Thomas Love Peacock — a remark

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“Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect in the infancy of civil society: but for the maturity of mind to make a serious business of the playthings of its childhood, is as absurd as for a full-grown man to rub his gums with coral, and cry to be charmed to sleep by the jingle of silver bells.”

Argues that poetry belongs to society's childhood and has no place in mature intellect · Essay, The Four Ages of Poetry (1820)

About Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock

18 October 1785–23 January 1866

Thomas Love Peacock was born on 18 October 1785 at Weymouth, Dorset, a coastal town whose mixture of fashionable society, maritime activity, and open sea offered an early imaginative setting for a writer who would remain drawn throughout his life to rivers, voyages, landscapes, and the contrast between civilized…

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