A. W. KINGLAKE--A BIOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY STUDY

PREFACE

It is just eleven years since Kinglake passed away, and his lifehas not yet been separately memorialized. A few years more, andthe personal side of him would be irrecoverable, though bypersonality, no less than by authorship, he made his contemporarymark. When a tomb has been closed for centuries, the effacedlineaments of its tenant can be re-coloured only by the idealizinghand of genius, as Scott drew Claverhouse, and Carlyle drewCromwell. But, to the biographer of the lately dead, men have aright to say, as Saul said to the Witch of Endor, "Call up Samuel!"In your study of a life so recent as Kinglake's, give us, if youchoose, some critical synopsis of his monumental writings, somesalvage from his ephemeral and scattered papers; trace so much ofhis youthful training as shaped the development of his character;depict, with wise restraint, his political and public life: butalso, and above all, re-clothe him "in his habit as he lived, " asfriends and associates knew him; recover his traits of voice andmanner, his conversational wit or wisdom, epigram or paradox, hisexplosions of sarcasm and his eccentricities of reserve, his wordsof winningness and acts of kindness: and, since one half of hislife was social, introduce us to the companions who shared hislighter hour and evoked his finer fancies; take us to the Athenaeum"Corner, " or to Holland House, and flash on us at least a glimpseof the brilliant men and women who formed the setting to hissparkle; "dic in amicitiam coeant et foedera jungant. "

This I have endeavoured to do, with such aid as I could commandfrom his few remaining contemporaries. His letters to his familywere destroyed by his own desire; on those written to MadameNovikoff no such embargo was laid, nor does she believe that it wasintended. I have used these sparingly, and all extracts from themhave been subjected to her censorship. If the result is not Atticin salt, it is at any rate Roman in brevity. I send it forth withJohn Bunyan's homely aspiration:

And may its buyer have no cause to say, His money is but lost or thrown away. 

CHAPTER I--EARLY YEARS

The fourth decade of the deceased century dawned on a procession ofOriental pilgrims, variously qualified or disqualified to hold thegorgeous East in fee, who, with bakshish in their purses, a theoryin their brains, an unfilled diary-book in their portmanteaus, sought out the Holy Land, the Sinai peninsula, the valley of theNile, sometimes even Armenia and the Monte Santo, and returned hometo emit their illustrated and mapped octavos. We have the typedelineated admiringly in Miss Yonge's "Heartsease, " {1} bitterly inMiss Skene's "Use and Abuse, " facetiously in the Clarence Bulbul of"Our Street. " "Hang it! has not everybody written an Eastern book?I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up tothe Second Cataract. My Lord Castleroyal has done one--an honestone; my Lord Youngent another--an amusing one; my Lord Woolseyanother--a pious one; there is the 'Cutlet and the Cabob'--asentimental one; Timbuctoothen--a humorous one. " Lord Carlisle'shonesty, Lord Nugent's fun, Lord Lindsay's piety, failed to floattheir books. Miss Martineau, clear, frank, unemotional Curzon, fuddling the Levantine monks with rosoglio that he might fleecethem of their treasured hereditary manuscripts, even EliotWarburton's power, colouring, play of fancy, have yielded to themobility of Time. Two alone out of the gallant company maintaintheir vogue to-day: Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine, " as a FifthGospel, an inspired Scripture Gazetteer; and "Eothen, " as aliterary gem of purest ray serene. 

In 1898 a reprint of the first edition was given to the public, prefaced by a brief eulogium of the book and a slight notice of theauthor. It brought to the writer of the "Introduction" not onlykind and indulgent criticism, but valuable corrections, freshfacts, clues to further knowledge. These last have been carefullyfollowed out. The unwary statement that Kinglake never spoke afterhis first failure in the House has been atoned by a careful studyof all his speeches in and out of Parliament. His reviews in the"Quarterly" and elsewhere have been noted; impressions of hismanner and appearance at different periods of his life have beenrecovered from coaeval acquaintances; his friend Hayward's Letters, the numerous allusions in Lord Houghton's Life, Mrs. Crosse'slively chapters in "Red Letter Days of my Life, " Lady Gregory'sinteresting recollections of the Athenaeum Club in Blackwood ofDecember, 1895, the somewhat slender notice in the "Dictionary ofNational Biography, " have all been carefully digested. From these, and, as will be seen, from other sources, the present Memoir hasbeen compiled; an endeavour--sera tamen--to lay before thecountless readers and admirers of his books a fairly adequateappreciation, hitherto unattempted, of their author. 

I have to acknowledge the great kindness of Canon WilliamWarburton, who examined his brother Eliot's diaries on my behalf, obtained information from Dean Boyle and Sir M. Grant Duff, clearedup for me not a few obscure allusions in the "Eothen" pages. Myhighly valued friend, Mrs. Hamilton Kinglake, of Taunton, hissister-in-law, last surviving relative of his own generation, hashelped me with facts which no one else could have recalled. To Mr. Estcott, his old acquaintance and Somersetshire neighbour, I amindebted for recollections manifold and interesting; but above allI tender thanks to Madame Novikoff, his intimate associate andcorrespondent during the last twenty years of his life, who hassupplemented her brilliant sketch of him in "La Nouvelle Revue" of1896 by oral and written information lavish in quantity and ofparamount biographical value. Kinglake's external life, hisliterary and political career, his speeches, and the more fugitiveproductions of his pen, were recoverable from public sources; buthis personal and private side, as it showed itself to the few closeintimates who still survive, must have remained to myself andothers meagre, superficial, disappointing, without MadameNovikoff's unreserved and sympathetic confidence. 

Alexander William Kinglake was descended from an old Scottishstock, the Kinlochs, who migrated to England with King James, andwhose name was Anglicized into Kinglake. Later on we find themsettled on a considerable estate of their own at Saltmoor, nearBorobridge, whence towards the close of the eighteenth century twobrothers, moving southward, made their home in Taunton--Robert as aphysician, William as a solicitor and banker. Both were of highrepute, both begat famous sons. From Robert sprang the eminentParliamentary lawyer, Serjeant John Kinglake, at one time acontemporary with Cockburn and Crowder on the Western Circuit, andWilliam Chapman Kinglake, who while at Trinity, Cambridge, won theLatin verse prize, "Salix Babylonica, " the English verse prizes on"Byzantium" and the "Taking of Jerusalem, " in 1830 and 1832. OfWilliam's sons the eldest was Alexander William, author of"Eothen, " the youngest Hamilton, for many years one of the mostdistinguished physicians in the West of England. "Eothen, " as hecame to be called, was born at Taunton on the 5th August, 1809, ata house called "The Lawn. " His father, a sturdy Whig, died at theage of ninety through injuries received in the hustings crowd of acontested election. His mother belonged to an old Somersetshirefamily, the Woodfordes of Castle Cary. She, too, lived to a greatage; a slight, neat figure in dainty dress, full of antique charmand grace. As a girl she had known Lady Hester Stanhope, who livedwith her grandmother, Lady Chatham, at Burton Pynsent, her ownfather, Dr. Thomas Woodforde, being Lady Chatham's medicalattendant. {2} The future prophetess of the Lebanon was then awild girl, scouring the countryside on bare-backed horses; sheshowed great kindness to Mary Woodforde, afterwards Kinglake'smother. It was as his mother's son that she received him longafterwards at Djoun. To his mother Kinglake was passionatelyattached; owed to her, as he tells us in "Eothen, " his home in thesaddle and his love for Homer. A tradition is preserved in thefamily that on the day of her funeral, at a churchyard five milesaway, he was missed from the household group reassembled in themourning home; he was found to have ordered his horse, and gallopedback in the darkness to his mother's grave. Forty years later hewrites to Alexander Knox: "The death of a mother has an almostmagical power of recalling the home of one's childhood, and thealmost separate world that rests upon affection. " Of his twosisters, one was well read and agreeably talkative, noted byThackeray as the cleverest woman he had ever met; the other, Mrs. Acton, was a delightful old esprit fort, as I knew her in thesixties, "pagan, I regret to say, " but not a little resembling herbrother in the point and manner of her wit. The family moved inhis infancy to an old-fashioned handsome "Wilton House, " adjoiningclosely to the town, but standing amid spacious park-like grounds, and inhabited in after years by Kinglake's younger brotherHamilton, who succeeded his uncle in the medical profession, andpassed away, amid deep and universal regret, in 1898. Here duringthe thirties Sydney Smith was a frequent and a welcome visitor; itwas in answer to old Mrs. Kinglake that he uttered his audaciousmot on being asked if he would object, as a neighbouring clergymanhad done, to bury a Dissenter: "Not bury Dissenters? I shouldlike to be burying them all day!"

Taunton was an innutrient foster-mother, arida nutrix, for suchyoung lions as the Kinglake brood. Two hundred years before it hadbeen a prosperous and famous place, its woollen and kersey trades, with the population they supported, ranking it as eighth in orderamong English towns. Its inhabitants were then a gallant race, republican in politics, Puritan in creed. Twice besieged by Goringand Lumford, it had twice repelled the Royalists with loss. It wasthe centre of Monmouth's rebellion and of Jeffrey's vengeance; thesuburb of Tangier, hard by its ancient castle, still recalls thetime when Colonel Kirke and his regiment of "Lambs" were quarteredin the town. But long before the advent of the Kinglakes its gloryhad departed; its manufactures had died out, its society becomePhilistine and bourgeois--"little men who walk in narrow ways"--while from pre-eminence in electoral venality among Englishboroughs it was saved only by the near proximity of Bridgewater. Anoted statesman who, at a later period, represented it inParliament, used to say that by only one family besides Dr. Hamilton Kinglake's could he be received with any sense of socialor intellectual equality. 

Not much, however, of Kinglake's time was given to his native town:he was early sent to the Grammar School at Ottery St. Mary's, the"Clavering" of "Pendennis, " whose Dr. Wapshot was George Coleridge, brother of the poet. He was wont in after life to speak of thistime with bitterness; a delicate child, he was starved oninsufficient diet; and an eloquent passage in "Eothen" depicts hisintellectual fall from the varied interests and expandingenthusiasm of liberal home teaching to the regulation gerund-grinding and Procrustean discipline of school. "The dismal changeis ordained, and then--thin meagre Latin with small shreds andpatches of Greek, is thrown like a pauper's pall over all yourearly lore; instead of sweet knowledge, vile, monkish, doggerelgrammars and graduses, dictionaries and lexicons, and horrible oddsand ends of dead languages are given you for your portion, and downyou fall, from Roman story to a three-inch scrap of 'ScriptoresRomani, '--from Greek poetry, down, down to the cold rations of'Poetae Graeci, ' cut up by commentators, and served out by school-masters!"

At Eton--under Keate, as all readers of "Eothen" know--he wascontemporary with Gladstone, Sir F. Hanmer, Lords Canning andDalhousie, Selwyn, Shadwell. He wrote in the "Etonian, " createdand edited by Mackworth Praed; and is mentioned in Praed's poem onSurly Hall as

"Kinglake, dear to poetry, And dear to all his friends. "

Dr. Gatty remembers his "determined pale face"; thinks that he madehis mark on the river rather than in the playing fields, being agood oar and swimmer. His great friend at school was Savile, the"Methley" of his travels, who became successively Lord Pollingtonand Earl of Mexborough. The Homeric lore which Methley exhibitedin the Troad, is curiously illustrated by an Eton story, that in apugilistic encounter with Hoseason, afterwards an Indian Cavalryofficer, while the latter sate between the rounds upon his second'sknee, Savile strutted about the ring, spouting Homer. 

Kinglake entered at Trinity, Cambridge, in 1828, among anexceptionally brilliant set--Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, JohnSterling, Trench, Spedding, Spring Rice, Charles Buller, Maurice, Monckton Milnes, J. M. Kemble, Brookfield, Thompson. With none ofthem does he seem in his undergraduate days to have been intimate. Probably then, as afterwards, he shrank from camaraderie, sharedByron's distaste for "enthusymusy"; naturally cynical and self-contained, was repelled by the spiritual fervour, incessant logicalcollision, aggressive tilting at abuses of those young "Apostles, "already

"Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years wouldyield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, "

waxing ever daily, as Sterling exhorted, "in religion andradicalism. " He saw life differently; more practically, if moreselfishly; to one rhapsodizing about the "plain living and highthinking" of Wordsworth's sonnet, he answered: "You know that youprefer dining with people who have good glass and china and plentyof servants. " For Tennyson's poetry he even then felt admiration;quotes, nay, misquotes, in "Eothen, " from the little known"Timbuctoo"; {3} and from "Locksley Hall"; and supplied longafterwards an incident adopted by Tennyson in "Enoch Arden, "

"Once likewise in the ringing of his earsThough faintly, merrily--far and far away -He heard the pealing of his parish bells, " {4}

from his own experience in the desert, when on a Sunday, amidoverpowering heat and stillness, he heard the Marlen bells ofTaunton peal for morning church. {5}

In whatever set he may have lived he made his mark at Cambridge. Lord Houghton remembered him as an orator at the Union; andspeaking to Cambridge undergraduates fifty years later, afterenumerating the giants of his student days, Macaulay, Praed, Buller, Sterling, Merivale, he goes on to say: "there, too, wereKemble and Kinglake, the historian of our earliest civilization andof our latest war; Kemble as interesting an individual as ever wasportrayed by the dramatic genius of his own race; Kinglake, as bolda man-at-arms in literature as ever confronted public opinion. " Weknow, too, that not many years after leaving Cambridge he received, and refused, a solicitation to stand as Liberal representative ofthe University in Parliament. He was, in fact, as far as any ofhis contemporaries from acquiescing in social conventionalisms andshams. To the end of his life he chafed at such restraint: "whenpressed to stay in country houses, " he writes in 1872, "I have hadthe frankness to say that I have not discipline enough. "Repeatedly he speaks with loathing of the "stale civilization, " the"utter respectability, " of European life; {6} longed with all hissoul for the excitement and stir of soldiership, from which hisshortsightedness debarred him; {7} rushed off again and again intoforeign travel; set out immediately on leaving Cambridge, in 1834, for his first Eastern tour, "to fortify himself for the business oflife. " Methley joined him at Hamburg, and they travelled byBerlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, to Semlin, where his book begins. Lord Pollington's health broke down, and he remained to winter atCorfu, while Kinglake pursued his way alone, returning to Englandin October, 1835. {8} On his return he read for the Chancery Baralong with his friend Eliot Warburton, under Bryan Procter, aCommissioner of Lunacy, better known by his poet-name, BarryCornwall; his acquaintance with both husband and wife ripening intolife-long friendship. Mrs. Procter is the "Lady of Bitterness, "cited in the "Eothen" Preface. As Anne Skepper, before hermarriage, she was much admired by Carlyle; "a brisk witty prettyishclear eyed sharp tongued young lady"; and was the intimate, amongmany, especially of Thackeray and Browning. In epigrammatic powershe resembled Kinglake; but while his acrid sayings were emittedwith gentlest aspect and with softest speech; while, like Byron'sLambro:

"he was the mildest mannered manThat ever scuttled ship or cut a throat, With such true breeding of a gentleman, You never could divine his real thought, "

her sarcasms rang out with a resonant clearness that enforced andaggravated their severity. That two persons so strongly resemblingeach other in capacity for rival exhibition, or for mutualexasperation, should have maintained so firm a friendship, oftensurprised their acquaintance; she explained it by saying that sheand Kinglake sharpened one another like two knives; that, in thewords of Petruchio, "Where two raging fires meet together, They do consume the thing that feeds their fury. "

Crabb Robinson, stung by her in a tender place, his boastfuliterative monologues on Weimar and on Goethe, said that of all menProcter ought to escape purgatory after death, having tasted itsfulness here through living so many years with Mrs. Procter; "thehusbands of the talkative have great reward hereafter, " saidRudyard Kipling's Lama. And I have been told by those who knew thepair that there was truth as well as irritation in the taunt. "Agraceful Preface to 'Eothen, '" wrote to me a now famous lady who asa girl had known Mrs. Procter well, "made friendly companyyesterday to a lonely meal, and brought back memories of Mr. Kinglake's kind spoiling of a raw young woman, and of the wit, theegregious vanity, the coarseness, the kindness, of that hard oldworldling our Lady of Bitterness. " In the presence of one man, Tennyson, she laid aside her shrewishness: "talking with AlfredTennyson lifts me out of the earth earthy; a visit to Farringfordis like a retreat to the religious. " A celebrity in London forfifty years, she died, witty and vigorous to the last, in 1888. "You and I and Mr. Kinglake, " she says to Lord Houghton, "are allthat are left of the goodly band that used to come to St. John'sWood; Eliot Warburton, Motley, Adelaide, Count de Verg, Chorley, Sir Edwin Landseer, my husband. " "I never could write a book, " shetells him in another letter, "and one strong reason for not doingso was the idea of some few seeing how poor it was. Venables wasone of the few; I need not say that you were one, and Kinglake. "

Kinglake was called to the Chancery Bar, and practised apparentlywith no great success. He believed that his reputation as a writerstood in his way. When, in 1845, poor Hood's friends were helpinghim by gratuitous articles in his magazine, "Hood's Own, " Kinglakewrote to Monckton Milnes refusing to contribute. He will send 10pounds to buy an article from some competent writer, but will nothimself write. "It would be seriously injurious to me if theauthor of 'Eothen' were affiched as contributing to a magazine. Myfrailty in publishing a book has, I fear, already hurt me in myprofession, and a small sin of this kind would bring on me stilldeeper disgrace with the solicitors. "

Twice at least in these early years he travelled. "Mr. Kinglake, "writes Mrs. Procter in 1843, "is in Switzerland, reading Rousseau. "And in the following year we hear of him in Algeria, accompanyingSt. Arnaud in his campaign against the Arabs. The mingled interestand horror inspired in him by this extra-ordinary man findsexpression in his "Invasion of the Crimea" (ii. 157). A few, avery few survivors, still remember his appearance and manners inthe forties. The eminent husband of a lady, now passed away, whoin her lifetime gave Sunday dinners at which Kinglake was alwayspresent, speaks of him as SENSITIVE, quiet in the presence of noisypeople, of Brookfield and the overpowering Bernal Osborne; likingtheir company, but never saying anything worthy of remembrance. Apopular old statesman, still active in the House of Commons, recalls meeting him at Palmerston, Lord Harrington's seat, wherewas assembled a party in honour of Madame Guiccioli and her secondhusband, the Marquis de Boissy, and tells me that he attachedhimself to ladies, not to gentlemen, nor ever joined in generaltattle. Like many other famous men, he passed through a period ofshyness, which yielded to women's tactfulness only. From the firstthey appreciated him; "if you were as gentle as your friendKinglake, " writes Mrs. Norton reproachfully to Hayward in thesulks. Another coaeval of those days calls him handsome--anepithet I should hardly apply to him later--slight, not tall, sharpfeatured, with dark hair well tended, always modishly dressed afterthe fashion of the thirties, the fashion of Bulwer's exquisites, orof H. K. Browne's "Nicholas Nickleby" illustrations; leaving on allwho saw him an impression of great personal distinction, yet withan air of youthful ABANDON which never quite left him: "He waspale, small, and delicate in appearance, " says Mrs. Simpson, NassauSenior's daughter, who knew him to the end of his life; while Mrs. Andrew Crosse, his friend in the Crimean decade, cites his finelychiselled features and intellectual brow, "a complexion bloodlesswith the pallor not of ill-health, but of an old Greek bust. "

