SOURCE: "Twice Around the Grounds," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XLII, No. 10, June 8, 1995, pp. 28-30, 32.

[An American-born English educator and critic, Barton has written extensively on English drama. In the review below, she discusses language and theme in Arcadia, particularly the interaction between the past and present.]

"Allow me," said Mr. Gall. "I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call unexpectedness."

"Pray, sir," said Mr. Milestone, "by what name do you distinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?"

Mr. Gall bit his lips, and inwardly vowed to revenge himself on Milestone, by cutting up his next publication.

—Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall (1815)

In Headlong Hall, the earliest of Peacock's satirical novels, a motley collection of guests assembles at Squire Headlong's...