Atticism. Our studies were exclusively Greek". The benefit which Shelley derived from such a course of study cannot be overrated. Its influence is seen more and more in everything he wrote to the end of his life. The morbid, the fantastic, the polemical, fade gradually out of his mind; and the writer who had begun as the imitator of the wildest extravagances of German romance would, had not his genius transcended the limits of any school, have ended as scarcely less of a Hellene than Keats and Landor.

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In 1815 Headlong Hall was written, and it was published in the following year. With this book Peacock definitively takes the place in literature which he was to maintain throughout his life, without substantial alteration or development beyond the mellowing which wider experience and increasing prosperity would naturally bring.

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In 1816 Shelley went abroad, and Peacock appears to have been entrusted with the commission of providing the Shelleys with a new residence. He fixed them near his own abode at Great Marlow. Melincourt was published at this time; and Nightmare Abbey and "Rhododaphne" written. Before these works were published in 1818, Shelley was again on the wing, and Peacock and he were never to meet again.

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