CHAPTER II--"EOTHEN"

"Eothen" appeared in 1844. Twice, Kinglake tells us, he hadessayed the story of his travels, twice abandoned it under a senseof strong disinclination to write. A third attempt was induced byan entreaty from his friend Eliot Warburton, himself projecting anEastern tour; and to Warburton in a characteristic preface thenarrative is addressed. The book, when finished, went the round ofthe London market without finding a publisher. It was offered toJohn Murray, who cited his refusal of it as the great blunder ofhis professional life, consoling himself with the thought that hisfather had equally lacked foresight thirty years before indeclining the "Rejected Addresses"; he secured the copyright lateron. It was published in the end by a personal friend, Ollivier, ofPall Mall, Kinglake paying 50 pounds to cover risk of loss; evenworse terms than were obtained by Warburton two years afterwardsfrom Colburn, who owned in the fifties to having cleared 6, 000pounds by "The Crescent and the Cross. " The volume was an octavoof 418 pages; the curious folding-plate which forms thefrontispiece was drawn and coloured by the author, and was comparedby the critics to a tea-tray. In front is Moostapha the Tatar; thetwo foremost figures in the rear stand for accomplished Mysseri, whom Kinglake was delighted to recognize long afterwards as aflourishing hotel keeper in Constantinople, and Steel, theYorkshire servant, in his striped pantry jacket, "looking out forgentlemen's seats. " Behind are "Methley, " Lord Pollington, in abroad-brimmed hat, and the booted leg of Kinglake, who modestly hidhis figure by a tree, but exposed his foot, of which he was veryproud. Of the other characters, "Our Lady of Bitterness" was Mrs. Procter, "Carrigaholt" was Henry Stuart Burton of Carrigaholt, County Clare. Here and there are allusions, obvious at the time, now needing a scholiast, which have not in any of the reprints beenexplained. In their ride through the Balkans they talked of oldEton days. "We bullied Keate, and scoffed at Larrey Miller andOkes; we rode along loudly laughing, and talked to the graveServian forest as though it were the Brocas clump. " {9} Keaterequires no interpreter; Okes was an Eton tutor, afterwards Provostof King's. Larrey or Laurie Miller was an old tailor in Keate'sLane who used to sit on his open shop-board, facing the street, amark for the compliments of passing boys; as frolicsome youngstersin the days of Addison and Steele, as High School lads in the daysof Walter Scott, were accustomed to "smoke the cobler. " The Brocaswas a meadow sacred to badger-baiting and cat-hunts. The badgerswere kept by a certain Jemmy Flowers, who charged sixpence for each"draw"; Puss was turned out of a bag and chased by dogs, her chancebeing to reach and climb a group of trees near the river, known asthe "Brocas Clump. " Of the quotations, "a Yorkshiremanhippodamoio" (p. 35) is, I am told, an obiter dictum of Sir FrancisDoyle. "Striving to attain, " etc. (p. 33), is taken not quitecorrectly from Tennyson's "Timbuctoo. " Our crew were "a solemncompany" (p. 57) is probably a reminiscence of "we were a gallantcompany" in "The Siege of Corinth. " For "'the own armchair' of ourLyrist's 'Sweet Lady'" Anne'" (p. 161) see the poem, "My ownarmchair" in Barry Cornwall's "English Lyrics. " "Proud Marie ofAnjou" (p. 96) and "single-sin--" (p. 121), are unintelligible; afriend once asked Kinglake to explain the former, but received foranswer, "Oh! that is a private thing. " It may, however, have beena pet name for little Marie de Viry, Procter's niece, and the chereamie of his verse, whom Eothen must have met often at his friend'shouse. The St. Simonians of p. 83 were the disciples of Comte deSt. Simon, a Parisian reformer in the latter part of the eighteenthcentury, who endeavoured to establish a social republic based oncapacity and labour. Pere Enfantin was his disciple. The "mysticmother" was a female Messiah, expected to become the parent of anew Saviour. "Sir Robert once said a good thing" (p. 93), referspossibly to Sir Robert Peel, not famous for epigram, whose one goodthing is said to have been bestowed upon a friend before Croker'sportrait in the Academy. "Wonderful likeness, " said the friend, "it gives the very quiver of the mouth. " "Yes, " said Sir Robert, "and the arrow coming out of it. " Or it may mean Sir RobertInglis, Peel's successor at Oxford, more noted for his genialkindness and for the perpetual bouquet in his buttonhole at a datewhen such ornaments were not worn, than for capacity to conceiveand say good things. In some mischievous lines describing theOxford election where Inglis supplanted Peel, Macaulay wrote

"And then said all the Doctors sitting in the Divinity School, Not this man, but Sir Robert'--now Sir Robert was a fool. "

But in the fifth and later editions Kinglake altered it to "SirJohn. "

By a curious oversight in the first two editions (p. 41) Jove wasmade to gaze on Troy from Samothrace; it was rightly altered toNeptune in the third; and "eagle eye of Jove" in the followingsentence was replaced by "dread Commoter of our globe. " The phrase"a natural Chiffney-bit" (p. 109), I have found unintelligible to-day through lapse of time even to professional equestrians andstable-keepers. Samuel Chiffney, a famous rider and trainer, wasborn in 1753, and won the Derby on Skyscraper in 1789. He managedthe Prince of Wales's stud, was the subject of discreditableinsinuations, and was called before the Jockey Club. Nothing wasproved against him, but in consequence of the fracas the Princesevered his connection with the Club and sold his horses. Chiffneyinvented a bit named after him; a curb with two snaffles, whichgave a stronger bearing on the sides of a horse's mouth. His rulein racing was to keep a slack rein and to ride a waiting race, notcalling on his horse till near the end. His son Samuel, whofollowed him, observed the same plan; from its frequent success theterm "Chiffney rush" became proverbial. In his ride through thedesert (p. 169) Kinglake speaks of his "native bells--the innocentbells of Marlen, that never before sent forth their music beyondthe Blaygon hills. " Marlen bells is the local name for the finepeal of St. Mary Magdalen, Taunton. The Blaygon, more commonlycalled the Blagdon Hills, run parallel with the Quantocks, andbetween them lies the fertile Vale of Taunton Deane. "Damascus, "he says, on p. 245, "was safer than Oxford"; and adds a note on Mr. Everett's degree which requires correction. It is true that anattempt was made to non-placet Mr. Everett's honorary degree in theOxford Theatre in 1843 on the ground of his being a Unitarian; nottrue that it succeeded. It was a conspiracy by the young lions ofthe Newmania, who had organized a formidable opposition to thedegree, and would have created a painful scene even if defeated. But the Proctor of that year, Jelf, happened to be the most-hatedofficial of the century; and the furious groans of undergraduatedispleasure at his presence, continuing unabated for three-quartersof an hour, compelled Wynter, the Vice-Chancellor, to break up theAssembly, without recitation of the prizes, but not withoutconferring the degrees in dumb show: unconscious Mr. Everettsmilingly took his place in red gown among the Doctors, the Vice-Chancellor asserting afterwards, what was true in the letter thoughnot in the spirit, that he did not hear the non-placets. So whileEverett was obnoxious to the Puseyites, Jelf was obnoxious to theundergraduates; the cannonade of the angry youngsters drowned theodium of the theological malcontents; in the words of Bombastes:

"Another lion gave another roar, And the first lion thought the last a bore. "

The popularity of "Eothen" is a paradox: it fascinates byviolating all the rules which convention assigns to viaticnarrative. It traverses the most affecting regions of the world, and describes no one of them: the Troad--and we get only hischildish raptures over Pope's "Homer's Iliad"; Stamboul--and herecounts the murderous services rendered by the Golden Horn to theAssassin whose serail, palace, council chamber, it washes; Cairo--but the Plague shuts out all other thoughts; Jerusalem--butPilgrims have vulgarized the Holy Sepulchre into a BartholomewFair. He gives us everywhere, not history, antiquities, geography, description, statistics, but only Kinglake, only his ownsensations, thoughts, experiences. We are told not what the desertlooks like, but what journeying in the desert feels like. Frommorn till eve you sit aloft upon your voyaging camel; the risensun, still lenient on your left, mounts vertical and dominant; youshroud head and face in silk, your skin glows, shoulders ache, Arabs moan, and still moves on the sighing camel with hisdisjointed awkward dual swing, till the sun once more descendingtouches you on the right, your veil is thrown aside, your tent ispitched, books, maps, cloaks, toilet luxuries, litter your spread-out rugs, you feast on scorching toast and "fragrant" {10} tea, sleep sound and long; then again the tent is drawn, the comfortspacked, civilization retires from the spot she had for a singlenight annexed, and the Genius of the Desert stalks in. 

Herein, in these subjective chatty confidences, is part of thespell he lays upon us: while we read we are IN the East: otherbooks, as Warburton says, tell us ABOUT the East, this is the Eastitself. And yet in his company we are always ENGLISHMEN in theEast: behind Servian, Egyptian, Syrian, desert realities, is abackground of English scenery, faint and unobtrusive yet persistentand horizoning. In the Danubian forest we talk of past school-days. The Balkan plain suggests an English park, its trees plantedas if to shut out "some infernal fellow creature in the shape of anew-made squire"; Jordan recalls the Thames; the Galilean Lake, Windermere; the Via Dolorosa, Bond Street; the fresh toast of thedesert bivouac, an Eton breakfast; the hungry questing jackals arethe place-hunters of Bridgewater and Taunton; the Damascus gardens, a neglected English manor from which the "family" has been longabroad; in the fierce, dry desert air are heard the "Marlen" bellsof home, calling to morning prayer the prim congregation in far-offSt. Mary's parish. And a not less potent factor in the charm isthe magician's self who wields it, shown through each passingenvironment of the narrative; the shy, haughty, imperious Solitary, "a sort of Byron in the desert, " of cultured mind and eloquentspeech, headstrong and not always amiable, hiding sentiment withcynicism, yet therefore irresistible all the more when hecondescends to endear himself by his confidence. He meets thePlague and its terrors like a gentleman, but shows us, through thevicarious torments of the cowering Levantine that it was courageand coolness, not insensibility, which bore him through it. A foeto marriage, compassionating Carrigaholt as doomed to travel"Vetturini-wise, " pitying the Dead Sea goatherd for his ugly wife, revelling in the meek surrender of the three young men whom he sees"led to the altar" in Suez, he is still the frank, susceptible, gallant bachelor, observantly and critically studious of femalecharms: of the magnificent yet formidable Smyrniotes, eyes, brow, nostrils, throat, sweetly turned lips, alarming in their latentcapacity for fierceness, pride, passion, power: of the Moslemwomen in Nablous, "so handsome that they could not keep up theiryashmaks:" of Cypriote witchery in hair, shoulder-slope, tempestuous fold of robe. He opines as he contemplates the plain, clumsy Arab wives that the fine things we feel and say of womenapply only to the good-looking and the graceful: his memorywanders off ever and again to the muslin sleeves and bodices and"sweet chemisettes" in distant England. In hands sensual andvulgar the allusions might have been coarse, the dilatingsunseemly; but the "taste which is the feminine of genius, " theself-respecting gentleman-like instinct, innocent at once andplayful, keeps the voluptuary out of sight, teaches, as Imogentaught Iachimo, "the wide difference 'twixt amorous andvillainous. " Add to all these elements of fascination the unbrokenluxuriance of style; the easy flow of casual epigram or negligentsimile;--Greek holy days not kept holy but "kept stupid"; the mulewho "forgot that his rider was a saint and remembered that he was atailor"; the pilgrims "transacting their salvation" at the HolySepulchre; the frightened, wavering guard at Satalieh, notshrinking back or running away, but "looking as if the pack werebeing shuffled, " each man desirous to change places with hisneighbour; the white man's unresisting hand "passed round like aclaret jug" by the hospitable Arabs; the travellers dripping from aBalkan storm compared to "men turned back by the Humane Society asbeing incurably drowned. " Sometimes he breaks into a canter, as inthe first experience of a Moslem city, the rapturous escape fromrespectability and civilization; the apostrophe to the Stamboulsea; the glimpse of the Mysian Olympus; the burial of the poor deadGreek; the Janus view of Orient and Occident from the Lebanonwatershed; the pathetic terror of Bedouins and camels on entering awalled city; until, once more in the saddle, and winding throughthe Taurus defiles, he saddens us by a first discordant note, thenote of sorrow that the entrancing tale is at an end. 

Old times return to me as I handle the familiar pages. To theschoolboy six and fifty years ago arrives from home a birthdaygift, the bright green volume, with its showy paintings of theimpaled robbers and the Jordan passage; its bulky Tatar, toweringhigh above his scraggy steed, impressed in shining gold upon itscover. Read, borrowed, handed round, it is devoured and discussedwith fifth form critical presumption, the adventurous audacityarresting, the literary charm not analyzed but felt, the vividpersonality of the old Etonian winged with public schoolfreemasonry. Scarcely in the acquired insight of all theintervening years could those who enjoyed it then more keenlyappreciate it to-day. Transcendent gift of genius! to gladdenequally with selfsame words the reluctant inexperience of boyhoodand the fastidious judgment of maturity. Delightful self-accountant reverence of author-craft! which wields full knowledgeof a shaddock-tainted world, yet presents no licence to theprurient lad, reveals no trail to the suspicious moralist. 

CHAPTER III--LITERARY AND PARLIAMENTARY LIFE

Kinglake returned from Algiers in 1844 to find himself famous bothin the literary and social world; for his book had gone throughthree editions and was the universal theme. Lockhart opened to himthe "Quarterly. " "Who is Eothen?" wrote Macvey Napier, editor ofthe "Edinburgh, " to Hayward: "I know he is a lawyer and highlyrespectable; but I should like to know a little more of hispersonal history: he is very clever but very peculiar. "Thackeray, later on, expresses affectionate gratitude for hispresence at the "Lectures on English Humourists":- "it goes to aman's heart to find amongst his friends such men as Kinglake andVenables, Higgins, Rawlinson, Carlyle, Ashburton and Hallam, Milman, Macaulay, Wilberforce, looking on kindly. " He dines out inall directions, himself giving dinners at Long's Hotel. "Did youever meet Kinglake at my rooms?" writes Monckton Milnes toMacCarthy: "he has had immense success. I now rather wish I hadwritten his book, WHICH I COULD HAVE DONE--AT LEAST NEARLY. " Weare reminded of Charles Lamb--"here's Wordsworth says he could havewritten Hamlet, IF HE HAD HAD A MIND. " "A delightful Voltaireanvolume, " Milnes elsewhere calls it. 

"Eothen" was reviewed in the "Quarterly" by Eliot Warburton. "Other books, " he says, "contain facts and statistics about theEast; this book gives the East itself in vital actual reality. Itsstyle is conversational; or the soliloquy rather of a manconvincing and amusing himself as he proceeds, without reverencefor others' faith, or lenity towards others' prejudices. It is areal book, not a sham; it equals Anastasius, rivals 'Vathek;' itsterseness, vigour, bold imagery, recall the grand style of Fullerand of South, to which the author adds a spirit, freshness, delicacy, all his own. " Kinglake, in turn, reviewed "The Crescentand the Cross" in an article called "The French Lake. " From acordial notice of the book he passes to a history of Frenchambition in the Levant. It was Bonaparte's fixed idea to become anOriental conqueror--a second Alexander: Egypt in his grasp, hewould pass on to India. He sought alliance against the Englishwith Tippoo Saib, and spent whole days stretched upon maps of Asia. He was baffled, first at Aboukir, then at Acre; but the partitionof Turkey at Tilsit showed that he had not abandoned his design. To have refrained from seizing Egypt after his withdrawal was apolitical blunder on the part of England. 

