Headlong Hall
Thomas Love Peacock
CHAPTER V Page 2
He kept at true good humour's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide: He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear, but when he died. No sorrow round his tomb should dwell: More pleased his gay old ghost would be, For funeral song, and passing bell, To hear no sound but THREE TIMES THREE.
_Mr Panscope._ (_Suddenly emerging from a deep reverie._) I have heard, with the most profound attention, every thing which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considerable degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the _authority_ of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the controversy; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St Chrysostom, St Jerome, St Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Cibber, Bojardo, Gregory Nazianzenus, Locke, D'Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a-Kempis.
_Mr Escot._ I presume, sir, you are one of those who value an _authority_ more than a reason.
_Mr Panscope._ The _authority_, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.
_Squire Headlong._ Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.
_Mr Panscope._ I am not obliged, sir, as Dr Johnson observed on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.
_Mr Escot._ I fear, sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock.
_Mr Panscope._ 'Sdeath, sir, do you question my understanding?
_Mr Escot._ I only question, sir, where I expect a reply; which, from things that have no existence, I am not visionary enough to anticipate.
_Mr Panscope._ I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, all your opinions are extremely absurd.
_Mr Escot._ I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd.
_Mr Panscope._ Death and fury, sir----
_Mr Escot._ Say no more, sir. That apology is quite sufficient.
_Mr Panscope._ Apology, sir?
_Mr Panscope._ Lightning and devils! sir----
_Squire Headlong._ No civil war!--Temperance, in the name of Bacchus!--A glee! a glee! _Music has charms to bend the knotted oak._ Sir Patrick, you'll join?
_Sir Patrick O'Prism._ Troth, with all my heart; for, by my soul, I'm bothered completely.
_Squire Headlong._ Agreed, then; you, and I, and Chromatic. Bumpers! Come, strike up.
Squire Headlong, Mr Chromatic, and Sir Patrick O'Prism, each holding a bumper, immediately vociferated the following
GLEE
A heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it! So fill me a bumper, a bumper of claret! Let the bottle pass freely, don't shirk it nor spare it, For a heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!
No skylight! no twilight! while Bacchus rules o'er us: No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus: Let us moisten our clay, since 'tis thirsty and porous: No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus!
GRAND CHORUS
_By Squire Headlong, Mr Chromatic, Sir Patrick O'Prism, Mr Panscope, Mr Jenkison, Mr Gall, Mr Treacle, Mr Nightshade, Mr Mac Laurel, Mr Cranium, Mr Milestone, and the Reverend Dr Gaster._
A heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it! So fill me a bumper, a bumper of claret! Let the bottle pass freely, don't shirk it nor spare it, For a heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!
'OMADOS KAI DOUPOS OROREI'
The little butler now waddled in with a summons from the ladies to tea and coffee. The squire was unwilling to leave his Burgundy. Mr Escot strenuously urged the necessity of immediate adjournment, observing, that the longer they continued drinking the worse they should be. Mr Foster seconded the motion, declaring the transition from the bottle to female society to be an indisputable amelioration of the state of the sensitive man. Mr Jenkison allowed the squire and his two brother philosophers to settle the point between them, concluding he was just as well in one place as another. The question of adjournment was then put, and carried by a large majority.