All at cross-purpose even with myself, The fruitful champaign, and the cloud-capt Alps, If I lose this, how terrible! No, no, I am contented, and will not complain. I bear the workday burden of dull life Say not the struggle nought availeth. The labour and the wounds are vain, And as things have been they remain. And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, Less noteworthy than Clough's poetry was his revision of 'the translation called Dryden's' of Plutarch's Lives. F. T. Palgrave edited Clough's Poems, with a Memoir, in 1862; and Clough's widow his Poems and Prose Remains, with a delightful Life (2 vols. 1869). Reference should also be made to Samuel Waddington's Arthur Hugh Clough, a Monograph (1883); and the Memoirs (1897) of Clough's sister, Anne Jemima (1820-92), the first Principal of Newnham College at Cambridge. Charles Kingsley was born at Holne vicarage, under the brow of Dartmoor, on 12th June 1819, and passed his childhood at Barnack in the Northamptonshire fen country, and at Clovelly in his native Devon. From the Helston School he passed to King's College, London; but going afterwards to Magdalen College, Cambridge, he took his degree in 1842-first-class in classics, senior optime in mathematics-and was five months after ordained to the curacy of Eversley in Hampshire, where from 1844 as rector-he spent the rest of his life, having married in the year in which he was presented to his living. His theology was to a large extent based on an abhorrence of the Calvinistic doctrine of rewards and punishments, on F. D. Maurice's Kingdom of Christ, and Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. His dramatic poem, The Saint's Tragedy, 'the true story of Elizabeth of Hungary,' and a graphic presentation of mediæval piety, appeared in 1848; and it was immediately followed (1849) by Alton Locke and Yeast, novels revealing the work of a convinced Radical or 'Christian Socialist,' and dealing with modern social questions in a bold and eminently original manner. The hero of Alton Locke, tailor and poet,' is found in a London workshop; Yeast deals with the condition of the English agricultural labourer. The influence of these books was very marked; and if Kingsley wrote nothing more to the same purpose, it was not so much that time had modified his views as that his views had modified the times. For Kingsley had thrown himself with all the ardour of youth and of his own impetuous nature into various schemes for the improvement of the condition, material, moral, and religious, of the workingclasses-subjects more familiar now than they were in 1844. In this work he was associated with F. D. Maurice, the recognised leader of the movement known as 'Christian Socialism;' and under the well-known pseudonym of 'Parson Lot' he published an immense number of articles on current topics, especially in the Christian Socialist and Politics for the People. In 1853 appeared Hypatia, a powerful and affecting picture of early Christianity in conflict with Greek philosophy at Alexandria in the beginning of the fifth century; the beauty of Greek philosophy, and of at least one Greek philosophical teacher, in the person of the heroine, is perhaps too sharply contrasted with the bigotry of Cyprian and the savagery of the monks who murdered the virgin martyr of Neoplatonism. Alexandria and her Schools (1854) was also the theme of a course of lectures delivered in Edinburgh. Westward Ho! (1855), a tale of Elizabethan England and the Spanish Main, of Devonshire worthies and their Spanish foemen, is-in parts at least as life-like as anything in the whole range of romantic literature. The tone of the book is free, hearty, perhaps all too English and too Protestant, and, like the author himself, at once strong and tender. Perhaps more than any other of his works, it displays his gift of dramatic presentation and his skill in the poetic description of scenery. But some critics prefer his first two novels, as more real and more thoroughly sincere, to all their successors; they certainly contained Kingsley's 'message.' In Two Years Ago (1857) he sketched with a master-hand the North Devon scenery so dear to the west - countryman, and touched again on social problems and on the Crimean war, gold-digging in Australia, and American institutions; and Hereward the Wake (1866), a novel of the days of the Conqueror, brought a remarkable series of works of fiction to a close. In 1860 the University of Cambridge had chosen their author to be Professor of History, and his inaugural lecture was published at the end of that year under the title of The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History. The Roman and the Teuton (1864) is also based upon his Cambridge lectures. Neither a profound metaphysician nor a precise logician, he was a picturesque rather than a deeply read or accurate historian; and