By far the most charming of Kinglake's articles was a paper on the"Rights of Women, " in the "Quarterly Review" of December, 1844. Grouping together Monckton Milnes's "Palm Leaves, " Mrs. Poole's"Sketch of Egyptian Harems, " Mrs. Ellis's "Women and Wives ofEngland, " he produced a playful, lightly touched, yet sincerelyconstructed sketch of woman's characteristics, seductions, attainments; the extent and secret of her fascination and herdeeper influence; her defects, foibles, misconceptions. He wasgreatly vexed to learn that his criticism of "Palm Leaves" wasconsidered hostile, and begged Warburton to explain. His praise, he said, had been looked upon as irony, his bantering taken toexpress bitterness. Warburton added his own conviction that thenotice was tributary to Milnes's fame, and Milnes accepted theexplanation. But the chief interest of this paper lies in thebeautiful passage which ends it. "The world must go on its ownway, for all that we can say against it. Beauty, though it beamsover the organization of a doll, will have its hour of empire; themost torpid heiress will easily get herself married; but the wifewhose sweet nature can kindle worthy delights is she that brings toher hearth a joyous, hopeful, ardent spirit, and that subtle powerwhose sources we can hardly trace, but which yet so irradiates ahome that all who come near are filled and inspired by a deep senseof womanly presence. We best learn the unsuspected might of abeing like this when we try the weight of that sadness which hangslike lead upon the room, the gallery, the stairs, where once herfootstep sounded, and now is heard no more. It is not less theenergy than the grace and gentleness of this character that worksthe enchantment. Books can instruct, and books can exalt andpurify; beauty of face and beauty of form will come with brightpictures and statues, and for the government of a household hiredmenials will suffice; but fondness and hate, daring hopes, livelyfears, the lust of glory and the scorn of base deeds, sweetcharity, faithfulness, pride, and, chief over all, the impetuouswill, lending might and power to feeling:- these are the rib of theman, and from these, deep veiled in the mystery of her veryloveliness, his true companion sprang. A being thus ardent willoften go wrong in her strenuous course; will often alarm, sometimesprovoke; will now and then work mischief and even perhaps grievousharm; but she will be our own Eve after all; the sweet-speakingtempter whom heaven created to be the joy and the trouble of thispleasing anxious existence; to shame us away from the hiding-placesof a slothful neutrality, and lead us abroad in the world, menmilitant here on earth, enduring quiet, content with strife, andlooking for peace hereafter. " {11} Beautiful words indeed! howcame the author of a tribute so caressingly appreciative, soeloquently sincere, to remain himself outside the gates ofParadise? how could the pen which in the Crimean chapter on theHoly Shrines traced so exquisitely the delicate fancifulness ofpurest sexual love, perpetrate that elaborate sneer over thebachelor obsequies of Carrigaholt--"the lowly grave, that is theend of man's romantic hopes, has closed over all his rich fanciesand all his high aspirations: he is utterly married. " {12}

"Gai, gai, mariez vous, Mettez vous dans la misere!Gai, gai, mariez vous, Mettez vous la corde au cou!" {13}

There is generally a good reason for prolonged celibacy, a reasonwhich the bachelor as generally does not betray: Kinglake remainedsingle, by his own account, because he had observed that womenalways prefer other men to their own husbands. Yet, althoughunmarried, perhaps because unmarried, he heartily admired manyclever women; formed with them sedate but genuine friendships, thel'amour sans ailes, sometimes called "Platonic" by persons who havenot read Plato; found in their illogical clear-sightedness, intheir [Greek word which cannot be reproduced], to use the master'sown untranslatable phrase, a titillating stimulus which he missedin men. He thought that the Church should ordain priestesses aswell as priests, the former to be the Egerias of men, as the latterare the Pontiffs of women. And Lady Gregory tells us, that whenattacked by gout, he wished for the solace of a lady doctor, andwrote to one asking if gout were beyond her scope. She answered:"Dear Sir, --Gout is not beyond my scope, but men are. "

In 1854 he accompanied Lord Raglan to the Crimea. "I had heard, "writes John Kenyon, "of Kinglake's chivalrous goings on. We weresaying yesterday that though he might write a book, he was amongthe last men to go that he might write a book. He is wild aboutmatters military, if so calm a man is ever wild. " He had hoped togo in an official position as non-combatant, but this was refusedby the authorities. His friend, Lord Raglan, whose acquaintance hehad made while hunting with the Duke of Beaufort's hounds, took himas his private guest. Arrested for a time at Malta by an attack offever, he joined our army before hostilities began, rode with LordRaglan's staff at the Alma fight, likening the novel sensation tothe excitement of fox-hunting; and accompanied the chief in hisvisit of tenderness to the wounded when the fight was over. Throughout the campaign the two were much together, as we shallnotice more fully later on. There are often slight butunmistakable signs of Kinglake's presence as spectator and auditorof Lord Raglan's deeds and words; {14} his affection and reverencefor the great general animate the whole; in outward composure andlatent strength the two men resembled each other closely. The bookis, in fact, a history of Lord Raglan's share in the campaign;begun in 1856 at the request of Lady Raglan, the narrative endswhen the "Caradoc" with the general's body on board steams out ofthe bay, "Farewell" flying at her masthead, the Russian batteries, with generous recognition, ceasing to fire till the ship was out ofsight. "Lord Raglan is dead, " said Kinglake as vol. Viii. Was sentto press, "and my work is finished. "

Ten years were to elapse before the opening volumes should appear;and meanwhile he entered parliament for the borough of Bridgewater, which had rejected him in 1852. His colleague was Colonel CharlesJ. Kemyss Tynte, member of a family which local influence andlavish expenditure had secured in the representation of the townfor nearly forty years. Catechized as to his political creed, heanswered: "I call myself an advanced Liberal; but I decline to gointo parliament as the pledged adherent of Lord Palmerston or anyother Liberal. " He adds, in response to a further question: "I ambelieved to be the author of 'Eothen. '" He broke down in hismaiden speech; but recovered himself in a later effort, and spoke, not unfrequently, on subjects then important, now forgotten; on theoutrage of the "Charles et George"; the capture of the Sardinian"Cagliari" by the Neapolitans on the high seas; our attitudetowards the Paris Congress of 1857; while in 1858 he led the revoltagainst Lord Palmerston's proposal to amend the Conspiracy Laws indeference to Louis Napoleon; in 1860 vigorously denounced theannexation of Savoy and Nice; and in 1864 moved the amendment toMr. Disraeli's motion in the debate on the Address, which wascarried by 313 to 295. His feeble voice and unimpressive mannerprevented him from becoming a power in the House; but his speecheswhen read are full, fluent, and graceful; the late Sir RobertPeel's remarkable harangue against the French Emperor in the courseof an earlier debate was taken, as he is said to have owned, mainlyfrom a speech by Kinglake, delivered so indistinctly that thereporters failed to catch it, but audible to Sir Robert who sateclose beside him. 

With his constituents he was more at ease and more effective. Hisseat for Bridgewater was challenged at a general election by HenryPadwick, a hanger-on to Disraeli and a well-known bookmaker on theturf, who, with an Irish Colonel Westbrook, tried to cajole theelectors and their wives by extravagant compliments to the town, its neighbourhood, its denizens; a place celebrated, as CaptainCostigan said of Chatteris, "for its antiquitee, its hospitalitee, the beautee of its women, the manly fidelitee, generositee, andjovialitee of its men. " Kinglake met them on their own ground. Inhis flowery speeches the romance of Sinai and Palestine fadedbefore the glories of the little Somersetshire town. What was theJordan by comparison with the Parrett? Could Libanus or Anti-Libanus vie with the Mendip and the Quantock Hills? The viewsurveyed by Monmouth from St. Mary's Tower on the Eve of Sedgemoortranscended all the panoramas which the Holy Land or Asia Minorcould present! But his more serious orations were worthy of hishigher fame. In the panic of 1858, when the address of the Frenchcolonels to the Emperor, beseeching to be led against England, hadcreated serious alarm on this side the Channel, he went down toBridgewater to enlighten the West of England. "Why, " he asked, "dowe fear invasion? The population of France is peaceful, the'turnip-soup Jacques Bonhomme' is peaceful, the soldiers of theline are peaceful. Why are we anxious? Because there sits in hischamber at the Tuileries a solitary moody man. He is deeplyinterested in the science and the art of war; he told me once thathe was contemplating a history of all the great battles everfought. He holds absolute control over vast resources both in menand money; he has shown that he can attack successfully at a fewweeks' notice the greatest European military power: gout orindigestion may at any moment convert him into an enemy ofourselves. Until France returns to parliamentary government thisdanger is imminent and continual. Our safety lies in our fleet, and in that alone. If for twenty-four hours only the Channel weredenuded of our ships in time of war with France, they would hurlupon our shores a force we could not meet. Such denudation must bemade impossible; our fleet so augmented and strengthened as toprovide impregnably at all times for home defence no less than forforeign necessities. Our danger, I repeat, lies in no hostility onthe part of the French army, in no ferocity on the part of theFrench people, in no PRESENT unfriendliness on the part of theFrench Emperor: it arises from the fact that a revolutionarygovernment exists in France, which has armed one man, under thename of Emperor--Dictator rather, I should say--with a power socolossal, that until such power is moderated, as all power ought tobe, no neighbour can be entirely safe. " This speech was reproducedin "The Times. " Montalembert read it with admiration. "Who, " heasked Sir M. E. Grant Duff, "who is Mr. Kinglake?" "He is theauthor of 'Eothen. '" "And what is 'Eothen?' I never heard of it. "

He found great enjoyment in parliamentary life, but was in 1868unseated on petition for bribery on the part of his agents. Blue-books are not ordinarily light reading; but the Report of theCommissioners appointed to inquire into the alleged corruptpractices at Bridgewater is not only a model of terse and vigorouscomposition, but to persons with a sense of humour, inclined toview human irregularities and inconsistencies in a sportive ratherthan an indignant light, it is a sustained and diverting comedy. Of the constituency, both before and after the Reform Bill, three-fourths, the Commissioners artlessly inform us, sought and receivedbribes; of the remainder, all but a few individuals negotiated andgave the bribes. So in every election, both sides bribed avowedly;if a luckless Purity Candidate appeared, he was promptly informedthat "Mr. Most" would win the seat: highest bribes decided eachelection, further bribes averted petitions. When once a desperateriot took place and the ringleaders were tried at Quarter Sessions, the jury were bribed to acquit, in the teeth of the Chairman'ssumming up. At last, in 1868, the defeated candidate petitioned;blue-book literature was enriched by a remarkable report, and theborough was disfranchised. Of course Kinglake had only himself tothank; if a gentleman chooses to sit for a venal borough, and tointrust his interests to a questionable agent, he must, in thewords of Mrs. Gamp, "take the consequences of sech a sitiwation. "The consequences to him were loss of his present seat, andpermanent exclusion from Parliament. 

He was keenly mortified by his ostracism, speaking of himself everafter as "a political corpse. " Thenceforward he gave his wholeenergy to literary work, to occasional reviews, mainly to his"Invasion of the Crimea. " In the "Edinburgh" I think he neverwrote, cordially disliking its then editor. A fine notice in"Blackwood" of Madame de Lafayette's life was from his pen. Surveying the Revolutionary Terror, he points out thatRobespierre's opponents were in numbers overwhelmingly strong, butlacked cohesion and leaders; while the Mountain, dominated by asingle will, was legally armed with power to kill, and went onkilling. The Church played into Robespierre's hands by enforcingPatience and Resignation as the highest Christian virtues, confusing the idea of submission to Heaven with the idea ofsubmission to a scoundrel. Had Hampden been a Papist he would havepaid ship-money. He wrote also in "The Owl, " a brilliant littlemagazine edited by his friend Laurence Oliphant; a "SocietyJournal, " conducted by a set of clever well-to-do young bachelorsliving in London, addressed like the "Pall Mall Gazette, " in"Pendennis, " "to the higher circles of society, written bygentlemen for gentlemen. " When the expenses of production werepaid, the balance was spent on a whitebait dinner at Greenwich, andon offerings of flowers and jewellery to the lady guests invited. It came to an end, leaving no successor equally brilliant, high-toned, wholesome; its collected numbers figure sometimes at aformidable price in sales and catalogues. {15}

The first two volumes of his "Crimea" had appeared in 1863. Theywere awaited with eager expectation. An elaborate history of thewar had been written by a Baron de Bazancourt, condemned as unfairand unreliable by English statesmen, and severely handled in ourreviews. So the wish was felt everywhere for some record lessephemeral, which should render the tale historically, andcounteract Bazancourt's misstatements. "I hear, " wrote the Duke ofNewcastle, "that Kinglake has undertaken the task. He has a nobleopportunity of producing a text-book for future history, but toaccomplish this it must be STOICALLY impartial. "

The beauty of their style, the merciless portraiture of the SecondEmpire, the unparalleled diorama of the Alma fight, combined togain for these first four-and-twenty chapters an immediate vogue asemphatic and as widely spread as that which saluted the opening ofMacaulay's "History. " None of the later volumes, though highlyprized as battle narratives, quite came up to these. The politicaland military conclusions drawn provoked no small bitterness; hiscousin, Mrs. Serjeant Kinglake, used to say that she met sometimeswith almost affronting coldness in society at the time, under theimpression that she was A. W. Kinglake's wife. Russians were, perhaps unfairly, dissatisfied. Todleben, who knew and lovedKinglake well, pronounced the book a charming romance, not ahistory of the war. Individuals were aggrieved by its notice ofthemselves or of their regiments; statesmen chafed under thescientific analysis of their characters, or at the publication ofofficial letters which they had intended but not required to belooked upon as confidential, and which the recipients had in allinnocence communicated to the historian. Palmerstonians, acceptingwith their chief the Man of December, were furious at the exposureof his basenesses. Lucas in "The Times" pronounced the workperverse and mischievous; the "Westminster Review" branded it asreactionary. "The Quarterly, " in an article ascribed to A. H. Layard, condemned its style as laboured and artificial; as pallingfrom the sustained pomp and glitter of the language; as wearisomefrom the constant strain after minute dissection; declaring itfurther to be "in every sense of the word a mischievous book. ""Blackwood, " less unfriendly, surrendered itself to the beauty ofthe writing; "satire so studied, so polished, so remorseless, andwithal so diabolically entertaining, that we know not where inmodern literature to seek such another philippic. "

Reeve, editor of the "Edinburgh, " wished Lord Clarendon to attackthe book; he refused, but offered help, and the resulting articlewas due to the collaboration of the pair. It caused a prolongedcoolness between Reeve and Kinglake, who at last ended the quarrelby a characteristic letter: "I observed yesterday that my malice, founded perhaps upon a couple of words, and now of three years'duration, had not engendered corresponding anger in you; and if myimpression was a right one, I trust we may meet for the future onour old terms. "

On the other hand, the "Saturday Review, " then at the height of itsrepute and influence, vindicated in a powerful article Kinglake'struth and fairness; and a pamphlet by Hayward, called "Mr. Kinglakeand the Quarterlies, " amused society by its furious onslaught uponthe hostile periodicals, laid bare their animus, and exposed theirmisstatements. "If you rise in this tone, " he began, in words ofLord Ellenborough when Attorney-General, "I can speak as loudly andemphatically: I shall prosecute the case with all the liberalityof a gentleman, but no tone or manner shall put me down. " And thedissentient voices were drowned in the general chorus ofadmiration. German eulogy was extravagant; French Republicanismwas overjoyed; Englishmen, at home and abroad, read eagerly for thefirst time in close and vivid sequence events which, when spreadover thirty months of daily newspapers, few had the patience tofollow, none the qualifications to condense. Macaulay tells usthat soon after the appearance of his own first volumes, a Mr. Crump from America offered him five hundred dollars if he wouldintroduce the name of Crump into his history. An English gentlemanand lady, from one of our most distant colonies, wrote to Kinglakea jointly signed pathetic letter, intreating him to cite in hispages the name of their only son, who had fallen in the Crimea. Heat once consented, and asked for particulars--manner, time, place--of the young man's death. The parents replied that they need nottrouble him with details; these should be left to the historian'skind inventiveness: whatever he might please to say inembellishment of their young hero's end they would gratefullyaccept. 

Unlike most authors, from Moliere down to Dickens, he never readaloud to friends any portion of the unpublished manuscript; never, except to closest intimates, spoke of the book, or toleratedinquiry about it from others. When asked as to the progress of avolume he had in hand, he used to say, "That is really a matter onwhich it is quite out of my power even to inform myself"; and Iremember how once at a well-selected dinner-party in the country, whither he came in good spirits and inclined to talk his best, asecond-hand criticism on his book by a conceited parson, theofficial and incongruous element in the group, stiffened him intopersistent silence. All England laughed, when Blackwood's"Memoirs" saw the light, over his polite repulse of the kindlyofficious publisher, who wished, after his fashion, to criticiseand finger and suggest. "I am almost alarmed, as it were, at thenotion of receiving suggestions. I feel that hints from you mightbe so valuable and so important, it might be madness to ask youbeforehand to abstain from giving me any; but I am anxious for youto know what the dangers in the way of long delay might be, theresult of even a few slight and possibly most useful suggestions. . . . You will perhaps (after what I have said) think it best not toset my mind running in a new path, lest I should take to re-writing. " Note, by the way, the slovenliness of this epistle, ascoming from so great a master of style; that defect characterizesall his correspondence. He wrote for the Press "with all hissinging robes about him"; his letters were unrevised and brief. Mrs. Simpson, in her pleasant "Memories, " ascribes to him theeloquence du billet in a supreme degree. I must confess that ofmore than five hundred letters from his pen which I have seen onlysix cover more than a single sheet of note-paper, all are alikecareless and unstudied in style, though often in mattercharacteristic and informing. "I am not by nature, " he would say, "a letter-writer, and habitually think of the uncertainty as to whomay be the reader of anything that I write. It is my fate, as awriter of history, to have before me letters never intended for myeyes, and this has aggravated my foible, and makes me a wretchedcorrespondent. I should like very much to write letters gracefullyand easily, but I can't, because it is contrary to my nature. " "Ihave got, " he writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use ofthe pen; to ask me to write letters is like asking a lame man towalk; it is not, as horse-dealers say, 'the nature of the beast. 'When others TALK to me charmingly, my answers are short, faltering, incoherent sentences; so it is with my writing. " "You, " he says toanother lady correspondent, "have the pleasant faculty of easy, pleasant letter-writing, in which I am wholly deficient. "

In fact, the claims of his Crimean book, which compelled himlatterly to refuse all other literary work, gave little time forcorrespondence. Its successive revisions formed his daily taskuntil illness struck him down. Sacks of Crimean notes, labelledthrough some fantastic whim with female Christian names--the Helenbag, the Adelaide bag, etc. --were ranged round his room. Hisworking library was very small in bulk, his habit being to cut outfrom any book the pages which would be serviceable, and to flingthe rest away. So, we are told, the first Napoleon, bindingvolumes for his travelling library, shore their margins to thequick, and removed all prefaces, title-pages, and other superfluousleaves. So, too, Edward Fitzgerald used to tear out of his booksall that in his judgment fell below their authors' higheststandard, retaining for his own delectation only the quintessentialremnants. Vols. III. And IV. Appeared in 1868, V. In 1875, VI. In1880, VII. And VIII. In 1887; while a Cabinet Edition of the wholein nine volumes was issued continuously from 1870 to 1887. Ourattempt to appreciate the book shall be reserved for anotherchapter. 

CHAPTER IV--"THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA"

Was the history of the Crimean War worth writing? Not as amagnified newspaper report, --that had been already done--but as apermanent work of art from the pen of a great literary expert?Very many of us, I think, after the lapse of fifty years, feelcompelled to say that it was not. The struggle represented nogreat principles, begot no far-reaching consequences. It was notinspired by the "holy glee" with which in Wordsworth's sonnetLiberty fights against a tyrant, but by the faltering boldness, thedrifting, purposeless unresolve of statesmen who did not desire it, and by the irrational violence of a Press which did not understandit. It was not a necessary war; its avowed object would have beenattained within a few weeks or months by bloodless Europeanconcert. It was not a glorious war; crippled by an incompatiblealliance and governed by the Evil Genius who had initiated it forpersonal and sordid ends, it brought discredit on baffled generalsin the field, on Crown, Cabinet, populace, at home. It was not afruitful war; the detailed results purchased by its squandered lifeand treasure lapsed in swift succession during twenty sequentyears, until the last sheet of the treaty which secured them wascontemptuously torn up by Gortschakoff in 1870. But a right senseof historical proportion is in no time the heritage of the many, and is least of all attainable while the memory of a campaign isfresh. On Englishmen who welcomed home their army in 1855, thestrife from which shattered but victorious it had returned, loomedas epoch-making and colossal, as claiming therefore permanentrecord from some eloquent artist of attested descriptive power. Soon the report gained ground that the destined chronicler wasKinglake, and all men hailed the selection; yet the sceptic who inlooking back to-day decries the greatness of the campaign mayperhaps no less hesitate to approve the fitness of its chosenannalist. His fame was due to the perfection of a single book; heranked as a potentate in STYLE. But literary perfection, whetherin prose or poetry, is a fragile quality, an afflatus irregular, independent, unamenable to orders; the official tributes of aLaureate we compliment at their best with the northern farmer'sverdict on the pulpit performances of his parson:

"An' I niver knaw'd wot a mean'd but I thow't a 'ad summut to saay, And I thowt a said wot a owt to 'a said an' I comed awaay. "

Set to compile a biography from thirty years of "Moniteurs, " theauthor of Waverley, like Lord Chesterfield's diamond pencil, produced one miracle of dulness; it might well be feared thatKinglake's volatile pen, when linked with forceful feeling andbound to rigid task-work, might lose the charm of casual epigram, easy luxuriance, playful egotism, vagrant allusion, whichestablished "Eothen" as a classic. On the other hand, he had beenfor twenty years conversant with Eastern history, geography, politics; was, more than most professional soldiers, an adept inmilitary science; had sate in the centre of the campaign as itsgeneral's guest and comrade; was intrusted, above all, by LadyRaglan with the entire collection of her husband's papers: herwish, implied though not expressed, that they should be utilizedfor the vindication of the great field-marshal's fame, he acceptedas a sacred charge; her confidence not only governed his decisionto become the historian of the war, but imparted a personalcharacter to the narrative. 

