BOOKS.

LIFE OF CHARLES KINGSLEY.s' [FIRST NOTICE.]

ON the question concerning the interval which should elapse between a man's death and his biography, as upon most other questions interesting to mankind, there is a good deal to be said on both sides. The advantages of addressing an audience who supply keen interest in the subject are perhaps more obvious than the advantages of contemplating that subject under the mellowing influence of time, and it is not surprising that the interests of literature—generally strongly engaged, we think, on the side of delay—should give way to those which are more prominent in individual cases, though posterity can take less account of them. Nor could we say without qualification that the two interests may not be united. If we were to specify what we considered as the most favourable chronological perspective for a biographer, the two most popular biographies in our language—Boswell's Life of Johnson. and Stanley's of Arnold—would suggest themselves to every reader as a confutation, and would at least suffice to force from us the confession that it is possible to satisfy at once those who would have known almost nothing of the man without the memoir, and those who bring to it a wide background of

recollection and surmise. But though this has happened, we do not think it is likely to happen often, and a few striking exceptions do not shake our faith in the rule that if a biography is to be a contribution to literature, the writer must aim at sup-

* Charles Kingsley: his Letters, t tact Memories of his Lift. Edited by his Wife. London : Henry S. King and Co.

plying more than a crystallising point for vivid memories, and a response to eager and intelligent interest.

We make these remarks in no disparagement of the volumes which have been absorbing so many of our readers, but as an in- dication of the point of view from which to regard them. It is not

as the literary critic,- at all events, that one of those they have rivetted can speak of a narrative at which the graves have seemed

to give up their dead. Fresh from such a perusal, it would be difficult to estimate defects in less unpretending workmanship than that which is here endowed with the enchanter's wand, and we must disclaim that approval of the work, considered as a con- tribution to literature, which might be the natural interpretation put upon the omission of all literary criticism. What the book may be for a generation to whom the things it speaks of are as dead as the Bangorian Controversy, for instance, is to us, we will not inquire. For those to whom it recalls the associations of a vivid past, it is one of the most interesting biographies of our time.

One more concession must be made to the ungracious spirit by which criticism is haunted. The book is interesting to its last page, but we believe our opinion that it is most interesting at

first will be general. We cannot deny that it is so much the more faithful a representation of its object. if the word genius is to be ap-

plied to Charles Kingsley—and we think it is—the attention must be concentrated on the works of his earlier years. To a man's con- temporaries this implies something disappointing in his life, no doubt. But History judges him simply by what his best is, whether his best comes first or last. There is a certain amount of accident in the development of genius ; kindly influences may breathe on the plant in spring, and the rich promise may be belied by a withered aspect in autumn, but it may be that under the best conditions the fruit would have been worth more than the blossom. If the " Saint's Tragedy " finds but a feeble echo in the " Miscellaneous Poems," if the picture of the strange, seething life of Alexandria which Kingsley made a background to his sketch of the Neo-Platonist virgin and martyr, had no worthy successor, we may learn from these volumes how much activity of another kind succeeded this phase of youthful achievement, and of activity perhaps incompatible with it. We know but little of the correlation of the intellectual life, and many of the spiritual activities which look like natural accompaniments are in fact rigid alternatives. in the inward world, as in the outer, power often only changes its form when it seems to disappear, and it may even be that we date a life's decline at the dawn of its deepest efficiency. But there is no denying that so far as we can make an estimate of the lives of our fellows, Charles Kingsley's was at its best in the glow of youth, and we would invite those who would do him justice to cross a longer interval than that which separates us from his newly-closed grave.

The great charm of his character, so far as it did not consist in that magnetic quality which defies analysis, was, we think, the equivalent intensity with which he entered into the inward and the outward world. The elasticity and many-sidedness of per- ception which are thus manifested (qualities to which no small part of the enjoyment of intercourse is owing), showed themselves in vari- ous views of the same thing, as well as in the power to see different things ;—the aspects of Nature were as much to him as her laws.

'While his descriptions of natural scenery tell of the brooding eye and the open heart, his taste for science witnesses to a kind of attention thatfew men find compatible with a keen love of beauty. "It is so provoking," said the wife of a geologist, in good-

humoured despair, " when I am looking at the light upon a distant hill, to hear him say, in a very pondering voice, Ah, I

see, the fault comes in there !' " The companion of all Kingsley's interests can never have had occasion for this playful reproach. The laws that mould our world were to him a rich bass, set to the melody of its varied form and colour ; he could listen to the full symphony with undistracted ear, and with unwaning attention to the simple air or the complex modulation alone. We could not indeed say that he was able to convey in equal proportion these different kinds of enjoyment to other minds. Those passages in his books which bring even to many a jaded mind, incapable of appre- ciating these things at first-hand, the enjoyments and almost the sensations associated with the outward world, are secure in perennial interest, and no one will say this of anything he has written about science. Still for himself, nature as the fountain of law was no less imperiously attractive than nature as the storehouse of beauty, and men who delight in it as the glorious picture-gallery and as the richly-stored museum, and who have no sympathy with each other, might find equal sympathy from him.

