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Excerpt from Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry, Shelley's Defence of Poetry, Browning's Essay on Shelley
Exactly a century has passed since The Four Ages of Poetry first appeared in print, and no student of Shelley in this country has hitherto thought it worth while to unite, in one small volume, Peacock's essay and its answer. Yet Shelley's Defence of Poetry was a direct and detailed reply to his friend's attack, and if we allow the Defence to rank with the great pronouncements on poetry of such critics as Sir Philip Sidney, Dryden, Matthew Arnold and Wordsworth, this neglect of its immediate source is remarkable.
Thomas Love Peacock, born in 1785, was close on seven years older than Shelley, whom he first met towards the end of 1812. Before Shelley's final departure from England in 1818 they had become intimate enough to read classical authors together and to join in a river expedition up the Thames. Peacock had also accepted an allowance from Shelley for some years, and had criticized his poems. A friendship which survives four such tests may fairly be called lasting, and it was not long disturbed even by Peacock's open disapproval of the desertion of Harriet Shelley.
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