In order, therefore, rightly to appreciate "The Invasion of theCrimea, " we must look upon it as a great prose epic; its argument, machinery, actors, episodes, subordinate to a predominant everpresent hero. In its fine preamble Lord Raglan sits enthroned highabove generals, armies, spectators, conflicts; on the quality ofhis mind the fate of two great hosts and the fame of two greatnations hang. He checks St. Arnaud's wild ambition; overrules thewaverings of the Allies; against his own judgment, but in dutifulobedience to home instruction carries out the descent upon the OldFort coast. The successful achievement of the perilous flank marchis ascribed to the undivided command which, during forty-eighthours, accident had conferred upon him. From his presence incouncil French and English come away convinced and strengthened;his calm in action imparts itself to anxious generals and panic-stricken aides-de-camp. Through Alma fight, from the high knoll towhich happy audacity had carried him he rides the whirlwind anddirects the storm. In the terrible crisis which sees the Russiansbreaking over the crest of Inkerman, in the ill-fated attack on theGreat Redan where Lacy Yea is killed, his apparent freedom fromanxiety infects all around him and achieves redemption fromdisaster. {16} We see him in his moments of vexation anddiscomfiture; dissembling pain and anger under the stress of theFrench alliance, galled by Cathcart's disobedience, by the loss ofthe Light Brigade, by Lord Panmure's insulting, querulous, unfounded blame. We read his last despatch, framed with wontedgrace and clearness; then--on the same day--we see the outwornframe break down, and follow mournfully two days later theafflicting details of his death. As the generals and admirals ofthe allied forces stand round the dead hero's form, as the palledbier, draped in the flag of England, is carried from headquartersto the port, as the "Caradoc, " steaming away with her honouredfreight, flies out her "Farewell" signal, the narrative abruptlyends. The months of the siege which still remained might be leftto other hands or lapse untold. Troy had still to be taken whenHector died; but with his funeral dirge the Iliad closed, the blindbard's task was over:

"Such honours Ilion to her hero paid, And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade. "

If the framework of the narrative is epic, its treatment isfrequently dramatic. The "Usage of Europe" in the opening pages isnot so much a record as a personification of unwritten Law: theGreat Eltchi tramps the stage with a majesty sometimes bordering onfustian. Dramatic is the story of the sleeping Cabinet. "It wasevening--a summer evening"--one thinks of a world-famous passage inthe "De Corona"--when the Duke of Newcastle carried to RichmondLodge the fateful despatch committing England to the war. "Beforethe reading of the Paper had long continued, all the members of theCabinet except a small minority were overcome with sleep"; the fewwho remained awake were in a quiet, assenting frame of mind, andthe despatch "received from the Cabinet the kind of approval whichis awarded to an unobjectionable Sermon. " Not less dramatic isNolan's death; the unearthly shriek of the slain corpse erect insaddle with sword arm high in air, as the dead horseman rode stillseated through the 13th Light Dragoons; the "Minden Yell" of the20th driving down upon the Iakoutsk battalion; the sustained andscathing satire on the Notre Dame Te Deum for the Boulevardmassacre. A simple dialogue, a commonplace necessary act, isstaged sometimes for effect. "Then Lord Stratford apprised theSultan that he had a private communication to make to him. Thepale Sultan listened. " . . . "Whose was the mind which had freshlycome to bear upon this part of the fight? Sir Colin Campbell wassitting in his saddle, the veteran was watching his time. " . . . "The Emperor Nicholas was alone in his accustomed writing-room. Hetook no counsel; he rang a bell. Presently an officer of his staffstood before him. To him he gave his order for the occupation ofthe Principalities. " This overpasses drama--it is melodrama. 

To the personal element which pervades the volumes great part oftheir charm is due. The writer never obtrudes himself, but leaveshis presence to be discerned by the touches which attest an eye-witness. Through his observant nearness we watch the Chief'sdemeanour and hear his words; see him "turn scarlet with shame andanger" when the brutal Zouaves carry outrage into the friendlyCrimean village, witness his personal succour of the woundedRussian after Inkerman, hear his arch acceptance of the Frenchcourtesy, so careful always to yield the post of danger to theEnglish; his "Go quietly" to the excited aide-de-camp; {17} hisgood-humoured reception of the scared and breathless messenger fromD'Aurelle's brigade; the "five words" spoken to Airey commandingthe long delayed advance across the Alma; the "tranquil low voice"which gave the order rescuing the staff from its unforeseenencounter with the Russian rear. He records Codrington's leap onhis grey Arab into the breast-work of the Great Redoubt; Lacy Yea'spassionate energy in forcing his clustered regiment to open out;Miller's stentorian "Rally" in reforming the Scots Greys after theBalaclava charge; Clarke losing his helmet in the same charge, andcreating amongst the Russians, as he plunged in bareheaded amongsttheir ranks, the belief that he was sheltered by some Sataniccharm. He notes on the Alma the singular pause of sound maintainedby both armies just before the cannonade began; the first death--ofan artilleryman riding before his gun--a new sight to nine-tenthsof those who witnessed it; {18} the weird scream of explodingshells as they rent the air around. He crossed the Alma closebehind Lord Raglan, cantering after him to the summit of aconspicuous hillock in the heart of the enemy's position, whencethe mere sight of plumed English officers scared the Russiangenerals, and, followed soon by guns and troops, governed the issueof the fight. The general's manner was "the manner of a manenlivened by the progress of a great undertaking without beingrobbed of his leisure. He spoke to me, I remember, about hishorse. He seemed like a man who had a clue of his own and knew hisway through the battle. " When the last gun was fired Kinglakefollowed the Chief back, witnessed the wild burst of cheeringaccorded to him by the whole British army, a manifestation, LordBurghersh tells us, which greatly distressed his modesty--and dinedalone with him in his tent on the evening of the eventful day. 

If Lord Raglan was the Hector of the Crimean Iliad, its Agamemnonwas Lord Stratford: "king of men, " as Stanley called him in hisfuneral sermon at Westminster; king of distrustful home Cabinets, nominally his masters, of scheming European embassies, of insultingRussian opponents, of presumptuous French generals, of false andfleeting Pashas (Le Sultan, c'est Lord Stratford, said St. Arnaud), of all men, whatever their degree, who entered his ambassadorialpresence. Ascendency was native to the man; while yet in his teenswe find Etonian and Cambridge friends writing to him deferentiallyas to a critic and superior. At four and twenty he became Ministerto a Court manageable only by high-handed authority and menace. Heowned, and for the most part controlled, a violent temper; it brokebounds sometimes, to our great amusement as we read to-day, to theoccasional discomfiture of attaches or of dependents, {19} to theabject terror of Turkish Sublimities who had outworn his patience. But he knew when to be angry; he could pulverize by fiery outbreaksthe Reis Effendi and his master, Abdu-l-Mejid; but asPlenipotentiary to the United States he could "quench the terror ofhis beak, the lightning of his eye, " disarming by his formalcourtesy and winning by his obvious sincerity the suspicious andirritable John Quincy Adams. When Menschikoff once insulted him, seeing that a quarrel at that moment would be fatal to his purpose, he pretended to be deaf, and left the Russian in the belief thathis rude speech had not been heard. Enthroned for the sixth timein Constantinople, at the dangerous epoch of 1853, he could pointto an unequalled diplomatic record in the past; to the Treaty ofBucharest, to reunion of the Helvetic Confederacy shattered byNapoleon's fall, to the Convention which ratified Greekindependence, to the rescue from Austrian malignity of theHungarian refugees. 

His conduct of the negotiations preceding the Crimean War is justlycalled the cornerstone of his career: at this moment of hisgreatness Kinglake encounters and describes him: through thebrilliant chapters in his opening volume, as more fully later onthrough Mr. Lane Poole's admirable biography, the Great Eltchi isknown to English readers. He moves across the stage with a majestysometimes bordering on what Iago calls bombast circumstance; drumsand trumpets herald his every entrance; now pacing the shadygardens of the Bosphorus, now foiling, "in his grand quiet way, "the Czar's ferocious Christianity, or torturing his baffledambassador by scornful concession of the points which he formallydemanded but did not really want; or crushing with "thin, tight, merciless lips and grand overhanging Canning brow" the presumptuousFrench commander who had dared to enter his presence with a plotfor undermining England's influence in the partnership of thecampaign. Was he, we ask as we end the fascinating description, was he, what Bright and the Peace Party proclaimed him to be, thecause of the Crimean War? The Czar's personal dislike to him--acaprice which has never been explained {20}--exasperated no doubtto the mind of Nicholas the repulse of Menschikoff's demands; butthat the precipitation of the prince and his master had put theRussian Court absolutely in the wrong is universally admitted. Ithas been urged against him that his recommendation of the famousVienna Note to the Porte was official merely, and allowed thewatchful Turks to assume his personal approbation of their refusal. It may be so; his biographer does not admit so much: but it isobvious that the Turks were out of hand, and that no pressure fromLord Stratford could have persuaded them to accept the Note. Further, the "Russian Analysis of the Note, " escaping shortlyafterwards from the bag of diplomatic secrecy, revealed to ourCabinet the necessity of those amendments to the Note on which thePorte had insisted. And lastly, the passage of the Dardanelles byour fleet, which more than any overt act made war inevitable, wasordered by the Government at home against Lord Stratford's counsel. Between panic-stricken statesmen and vacillating ambassadors, LordClarendon on one side, M. De la Cour on the other, the Eltchistands like Tennyson's promontory of rock, "Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned. "

Napoleon at St. Helena attributed much of his success in the fieldto the fact that he was not hampered by governments at home. Everymodern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must haveenvied him. Kinglake's mordant pen depicts with felicity andcompression the men of Downing Street, who without militaryexperience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over-ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General. We have Aberdeen, deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horrorof war bringing war to pass; Gladstone, of too subtle intellect andtoo lively conscience, "a good man in the worst sense of the term";Palmerston, above both in keenness of instinct and in strength ofwill, meaning war from the first, and biding his time to insure it;Newcastle, sanguine to the verge of rashness, loyally adherent toLord Raglan while governed by his own judgment, distrustful understress of popular clamour; Panmure, ungenerous, rough-tongued, violent, churlish, yet not malevolent--"a rhinoceros rather than atiger"--hurried by subservience to the newspaper Press intoinjustice which he afterwards recognized, yet did but sullenlyrepair. We see finally that dominant Press itself, personified inthe all-powerful Delane, a potentate with convictions at onceflexible and vehement; forceful without spite and merciless withoutmalignity; writing no articles, but evoking, shaping, revising all. The French commanders were not hampered by the muzzled Paris Press, which had long since ceased to utter any but dictated sentiments;they suffered even more disastrously from the imperiousinterference of the Tuileries. Canrobert's inaction, mutability, sudden alarms, flagrant breaches of faith, were inexplicable untillong afterwards, when the fall of the Empire disclosed the secretinstructions--disloyal to his allies and ruinous to the campaign--by which Louis Napoleon shackled his unhappy General. InCanrobert's successor, Pelissier, he met his match. For the firsttime a strong man headed the French army. Short of stature, bull-necked and massive in build, with grey hair, long dark moustache, keen fiery eyes, his coarse rough speech masking tested brain powerand high intellectual culture, he brought new life to the benumbedFrench army, new hope to Lord Raglan. The duel between theresolute general and the enraged Emperor is narrated with a touchcomedy. All that Lord Raglan desired, all that the Emperorforbade, Pelissier was stubbornly determined to accomplish; thesiege should be pressed at once, the city taken at any cost, theexpedition to Kertch resumed. Once only, under torment of theEmperor's reproaches and the Minister at War's remonstrances, hisresolution and his nerve gave way; eight days of failing judgmentissued in the Karabelnaya defeat, the severest repulse which thetwo armies had sustained; but the paralysis passed away, he showedhimself once more eager to act in concert with the Englishgeneral;--when the long-borne strain of disappointment and anxietysapped at last Lord Raglan's vital forces, and the hard fierceFrenchman stood for upwards of an hour beside his dead colleague'sbedside, "crying like a child. "

The lieutenants of Lord Raglan in the Crimea have long since passedaway, but in artistic epical presentment they retain their placearound him. Airey, his right hand from the first disembarkation atKalamita Bay, strong-willed, decisive, ardent, thrusting awaysuspense and doubt, untying every knot, is vindicated by his Chiefagainst the Duke of Newcastle's wordy inculpation in the severestdespatch perhaps ever penned to his official superior by a soldierin the field. Colin Campbell, with glowing face, grey kindlingeye, light, stubborn, crisping hair, leads his Highland brigade tipthe hill against the Vladimir columns, till "with the sorrowfulwail which bursts from the brave Russian infantry when they have tosuffer loss, " eight battalions of the enemy fall back in retreat. Lord Lucan, tall, lithe, slender, his face glittering and panther-like in moments of strenuous action, wins our hearts as he wonKinglake's, in spite of the mis-aimed cleverness and presumptuousself-confidence which always criticised and sometimes disobeyed theorders of his Chief. General Pennefather, "the grand old boy, " hisexulting radiant face flashing everywhere through the smoke, hisresonant innocuous oaths roaring cheerily down the line, sustainsall day the handful of our troops against the tenfold masses of theenemy. Generous and eloquent are the notices of Korniloff andTodleben, the great sailor and the great engineer, the soul and thebrain of the Sebastopol defence. The first fell in the siege, thesecond lived to write its history, to become a valued friend ofKinglake, to explore and interpret in his company long afterwardsthe scenes of struggle; his book and his personal guidance gave tothe historian what would otherwise have been unattainable, a clearknowledge of the conflict as viewed from within the town. 

The pitched battlefields of the campaign were three, Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman. The Alma chapter is the most graphic, forthere the fight was concentrated, offering to a spectator by LordRaglan's side a coup d'oeil of the entire action. The French wereby bad generalship virtually wiped out; for Bosquet crossed theriver too far to the right, Canrobert was afraid to move withoutartillery, Prince Napoleon and St. Arnaud's reserves were jammedtogether in the bottom of the valley. We see, as though on thespot, the advance, irregular and unsupported, of Codrington'sbrigade, their dash into the Great Redoubt and subsequentdisorderly retreat; the enemy checked by the two guns from LordRaglan's knoll and by the steadiness of the Royal Fusiliers; therepulse of the Scots Fusiliers and the peril which hung over theevent; then the superb advance of Guards and Highlanders up thehill, thin red line against massive columns, which determinedfinally the action. 

The interest of the Balaclava fight centres in the two historiccavalry charges. Here again, from his position on the hill above, Kinglake witnessed both; the first, clear in smokeless air, thesecond lost in the volleying clouds which filled the valley ofdeath. He saw the enormous mass of Russian cavalry, 3, 500 sabres, flooding like an avalanche down the hill with a momentum whichScarlett's tiny squadron could not for a moment have resisted;their unexplained halt, the three hundred seizing the opportunityto strike, digging individually into the Russian ranks, the scarletstreaks visibly cleaving the dense grey columns. Inwedged andsurrounded, in their passionate blood frenzy, with ceaseless playof whirling sword, with impetus of human and equestrian weight andstrength, the red atoms hewed their way to the Russian rear, turned, worked back, emerged, reformed; while the 4th and 5thDragoons, the Royals, the 1st Inniskillings, dashed upon the amazedcolumn right, left, front, till the close-locked mass headed slowlyup the hill, ranks loosened, horsemen turned and galloped off, abeaten straggling herd. Eight minutes elapsed from the time whenScarlett gave the word to charge, until the moment when theRussians broke: we turn from the fifty describing pages, breathless as though we had ridden in the melley; if the episodehas no historical parallel, the narrative is no less unique. Ourgreatest contemporary poet tried to celebrate it; his lines aretame and unexciting beside Kinglake's passionate pulsing rhapsody. Its effect upon the Russian mind was lasting; out of all their vastarray hardly a single squadron was ever after able to keep itsground against the approach of English cavalry; while but forCathcart's obstinacy and Lucan's temper it would have issued in theimmediate recapture of the Causeway Heights. 

The Charge of the Light Brigade, on the other hand, while itstirred the imagination of the poet, shocked the militaryconscience of the historian. He saw in it with agony, as LordRaglan saw, as the French spectators saw, no act of heroicsacrifice, but a needless, fruitless massacre. "You have lost theLight Brigade, " was his commander's salutation to Lord Lucan. "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre, " was the oft-quotedreproof of Bosquet. The "someone's blunder, " the sullen perversityin misconception which destroyed the flower of our cavalry, hasfaded from men's memories; the splendour of the deed remains. Itis well to recover salvage from the irrevocable, to voice and toprolong the deep human interest attaching to death encountered atthe call of duty; that is the poet's task, and brilliantly it hasbeen discharged. Its other side, the paean of sorrow for a self-destructive exploit, the dirge on lives wantonly thrown away, thedeep blame attaching to the untractableness which sent them totheir doom, was the task of the historian, and that too has beenfaithfully and lastingly accomplished. 