his lectures were rather severely handled by the critics. Water Babies (1863), called 'a fairy-tale for a land baby,' took a place of its own in the literature of fantasy for children; other works were, besides many volumes of sermons, Glaucus, on the wonders of the shore (1854); The Heroes, Greek fairy-tales (1856); Town Geology (1872); Prose Idylls (1873); Health and Education (1874). In 1869 Kingsley resigned his professorship and was appointed a canon of CHARLES KINGSLEY. Chester; in 1871 he made his voyage to the tropics, of whose scenery he had written so enthusiastically; and on his return to Eversley from the West Indies he gave to the world one of its most charming books of travel, At Last. In 1873 he was appointed a canon of Westminster and chaplain to the Queen; he died at Eversley on 23rd January 1875. By nature he was hottempered, frank, and combative; his muscular Christianity' (a phrase he himself disliked) was cheerful and robust. He had to live down much animosity and suspicion alike on political and theological grounds; and though ultimately he became apparently reconciled to the existing social order, he remained to the last an outspoken BroadChurchman and an eager polemic. His controversy with Newman, in which the Cardinal secured a great dialectical success, has already been referred to at page 338. Many of Kingsley's essays are charming. His poetry, like his prose works, reflects his eager, strenuous, open, sympathetic character, and is frank, simple, and straightforward, not seeking to probe spiritual depths, but not without its own characteristic charm. Two lyrics have by universal consent become everywhere well known as proverbs 'The sands of Dee' and 'Three fishers went sailing,' both tender, musical, simple, and perfect in their own way; but they are less characteristic of the man and his temperament than verses that ring with his own joy in free and strenuous life-'The Last Buccanier,' 'The Outlaw,' the 'Ode to the North-East Wind,' 'The Delectable Day.' Sixteenth Century Lotus-Eaters. Forth Amyas went, with Ayacanora as a guide, some five miles upward along the forest slopes, till the girl whispered,There they are;' and Amyas, pushing himself gently through a thicket of bamboo, beheld a scene which, in spite of his wrath, kept him silent, and perhaps softened, for a minute. On the farther side of a little lawn, the stream leaped through a chasm beneath overarching vines, sprinkling eternal freshness upon all around, and then sank foaming into a clear rock-basin, a bath for Dian's self. On its farther side, the crag rose some twenty feet in height, bank upon bank of feathered ferns and cushioned moss, over the rich green beds of which dropped a thousand orchids, scarlet, white, and orange, and made the still pool gorgeous with the reflection of their gorgeousness. At its more quiet outfall, it was half-hidden in huge fantastic leaves and tall flowering stems; but near the waterfall the grassy bank sloped down toward the stream, and there, on palm-leaves strewed upon the turf, beneath the shadow of the crags, lay the two men whom Amyas sought, and whom, now he had found them, he had hardly heart to wake from their delicious dream. For what a nest it was which they had found! The air was heavy with the scent of flowers, and quivering with the murmur of the stream, the humming of the colibris and insects, the cheerful song of birds, the gentle cooing of a hundred doves; while now and then, from far away, the musical wail of the sloth or the deep toll of the bell-bird came softly to the ear. What was not there which eye or ear could need? And what which palate could need either? For on the rock above, some strange tree, leaning forward, dropped every now and then a luscious apple upon the grass below, and huge wild plantains bent beneath their load of fruit. There, on the stream-bank, lay the two renegades from civilised life. They had cast away their clothes, and painted themselves, like the Indians, with arnotta and indigo. One lay lazily picking up the fruit which fell close to his side; the other sat, his back against a cushion of soft moss, his hands folded languidly upon his lap, giving himself up to the soft influence of the narcotic coca-juice, with half-shut dreamy eyes fixed on the everlasting sparkle of the waterfall 'While beauty, born of murmuring sound, Somewhat apart crouched their two dusky brides, crowned with fragrant flowers, but working busily, like true women, for the lords whom they delighted to honour. One sat plaiting palm-fibres into a basket; the other was boring the stem of a huge milk-tree, which rose like some mighty column on the right hand of the lawn, its broad canopy of leaves unseen through the dense underwood of laurel and bamboo, and betokened only by the rustle far aloft, and by the mellow shade in which it bathed the whole delicious