Part 9 (1/2)

Henry, the third son of the Rev Charles Kingsley, was born in Northamptonshi+re on the 2nd of January, 1830, his brother Charles being then eleven years old In 1836 his father became rector of St

Luke's Church, Chelsea--the church of which such effective use is made in _The Hillyars and the Burtons_--and his boyhood was passed in that fae School and Worcester College, Oxford, where he becae boat; also bow of a fa before it in its ti the Diamond Sculls at Henley From 1853 to 1858 his life was passed in Australia, whence after soated experiences he returned to Chelsea in 1858, bringing back nothing but good ”copy,” which he worked into _Geoffry Hamlyn_, his first romance

_Ravenshoe_ ritten in 1861; _Austin Elliot_ in 1863; _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ in 1865; _Silcote of Silcotes_ in 1867; _Mademoiselle Mathilde_ (admired by few, but a favorite of rave-on-Thah Daily Review_, and made a mess of it; in 1870 he represented that journal as field-correspondent in the Franco-Prussian War, was present at Sedan, and clailishman to enter Metz In 1872 he returned to London and wrote novels in which his powers appeared to deteriorate steadily

He removed to Cuckfield, in Sussex, and there died in May, 1876

Hardly a rave, or spoke, in print, a word in his praise

And yet, by all accounts, he was a wholly amiable ne'er-do-well--a wonderful flyfisher, an extres and children (surely, if we except a chapter of Victor Hugo's, the children in _Ravenshoe_ are the htful in fiction), and a joyous cosley, ”Uncle Henry's settling in Eversley was a great event At tie of slang--Burschen, Bargee, Parisian, Irish, cockney, and English provincialiset our uncle on his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, ht forth inis and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys He was the only man, I believe, who ever knew by heart the fahtiest and most humorous of tales--unpublished, of course, but handed down frohtful was an intervieeen his late Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showe the Fourth, you shall not have my Rumptifoozle!' What said animal was, or the authenticity of the story, he never would divulge”

I think it is to the conversational quality of their style--its ridiculous and good-hureat deal of their chare fro down banisters Of the three tales already republished in this pleasant edition, _Ravenshoe_ has always seemed to me the best in every respect; and in spite of its feeble plot and its ie Hillyar, and the painfully inane Gerty--I should rank _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ above the ined and more neatly constructed _Geoffry Hamlyn_

But this is an opinion on which I lay no stress

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _The Recollections of Geoffry Hasley New Edition, with a Memoir by Clement Shorter London: Ward, Lock & Bowden

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE

January 10, 1891 His Life

Alexander Williaentlelake, of Wilton House, Taunton--and received a country gentlee

Froe he went to Lincoln's Inn, and in 1837 was called to the Chancery Bar, where he practised with fair but not e startled the town, quietly resuet the achievement

Ten years later he accolan, to the Crimea

He retired from the Bar in 1856, and entered Parliawater Re-elected in 1868, he was unseated on petition in 1869, and thenceforward gave himself up to the work of his life He had consented, after Lord Raglan's death, to write a history of the Invasion of the Crimea The two first volumes appeared in 1863; the last was published but two years before he succumbed, in the first days of 1891, to a slow incurable disease In all, the task had occupied thirty years Long before these years ran out, the world had learnt to regard the Cri like its true perspective; but over Kinglake's inal proportions To adapt a phrase of M Jules Lee; il ne leve plus de dessus son papier a copie sa face congestionne_” And yet Kinglake was no cloistered scribe Before his last illness he dined out frequently, and was placed bythe first half-a-dozen talkers in London

His conversation, though delicate and finished, brimmed full of interest in life and affairs: but let hie Without, the world wasit turned into 1855

Style

His style is hard, elaborate, polished to brilliance Its difficult labor recalls Thucydides In effect it charms at first by its accuracy and vividness: but with continuous perusal it begins to weigh upon the reader, who feels the strain, the unsparing effort that this glittering fabric th ceases to syins to sylake started by disclai ”composition” ”My narrative,” he says, in the famous preface to _Eothen_, ”conveys not those iht to have been_ produced upon any well-constituted mind, but those which were really and truly received, at the ti and not very amiable traveller As I have felt, so I have written”

”_Eothen_”

For all this, page after page of _Eothen_ gives evidence of deliberate calculation of effect That book is at once curiously like and curiously unlike Borrows' _Bible in Spain_ The two belong to the same period and, in a sense, to the sa personal char of circulishlishement But whereas Borrow stood for ever fortified by his ard nature and atrocious English against the telake corained perhaps by his Public School and University training Borrow arrays his page by instinct, Kinglake by study His irony (as in the intervieith the Pasha) is alue chapter) almost too sure; the whole book almost too clever The perforerous

The ”Invasion”

”Composition” indeed proved the curse of the _Invasion of the Crilake was a sloriter, and coraph, the phrase, rather than on the whole work Force and accuracy of expression are but parts of a good prose style; indeed are, strictly speaking, inseparable froical connection, rise and fall of emotion It is but an indifferent landscape that contains no pedestrian levels: and his desire for the ilake to miss the broad effect He erated and sounded--as Matthew Arnold accused hi--the note of provinciality There were other causes He was, as we have seen, an English country gentlelais_, as the Duke of Wellington wrote to Louis XVIII

His aded is revealed by a thousand touches in his narrative--we can find half a score in the description of Codrington's assault on the Great Redoubt in the battle of the Alress, do we often miss an illustration, or at least a -field Undoubtedly he had the distinction of his class; but its narrowness was his as surely Also the partisanshi+p of the eight volulish Bench is notorious; but it co both sides of every question