Inkerman was the most complicated of the battles; the chapterswhich record it are correspondingly taxing to the reader. Morethan once or twice they must be scanned, with close study of theirlucid maps, before the intricate sequences are fairly anddistinctively grasped; the sixth book of Thucydides, a standingterror to young Greek students, is light and easy reading comparedwith the bulky sixth volume of Kinglake. The hero of the day wasPennefather; he maintained on Mount Inkerman a combat of picketsreinforced from time to time, while around him through nine hourssuccessive attacks of thousands were met by hundreds. Thedisparity of numbers was appalling. At daybreak 40, 000 Russiantroops advanced against 3, 000 English and were repulsed. Threehours later 19, 000 fresh troops came on, passed through a gap inour lines, which Cathcart's disobedience, atoned for presently byhis death, had left unoccupied, and seized the heights behind us;they too were dispossessed, but our numbers were dwindling and ourstrength diminishing. The Home Ridge, key of our position, wasnext invaded by 6, 000 Russians; the 7th St. Leger, linked with afew Zouaves and with 200 men of our 77th Regiment, French andEnglish for once joyously intermingled, hurled them back. It wasthe crisis of the fight; Canrobert's interposition would havedetermined it; but he sullenly refused to move. Finally, led bytwo or three daring young officers, 300 of our wearied troopscharged the Russian battery which had tormented us all day; theirartillerymen, already flinching under the galling fire of two 18-pounders, brought up by Lord Raglan's foresight early in themorning, hastily withdrew their guns, and the battle was won. Itwas a day of Homeric rushes; Burnaby, with only twenty men tosupport him, rescuing the Grenadier Guards' colours; the onset ofthe 20th with their "Minden Yell"; Colonel Daubeny with two dozenfollowers cleaving the Russian trunk column at the barrier; Waddy'sdash at the retreating artillery train, foiled only by the presenceand the readiness of Todleben. One marvels in reading how theEnglish held their own; their victory against so tremendous odds isascribed by the historian to three conditions; the hampering of theenemy by his crowded masses; the slaughter amongst his officersearly in the fight, which deprived their men of leadership; aboveall, the dense mist which obscured from him the fewness of hisopponents. If Canrobert with his fresh troops had followed inpursuit, the Russian's retreat must have been turned into a routand his artillery captured; if on the following day he hadassaulted the Flagstaff Bastion, Sebastopol, Todleben owned, musthave fallen. He would do neither; his hesitancy and apparentfeebleness have already been explained; but to it, and to thesinister influence which held his hand, were due the subsequentmiseries of the Crimean winter. 

But the epic muse exacted from Kinglake, as from Virgil longbefore, the portrayal not only of generals and of battles, but oftwo great monarchs, each in his own day conspicuously andabsolutely prominent--the Czar Nicholas and the Emperor Napoleon:

"dicam horrida belia, Dicam acies, actosque animis in funera REGES. "

His handling of them is characteristic. Few men living then couldhave approached either without a certain awe, their "genius"rebuked, --like Mark Antony's, in the presence of Caesars soimposing and so mighty; Kinglake's attitude towards both is theattitude of cold analysis. 

In the opening of the fifties the Czar Nicholas was the mostpowerful man then living in the world. He ruled over sixty millionsubjects whose loyalty bordered on worship: he had in arms amillion soldiers, brave and highly trained. In the troubles of1848 he had stood scornful and secure amid the overthrow ofsurrounding thrones; and the entire impact of his vast and well-organized Empire was subject to his single will; whatever he choseto do he did. Of stern and unrelenting nature, of active andwidely ranging capacity for business, of gigantic stature andcommanding presence, he inspired almost universal terror; and yethis friendliness had when he pleased a glow and franknessirresistible in its charm. Readers of Queen Victoria's early lifewill recall the alarm she felt at his sudden proposal to visitWindsor in 1844, the fascination which his presence exercised onher when he became her guest. He professed to embody his standardof conduct in the English word "gentleman"; his ideal of humangrandeur was the character of the Duke of Wellington. It was anevil destiny that betrayed this high-minded man into crooked ways;that made England sacrifice the stateliest among her ancientfriends to an ignoble and crime-stained adventurer; that poured outblood and treasure for no public advantage and with no permanentresult; that first humiliated, then slew with broken heart the manwho had been so great, and who is still regarded by survivingRussians who knew his inner life and had seen him in his gentlemood with passionate reverence and affection. 

Kinglake's description of "Prince Louis Bonaparte, " of hischaracter, his accomplices, his policy, his crimes, is perhapsunequalled in historical literature; I know not where else to lookfor a vivisection so scientific and so merciless of a greatpotentate in the height of his power. With scrutiny polite, impartial, guarded, he lays bare the springs of a consciencelessnature and the secrets of a crime-driven career; while for thecombination of precise simplicity with exhaustive synopsis, themasquerading of moral indignation in the guise of mocking laughter, the loathing of a gentleman for a scoundrel set to the measure notof indignation but of contempt, we must go back to the refinedinsolence, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of Voltaire. He had well known Prince Napoleon in his London days, had beenattracted by him as a curiosity--"a balloon man who had twicefallen from the skies and yet was still alive"--had divined themental power veiled habitually by his blank, opaque, wooden looks, had listened to his ambitious talk and gathered up the utterancesof his thoughtful, long-pondering mind, had quarrelled with himfinally and lastingly over rivalry in the good graces of a woman. {21} He saw in him a fourfold student; of the art of war, of themind of the first Napoleon, of the French people's character, ofthe science by which law may lend itself to stratagem and become aweapon of deceit. 

The intellect of this strange being was subject to an uncertaintyof judgment, issuing in ambiguity of enterprise, and giving animpression of well-kept secrecy, due often to the fact that dividedby mental conflict he had no secret to tell. He understood truth, but under the pressure of strong motive would invariably deceive. He sometimes, out of curiosity, would listen to the voice ofconscience, and could imitate neatly on occasion the scrupulouslanguage of a man of honour; but the consideration that one of twocourses was honest, and the other not, never entered into hismotives for action. He was bold in forming plots, and skilful inconducting them; but in the hour of trial and under the confront ofphysical danger he was paralysed by constitutional timidity. Hisgreat aim in life was to be conspicuous--digito monstrarier--coupled with a theatric mania which made scenic effects andsurprises essential to the eminence he craved. 

Handling this key to his character, Kinglake pursues him into hisDecember treason, contrasts the consummate cleverness of hisschemes with the faltering cowardice which shrank, like Macbeth'sambition, from "the illness should attend them, " and which, but forthe stronger nerve of those behind him, would have caused hiscollapse, at Paris as at Strasburg and Boulogne, in contact withthe shock of action. It is difficult now to realize the commotioncaused by this fourteenth chapter of Kinglake's book. The Emperorwas at the summit of his power, fresh from Austrian conquest, viewed with alarm by England, whose rulers feared his strength andwere distrustful of his friendship. Our Crown, our government, oursociety, had condoned his usurpation; he had kissed the Queen'scheek, bent her ministers to his will, ridden through her capital atriumphant and applauded guest. And now men read not only acynical dissection of his character and disclosure of his earlyfoibles, but the hideous details of his deceit and treachery, thephases of cold-blooded massacre and lawless deportation by which heemptied France of all who hesitated to enrol themselves as hisaccomplices or his tools. Forty years have passed since theterrible indictment was put forth; down to its minutest allegationit has been proved literally true; the arch criminal has fallenfrom his estate to die in disgrace, disease, exile. When we talkto-day with cultivated Frenchmen of that half-forgotten epoch, andof the book which bared its horrors, we are met by their responseof ardent gratitude to the man who joined to passionate hatred ofiniquity surpassing capacity for denouncing it; their avowal thatwith all its frequent exposure of their military shortcomings anddepreciation of their national character, no English chronicle ofthe century stands higher in their esteem than the history of thewar in the Crimea. 

The close of the book is grim and tragic in the main, the stir ofgallant fights exchanged for the dreary course of siege, intrenchment, mine and countermine. We have the awful winter onthe heights, the November hurricane, the foiled bombardments, thecruel blunder of the Karabelnaya assault, the bitter naturaldiscontent at home, the weak subservience of our government tomisdirected clamour, the touching help-fraught advent of the LadyNurses: then, just as better prospects dawn, the Chief's collapseand death. From the morrow of Inkerman to the end, through nofault of his, the historian's chariot wheels drag. More and moreone sees how from the nature of the task, except for the flush ofcontemporary interest then, except by military students now, it isnot a work to be popularly read; the exhausted interest of itssubject swamps the genius of its narrator. Scattered through itsmore serious matter are gems with the old "Eothen" sparkle, ofperiphrasis, aphorism, felicitous phrase and pregnant epithet. Such is the fine analogy between the worship of holy shrines andthe lover's homage to the spot which his mistress's feet have trod;such France's tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arablaying his verminous burnous upon an ant-hill; the apt quotationfrom the Psalms to illustrate the on-coming of the Guards; thedemeanour of horses in action; the course of a flying cannon-ball;the two ponderous troopers at the Horse Guards; Tom Tower and hisCroats landing stores for our soldiers from the "Erminia. " Oragain, we have the light clear touches of a single line; "thedecisiveness and consistency of despotism"--"the fractional andvolatile interests in trading adventure which go by the name ofShares"--"the unlabelled, undocketed state of mind which shallenable a man to encounter the Unknown"--"the qualifying words whichcorrect the imprudences and derange the grammatical structure of aQueen's Speech": but these are islets in the sea of narrative, not, as in "Eothen, " woof-threads which cross the warp. 

To compare an idyll with an epic, it may be said, is like comparinga cameo with a Grecian temple: be it so; but the temple falls inruins, the cameo is preserved in cabinets; and it is possible thata century hence the Crimean history will be forgotten, while"Eothen" is read and enjoyed. The best judges at the timepronounced that as a lasting monument of literary force the workwas over refined: "Kinglake, " said Sir George Cornewall Lewis, "tries to write better than he can write"; quoting, perhapsunconsciously, the epigram of a French art critic a hundred yearsbefore-- Il cherche toujours a faire mieux qu'il ne fait. {22} Helavished on it far more pains than on "Eothen": the proof sheetswere a black sea of erasures, intercalations, blots; the originalchaotic manuscript pages had to be disentangled by a calligraphicTaunton bookseller before they could be sent to press. Thisfastidiousness in part gained its purpose; won temporary success;gave to his style the glitter, rapidity, point, effectiveness, of apungent editorial; went home, stormed, convinced, vindicated, damaged, triumphed: but it missed by excessive polish thereposeful, unlaboured, classic grace essential to the highest art. Over-scrupulous manipulation of words is liable to the "defect ofits qualities"; as with unskilful goldsmiths of whom old Latinwriters tell us, the file goes too deep, trimming away more of thefirst fine minting than we can afford to lose. Ruskin hasexplained to us how the decadence of Gothic architecture commencedthrough care bestowed on window tracery for itself instead of as anavenue or vehicle for the admission of light. Read "words" fortracery, "thought" for light, and we see how inspiration avengesitself so soon as diction is made paramount; artifice, whichdemands and misses watchful self-concealment, passes intomannerism; we have lost the incalculable charm of spontaneity. Comparison of "Eothen" with the "Crimea" will I think exemplifythis truth. The first, to use Matthew Arnold's imagery, is Attic, the last has declined to the Corinthian; it remains a great, anamazingly great production; great in its pictorial force, itsomnipresent survey, verbal eloquence, firm grasp, marshalleddelineation of multitudinous and entangled matter; but it is notunique amongst martial records as "Eothen" is unique amongst booksof travel: it is through "Eothen" that its author has soared intoa classic, and bids fair to hold his place. And, apart from themerit of style, great campaigns lose interest in a third, if not ina second generation; their historical consequence effaced throughlapse of years; their policy seen to have been nugatory ormischievous; their chronicles, swallowed greedily at the birth likeSaturn's progeny, returning to vex their parent; relegated finallyto an honourable exile in the library upper shelves, where theyhold a place eyed curiously, not invaded:

"devouredAs fast as they are made, forgot as soonAs done. . . . To have done, is to hangQuite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, In monumental mockery. "

CHAPTER V--MADAME NOVIKOFF

The Cabinet Edition of "The Invasion of the Crimea" appeared in1877, shortly after the Servian struggle for independence, whicharoused in England universal interest and sympathy. Kinglake hadheard from the lips of a valued lady friend the tragic death-taleof her brother Nicholas Kireeff, who fell fighting as a volunteeron the side of the gallant Servian against the Turk: and, muchmoved by the recital, offered to honour the memory of the dead heroin the Preface to his forthcoming edition. He kept his word; madesympathetic reference to M. Kireeff in the opening of his Preface;but passed in pursuance of his original design to a hostileimpeachment of Russia, its people, its church, its ruler. This wasan error of judgment and of feeling; and the lady, reading themanuscript, indignantly desired him to burn the whole rather thancommit the outrage of associating her brother's name with an attackon causes and personages dear to him as to herself. Kinglakelistened in silence, then tendered to her a crayon rouge, beggingher to efface all that pained her. She did so; and, diminished bythree-fourths of its matter, the Preface appears in Vol. I. Of theCabinet Edition. The erasure was no slight sacrifice to an authorof Kinglake's literary sensitiveness, mutilating as it did theintegrity of a carefully schemed composition, and leaving visiblethe scar. He sets forth the strongly sentimental and romantic sideof Russian temperament. Love of the Holy Shrines begat the war of1853, racial ardour the war of 1876. The first was directed by asingle will, the second by national enthusiasm; yet the mind ofNicholas was no less tossed by a breathless strife of opposingdesires and moods than was Russia at large by the struggle betweenPanslavism and statesmanship. Kinglake paints vividly the imposingfigure of the young Kireeff, his stature, beauty, bravery, thewhite robe he wore incarnadined by death-wounds, his body capturedby the hateful foes. He goes on to tell how myth rose like anexhalation round his memory: how legends of "a giant piling uphecatombs by a mighty slaughter" reverberated through mansion andcottage, town and village, cathedral and church; until thousands ofvolunteers rushed to arms that they might go where young Kireeffhad gone. Alexander's hand was forced, and the war began, whichbut for England's intervention would have cleared Europe of theTurk. We have the text, but not the sermon; the Preface endsabruptly with an almost clumsy peroration. 

The lady who inspired both the eulogy and the curtailment wasMadame Novikoff, more widely known perhaps as O. K. , with whomKinglake maintained during the last twenty years of life anintimate and mutual friendship. Madame Olga Novikoff, nee Kireeff, is a Russian lady of aristocratic rank both by parentage andmarriage. In a lengthened sojourn at Vienna with her brother-in-law, the Russian ambassador, she learned the current business ofdiplomacy. An eager religious propagandist, she formed alliancewith the "Old Catholics" on the Continent, and with many among theHigh Church English clergy; becoming, together with her brotherAlexander, a member of the Reunion Nationale, a society for theunion of Christendom. Her interest in education has led her todevote extensive help to school and church building and endowmenton her son's estate. God-daughter to the Czar Nicholas, she is adevoted Imperialist, nor less in sympathy, as were all her family, with Russian patriotism: after the death of her brother in Serviaon July 6/18, 1876, she became a still more ardent Slavophile. Thethree articles of her creed are, she says, those of her country, Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationalism. Her political aspirations havebeen guided, and guided right, by her tact and goodness of heart. Her life's aim has been to bring about a cordial understandingbetween England and her native land; there is little doubt that herinfluence with leading Liberal politicians, and her vigorousallocutions in the Press, had much to do with the enthusiasmmanifested by England for the liberation of the Danubian States. Readers of the Princess Lieven's letters to Earl Grey will recallthe part played by that able ambassadress in keeping this countryneutral through the crisis of 1828-9; to her Madame Novikoff hasbeen likened, and probably with truth, by the Turkish Press bothEnglish and Continental. She was accused in 1876 of playing on thereligious side of Mr. Gladstone's character to secure his interestin the Danubians as members of the Greek Church, while withunecclesiastical people she was said to be equally skilful on thepolitical side, converting at the same time Anglophobe Russia byher letters in the "Moscow Gazette. " Mr. Gladstone's leanings toMontenegro were attributed angrily in the English "Standard" toMadame Novikoff: "A serious statesman should know better than tocatch contagion from the petulant enthusiasm of a Russian Apostle. "The contagion was in any case caught, and to some purpose; letterafter letter had been sent by the lady to the great statesman, thenin temporary retirement, without reply, until the last of these, "abitter cry of a sister for a sacrificed brother, " brought a feelinganswer from Mrs. Gladstone, saying that her husband was deeplymoved by the appeal, and was writing on the subject. In a few daysappeared his famous pamphlet, "Bulgarian Horrors and the Questionof the East. "

Carlyle advised that Madame Novikoff's scattered papers should beworked into a volume; they appeared under the title "Is RussiaWrong?" with a preface by Froude, the moderate and ultra-prudenttone of which infuriated Hayward and Kinglake, as not beingsufficiently appreciative. Hayward declared some woman had biassedhim; Kinglake was of opinion that by studying the etat of QueenElizabeth Froude had "gone and turned himself into an old maid. "

Froude's Preface to her next work, "Russia and England, a Protestand an Appeal, " by O. K. , 1880, was worded in a very different toneand satisfied all her friends. The book was also reviewed withhighest praise by Gladstone in "The Nineteenth Century. " Learningthat an assault upon it was contemplated in "The Quarterly, "Kinglake offered to supply the editor, Dr. Smith, with materialswhich might be so used as to neutralize a PERSONAL attack upon O. K. Smith entreated him to compose the whole article himself. "Icould promise you, " he writes, "that the authorship should be kepta profound secret;" but this Kinglake seems to have thoughtundesirable. The article appeared in April, 1880, under the titleof "The Slavonic Menace to Europe. " It opens with a panegyric onthe authoress: "She has mastered our language with conspicuoussuccess; she expostulates as easily as she reproaches, and sheexhibits as much facility in barbing shafts of satire as in framingspecious excuses for daring acts of diplomacy. " It insists on thehigh esteem felt for her by both the Russian and Austriangovernments, telling with much humour an anecdote of Count Beust, the Prime Minister of Austria during her residence in Vienna. TheCount, after meeting her at a dinner party at the Turkish Embassy, composed a set of verses in her honour, and gave them to her, butshe forgot to mention them to her brother-in-law. The PrimeMinister, encountering the latter, asked his opinion of the verses;and the ambassador was greatly amazed at knowing nothing of thematter. {23} From amenities towards the authoress, the articlepasses abruptly to hostile criticism of the book; declares it to beproscribed in Russia as mischievous, and to have precipitated ageneral war by keeping up English interest in Servian rebellion. It sneers in doubtful taste at the lady's learning:

"sit non doctissima conjux, Sit nox cum somno, sit sine lite dies;"

denounces the Slavs as incapable of being welded into a nation, urging that their independence must destroy Austria-Hungary, aconsummation desired by Madame Novikoff, with her feline contemptfor "poor dear Austria, " but which all must unite to prevent ifthey would avert a European war. 