These words describe a kind of activity that makes no small contribution to all the healing influences of life, if they were all we had to say. But they describe only half the spiritual compass I of Charles Kingsley. He had wings for a chasm wider than Ithat which severs the scientific and the poetic aspect of Nature,—for the great spiritual chasm of our day. But in saying that he was at home both in the worlds that eye

bath seen and that it hath not seen, we must guard ourselves against misapprehension. The fact that those who in our day give themselves to the study of Nature lose their belief in what is

above Nature, while in former days they acquired but a new illustration and support for their faith, might be described in very different words. Some would say that we have reached a point where the growing and harmonious certainties of the outer world contrast too glaringly with the perennial doubt, the in- creasing divergencies of the inner. They believe that the rising sun has driven us to blow out our rushlight. Others, who find this con- trast explained by the distinction between the kind of truth which can and cannot be transferred from one intellect to another, may consider that the rising sun has led some of us to disbelieve in the stars. But as to the fact of a change, everybody, we suppose, is of one mind. Now there is no doubt that the noble-minded man of whom we speak cared vividly for both the truths of the seen world, and the truths of the unseen, and it was a sign of his many-sided and fearless spirit that he did so, but we cannot say that it was any sign of his power of thought. His writings are rich in many sources of teaching and help, and he can afford to have it said that a vista opened through the perplexities of the age is not one of them. Men must see diffi- culties, before they can see beyond them. The problems that are set before us by the mere experience of life weighed upon Kings- ley, doubtless, with as heavy a burden as they ever laid on any human spirit, and out of that dark experience be wrung the power to elevate and soothe many a heart full of filial yearnings that missed their expected response. But he never confronted the perplexities that beset the mind combining the intellectual life of our day with a higher life. He could not resolve the discord of Science and Faith, for he never heard it.

Still the fact remains that he was the one man eminent in our day who entered into the theories of science, and the beliefs that if they are accepted at all claim precedence of all that we call Science. It is something to see that these views may be recon- ciled by a thoroughly honest mind, even if we are obliged to con- fess that it was neither profound nor logical. A person who does not see difficulties cannot judge whether they are large or small (though he often thinks he can), but he may measure their range for others by the approach he makes to them from different quarters. Kingsley felt all that we call Nature to be the medium between the spirit of man and one with whom he is called to enter into immediate relation. If it is possible to exaggerate the im- portance of this mediate relation—perhaps it is not—he did exaggerate it. But he never doubted that however large a part of what is divine is revealed to man through the things we can touch and weigh and see, there is a wider region which we can know only through contact of spirit with spirit. Thus his rever- ence for a Will above Nature was raised on the pedestal of his reverence for Nature, and the spirit which is generally antagonistic to Faith in that which is supernatural, in him did homage to it. Hence his power to reach a variety of minds, hence the firm common ground on which he could plant his foot in his endeavour to bring men to a loftier standing. This power, if it had been joined to a profound insight that pierced the mists of doubt, would have made him a great name in the history of thought. But we doubt if his influence did not take a wider range in his lifetime as things were.

A reminiscence—perhaps trifling—seems to us to illustrate so much of the advantage he possessed in this power of ap- proaching the minds of men from different sides, that we will confront the reproach of triviality by giving it :—" What an un- intelligible mystic Kingsley is !" said a guest at some festivity, of which perhaps few partakers are now living ; " I wonder if he himself understands his own writings." His hearer did not see the appropriateness of the description, and the conversation took a line on which the speaker had more to say,—a subject connected with science. "There is an admirable article on that subject," he continued, "in such and such a Review ; it throws more light upon it, and givis more practical suggestions concerning it, than any- thing I have read for years." "It was written by Kingsley," said the other—and the good man took refuge in his dinner. It was a startling transformation to find his religious mystic an authority on the practical applica- tions of science ! Here, we think, lies the secret of a large part of Kingsley's power. The real test of truth to the average man roughing it in the world is, How does this doctrine work ? li'hat sort of a character does it produce ? What sort of a life does it mould? We are not saying that every one is as favourably situated for applying this test as he considers himself. We only say that it is, as a matter of fact, the rule according to which people do accept or reject any system of belief that is large and deep enough to form a character. And it is rare indeed that one who speaks to men of the hopes and fears that are independent of outward things can speak of these also ; it is rare that a spiritual teacher can, like Kingsley, appeal to practical men in their own language, and blend as he did the belief he sought to impart with the life they desire to retain.

