Note 297 — Chapter VIII · “DON JUAN”
Reading edition
It is possible that Byron, in his description of this assemblage, was influenced to some extent by T. L. Peacock, the friend of Shelley, who had published Headlong Hall (1816) and Nightmare Abbey (1818). In these books Peacock had created a sort of prose Comedy of Humors by forming groups of curious eccentrics, each one obsessed by a single passion or hobby, and by giving each figure a name suggestive of his peculiar folly.