How could one clear harp, men asked themselves as they read, haveproduced so diverse tones? The riddle is solved when we learn thatthe first part only was from Kinglake's pen: having vindicated hisfriend's ability and good faith, her right to speak and to be heardattentively, he left the survey of her views, with which heprobably disagreed, to the originally assigned reviewer. Thearticle, Madame Novikoff tells us in the "Nouvelle Revue, " wasreceived avec une stupefaction unanime. It formed the general talkfor many days, was attributed to Lord Salisbury, was supposed tohave been inspired by Prince Gortschakoff. The name standingagainst it in Messrs. Murray's books, as they kindly inform me, isthat of a writer still alive, and better known now than then, butthey never heard that Kinglake had a hand in it; the editor wouldseem to have kept his secret even from the publishers. Kinglakesent the article in proof to the lady; hoped that the facts he hadimparted and the interpolations he had inserted would please her;he could have made the attack on Russia more pointed had he writtenit; she would think the leniency shows a fault on the right side;he did not know the writer of this latter part. He begged her toacquaint her friends in Moscow what an important and majestic organis "The Quarterly, " how weighty therefore its laudation of herself. She recalls his bringing her soon afterwards an article on her, written, he said, in an adoring tone by Laveleye in the "Revue desDeux Mondes, " and directing her to a paper in "Fraser, " by MissPauline Irby, a passionate lover of the "Slav ragamuffins, " and aworshipper of Madame Novikoff. He quotes with delight Chenery'sapprobation of her "Life of Skobeleff"; he spoke of you "with agleam of kindliness in his eyes which really and truly I had neverobserved before. " "The Times" quotes her as the "eloquentauthoress of 'Russia and England'"; "fancy that from your enemy!you are getting even 'The Times' into your net. " A later articleon O. K. Contains some praise, but more abuse. Hayward is angrywith it; Kinglake thinks it more friendly than could have beenexpected "to YOU, a friend of ME, their old open enemy: the sugar-plums were meant for you, the sprinklings of soot for me. "

Besides "Russia and England" Madame Novikoff is the author of"Friends or Foes?--is Russia wrong?" and of a "Life of Skobeleff, "the hero of Plevna and of Geok Tepe. From her natural endowmentsand her long familiarity with Courts, she has acquired a capacityfor combining, controlling, entertaining social "circles" whichrecalls les salons d'autrefois, the drawing-rooms of an Ancelot, aLe Brun, a Recamier. Residing in several European capitals, shesurrounds herself in each with persons intellectually eminent; inEngland, where she has long spent her winters, Gladstone, Carlyleand Froude, Charles Villiers, Bernal Osborne, Sir Robert Morier, Lord Houghton, and many more of the same high type, formed hercourt and owned her influence. 

Kinglake first met her at Lady Holland's in 1870, and mutual likingripened rapidly into close friendship. During her residences inEngland few days passed in which he did not present himself at herdrawing-room in Claridge's Hotel: when absent in Russia or on theContinent, she received from him weekly letters, though he used tocomplain that writing to a lady through the poste restante was liketrying to kiss a nun through a double grating. These letters, allfaithfully preserved, I have been privileged to see; they remindme, in their mixture of personal with narrative charm, of Swift's"Letters to Stella"; except that Swift's are often coarse andsometimes prurient, while Kinglake's chivalrous admiration for hisfriend, though veiled occasionally by graceful banter, is alwaysrespectful and refined. They even imitate occasionally the "littlelanguage" of the great satirist; if Swift was Presto, Kinglake is"Poor dear me"; if Stella was M. D. , Madame Novikoff is "My dearMiss. " This last endearment was due to an incident at a Londondinner table. A story told by Hayward, seasoned as usual with grossel, amused the more sophisticated English ladies present, butcovered her with blushes. Kinglake perceived it, and said to herafterwards, "I thought you were a hardened married woman; I am gladthat you are not; I shall henceforth call you MISS. " Sometimes herushes into verse. In answer to some pretended rebuff receivedfrom her at Ryde he writes

"There was a young lady of Ryde, so awfully puffed up by pride, She felt grander by far than the Son of the Czar, And when he said, 'Dear, come and walk on the pier, Oh please come and walk by my side;'The answer he got, was 'Much better not, ' from that awful younglady of Ryde. "

Oftenest, the letters are serious in their admiring compliments;they speak of her superb organization of health and life andstrength and joyousness, the delightful sunshine of her presence, her decision and strength of will, her great qualities and greatopportunities: "away from you the world seems a blank. " He isglad that his Great Eltchi has been made known to her; the oldstatesman will be impressed, he feels sure, by her "intense life, graciousness and grace, intellect carefully masked, musical facultyin talk, with that heavenly power of coming to an end. " He sendsplayfully affectionate messages from other members of theGerontaion, as he calls it, the group of aged admirers who formedher inner court; echoing their laments over the universality of herpatronage. "Hayward can pardon your having an ambassador or two atyour FEET, but to find the way to your HEART obstructed by a crowdof astronomers, Russ-expansionists, metaphysicians, theologians, translators, historians, poets;--this is more than he can endure. The crowd reduces him, as Ampere said to Mme. Recamier, to thequalified blessing of being only chez vous, from the delight ofbeing avec vous. He hails and notifies additions to the list ofher admirers; quotes enthusiastic praise of her from Stansfeld andCharles Villiers, warm appreciation from Morier, Sir Robert Peel, Violet Fane. He rallies her on her victims, jests at Froude'slover-like galanterie--"Poor St. Anthony! how he hovered round theflame";--at the devotion of that gay Lothario, Tyndall, whoseapproaching marriage will, he thinks, clip his wings forflirtation. "It seems that at the Royal Institution, or whateverthe place is called, young women look up to the Lecturers aspriests of Science, and go to them after the lecture in whatchurchmen would call the vestry, and express charming little doubtsabout electricity, and pretty gentle disquietudes about the solarsystem: and then the Professors have to give explanations;--andthen, somehow, at the end of a few weeks, they find they haveprovided themselves with chaperons for life. " So he pursues thelist of devotees; her son will tell her that Caesar summarized hisconquests in this country by saying Veni, Vidi, Vici; but to her itis given to say, Veni, Videbar, Vici. 

On two subjects, theology and politics, Madame Novikoff was, as wehave seen, passionately in earnest. Himself at once an amateurcasuist and a consistent Nothingarian, whose dictum was that"Important if true" should be written over the doors of churches, he followed her religious arguments much as Lord Steyne listened tothe contests between Father Mole and the Reverend Mr. Trail. Heexpresses his surprise in all seriousness that the Pharisees, athoughtful and cultured set of men, who alone among the Jewsbelieved in a future state, should have been the very men to whomour Saviour was habitually antagonistic. He refers more lightlyand frequently to "those charming talks of ours about ourChurches"; he thinks they both know how to effleurer the surface oftheology without getting drowned in it. Of existing Churches hepreferred the English, as "the most harmless going"; disliked theLatin Church, especially when intriguing in the East, aspersecuting and as schismatic, and therefore as no Church at all. Roman Catholics, he said, have a special horror of being called"schismatic, " and that is, of course, a good reason for so callingthem. He would not permit the use of the word "orthodox, " because, like a parson in the pulpit, it is always begging the question. Herefused historical reverence to the Athanasian Creed, and wasdelighted when Stanley's review in "The Times" of Mr. Ffoulkes'learned book showed it to have been written by order of Charles theGreat in 800 A. D. As what Thorold Rogers used to call "an electionsquib. " In the "Filioque" controversy, once dear to Liddon and toGladstone, now, I suppose, obsolete for the English mind, but whichrelates to the chief dividing tenet of East from West, he showed aninterest humorous rather than reverent; took pains to acquainthimself with the views held on it by Dollinger and the oldCatholics; noted with amusement the perplexity of London ladies asto the meaning of the word when quoted in the much-read "Quarterly"article, declaring their belief to be that it was a clergyman'sbaby born out of wedlock. 

Madame Novikoff's political influence, which he recognized to thefull, he treated in the same mocking spirit. She is at Berlin, received by Bismarck; he hopes that though the great man may noteradicate her Slavophile heresies, he may manifest the weakness ofembroiling nations on mere ethnological grounds. "Are even nearerrelationships so delightful? would you walk across the street for athird or fourth cousin? then why for a millionth cousin?" MadameNovikoff kindly sends to me an "Imaginary Conversation" betweenherself and Gortschakoff, constructed by Kinglake during her stayin St. Petersburg in 1879. 

"G. Well--you really have done good service to your country andyour Czar by dividing and confusing these absurd English, andgetting us out of the scrape we were in in that--Balkan Peninsula. 

"Miss O. Well, certainly I did my best; but I fear I have ruinedthe political reputation of my English partizans, for in order tomake them 'beloved of the Slave, ' I of course had to make them, poor souls! go against their own country; and their country, stupidas it is, has now I fear found them out. 

"G. Tant pis pour eux! Entre nous, if I had been Gladstone, Ishould have preferred the love of my own country to the love ofthese--Slaves of yours. But, tell me, how did you get hold ofGladstone?

"Miss O. Rien de plus simple! Four or five years ago I asked whatwas his weak point, and was told that he had two, 'Effervescence, 'and 'Theology. ' With that knowledge I found it all child's play tomanage him. I just sent him to Munich, and there boiled him up ina weak decoction of 'Filioque, ' then kept him ready for use, andimpatiently awaited the moment when our plans for getting up the'Bulgarian atrocities' should be mature. I say 'impatiently, ' for, Heavens, how slow you all were! at least so it strikes a woman. The arrangement of the 'atrocities' was begun by our people in1871, and yet till 1876, though I had Gladstone ready in 1875, nothing really was done! I assure you, Prince, it is a tryingthing to a woman to be kept waiting for promised atrocities such anunconscionable time. 

"G. That brother-in-law of yours was partly the cause of ourslowness. He was always wanting to have the orders for fire andblood in neat formal despatches, signed by me, and copied byclerks. However, I hope you are satisfied now, with the butcheriesand the flames, and the--?

"Miss O. Pour le moment!"

She is absent during the sudden dissolution of Parliament in 1874. "London woke yesterday morning and found that your friend Gladstonehad made a coup-d'etat. He has dissolved Parliament at a momentwhen no human being expected it, and my impression is that he hasmade a good hit, and that the renovated Parliament will give him agreat majority. " The impression was wildly wrong; and he found acause for the Conservative majority in Gladstone's tame foreignpolicy, and especially in the pusillanimity his government showedwhen insulted by Gortschakoff. He always does justice to herinfluence with Gladstone; his great majority at the polls in 1880is HER victory and HER triumph; but his Turkophobia is no less hercreation: "England is stricken with incapacity because you havestirred up the seething caldron that boils under Gladstone's skull, putting in diabolical charms and poisons of theology to overturnthe structure of English polity:" she will be able, he thinks, totell her government that Gladstone is doing his best to break upthe British Empire. 

He quotes with approbation the newspaper comparison of her to thePrincess Lieven. She disparages the famous ambassadress; he setsher right. Let her read the "Correspondence, " by his friend Mr. Guy Le Strange, and she will see how large a part the Princessplayed in keeping England quiet during the war of 1828-29. She didnot convert her austere admirer, Lord Grey, to approval of theRussian designs, nor overcome the uneasiness with which the Duke ofWellington regarded her intrigues; but the Foreign Minister, LordAberdeen, was apparently a fool in her hands; and, whoever had themerit, the neutrality of England continued. That was, he repeatsmore than once, a most critical time for Russia; it was an objectalmost of life and death to the Czar to keep England dawdling in astate of actual though not avowed neutrality. It is, he argued, amatter of fact, that precisely this result was attained, and "Ishall be slow to believe that Madame de Lieven did not deserve agreat share of the glory (as you would think it) of making Englandact weakly under such circumstances; more especially since we knowthat the Duke did not like the great lady, and may be supposed tohave distinctly traced his painful embarrassment to her power. " Sothe letters go, interspersed with news, with criticisms of notablepersons, with comments enlightening or cynical on passing politicalevents: with personal matters only now and then; as when he notesthe loss of his two sisters; dwells with unwonted feeling on thedeath of his eldest nephew by consumption; condoles with her on herhusband's illness; gives council, wise or playful, as to theeducation of her son. "I am glad to hear that he is good at Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, for that shows his cleverness; glad also tohear that he is occasionally naughty, for that shows his force. Iadvise you to claim and exercise as much control as possible, because I am certain that a woman--especially so gifted a one asyou--knows more, or rather feels more, about the right way ofbringing up a boy than any mere man. "

Unbrokenly the correspondence continues: the intimacy added charm, interest, fragrance to his life, brought out in him all that wasgenial, playful, humorous. He fights the admonitions of comingweakness; goes to Sidmouth with a sore throat, but takes his papersand his books. It is, he says, a deserted little sea-coast place. "Mrs. Grundy has a small house there, but she does not know me bysight. If Madame Novikoff were to come, the astonished littletown, dazzled first by her, would find itself invaded bytheologians, bishops, ambassadors of deceased emperors, and an ex-Prime-Minister. " But as time goes on he speaks more often of hissuffering throat; of gout, increasing deafness, only half a voice:his last letter is written in July, 1890, to condole with hisfriend upon her husband's death. In October his nurse takes thepen; Madame Novikoff comes back hurriedly from Scotland to find himin his last illness. "It is very nice, " he told his nurse, "to seedear Madame Novikoff again, but I am going down hill fast, andcannot hope to be well enough to see much of her. " This is inNovember, 1890; on New Year's Eve came the inexorable, "Terminatorof delights and Separator of friends. "

CHAPTER VI--LATER DAYS, AND DEATH

For twenty years Kinglake lived in Hyde Park Place, in brightcheerful rooms looking in one direction across the Park, but onanother side into a churchyard. The churchyard, Lady Gregory tellsus, gave him pause on first seeing the rooms. "I should not liketo live here, I should be afraid of ghosts. " "Oh no, sir, there isalways a policeman round the corner. " {24} "Pleaceman X. " has not, perhaps, before been revered as the Shade-compelling son of Maia:

"Tu pias laetis animas reponisSedibus, virgaque levem coercesAurea turbam. "

Here he worked through the morning; the afternoon took him to the"Travellers, " where his friends, Sir Henry Bunbury and Mr. Chenery, usually expected him; then at eight o'clock, if not, as Shylocksays, bid forth, he went to dine at the Athenaeum. His dinner seatwas in the left-hand corner of the coffee-room, where, in thethirties, Theodore Hook had been wont to sit, gathering near him somany listeners to his talk, that at Hook's death in 1841 thereceipts for the club dinners fell off to a large amount. Here, inthe "Corner, " as they called it, round Kinglake would be Hayward, Drummond Wolff, Massey, Oliphant, Edward Twisleton, Strzelecki, Storks, Venables, Wyke, Bunbury, Gregory, American Ticknor, and afew more; Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, when in Scotland, sendinghampers of pheasants to the company. "Hurried to the Athenaeum fordinner, " says Ticknor in 1857, "and there found Kinglake and SirHenry Rawlinson, to whom were soon added Hayward and Stirling. Wepushed our tables together and had a jolly dinner. . . . To theAthenaeum; and having dined pleasantly with Merivale, Kinglake, andStirling, I hurried off to the House. " In later years, when hisvoice grew low and his hearing difficult, he preferred that thediners should resolve themselves into little groups, assigning tohimself a tete-a-tete, with whom at his ease he could unfoldhimself. 

No man ever fought more gallantly the encroachments of old age--onsut etre jeune jusque dans ses vieux jours. At seventy-four yearsold, staying with a friend at Brighton, he insisted on riding overto Rottingdean, where Sir Frederick Pollock was staying. "Imastered, " he said, in answer to remonstrances, "I mastered thepeculiarities of the Brighton screw before you were born, and havenever forgotten them. " Vaulting into his saddle he rode off, returning with a schoolboy's delight at the brisk trot he had foundpracticable when once clear of the King's Road. Long after hishearing had failed, his sight become grievously weakened, and hislimbs not always trustworthy, he would never allow a cab to besummoned for him after dinner, always walking to his lodgings. Buthe had to give up by and by his daily canter in Rotten Row, andmore reluctantly still his continental travel. Foreign railwayswere closed to him by the Salle d'Attente; he could not standincarceration in the waiting-rooms. 

The last time he crossed the Channel was at the close of theFranco-Prussian war, on a visit to his old friend M. Thiers, thenPresident. It was a dinner to deputies of the Extreme Left, andKinglake was the only Englishman; "so, " he said, "among theservants there was a sort of reasoning process as to my identity, ending in the conclusion, 'il doit etre Sir Dilke. '" Soon theinference was treated as a fact; and in due sequence came newspaperparagraphs declaring that the British Ambassador had gravelyremonstrated with the President for inviting Sir Charles Dilke tohis table. Then followed articles defending the course taken bythe President, and so for some time the ball was kept up. Theremonstrance of the Ambassador was a myth, Lord Lyons was a friendof Sir Charles; but the latter was suspect at the time both inEngland and France; in England for his speeches and motion on theCivil List; in France, because, with Frederic Harrison, he hadhelped to get some of the French Communists away from France; andthe French Government was watching him with spies. In SirCharles's motion Kinglake took much interest, refusing to join inthe cry against it as disloyal. Sir Charles, he said, spoke noword against the Queen; and only brought the matter before theHouse because challenged to repeat in Parliament the statements hehad made in the country. As a matter of policy he thought itmistaken: "Move in such a matter openly, and party disciplinecompels your defeat; bring pressure to bear on a Cabinet, some ofits members are on your side, and you may gain your point. " SirCharles's speech was calmly argumentative, and to many mindsconvincing; it provoked a passionate reply from Gladstone; and whenMr. Auberon Herbert following declared himself a Republican, atumult arose such as in those pre-Milesian days had rarely beenwitnessed in the House. But the wisdom of Kinglake's counsel issustained by the fact that many years afterwards, as a result ofmore private discussion, Mr. Gladstone pronounced his conversion tothe two bases of the motion, publicity, and the giving of the Stateallowance to the head of the family rather than, person by person, to the children and grandchildren of the Sovereign. Actionpointing in this direction was taken in 1889 and 1901 on the adviceof Tory ministers. 

Amongst Frenchmen of the highest class, intellectually andsocially, he had many valued friends, keeping his name on the"Cosmopolitan" long after he had ceased to visit it, since "onenever knows when the distinguished foreigner may come upon one, andof such the Cosmo is the London Paradise. " But he used to say thatin the other world a good Frenchman becomes an Englishman, a badEnglishman becomes a Frenchman. He saw in the typical Gaul acompound of the tiger and the monkey; noted their want ofindividuality, their tendency to go in flocks, their susceptibilityto panic and to ferocity, to the terror that makes a man killpeople, and "the terror that makes him lie down and beg. " Weremember, too, his dissection of St. Arnaud, as before all things atype of his nation; "he impersonated with singular exactness theidea which our forefathers had in their minds when they spoke ofwhat they called 'a Frenchman;' for although (by cowing the richand by filling the poor with envy), the great French Revolution hadthrown a lasting gloom on the national character, it left this oneman untouched. He was bold, gay, reckless, vain; but beneath themere glitter of the surface there was a great capacity foradministrative business, and a more than common willingness to takeaway human life. "

"I relish, " Kinglake said in 1871, "the spectacle of Bismarckteaching the A B C of Liberal politics to the hapless French. Hislast mot, they tell me, is this. Speaking of the extent to whichthe French Emperor had destroyed his own reputation and put an endto the worship of the old Napoleon, he said: 'He has killedhimself and buried his uncle. '" Again, in 1874, noting the contrecoup upon France resulting from the Bismarck and Arnim despatches, he said: "What puzzles the poor dear French is to see that truthand intrepid frankness consist with sound policy and consummatewisdom. How funny it would be, if the French some day, as anovelty, or what they would call a caprice, were to try the effectof truth; "though not naturally honest, " as Autolycus says, "wereto become so by chance. "

He thought M. Gallifet dans sa logique in liking the Germans andhating Bismarck; for the Germans, in having their own way, wouldbreak up into as many fragments as the best Frenchman could desire, and Bismarck is the real suppressor of France. Throughout theFranco-Prussian war he sided strongly with the Prussians, refusingto dine in houses where the prevailing sympathy with France wouldmake him unwelcome as its declared opponent; but he felt "as anightmare" the attack on prostrate Paris, "as a blow" thecapitulation of Metz; denouncing Gambetta and his colleagues asmeeting their disasters only with slanderous shrieks, "possessed bythe spirit of that awful Popish woman. " Bismarck as a statesman heconsistently admired, and deplored his dismissal. I see, he said, all the peril implied by Bismarck's exit, and the advent of hisambitious young Emperor. It is a transition from the known to theunknown, from wisdom, perhaps, to folly. 

