At one point in Thomas Peacock's satire Melincourt, the heroine Anthelia offers a spirited sketch of the character traits which she looks for in a prospective husband. 'I would require him to be free in all his thoughts, true in all his words, generous in all his actions - ardent in friendship, enthusiastic in love, disinterested in both ... the champion of the feeble, the firm opponent of the powerful oppressor - not to be enervated by luxury, nor corrupted by avarice, nor intimidated by tyranny, nor enthralled by superstition - more desirous to distribute wealth than to possess it, to disseminate liberty than to appropriate power, to cheer the heart of sorrow than to dazzle the eyes of folly.' Her robustly philistine interlocutor, the Hon. Mrs Pinmoney, is unimpressed: 'And do you really expect to find such a knight-errant? The age of chivalry is gone.' Peacock is partly mocking Edmund Burke's famous rhapsody over Marie Antoinette, as Marilyn Butler points out in her recent Peacock Displayed, but his heart is evidently with Anthelia. There is nonetheless some force to Mrs Pinmoney's reply.

LRB 17 September 1981 | PDF Download