When an author or a poet dies, the better part of him, it is often said,
is left in his works. So it is in many cases. But with Kingsley his
life and his works were one. All he wrote was meant for the day when he
wrote it. That was enough for him. He hardly gave himself time to think
of fame and the future. Compared with a good work done, with a good word
spoken, with a silent grasp of the hand from a young man he had saved
from mischief, or with a 'Thank you, Sir,' from a poor woman to whom he
had been a comfort, he would have despised what people call glory, like
incense curling away in smoke. He was, in one sense of the word, a
careless writer. He did his best at the time and for the time. He did
it with a concentrated energy of will which broke through all
difficulties. In his flights of imagination, in the light and fire of
his language he had few equals, if any; but the perfection and classical
finish which can be obtained by a sustained effort only, and by a
patience which shrinks from no drudgery, these are wanting in most of his
works.
However, fame, for which he cared so little, has come to him. His bust
will stand in Westminster Abbey, in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist,
by the side of his friend, Frederick Maurice; and in the Temple of Fame
which will be consecrated to the period of Victoria and Albert, there
will be a niche for Charles Kingsley, the author of Alton Locke and
Hypatia.
Sooner or later a complete edition of his works will be wanted, though we
may doubt whether he himself would have wished all his literary works to
be preserved. From what I knew of him and his marvellous modesty, I
should say decidedly not. I doubt more especially, whether he would have
wished the present book, _The Roman and the Teuton_, to be handed down to
posterity. None of his books was so severely criticised as this volume
of Lectures, delivered before the University of Cambridge, and published
in 1864. He himself did not republish it, and it seems impossible to
speak in more depreciatory terms of his own historical studies than he
does himself again and again in the course of his lectures. Yet these
lectures, it should be remembered, were more largely attended than almost
any other lectures at Cambridge. They produced a permanent impression on
many a young mind. They are asked for again and again, and when the
publishers wished for my advice as to the expediency of bringing out a
new and cheaper edition, I could not hesitate as to what answer to give.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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