His Crimean volumes continued to appear; in 1875, 1880, finally in1887; while the Cabinet Edition was published in 1887-8. This lastcontained three new Prefaces; in Vol. I. As we have seen, thememorial of Nicholas Kireeff; in Vol. II. The latter half of theoriginal Preface to Vol. I. , cancelled thence at Madame Novikoff'srequest, though now carefully modified so as to avoid anythingwhich might irritate Russia at a moment when troubles seemed to beclearing away. In his Preface to Vol. VII. He had three objects, to set right the position of Sir E. Hamley, who had been neglectedin the despatches; to demolish his friend Lord Bury, who had"questioned my omniscience" in the "Edinburgh Review"; and toexonerate England at large from absurd self-congratulations aboutthe "little Egypt affair, " the blame of such exaggeration restingwith those whom he called State Showmen. 

Silent to acquaintances about the progress of his work, he wascommunicative to his few intimates, though never reading aloudextracts or allowing them to be seen. In 1872 he would speakpathetically of his "Crimean muddle, " perplexed, as he well mightbe, by the intricacies of Inkerman. Asked if he will not introducea Te Deum on the fall of Louis Napoleon, he answered that to writewithout the stimulus of combat would be a task beyond his energy;"when I took the trouble to compose that fourteenth chapter, thewretched Emperor and his gang were at the height of their power inEurope and the world; but now!" He was insatiate as to fresh facts:utilized his acquaintance with Todleben, whom he had first met onhis visit to England in 1864; sought out Prince Ourusoff at a latertime, and inserted particulars gleaned from him in Vol. IX. , Chapter V. 

In 1875 he told Madame Novikoff that his task was done so far asInkerman was concerned, and was proud to think that he had rescuedfrom oblivion the heroism of the Russian troops in what he callsthe "Third Period" of the great fight, ignored as it was by allRussian historians of the war. He made fruitless inquiries after apaper said to have been left behind him by Skobeleff, explainingthat "India is a cherry to be eaten by Russia, but in two bites";it was contrary to the general's recorded utterances and probablyapocryphal. Russophobe as regarded Turkey, he sneered at England'ssentimental support of nationalities as "Platonic": a capitalepithet he called it, and envied the Frenchman who applied it tous, declaring that it had turned all the women against us. He wasmoved by receiving Korniloff's portrait with a kind message fromthe dead hero's family, seeing in the features a confirmation ofthe ideal which he had formed in his own mind and had tried toconvey to others. Readers of his book will recall the fine tributeto Korniloff's powers, and the description of his death, inChapters VI. And XIII. Of Vol. IV. (Cabinet Edition). 

Many of his comments on current events are preserved in the notesor in the memories of his friends. Sometimes these werecharacteristically cynical. He ridiculed the newspaper parade ofnational sympathy with the Prince of Wales's illness: "We arerepresented as all members of the royal family, and all in familyhysterics. " Dizzy's orientalization of Queen Victoria into anEmpress angered him, as it angered many more. The last EmpressRegnant, he said, was Catherine II. And it seems to be thought thatby advising the Queen to take that great monarch's title, we shallexercise a wholesome influence on the morals of our women. Hewould quote Byron's

"Russia's mighty EmpressBehaved no better than a common sempstress;"

"there was an old-fashioned sacredness, which, however foolishintrinsically, was still useful, in our title of 'The Queen'; nordo we see the policy of adding a Supreme de Volaille to the breadand wine of our Sacrament. "

He chuckled over the indignation of the haute volee, when on thevisit to England of President Grant's daughter in 1872, Americansin London sent out cards of invitation headed "To meet Miss Grant, "as at a profane imitation of a practice hitherto confined toroyalties; laughing not at the legitimate American mimicry ofEuropean consequence, but at the silly formalists in Society whofumed over the imagined presumption. Consulted by an invalid as tothe charm of Ostend for a seaside residence, he limited it topersons of gregarious habits; "the people are all driven down tothe beach like a flock of sheep in the morning, and in the eveningthey are all driven back to their folds. " He reported a feebledrama written by his ancient idol, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; "itis a painful thing to see a man of his quality and of his ageunduly detained in the world; when the Emperor Nicholas died, theEltchi lost his raison d'etre. " He disparaged the wild fit ofmorality undergone by the "Pall Mall Gazette" during the scandalous"Maiden Tribute" revelation, pronouncing its protegees to be"clever little devils. " He was greatly startled by Gortschakoff'sfamous circular, annulling the Black Sea clause in the Treaty ofParis, and much relieved by Bismarck's dexterous interposition, which saved the susceptibility of Europe, and especially ofEngland, by yielding as a favour to the demand of Russia what noone was in a position to refuse; but he maintained, and LordStratford agreed with him, that Gortschakoff's precipitate act wasgoverned by circumstances never revealed to mankind. He learned, too, that it caused the Chancellor to be deconsidere in highRussian circles; he was called "un Narcisse qui se mire dans sonencrier. " Kinglake used to say that in conceding the right of theSultan to exclude any war-flag from the Bosphorus and theDardanelles, Russia was treating Turkey as a bag-fox, to be gentlyhunted occasionally, but not mangled or killed; and he felt keenlythe ridicule resting on the allies, who were compelled to surrenderthe neutralization purchased at the cost of so much blood andtreasure. He watched with much amusement the restoration ofTurkish self-confidence. "Turkey believes that he is no longer asick man, and is turning all his doctors out of the house, to theimmense astonishment of the English doctor, so conscious of his ownrectitude that he cannot understand being sent off with the quacks. You know in our beautiful Liturgy we have a prayer for the Turks;it looks as if our supplications had become successful. " Hisinterest in Turkey never flagged. "I am in a great fright, " hesaid in 1877, "about my dear Turks, because Russia gives virtualcommand of the army before Plevna to Todleben, a really great hommede guerre. "

Russophobia was at that time so strong in London that MadameNovikoff hesitated to visit England, and he himself feared that shemight find it uncomfortable. Her alarm, however, was ridiculed byHayward, "most faithful of the Russianisers, ready to do battle forRussia at any moment, declaring her to be quite virtuous, with nofault but that of being incomprise. " But he groaned over thehumiliation of England under Russia's bold stroke, notingfrequently a decay of English character which he ascribed tochronic causes. The Englishman taken separately, he said, seemsmuch the same as he used to be; but there is a softening of theaggregate brain which affects Englishmen when acting together. Hehailed the great Liberal victory of 1880, and watched withinterest, as one behind the scenes, the negotiations which led toLord Hartington's withdrawal and Mr. Gladstone's resumption ofpower; for in these his friend Hayward was an active go-between, removing by his tact and frankness "hitches" which might otherwisehave been disastrous. He thought W. E. Forster's attack on Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy in 1882 ill-managed for his own position, his famous speech not sufficiently "clenching. " Had he separatedfrom his chief on broader grounds, refusing complicity with aMinister who consented to parley with the imprisoned Irishmen, hewould, Kinglake thought, have occupied a highly commandingposition. At present his difference from his colleagues was oneonly of degree. 

He was once beguiled, amongst friends very intimate, into telling adream. He dreamed that he was attending an anatomical lecture--which, as a fact, he had never done--and that his own body, fromwhich he found himself entirely separated, was the dissectedsubject on which the lecturer discoursed. The body lay on a tablebeside the lecturer, but he himself, his entity, was at the otherend of the room, on the furthest or highest of a set of benchesraised one above the other as at a theatre. He imagined himself ina vague way to be disagreeing with the lecturer; but the strongestimpression on his mind was annoyance at being so badly placed, sofar from the professor and from his own body that he could not seeor hear without an effort. The dream, he pointed out, showed thiscurious fact, that without any conscious design or effort of thewill a man may conceive himself to be in perfect possession of hisidentity, whilst separated from his own body by a distance ofseveral feet. "The highest concept, " said Jowett, "which man formsof himself is as detached from the body. " ("Life, " ii. 241. ) Thelecture-room which he imagined was one of the lower school-rooms atEton, with which he had been familiar in early days. 

After Hayward's death in 1884, his own habits began to change. Hestill dined at the Athenaeum "corner, " but increasing deafnessbegan to make society irksome, and, his solitary meal ended, hespent his evenings reading in the Library. By-and-by that toobecame impossible. His voice grew weak, throat and tongue werethreatened with disease. In 1888 he went to Brighton with a nurse, returned to rooms on Richmond Hill, then to Bayswater Terrace. Anoperation was performed and he seemed to recover, but relapsed. Old friends tended him: Madame Novikoff, Mr. Froude and Mr. Lecky, Madame de Quaire and Mrs. Brookfield, Lord Mexborough his ancientfellow-traveller, Mrs. Craven, Sir William and Lady Gregory, with afew more, cheered him by their visits so long as he was able tobear them; and his brother and sister, Dr. And Mrs. HamiltonKinglake, were with him at the end. Patient to the last, kind andgentle to all about him, he passed away quietly on New Year's Day, 1891:

"being merry-hearted, Shook hands with flesh and blood, and so departed. "

His remains were cremated at Woking, after a special service atChristchurch, Lancaster Gate, attended by Dr. And Mrs. Kinglakewith their son Captain Kinglake, the Duke of Bedford, Mr. And Mrs. Lecky, Mrs. W. H. Brookfield and her son Charles. 

No good portrait of him has been published. That prefixed toBlackwood's "Eothen" of 1896 was furnished by Dr. Kinglake, who, however, looked upon it as unsatisfactory. The "Not an M. P. " of"Vanity Fair, " 1872, is a grotesque caricature. The photographhere reproduced (p. 128), by far the best likeness extant, he gaveto Madame Novikoff in 1870, receiving hers in return, butpronouncing the transaction "an exchange between the personifiedmonths of May and November. " The face gives expression to the shyaloofness which, amongst strangers, was characteristic of himthrough life. He had even a horror of hearing his name pealed outby servants, and came early to parties that the proclamation mightbe achieved before as few auditors as possible. Visiting the newlymarried husband of his friend Adelaide Kemble, and being the firstguest to arrive, he encountered in Mr. Sartoris a host ascontentedly undemonstrative as himself. Bows passed, a seat by thefire was indicated, he sat down, and the pair contemplated oneanother for ten minutes in absolute silence, till the lady of thehouse came in, like the prince in "The Sleeping Beauty, " though notby the same process, to break the charm. He gave up calling at ahouse where he was warmly appreciated, because father, mother, daughter, bombarded him with questions. "I never came away withoutfeeling sure that I had in some way perjured myself. "

On his shyness waited swiftly ensuing boredom; if his neighbour attable were garrulous or banale, his face at once betrayedconversational prostration; a lady who often watched him used tosay that his pulse ought to be felt after the first course; andthat if it showed languor he should be moved to the side of someother partner. "He had great charm, " writes to me another oldfriend, "in a quiet winning way, but was 'dark' with rough andnoisy people. " So it came to pass that his manner was threefold;icy and repellent with those who set his nerves on edge; good-humoured, receptive, intermittently responsive in general andcongenial company; while, at ease with friends trusted and beloved, the lines of the face became gracious, indulgent, affectionate, thesourire des yeux often inexpressibly winning and tender. "Kinglake, " says Eliot Warburton in his unpublished diary, "talkedto us to-day about his travels; pessimistic and cynical to the restof the world, he is always gentle and kind to us. " To this dearfriend he was ever faithful, wearing to the day of his death anoctagonal gold ring engraved "Eliot. Jan: 1852. " He would neverplay the raconteur in general company, for he had a great horror ofrepeating himself, and, latterly, of being looked upon as a bore byyounger men; but he loved to pour out reminiscences of the past toan audience of one or two at most: "Let an old man gather hisrecollections and glance at them under the right angle, and hislife is full of pantomime transformation scenes. " The chiefcharacteristic of his wit was its unexpectedness; sometimes acrid, sometimes humorous, his sayings came forth, like Topham Beauclerk'sin Dr. Johnson's day, like Talleyrand's in our own, poignantwithout effort. His calm, gentle voice, contrasted with hisstartling caustic utterance, reminded people of Prosper Merimee:terse epigram, felicitous apropos, whimsical presentment of thetopic under discussion, emitted in a low tone, and without theslightest change of muscle:

"All the charm of all the MusesOften flowering in a lonely word. " {25}

Questions he would suavely and often wittily parry or repel: to anunhistorical lady asking if he remembered Madame Du Barry, he said, "my memory is very imperfect as to the particulars of my lifeduring the reign of Lous XV. And the Regency; but I know a lady whohas a teapot which belonged, she says, to Madame Du Barry. " MadameNovikoff, however, records his discomfiture at the query of acertain Lady E-, who, when all London was ringing with his firstCrimean volumes, asked him if he were not an admirer of LouisNapoleon. "Le pauvre Kinglake, decontenance, repondit tout basintimide comme un enfant qu'on met dates le coin: Oui--non--pasprecisement. "

He had no knowledge of or liking for music. Present once by somemischance at a matinee musicale, he was asked by the hostess whatkind of music he preferred. His preference, he owned, was for thedrum. One thinks of the "Bourgeois Gentilhomme, " "la trompettemarine est un instrument qui me plait, el qui est harmonieux"; weare reminded, too, of Dean Stanley, who, absolutely tone-deaf, andhurrying away whenever music was performed, once from an adjoiningroom in his father's house heard Jenny Lind sing "I know that myRedeemer liveth. " He went to her shyly, and told her that she hadgiven him an idea of what people mean by music. Once before, hesaid in all seriousness, the same feeling had come over him, whenbefore the palace at Vienna he had heard a tattoo rendered by fourhundred drummers. 

Kinglake used to regret the disuse of duelling, as having impairedthe higher tone of good breeding current in his younger days, andeven blamed the Duke of Wellington for proscribing it in the army. He had himself on one occasion sent a cartel, and stood waiting forhis adversary, like Sir Richard Strachan at Walcheren, eight dayson the French coast; but the adversary never came. Hayward oncereferred to him, as a counsellor, and if necessary a second, aquarrel with Lord R-. Lord R-'s friend called on him, a Norfolksquire, "broad-faced and breathing port wine, " after the fashion ofuncle Phillips in "Pride and Prejudice, " who began in a boisterousvoice, "I am one of those, Mr. Kinglake, who believe R- to be agentleman. " In his iciest tones and stoniest manner Kinglakeanswered: "That, Sir, I am quite willing to assume. " The effect, he used to say, as he told and acted the scene, was magical; "I hadfrozen him sober, and we settled everything without a fight. " Ofall his friends Hayward was probably the closest; an association ofdiscrepancies in character, manner, temperament, not complementary, but opposed and hostile; irreconcilable, one would say, but for theknowledge that in love and friendship paradox reigns supreme. Hayward was arrogant, overbearing, loud, insistent, full of strangeoaths and often unpardonably coarse; "our dominant friend, "Kinglake called him; "odious" is the epithet I have heard commonlybestowed upon him by less affectionate acquaintances. Kinglake wasreserved, shy, reticent, with the high breeding, grand manner, quiet urbanity, grata protervitas, of a waning epoch; restraint, concentration, tact of omission, dictating alike his silence andhis speech; his well-weighed words "crystallizing into epigrams asthey touched the air. " {26} When Hayward's last illness came uponhim in 1884, Kinglake nursed him tenderly; spending the morning inhis friend's lodgings at 8, St. James's Street, the house whichByron occupied in his early London days; and bringing on the latestbulletin to the club. The patient rambled towards the end; "weought to be getting ready to catch the train that we may go to mysister's at Lyme. " Kinglake quieted his sick friend by an assurancethat the servants, whom he would not wish to hurry, were packing. "On no account hurry the servants, but still let us be off. " Thelast thought which he articulated while dying was, "I don't exactlyknow what it is, but I feel it is something grand. " "Hayward isdead, " Kinglake wrote to a common friend; "the devotion shown tohim by all sorts and conditions of men, and, what is better, ofwomen, was unbounded. Gladstone found time to be with him, and toengage him in a conversation of singular interest, of which he hasmade a memorandum. "

Another of Kinglake's life-long familiars was Charles Skirrow, Taxing Master in Chancery, with his accomplished wife, from whosememorable fish dinners at Greenwich he was seldom absent, adaptinghimself no less readily to their theatrical friends--the Bancrofts, Burnand, Toole, Irving--than to the literary set with which he wasmore habitually at home. He was religiously loyal to his friends, speaking of them with generous admiration, eagerly defending themwhen attacked. He lauded Butler Johnstone as the most gifted ofthe young men in the House of Commons; would not allow BernalOsborne to be called untrue; "he offends people if you like, but heis never false or hollow. " A clever sobriquet fathered on him, burlesquing the monosyllabic names of a well-known diarist andofficial, he repelled indignantly. "He is my friend, and had Ibeen guilty of the jeu, I should have broken two of mycommandments; that which forbids my joking at a friend's expense, and that which forbids my fashioning a play upon words. " Heentreated Madame Novikoff to visit and cheer Charles Lever, dyingat Trieste; deeply lamented Sir H. Bulwer's death: "I used tothink his a beautiful intellect, and he was wonderfully simpaticoto me. " But he was shy of condoling with bereaved mourners, believing words used on such occasions to be utterly untrue. Heloved to include husband and wife in the same meed of admiration, as in the case of Dean Stanley and Lady Augusta, or of Sir Robertand Lady Emily Peel. Peel, he said, has the RADIANT quality noteasy to describe; Lady Emily is always beauteous, bright, attractive. Lord Stanhope he praised as a historian, paying himthe equivocal compliment that his books were much better than hisconversation. So, too, he qualified his admiration of LadyAshburton, dwelling on her beauty, silver voice, ready enthusiasmapt to disperse itself by flying at too many objects. 

He was wont to speak admiringly of Lord Acton, relating how, aRoman Catholic, yet respecting enlightenment and devoted to books, he once set up and edited a "Quarterly Review, " with a notion ofreconciling the Light and the Dark as well as he could; but the"Prince of Darkness, the Pope, " interposed, and ordered him to stopthe "Review. " He was compelled to obey; not, he told people, onany religious ground, but because relations and others would havemade his life a bore to him if he had been contumacious against theHoly Father. 