scene. Amyas stood silent for a while, partly from noble shame at seeing two Christian men thus fallen of their own selfwill; partly because-and he could not but confess that -a solemn calm brooded above that glorious place, to break through which seemed sacrilege even while he felt it duty. Such, he thought, was Paradise of old; such our first parents' bridal bower! Ah! if man had not fallen, he too might have dwelt for ever in such a home -with whom? He started, and shaking off the spell, advanced sword in hand. The women saw him, and sprang to their feet, caught up their long pocunas, and leaped like deer each in front of her beloved. There they stood, the deadly tubes pressed to their lips, eying him like tigresses who protect their young, while every slender limb quivered, not with terror, but with rage. Amyas paused, half in admiration, half in prudence; for one rash step was death. But rushing through the canes, Ayacanora sprang to the front, and shrieked to them in Indian. At the sight of the prophetess the women wavered; and Amyas, putting on as gentle a face as he could, stepped forward, assuring them in his best Indian that he would harm no one. 6 Ebsworthy! Parracombe ! Are you grown such savages already that you have forgotten your captain? Stand up, men, and salute!' Ebsworthy sprang to his feet, obeyed mechanically, and then slipped behind his bride again, as if in shame. The dreamer turned his head languidly, raised his hand to his forehead, and then returned to his contemplation. Amyas rested the point of his sword on the ground, and his hands upon the hilt, and looked sadly and solemnly upon the pair. Ebsworthy broke the silence, half reproachfully, half trying to bluster away the coming storm. 'Well, noble captain, so you've hunted out us poor fellows, and want to drag us back again in a halter, I suppose?' 'I came to look for Christians, and I find heathens; for men, and I find swine. I shall leave the heathens to their wilderness, and the swine to their trough.Parracombe !' 'He's too happy to answer you, sir. And why not? What do you want of us? Our two years' vow is out, and we are free men now.' 'Free to become like the beasts that perish? You are the Queen's servants still, and in her name I charge you' 'Free to be happy,' interrupted the man. 'With the best of wives, the best of food, a warmer bed than a duke's, and a finer garden than an emperor's. As for clothes, why the plague should a man wear them where he don't need them? As for gold, what's the use of it where Heaven sends everything ready-made to your hands? Hearken, Captain Leigh. You've been a good captain to me, and I'll repay you with a bit of sound advice. Give up your gold-hunting, and toiling and moiling after honour and glory, and copy us. Take that fair maid behind you there to wife; pitch here with us; and see if you are not happier in one day than ever you were in all your life before.' 'You are drunk, sirrah! William Parracombe! Will you speak to me, or shall I heave you into the stream to sober you?' 'Who calls William Parracombe?' answered a sleepy voice. 'I, fool!—your captain.' 'I am not William Parracombe. He is dead long ago of hunger, and labour, and heavy sorrow, and will never see Bideford town any more. He is turned into an Indian now; and he is to sleep, sleep, sleep for a hundred years, till he gets his strength again, poor fellow ' 'Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light! A christened Englishman, and living thus the life of a beast!' 6 'Christ shall give thee light?' answered the same unnatural, abstracted voice. 'Yes; so the parsons say. And they say, too, that he is Lord of heaven and earth. I should have thought his life was as near us here as anywhere, and nearer too, by the look of the place. Look round,' said he, waving a lazy hand, and see the works of God, and the place of paradise, whither poor weary souls go home and rest, after their masters in the wicked world have used them up, with labour and sorrow, and made them wade knee-deep in blood-I'm tired of blood, and tired of gold. I'll march no more; I'll fight no more; I'll hunger no more after vanity and vexation of spirit. What shall I get by it? Maybe I shall leave my bones in the wilderness. I can but do that here. Maybe I shall get home with a few pezos, to die an old cripple in some stinking hovel, that a monkey would scorn to lodge in here. You may go on; it'll pay you. You may be a rich man, and a knight, and live in a fine house, and drink good wine, and go to court, and torment your soul with trying to get more, when you've got too much already; plotting and planning to scramble upon your neighbour's shoulders, as they all did-Sir Richard, and Mr Raleigh, and Chichester, and poor dear old Sir Warham, and all of them that I used to watch when I lived before. They were no happier than I was then; I'll warrant they are no happier now. Go your ways, captain; climb to glory upon some other backs than ours, and leave us here in peace, alone with God and God's woods, and the good wives that God has given us, to play a little like school children. It's long since I've had play-hours; and now I'll be a little child once more, with the flowers, and the singing-birds, and the silver fishes in the stream, that are at peace, and think no harm, and want neither clothes, nor money, nor knighthood, nor peerage, but just take what comes; and their heavenly Father feedeth them, and Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these-and will he not much more feed us, that are of more value than many sparrows?' 