The not sarcastic or not purely sarcastic scenes and personages of the novel have considerable merit, which would be more easily perceptible if they were not kept apart from each other by so much of the Fax-and-Forester business. Anthelia has excited interest and admiration as a reminiscence of Peacock’s first love, and a first draft of the more perfectly conceived Susannah Touchandgo in _Crotchet Castle_. They both exhibit—with some modern touches, chiefly in the latter of the pair—the sentimental but intelligent heroine of the last century. Mrs. Pinmoney and her daughter are slight, but good, and the former’s list of tastes is a capital passage, while Sir Telegraph Paxarett is an excellent personage, showing something of Thackeray’s partiality for making a young man of fashion not quite a coxcomb, such as the older novelists had been prone to draw him. Mr. Derrydown, who is a sort of first sketch of Mr. Chainmail in _Crotchet Castle_, is a very intelligent mediaevalist; and the ‘supers,’ Mr. O’Scarum and the rest, play their parts very well. These compliments, however, will hardly extend to the hero or the villains, though they apply with redoubled force to Sir Oran Haut-ton. The quadrumanous baronet, indeed, is such an excellent fellow, that one almost wishes he could have been discovered to be no Orang at all, but a baby lost early in the woods, could have recovered his speech, improved his good looks, and married Anthelia. For his patron, friend, rival, and almost namesake, Sylvan Forester, is a terrible prig and bore. It is difficult to believe that Peacock can have sympathised with him, and impossible not to think that he simply followed the old theory of the good young hero, as he did other old theories in the elopement and recovery. But Mr. Forester is not much worse than the villains. Grovelgrub indeed, though he is much worse than Portpipe (who is not detestable), and is the sequel to Gaster in Peacock’s curious warfare against the clergy, has a touch of wit now and then. But Lord Anophel Achthar (how with that title he came to be heir-apparent to a marquis Peacock does not explain) is an exceeding poor creature, not much more valorous than Bob Acres, without any of Bob’s redeeming fun, and as dull a dog as need or need not be.