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CHARLES KINGSLEY.

[BɔRN at Holue Vicarage, Devonshire, in 1819, and educated, partly at Helston Grammar School, and partly at King's College, London, and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was Rector of Eversley in Hampshire; Professor of Moden History at his old university from 1860 to 1869; and Canon of Westminster in 1872. Chief among his thirty-five publications are The Saint's Tragedy (1848), Alton Locke and Yeast (1849), Hypatia (1853), The Heroes (185), Andromeda (1858), The Water-Babies (1863) and ProseIdylls (1873). He died in 1875.]

Charles Kingsley, author on the one hand of Cheap Clothes and Nasty, and of The Water-Babies on the other, was the type of a certain order of modern man: the man of whom much is expected, who is trained up to the fulfinent of many purposes, who is subject to many influences, open to many sorts of impressions, and possessed of many active holds upon life. He came of choice and generous stock; and from the hrst it was determined for him that he should do something and be somebody. It seems natural that he should have developed into one of the busiest men of his time. His, indeed, was a sane and active mind in a sane and active body, and he made noble use of the endowment. He died after a lifetime of such steady, earnest, and varied endeavour as is within the compass of but few.

As a writer, he is seen to greatest advantage in his prose, which is clear, nervous, full of vivacity and significance, and often very powerful and expressive. His verse, however, has a great deal of merit, and may be read with some true pleasure. He had a capacity for poetry, as he had capacities for many things beside, and he cultivated it as he cultivated all the others. His sense of rhythm seems to have been imperfect. His ear was correct, and he often hit on a right and beautiful cadence; but his music grows monotonous, his rhythmical ideas are seldom well sustained or happily developed. His work abounds in charming phrases and in those verbal inspirations that catch the ear and linger long about the memory:-as witness the notes that are audible in the opening verses of The Sands of Dee, the 'pleasant Isle of Avès' of

The Last Buccanier, and the whole first stanza of the song of the Old Schoolmistress in The Water-Babies. But, as it is with his music, so is it with his craftsmanship as well. He would begin brilliantly and suggestively and end feebly and ill, so that of perfect work he has left little or none. It is also to be noted of him that his originality was decidedly eclectic-an originality informed with many memories and showing sign of many influences; and that his work, even when its purpose is most dramatic, is always very personal, and has always a strong dash in it of the sentimental manliness, the combination of muscularity and morality, peculiar to its author. For the rest, Kingsley had imagination, feeling, some insight, a great affection for man and nature, a true interest in things as they were and are and ought to be-above all, as they ought to be !—and a genuine vein of lyric song. His work is singularly varied in quality and tone as in purpose and style. Now it is hot and crude and violent-violent without power-as in Alton Locke's Song and The Bad Squire; now, mannered and affected, as in The Red King and the Weird Lady; now, human and pathetic, as in The Last Buccanier and Airly Beacon; now, fierce and random and turbid, as in Santa Maura and The Saint's Tragedy; now, aesthetic, experimental, even imitative, as in The Longbeards' Saga, Earl Haldane's Daughter, and Andromeda ; now rhetorical and vague and insincere, and now natural, simple, direct, large in handling and earnest in expression, as only true poetry can be. There are fine passages everywhere in Kingsley, and of spirit and point he has an abundance. But it is as a writer of songs that the public have chosen to remember him, and they, as it seems to me, are right. The best of his songs will take rank with the second best in the language.

On the whole, Charles Kingsley was not so much a man of genius as a man of many instincts, many accomplishments, and many capacities. He will always be remembered with respect and admiration; for he was, in John Mill's phrase, 'one of the good influences of his time,' and an excellent writer beside.

W E. HENLEY.

PALLAS IN OLYMPUS.

[From Andromeda.]

Blissful, they turned them to go: but the fair-tressed Pallas Athené

Rose, like a pillar of tall white cloud, toward silver Olympus; Far above ocean and shore, and the peaks of the isles and the mainland;

Where no frost nor storm is, in clear blue windless abysses, High in the home of the summer, the seats of the happy Immortals,

Shrouded in keen deep blaze, unapproachable; there ever youthful Hebé, Harmonié, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodité,

Whirled in the white-linked dance with the gold-crowned Hours and the Graces,

Hand within hand, while clear piped Phoebe, queen of the woodlands.

All day long they rejoiced: but Athené still in her chamber Bent herself over her loom, as the stars rang loud to her singing, Chanting of order and right, and of foresight, warden of nations; Chanting of labour and craft, and of wealth in the port and the

garner;

Chanting of valour and fame, and the man who can fall with the foremost,

Fighting for children and wife, and the field which his father bequeathed him.

Sweetly and solemnly sang she, and planned new lessons for mortals;

Happy who, hearing, obey her, the wise unsullied Athené.

THE LAST BUCCANIER.

O England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high,
But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I;
And such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Avès, beside the Sparish Main.

There were forty craft in Avès that were both swift and stout,
All furnished well with small arms and cannons round about;
And a thousand men in Avès made laws so fair and free
To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.

Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold,

Which he wrung with cruel torture from Indian folk of old;
Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,
Who flog men and keelhaul them, and starve them to the bone.

O the palms grew high in Avès, and fruits that shone like gold
And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold;
And the negro maids to Avès from bondage fast did flee,
To welcome gallant sailors, a-sweeping in from sea.

O sweet it was in Avès to hear the landward breeze,
A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,
With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar
Of the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched the shore,

But Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be ;
So the King's ships sailed on Avès, and quite put down were we.
All day we fought like bull-dogs, but they burst the booms at

night;

And I fled in a piragua, sore wounded, from the fight.

Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside,

Till, for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died; But as I lay a-gasping, a Bristol sail came by,

And brought me home to England here, to beg until I die.

And now I'm old and going-I'm sure I can't tell where;
One comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there :
If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main,
To the pleasant Isle of Avès, to look at it once again.

THE SANDs of Dee.

[From Alton Locke.]

'O Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands o' Dee;'

The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
And all alone went she.

The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see;

The blinding mist came down and hid the land.
And never home came she.

'Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-
A tress o' golden hair,

O' drowned maiden's hair,

Above the nets at sea?

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair,
Among the stakes on Dee.'

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel, crawling foam,

The cruel, hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea;

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,
Across the sands o' Dee.

A FAREWELL.

My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray:
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you

For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;

Do noble hings, not dream them, all day long. And so make life, death, and that vast for ever One grand, sweet song.

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