Kinglake was strongly attracted by W. E. Forster, a "roughdiamond, " spoken of at one time as a possible Prime Minister. Beginning life, he said, as a Quaker, with narrow opinions, hisvigour of character and brain-power shook them off. Powerful, robust, and perfectly honest, yet his honesty inflicted on him adoubleness of view which caused him to be described as engaging histwo hands in two different pursuits. His estimate of Sir R. Morierwould have gladdened Jowett's heart; he loved him as a privatefriend; eulogized his public qualities; rejoiced over hisappointment as Ambassador at St. Petersburg, seeing in him adiplomatist with not only a keen intellect and large views, butvibrating with the warmth, animation, friendliness, that arecharmingly un-diplomatic. Of Carlyle, his life-long, though notalways congenial intimate, he used to speak as having great graphicpower, but being essentially a humourist; a man who, with those hecould trust, never pretended to be in earnest, but used to roarwith glorious laughter over the fun of his own jeremiads; "so farfrom being a prophet he is a bad Scotch joker, and knows himself tobe a wind-bag. " He blamed Froude's revelations of Carlyle in "TheReminiscences, " as injurious and offensive. Froude himself heoften likened to Carlyle; the thoughts of both, he said, ran in thesame direction, but of the two, Froude was by far the moreintellectual man. 

Staunch friend to the few, polite, though never effusive, to themany, he also nourished strong antipathies. The appearance inMadame Novikoff's rooms of a certain Scotch bishop invariably drovehim out of them, "Peter Paul, Bishop of Claridge's, " he called him. To Von Beust (the Austrian Chancellor), who spoke English in arapid half-intelligible falsetto, he gave the name of Mirliton(penny trumpet). His allusions to Mirliton and to the Bishopfrequently mystified Madame Novikoff's guests. For he loved totalk in cypher. Canon Warburton, kindly searching on my behalf hisbrother Eliot's journals, tells me that he and Kinglake, meetingalmost daily, lived in a cryptic world of jokes, confidences, colloquialisms, inexplicable to all but their two selves. 

He cordially disliked "The Times" newspaper, alleging instances ofthe unfairness with which its columns had been used to spite andinjure persons who had offended it, chuckling over Hayward'scompact anathema, --"'The Times, ' which as usual of late suppliedits lack of argument and proof by assumption, misrepresentation, and personality. " He thought that its attacks upon himself hadhelped his popularity. "One of the main causes, " he said in 1875, "of the interest which people here were good enough to take in mybook was the fight between 'The Times' and me. In 1863 it raged, in 1867 it was renewed with great violence, and now I suppose theflame kindles once more, though probably with diminished strength. In 1863 the storm of opinion generally waxed fierce against me, butnow, as I hear, 'The Times' is alone, journals of all politicsbeing loud in my praise. But I never look at any comment on myvolumes till long afterwards, and I never in my life wrote to anewspaper. " Once, when Chenery, the editor, came to join the tableat the Athenaeum where he and Mr. Cartwright were dining, Kinglakerose, and removed to another part of the room. "The Times" hadinserted a statement that Madame Novikoff was ordered to leaveEngland, and he thus publicly resented it. "So unlike me, " hesaid, relating the story, "but somehow a savagery as of youth cameover me in my ancient days; it was like being twenty years oldagain. " It came out, however, that "our indiscreet friend Froude"had written something which justified the paragraph, and Kinglakesent his amende to Chenery, with whom ordinarily he was on mostfriendly terms. 

He disliked Irishmen "in the lump, " saying that human nature is thesame everywhere except in Ireland. Parnell he personally admired, though hating Home Rule; and stigmatized as gross hypocrisy thedesertion of him by Liberals after the divorce trial. He was wontto speak irreverently of Lord Beaconsfield, whom he had known wellat Lady Blessington's in early days. He would have found himselfin accord with Huxley, who used to thank God, his friend Mr. Fisketells us, that he had never bowed the knee either to Louis Napoleonor Benjamin Disraeli. He poured scorn on the Treaty of Berlin. Russia, he said, defeating the Turks in war, has defeatedBeaconsfield in diplomacy. If Englishmen understood such thingsthey would see that the Congress was a comedy; anyone who willsatisfy himself as to what Russia was really anxious to obtain, andthen look at the Salisbury-Schouvaloff treaty, will see that, thanks to Beaconsfield's imbecility, Schouvaloff obtained one ofthe most signal diplomatic triumphs that was ever won. {27} Asound entente between Russia and England he thought both possibleand desirable; but conceived it to be rendered difficult by thewant of steadiness and capacity which, for international purposes, were the real faults of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury. Herepeated with much amusement the current anecdote of LordBeaconsfield's conquest of Mrs. Gladstone. Meeting her in society, he was said to have inquired with tenderness after Mr. Gladstone'shealth, and then after receiving the loving wife's report of herWilliam, to have rejoined in his most dulcet tones, "Ah! take careof him, for he is very VERY precious. " He always attributedDizzy's popularity to the feeling of Englishmen that he had "shownthem sport, " an instinct, he thought, supreme in all departments ofthe English mind. 

Towards his old schoolfellow Gladstone he never felt quitecordially, believing, rightly or wrongly, that the great statesmannourished enmity towards himself. He called him, as has been said, "a good man in the worst sense of the term, conscientious with adiseased conscience. " He watched with much amusement, asillustrating the moral twist in Gladstone's temperament, the"Colliery explosion, " as it was called, when Sir R. Collier, theAttorney-General, was appointed to a Puisne Judgeship, which heheld only for a day or two, in order to qualify him for a seat on anew Court of Appeal; together with a very similar trick, by whichEwelme Rectory, tenable only by an Oxonian, was given to aCambridge man. The responsibility was divided between Gladstoneand Lord Hatherley the Chancellor, with the mutual idea apparentlythat each of the two became thereby individually innocent. But SirF. Pollock, in his amusing "Reminiscences, " recalls the amicablehalving of a wicked word between the Abbess of Andouillet and theNovice Margarita in "Tristram Shandy. " It answered in neithercase. "'They do not understand us, ' cried Margarita. 'BUT THEDEVIL DOES, ' said the Abbess of Andouillet. " "The Collier scandalnarrowly escaped by two votes in the Lords, twenty-seven in theCommons, a Parliamentary vote of censure, and gave unquestionably adownward push to the Gladstone Administration. Mr. Gladstone, onthe other hand, cordially admired Kinglake's speeches, saying thatfew of those he had heard in Parliament could bear so well as histhe test of publication. 

To the great Prime Minister's absolute fearlessness he did fulljustice, as one of the finest features in his character; and lovedto quote an epigram by Lord Houghton, to whom Gladstone hadcomplained in a moment of weariness that he led the life of a dog. "Yes, " said Houghton, "but of a St. Bernard dog, ever busied insaving life. " He loved to contrast the twofold biographicalparadox in the careers of the two famous rivals, Gladstone andDisraeli; the dreaming Tory mystic, incarnation of Oxfordexclusiveness and Puseyite reserve, passing into the Radicaliconoclast; the Jew clerk in a city lawyer's office, "bad specimenof an inferior dandy, " coming to rule the proudest aristocracy andlead the most fastidious assembly in the world. 

He was not above broad farce when the fancy seized him. At thetime when a certain kind of nonsense verse was popular, he, withSir Noel Paton and others, added not a few facetious sonnets toEdward Lear's book, which lay on Madame Novikoff's table. Hisauthorship is betrayed by the introduction of familiarSomersetshire names, Taunton, Wellington, Curry Rivel, Creech, Trull, Wilton:

"There was a young lady of Wilton, Who read all the poems of Milton:And, when she had done, She said, 'What bad fun!'This prosaic young lady of Wilton. "

There were many more, but this will perhaps suffice; ex ungueleonem. They were addressed to the "Fair Lady of Claridge's, "Madame Novikoff's hotel when in London, and were signed "PeterPaul, Bishop of Claridge's. "

"There is a fair lady at Claridge's, Whose smile is more charming to me, Than the rapture of ninety-nine marriagesCould possibly, possibly, be;--"

is the final dedicatory stanza. It is the gracious fooling of aphilosopher who understood his company. "There are folks, " saysMr. Counsellor Pleydell, "before whom a man should take care how heplays the fool, because they have either too much malice or toolittle wit. " Kinglake knew his associates, and was not ashameddesipere in loco, to frolic in their presence. 

One point there was on which he never touched himself or sufferedothers to interrogate him, his conception of and attitude towardsthe Unseen. He wore his religion as Sir William Gull wore the furof his coat, INSIDE. Outwardly he died as he had lived, a Stoic;that on the most personal and sacred of all topics he shouldconsult the Silences was in keeping with his idiosyncrasy. Anotherfamous man, questioned as to his religious creed, made answer thathe believed what all wise men believe. And what do all wise menbelieve? "That all wise men keep to themselves?"

Footnotes:

{1} When "Heartsease" first appeared, Percy Fotheringham wasbelieved to be a portrait; but the accomplished authoress in aletter written not long before her death told me that the characterwas wholly imaginary. 

{2} Pedigrees are perplexing unless tabulated; so here isKinglake's genealogical tree. 

KINGLAKES OF SALTMOOR. WOODFORDES OF CASTLE CARY. | | +-------------------+ | | WILLIAM=MARY WOODFORDE. ROBERT | | +--------------------++--------------+ | || | | |SERJEANT REV. W. C. A. W. KING- DR. HAMILTONJOHN KING- KINGLAKE LAKE KINGLAKE. LAKE. ("Eothen. ")

{3} "Eothen, " p. 33. Reading "Timbuctoo" to-day one is amazed itshould have gained the prize. Two short passages adumbrate thecoming Tennyson, the rest is mystic nonsense. "What do you thinkof Tennyson's prize poem?" writes Charles Wordsworth to his brotherChristopher. "Had it been sent up at Oxford, the author would havehad a better chance of spending a few months at a lunatic asylumthan of obtaining the Prize. " A current Cambridge story at thetime explained the selection. There were three examiners, theVice-Chancellor, a man of arbitrary temper, with whom his juniorshesitated to disagree; a classical professor unversed in EnglishLiterature; a mathematical professor indifferent to all literature. The letter g was to signify approval, the letter b to brand it withrejection. Tennyson's manuscript came from the Vice-Chancellorscored all over with g's. The classical professor failed to seeits merit, but bowed to the Vice-Chancellor, and added his g. Themathematical professor could not admire, but since both hiscolleagues ordained it, good it must be, and his g made the awardunanimous. The three met soon after, and the Vice-Chancellor, inhis blatant way, attacked the other two for admiring a trashy poem. "Why, " they remonstrated, "you covered it with g's yourself. ""G's, " said he, "they were q's for queries; I could not understanda line of it. "

{4} "Enoch Arden, " p. 34. 

{5} "Eothen, " p. 169. Reprint by Bell and Sons, 1898. 

{6} "Eothen, " p. 17. 

{7} His deferential regard for army rank was like that of Johnsonfor bishops. Great was his indignation when the "grotesqueSalvation Army, " as he called it, adopted military nomenclature. "I would let those ragamuffins call themselves saints, angels, prophets, cherubim, Olympian gods and goddesses if they like; buttheir pretension in taking the rank of officers in the army is tome beyond measure repulsive. "

{8} "Eothen, " p. 190 in first edition. It was struck out in thefourth edition. 

{9} "Eothen, " p. 18. Reprint by Bell and Sons, 1898. 

{10} He is very fond of this word; it occurs eleven times. 

{11} "Quarterly Review, " December, 1844. 

{12} "Eothen, " p. 46. 

{13} Poitier's "Vaudeville. "

{14} One characteristic anecdote he omits. Two French officerswere attached to our headquarters; and the staff were partlyembarrassed and partly amused by Lord Raglan's inveterate habit, due to old Peninsular associations, of calling the enemy "theFrench" in the presence of our foreign guests. 

{15} Some of us can recall the lines in which Sir G. Trevelyancommemorated "The Owl's" nocturnal flights:

"When at sunset, chill and dark, Sunset thins the swarming park, Bearing home his social gleaning -Jests and riddles fraught with meaning, Scandals, anecdotes, reports, -Seeks The Owl a maze of courtsWhich, with aspect towards the west, Fringe the street of Sainted James, Where a warm, secluded nestAs his sole domain he claims;From his wing a feather draws, Shapes for use a dainty nib, Pens his parody or squib;Combs his down and trims his claws, And repairs where windows brightFlood the sleepless Square with light. "

{16} Greville, vii. 223, quotes from a letter written afterInkerman to the Prince Consort by Colonel Steele, saying "that hehad no idea how great a mind Raglan really had, but that he now sawit, for in the midst of distresses and difficulties of every kindin which the army was involved, he was perfectly serene andundisturbed. "

{17} "Go quietly" might have been his motto: even on horseback heseemed never to be in a hurry. Airey used to come in from theirrides round the outposts shuddering with cold, and complaining thatthe Chief would never move his horse out of a walk. "I daresay, "said Carlyle, "Lord Raglan will rise quite quietly at the lasttrump, and remain entirely composed during the whole day, and showthe most perfect civility to both parties. "

{18} The first death! out of how many he nowhere reckons: heshrinks from estimates of carnage, and we thank him for it. But anaccomplished naturalist tells me that the vulture, a bird unknownin the Crimea before hostilities began, swarmed there after theAlma fight, and remained till the war was over, disappearingmeanwhile from the whole North African littoral. 

{19} "D-n your eyes!" he said once, in a moment of irritation, tohis attache, Mr. Hay. "D-n your Excellency's eyes!" was theanswer, delivered with deep respect but with sufficient emphasis. Dismissed on the spot, the candid attache went in great anger topack up, but was followed after a time by Lady Canning, habitualpeacemaker in the household, who besought him if not to apologizeat least to bid his Chief good-bye. After much persuasion heconsented. "Hardly had he entered the room when Sir Stratford hadhim by the hand. 'My dear Hay, this will never do; what a devil ofa temper you have!' The two were firmer friends than ever afterthis" (LANE POOLE'S Life of Lord Stratford, chapter xiii. ). 

{20} The story of an old quarrel between Sir Stratford Canning andthe then Grand Duke Nicholas at St. Petersburg in 1825 is disprovedby Canning's own statement. The two met once only in their lives, at a purely formal reception at Paris in 1814. 

{21} La Femme was a "Miss" or "Mrs. " Howard. She followed LouisNapoleon to France in 1848, and lived openly with him as hismistress. In the once famous "Letters of an Englishman" we aretold how shortly after the December massacre the elite of Englishvisitors in Paris were not ashamed to dine at her house in thePresident's company: and in 1860, Mrs. Simpson, in France with herfather, Nassau Senior, found her, decorated with the title ofMadame de Beauregard, inhabiting La Celle, near Versailles, oncethe abode of Madame de Pompadour, "with the national flag flyingover it, to the great scandal of the neighbourhood. "

{22} Bachaumont's criticism of Latour. Lady Dilke's "FrenchPainters, " p. 165. 

{23} Here is one of the stanzas:

"L'Autriche--dit-on--et la RussieSe brouillent pour la Turquie. Des aujourd'hui il n'en est plus question. En invitant une femme charmante, Le Turc--et je l'en complimente -Est devenu pour nous un trait d'union. "

{24} "Blackwood's Magazine, " December, 1895, p. 802. 

{25} I inserted this quotation before reading the "EtchinghamLetters. " Sir Richard would wish me to erase it as hackneyed; butit applies to Kinglake's talk as accurately as to Virgil's writing, and I refuse to be defrauded of it. 

{26} This delightful phrase is Lady Gregory's. One would wish, like Lord Houghton, though suppressing his presumptuous rider, tohave been its author. 

{27} Of course Kinglake was not alone in this opinion. It wasvoiced in a delightful jeu d'esprit, now forgotten, which it isworth while to reproduce:

"THE BERLIN CONGRESS. 

"The following Latin poem, from the pen of the well-known Germanpoet, Gustave Schwetschke, was distributed by Prince Bismarck'sspecial request amongst the Plenipotentiaries immediately after thelast sitting on Saturday:

"'GAUDEAMUS CONGRESSIBILE. "'Gaudeamus igiturSocii congressus, Post dolores bellicosos, Post labores gloriosos, Nobis fit decessus. 

"'Ubi sunt, qui ante nosQuondam consedere, Viennenses, ParisiensesTot per annos, tot per menses?Frustra decidere. 

"'Mundus heu! vult decipi, Sed non decipiatur, Non plus ultra inter gentesLitigantes et frementesManus conferatur. 

'Vivat Pax! et comitentDii nunc congressum, Ceu Deus ex machinaIpsa venit CypriaRoborans successum. 

"'Pereat discordia!Vincat semper litemProxenetae probitas, {27a}Fides, spes, et charitas, Gaudeamus item!

"G. S. "

"THE OTHER VERSION. (From the "Pall Mall Gazette. ")

"A correspondent informs us that the version given in 'TheStandard' of yesterday of the congratulatory ode ('Gaudeamusigitur, ' etc. ) addressed to the Congress by 'the well-known Germanpoet Gustave Schwetschke, ' and 'distributed by Prince Bismarck'srequest among the Plenipotentiaries, ' is incorrect. The trueversion, we are assured, is as follows:

"'Rideamus igitur, Socii Congressus;Post dolores bellicosos, Post labores bumptiosos, Fit mirandus messus. 

"Ubi sunt qui apud nosCausas litigare, Moldo-Wallachae frementes, Graeculi esurientes?Heu! absquatulare. 

"'Ubi sunt provinciaeQuas est laus pacasse?Totae, totae, sunt partitae:Has tulerunt Muscovitae, Illas Count Andrassy. 

"'Et quid est quod AngliaeDedit hic Congressus?Jus pro aliis pugnandi, Mortuum vivificandi -Splendidi successus!

"'Vult Joannes decipiEt bamboosulatur. Io Beacche! Quae majestas!Ostreae reportans testasDomum gloriatur!'"

"This version, which from internal evidence will be seen to be thetrue one, may be roughly Englished thus:

"Let us have our hearty laugh, Greatest of Congresses!After days and weeks pugnacious, After labours ostentatious, See how big the mess is!

"'Where are those who at our barTheir demands have stated:Robbed Roumanians rampaging, Greeklings with earth-hunger raging?Where? Absquatulated!

"'Where the lands we've pacified, With their rebel masses?All are gone; yes, all up-gobbled:These the Muscovite has nobbled, Those are Count Andrassy's. 

"'And what does England carry offTo add to her possessions?The right to wage another's strife, The right to raise the dead to life -Glorious concessions!

"'Well, let John Bull bamboozled beIf he's so fond of sells!Io Beacche! Hark the cheering!See him home in triumph bearingBOTH {27b} the oyster shells!'"

{27a} "Der ehrlich Miikler. "

{27b} Peace and Honour.