'And will you live here, shut out from all Christian ordinances?' 'Christian ordinances! Adam and Eve had no parsons in Paradise. The Lord was their priest, and the Lord was their shepherd, and he 'll be ours too. But go your ways, sir, and send up Sir John Brimblecombe, and let him marry us here church fashion-though we have sworn troth to each other before God already—and let him give us the Holy Sacrament once and for all, and then read the funeral-service over us, and go his ways, and count us for dead, sir-for dead we are to the wicked worthless world we came out of three years ago. And when the Lord chooses to call us, the little birds will cover us with leaves, as they did the babies in the wood, and fresher flowers will grow out of our graves, sir, than out of yours in that bare Northam churchyard there beyond the weary, weary, weary sea.' His voice died away to a murmur, and his head sank on his breast. Amyas stood spell-bound. The effect of the narcotic was all but miraculous in his eyes. The sustained eloquence, the novel richness of diction in one seemingly drowned in sensual sloth, were in his eyes the possession of some evil spirit. And yet he could not answer the Evil One. His English heart, full of the divine instinct of duty and public spirit, told him that it must be a lie but how to prove it a lie? And he stood for full ten minutes searching for an answer, which seemed to fly farther and farther off the more he sought for it. . . . : A rustle! a roar! a shriek! and Amyas lifted his eyes in time to see a huge dark bar shoot from the crag above the dreamer's head, among the group of girls. A dull crash, as the group flew asunder; and in the midst, upon the ground, the tawny limbs of one were writhing beneath the fangs of a black jaguar, the rarest and most terrible of the forest kings. Of one? But of which? Was it Ayacanora? And sword in hand, Amyas rushed madly forward before he reached the spot those tortured limbs were still. It was not Ayacanora; for, with a shriek which rang through the woods, the wretched dreamer, wakened thus at last, sprang up and felt for his sword. Fool! he had left it in his hammock! Screaming the name of his dead bride, he rushed on the jaguar as it crouched above its prey, and seizing its head with teeth and nails, worried it, in the ferocity of his madness, like a mastiff dog. The brute wrenched its head from his grasp, and raised its dreadful paw. Another moment, and the husband's corpse would have lain by the wife's. But high in air gleamed Amyas's blade; down, with all the weight of his huge body and strong arm, fell that most trusty steel; the head of the jaguar dropped grinning on its victim's corpse: 'And all stood still who saw him fall, While men might count a score.' 'O Lord Jesus,' said Amyas to himself, 'thou hast answered the devil for me! And this is the selfish rest for which I would have bartered the rest which comes by working where thou hast put me!' They bore away the lithe corpse into the forest, and buried it under soft moss and virgin mould; and so the fair clay was transfigured into fairer flowers, and the poor gentle untaught spirit returned to God who gave it. And then Amyas went sadly and silently back again, and Parracombe walked after him, like one who walks in sleep. Ebsworthy, sobered by the shock, entreated to come too; but Amyas forbade him gently. 'No, lad; you are forgiven. God forbid that I should judge you or any man. Sir John shall come up and marry you; and then, if it still be your will to stay, the Lord forgive you, if you be wrong; in the meanwhile, we will leave with you all that we can spare. Stay here, and pray to God to make you, and me too, wiser men.' And so Amyas departed. He had come out stern and proud, but he came back again like a little child. (From Westward Ho!) The Last Buccanier. Oh England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high, But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I ; There were forty craft in Avès that were both swift and stout, All furnished well with small arms and cannons round about; And a thousand men in Avès made laws so fair and free To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold, Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old; Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone. Oh the palms grew high in Avès, and fruits that shone like gold, And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold; And the negro maids to Avès from bondage fast did flee, Oh sweet it was in Avès to hear the landward breeze roar Of the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched the shore. But Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be; So the King's ships sailed on Avès, and quite put down were we. All day we fought like bulldogs, but they burst the booms at night; And I fled in a piragua, sore wounded, from the fight. Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside, Till for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died; But as I lay a-gasping, a Bristol sail came by, And brought me home to England here, to beg until I die. And now I'm old and going-I'm sure I can't tell where ; One comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there : If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main, Ode to the North-East Wind. Ne'er a verse to thee. Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hark! The brave North-easter ! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over heath and bent. Chime, ye dappled darlings, Through the sleet and snow. Let the horses go! Ere an hour be past. Bask in ladies' eyes. Through the snow-storm hurled, Drives our English hearts of oak Seaward round the world. Come, as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come; and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood; Bracing brain and sinew; Blow, thou wind of God! Young and Old. When all the world is young, lad, And round the world away; When all the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down; Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among ; God grant you find one face there You loved when all was young. (From The Water Babies.) His widow published his Life and Letters in 1876 (2 vols.); and there is a monograph on Kingsley as a Christian Socialist' and reformer by Kaufmann (1892). A collected edition of his works appeared in twenty-eight volumes in 1879-81; an édition de luxe of the Life and Works was issued in 1901-3 in nineteen volumes, of which the sixteenth was occupied by the poems. Mrs Harrison, distinguished as a novelist under the pen-name of Lucas Malet,' is his youngest daughter. George Henry Kingsley (1827-92), the second brother in a gifted family, was born at Islington, was educated at King's College School, and graduated in medicine at Edinburgh and at Paris. His devotion to professional duty in a time of cholera was commemorated by his brother in Two Years Ago. In attendance on patients he travelled much; and he wrote, besides Notes on Sport and Travel, one famous book, South Sea Bubbles, by the Earl and the Doctor-his compagnon de voyage on this occasion being the Earl of Pembroke.-His daughter, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, was educated mainly at home on account of her weak health, and early became a voracious but desultory reader of books of all kinds. And after the death of both father and mother she resolved to travel and study the manners and customs of uncivilised peoples. She made two journeys in the Congo country, in the Cameroons, and on the Ogowé; her Travels in West Africa (1897), besides being 'rich in incident and bubbling over with racy humour,' showed a marvellous instinct for looking at savage rites, religions, and usages from the native point of view; and her original and unconventional views on some missionary methods, and on the services of the traders to Europe and civilisation, provoked criticism, but proved the writer's absolute good faith and unscrupulous desire to do justice to all aspects of truth. She had planned another voyage to study 'fishes and fetishes,' but at Cape Town volunteered to nurse sick Boer prisoners, and fell a victim to enteric fever in the Simon's Town hospital. He Henry Kingsley (1830-76), the younger brother of Charles, was born at Barnack rectory, near Stamford, and was brought up at Clovelly and Chelsea. From King's College, London, he passed in 1850 to Worcester College, Oxford, but went down in 1853 without a degree, and started for the Australian gold-diggings. never talked of his colonial experiences, but is known to have been for a time in the mounted police. He turned up again at Chelsea in 1858, and next year wrote at Eversley The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn, which, like The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865), is full of the strong, vivid life of the antipodes. Still, Ravenshoe (1861) is his masterpiece. Austin Elliot (1863), Mademoiselle Mathilde (1868), and Stretton (1869) deserve men |