Coleridge’s pervasive presence now filtered, like some wondrous philosophic protoplasm, into the third of Peacock’s satirical novels, Nightmare Abbey (1818). He bubbles into life as Mr Ferdinando Flosky, the interminable and inimitable transcendental talker. It was certainly fame to be given such a position among contemporary figures and fashionables. Mr Flosky holds centre stage with the misanthropic
