Simon, a Parisian reformer in the latter part of the eighteenth
century, who endeavoured to establish a social republic based on
capacity and labour. Pere Enfantin was his disciple. The "mystic
mother" was a female Messiah, expected to become the parent of a
new Saviour. "Sir Robert once said a good thing" (p. 93), refers
possibly to Sir Robert Peel, not famous for epigram, whose one good
thing is said to have been bestowed upon a friend before Croker's
portrait in the Academy. "Wonderful likeness," said the friend,
"it gives the very quiver of the mouth." "Yes," said Sir Robert,
"and the arrow coming out of it." Or it may mean Sir Robert
Inglis, Peel's successor at Oxford, more noted for his genial
kindness and for the perpetual bouquet in his buttonhole at a date
when such ornaments were not worn, than for capacity to conceive
and say good things. In some mischievous lines describing the
Oxford election where Inglis supplanted Peel, Macaulay wrote
"And then said all the Doctors sitting in the Divinity School,
Not this man, but Sir Robert'--now Sir Robert was a fool."
But in the fifth and later editions Kinglake altered it to "Sir
John.
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