Peacock, in The Four Ages of Poetry, proffers scathing critique for Romantic poetry; in his view, it is the poetry of half-savage nincompoops, indebted to a previous age but unable to fully reclaim it, trapped in some vague mire of foolishness, nostalgia and misplaced intention. His is a stance of extraordinary pessimism, with value found primarily in the Homers and Chretien de Troyes' among literate contributors, and few else.
For all its pessimism, though, the essay seems to miss a piece of immense optimism that ought to stem from the argument even on an insular level. That is, if this four ages theory is, indeed, to warrant acceptance, and Peacock's relative contemporaries were, indeed, agents of cheap brass, then should not the wheel (for Peacock) be imminently turning? Should not the Iron Age return to usher in the vainglories of modern war? And, after this, did not Peacock have a promised sequel to the Golden Age on which to place his anticipation?
Perhaps, but if he has told history aright, what follows brass is a long, dark period out of which the age of iron resurfaces. Meaning? Enlightenment is lost, the age of reason swallowed up in renewed superstition etc. But this is not what Peacock wants to see; rather, the future is an ever increasing and augmenting age of reason, of calculation, of technological progress. Thus the argument that poetry is no longer essential to society--if it was, then according to his cyclical history, Romanticism was on the verge of another dark age.
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