This remark should be associated rather with the robust prac- tical side of his nature generally than with his love of science. There was a time, we imagine, when this taste, strong as it always was, had a powerful competitor in his mind—a competitor, we mean, in regard to the limits of human time and interest, and not in virtue of any inherent incompatibility between the two—in his political sympathies. The account in these pages of the Christian Socialist movement of 1848 and onwards is somewhat melancholy reading, especially for those who can remember that dawn of rich and genial hope, and to whom Kingsley's words on April 11th —" a glorious future is opening "—bring back feelings that recur with the distinctness of events. There seemed then a possibility of a kind of common life that experience has, we fear, shown not to be possible, at least not under present circumstances. It seemed then as if common aims might supply the want of all individual adroitness, in adjusting intercourse to that break of continuity which people of different stages of cultivation are apt to feel in face of each other ; and that sudden glow which made itself thus felt in common-place minds brought Kingsley's to a fervour of hope, that seemed enough to fuse and weld the most heterogeneous materials, and really did for a time bring them into close contact. We are rather magnifying the power of sympathy in his nature than depreciating his power of insight, when we say that be mistook this impulse of brotherly compassion and aspiration for Democracy. It is a great mistake to confound sympathy or pity with a political creed, but the confusion is natural. We have all known, probably, the kind of surprise there is in returning upon a scene we had thought striking, to find that what had impressed us was in reality a certain effect of light and atmosphere which had clothed the stationary and permanent objects of our attention in a glory not their own. Perhaps there may have been something of this surprise in Kingsley's mind when he turned to politics in his later years. The morning light was gone.

All the more interesting are those productions which embody this fervour of youth, with its perhaps transitory sympathies. The work of his which will live longest, we suspect, is Alton Locke. The biography of the Chartist tailor embodies what was strongest in Kingsley's sympathies, what was clearest in his insight, what was deepest in his convictions. We cannot but believe there are materials for history in that book. When the great storm of 1848 shook Europe and sent a tiny spirt to our sheltered island, it was not because there was no discontent here, real and deep, that the hurricane sank to a squall. " The Government was very courageous to make such formidable preparations," said a public man, after the 10th of April ; " they must have known it would look as if they had made a steam-engine to kill a flea." But there was deep anxiety in many manly breasts on that day, as there was, no doubt, bitter misery in a few at its close. That misery is painted with a master's hand in the pages of Kingsley's first novel, and the picture may well be an effective one, for there is no more potent stimulus to imagination than generosity combined with prejudice. Kingsley was a thorough aristocrat, and the tyranny of shopkeepers was that against which his whole nature was engaged, as the larger part of his nature was engaged against all tyranny. The picture has already the interest of history. The England of our day is less changed in the last thirty years than any other European nation, but it is changed. Much of the spirit then working in vague discontent has been absorbed by trades-unionism. Much has been allayed by a Reform Bill which has transferred the prerogative from a class Kingsley was inclined to despise, to one with which all aristocrats have much more real sympathy. But we are living now in that disappointing stage which surely follows on all enfranchisement, when unwearied effort and patient sacrifice seem to have failed of their aim, and reading between the lines of these volumes,we could fancy that something of this disappointment stole upon the mind of Kingsley in his later years, and a little deadened his political interests. At any rate, he never lost his strong sense of brotherhood with the most degraded of mankind. There is a pathetic little touch in his pupil's (Mr. John Martin- eau's) account of him, describing the expression of disgust with which he turned from his well-furnished breakfast-table, after at length overcoming his almost unconquerable reluctance to send away a wretched tramp ; and we cannot doubt that the wretchedness of the outcast and the degraded, often weighed on his heart, with the feeling which manifested itself in that gesture of revulsion from the signs of comfort. We fancy we can discern seine such feeling—a dim, half-conscious sympathy with obscure suffering—in the strange pathos of his countenance, a pathos which haunts us even through this record of a life outwardly and inwardly so prosperous, and which, in the few sentences which record his wish for death, seems to escape from a murmur to a cry. We know well how much there was in his life unlike this,— how much that may make it seem absurd. But perhaps there are few men in whom the deepest part of the nature is notl hidden beneath much that is utterly- unlike it.

We have endeavoured to express in these lines the first general impression of the whole personality, as it has been half-produced and half-recalled by these volumes. On a future occasion we hope to return to the Biogeaphy, and by its help illustrate and supple- ment what has been said here.