Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/25

Borrow is air and exercise." Neither need we be very wide awake when we skim over his pages. He can be read with half-closed eyes, and we feel his stir and animation pleasantly from without, just as we feel the motion of a carriage when we are heavy with sleep. Peacock is too clever, and his cleverness has too much meaning and emphasis for this lazy delight. Yet, nevertheless, "The Misfortunes of Elphin" is an engaging book to re-read—if one knows it well already—in moments of drowsy satisfaction. Then will the convivial humor of "Seithenyn ap Seithyn" awake a sympathetic echo in our hearts, shorn for the nonce of all moral responsibility. Then will the roar of the ocean surging through the rotten dikes make the warm chimney corner doubly grateful. Then is the reader pleased to follow the fortunes of the uncrowned prince among a people who, having "no pamphleteering societies to demonstrate that reading and writing are better than meat and drink," lived without political science, and lost themselves contentedly "in the grossness of beef and ale." Peacock, moreover, in spite of his keenness and virility, is easily forgotten. We can "read