Of Peacock’s seven stories, the first three, published during the second decade of the century, are full of thinly veiled contemporary personalities. The next two, in the third decade, have at least the thicker veils of a historical perspective. In _Crochet Castle_ (1831) the early symptoms recur, but in much lighter form; and in Peacock’s last appearance, thirty years after, they have vanished, though the staging is current and local. The characters in the first three and the sixth are a sort of stock company, who reappear in the different _dramatis personæ_. Shelley has been identified with Foster of _Headlong Hall_, Scythrop of _Nightmare Abbey_, and Forester of _Melincourt_, though this last might also be Lord Monboddo, as Peacock, like Spenser, had no objection to the economy of duplication. Southey plays the unenviable parts of Nightshade in _Headlong Hall_, Feathernest in _Melincourt_, and Sackbut in _Crochet Castle_. In the last story, however, he may be Mr. Rumblesack Shanstee, since Wordsworth is probably meant in Mr. Wilful Wontsee. The latter is also Mr. Paperstamp in _Melincourt_. Coleridge is another of triple incarnation, appearing as Mystic in _Melincourt_. Flosky in _Nightmare Abbey_, and Skionar in _Crochet Castle_. In this last volume Byron figures as Cypress, and is probably also the Honorable Mr. Listless of _Nightmare Abbey_. Either Gifford or Jeffrey may be intended in Gall, in _Headlong Hall_. In _Melincourt_, Canning is Mr. Anyside Antijack, and Malthus, Mr. Fax. Of all these the most purely personal, in the sense that they are satires on the men as individuals and not as representatives of a philosophy or an organization, are the hits at Coleridge and Southey.[251] The former is allowed to speak for himself:[252] “‘I divide my day,’ said Mr. Mystic, ‘_on a new principle_: I am always poetical at breakfast, moral at luncheon, metaphysical at dinner, and political at tea. Now you shall know my opinion of the hopes of the world. * * * “Who art thou?--MYSTERY!--I hail thee! Who art thou?--JARGON!--I love thee! Who art thou?--SUPERSTITION!--I worship thee! Hail, transcendental TRIAD!’” Later while his companions are concerned practically over the catastrophe of an explosion of gas in his room, he bewails it as--[253] “* * * an infallible omen of evil--a type and symbol of an approaching period of public light--when the smoke of metaphysical mystery, and the vapours of ancient superstition, which he had done all that in him lay to consolidate in the spirit of man, would explode at the touch of analytical reason, leaving nothing but the plain common sense matter-of-fact of moral and political truth--a day that he earnestly hoped he might never live to see.” Mr. Floskey is thus described:[254]