The London Quarterly Review

ART. I.-1. The Saint's Tragedy. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, JUN., Rector of Eversley. With a Preface by PROFESSOR MAURICE. Second Edition. London: J. W. Parker and Son.

1851.

2. Yeast: A Problem. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, JUN. Third Edition. Parkers. 1853.

By the

3. Alton Locke: Tailor and Poet. An Autobiography. REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Chapman and Hall. 1856. 4. Hypatia: or, New Foes with an Old Face. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, JUN. Two Vols. Parkers. 1853.

5. Westward Ho. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, &c. Three Vols. Second Edition. Cambridge: Macmillans. 1856.

6. Phaethon: or, Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers. CHARLES KINGSLEY, &c. Second Edition. Macmillans. 1854. 7. Glaucus: or, The Wonders of the Shore. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, &c. Second Edition. Macmillans. 1856.

8. Alexandria. and her Schools. Being Four Lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh. With a Preface. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, &c. Macmillans. 1854.

9. Twenty-Five Village Sermons. By CHARLES Kingsley, Jun., Rector of Eversley, Hants, and Canon of Middleham, Yorkshire. Third Edition. Parkers. 1854.

10. Sermons on National Subjects, preached in a Village Church. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, &c. London: Griffin and Co. 1852. 11. Sermons on National Subjects. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, &c. Second Series. Griffins. 1854.

12. Sermons for the Times. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, &c. Parkers. 1855.

13. Fraser's Magazine for September, 1856. Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics. By C. K.

Article on

BRITAIN has, at the present day, no more remarkable writer than CHARLES KINGSLEY; and there are few who have more powerfully influenced the temper and opinions of the times, both for good and for evil. His profession, as every body knows, is that of an Anglican clergyman; but his performances are far more various than would be expected from such a fact; and his powers are as versatile and distinguished as his performances are various. He seems to have begun his career of avowed authorship as a dramatic poet; he has subsequently appeared as a novelist, naturalist, preacher, and lecturer on philosophy. In all these departments he has shown himself to possess no ordinary gifts. His poetry is often exquisite; his pathos as novelist is at once manly and most deeply moving, while his dramatic power is great. As a naturalist, for truth, beauty, and vividness of minute description, he is equal to the late Hugh Miller, and far superior in the free and affluent eloquence which revels in rich discourse upon the aspects and relations of the present scene or subject. He is one of the plainest, most practical, and most powerful of preachers, allowances being made for what we consider the grave errors of his theology; and few men can excel him as a popular expositor and historian of philosophy. In his philosophical and theological views he seems perfectly to accord with his friend Maurice, who is, we believe, several years his senior, and who introduced Kingsley's Saint's Tragedy to the public by a preface, which is one of his best pieces of writing. But in clearness and force of intellect, and in power of eloquence, Maurice is, in our judgment, greatly inferior to his younger friend. He is frequently misty, redundant, circuitous, and evasive; Kingsley is clear, direct, and forcible, cuts his way boldly and honestly to his meaning; and, if he is finally obscure, this arises neither from want of power to see and explain, nor from studied evasion or reserve, but from the positive obscurity of the subject. For mastery of the English language-with the exception of some small blunders in ordinary grammar, such as the use of him and us for he and we, and of or continually for nor, which philosophers like Coleridge, and university graduates like Kingsley, seem to have a special licence to make we hardly know where to find his equal. Perhaps his too great admiration of Carlyle has somewhat tinged the style of his novels, and the vapid mannerisms of Maurice have, we think, sometimes infected that of his sermons. Оссаsionally, too, his earnestness is in some danger of degenerating into rant. But these are only occasional and inconsiderable blemishes.

Some of our readers, we dare say, will be scandalized at the

His Novels their polemic Character.

idea of a clergyman appearing in such a variety of characters as an author, and especially at his being a writer of novels. Mr. Kingsley, however, as we shall presently see, has his own theory as well as practice on this subject. And we must do him the justice to say, that his novels, whatever may be their faults and errors, are full of earnest moral purpose. They are intended to be auxiliary to his sermons, and to expound his philosophy; he is the preacher or teacher in those no less than in these. Indeed, one chief reason, in our opinion, of their defects as works of art is, that the writer cannot sufficiently forget his preaching purpose. He is too much in earnest about projects and theories of his own, to merge his individuality in that of his characters. Thackeray sets himself, with fixed purpose and complete selfmastery, to reflect upon his page the phases of society as it is. He controls into a rigid calm the moral impulses of his nature while he writes; his scorn at meanness, and indignation at wrong-doing, are implied in the faithful picture which his pencil draws, or concentrated into a sentence of biting satire. While he is giving permanent body and form to the scenes which glow upon the mirror of his imagination, the artist holds his own breath, for fear its warmth should dim the reflection. While he gazes upon the images on the surface of the still lake, he dreads lest any wind or gusty air should rise to disturb and distort the figures and scenery on which he looks. But Kingsley does not write fiction on this plan. His talkers and actors are intended to represent different parts and aspects of the manysided message which he has to utter, or to exhibit the errorsas he considers them-which he has sworn to resist. Hence his own strong feelings often break forth in the speech of his characters. Some swell out a tone too grand and high, or speak what happened to strike him at the moment as fit to be said, but was not so likely to have been thought and said by them; or, on the other hand, are, by the caricature of his prejudice and dislike, made to utter sentiments neither consistent with their own position and character, nor with those of the party they represent. For a similar reason, when the great moral purpose of any of his works has been once brought clearly and fully out, Mr. Kingsley's patience seems to be expended; he will not take time or trouble to weave his piece fairly to an end, but breaks the threads, or winds them up in an uncouth knot, and so concludes his work. All his fictions show something, more or less, of this, in their contempt of probabilities as to plot or catastrophe; but in Yeast it appears most conspicuously. That Mr. Kingsley can conceive and carry through a powerful and consistent character, will be doubted by none who have read Alton Locke, with its grand Carlylish picture of the old Scotch Chartist doctrinaire, Sandy Mackaye. But he is too much in earnest to teach his peculiar gospel, is too powerfully pressed in spirit by the

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The London Quarterly Review, Volume 8