Review: “Nightmare Abbey” by Thomas Love Peacock

Thumbs up for Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock. Literature.

I don’t think that the second half quite lived up to its initial promise, but, if you are the sort of person who is willing to read something riddled with untranslated Latin and French, and even English words to send one scurrying to the OED, then it’s a pretty dang funny piece of Victorian social satire. I am that sort of person on occasion. You may be as well; I would not like to assume. If you are, then you should taste this delightful trifle. Also, it’s available for free on Project Gutenberg, so you can’t really go wrong.

When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head: having finished his education to the high satisfaction of the master and fellows of his college, who had, in testimony of their approbation, presented him with a silver fish-slice, on which his name figured at the head of a laudatory inscription in some semi-barbarous dialect of Anglo-Saxonised Latin.