No More Learning

” But of
Kingsley's masterpiece in the way of character, the old Scotchman
Mackaye, he says, “My invaluable countryman in this book is nearly
perfect. ”
Kingsley's historical novels are in a different strain. The further
he removes his story from his own time, the more pictorial the pres-
entation. His freshness and vigor seize upon the reader; the roots
of feeling strike down into the heart of life. The desert scenes in
Hypatia,' the thrilling tragedy of the death of the martyr, which if
bad history is admirable fiction, the sea-fight in Westward Ho! ' an
epic «not of dull prose but of the thunder roll of Homer's verse,
stir the blood and mock criticism. Concerning the history and the
theology the general reader does not concern himself. The genius
of the author has already possessed him. Raphael, Wulf, and Amal —
beings begot of fancy, dwelling in an unreal time—are more alive
than modern photographic realism makes the latest realistic hero.
No writer in the language has shown a greater power of descrip-
tion than Kingsley. Landscape, beast, and bird are invested with
poetic charm. He is as close an observer as John Burroughs, and as
great an artist as Turner in painting grand effects of sea and sky.
There is no elaboration of detail, no exaggeration, in his glimpses of
the fens of Devon and the cliffs of Lundy. The writing is alive; the
man tells what he has seen; we have the atmospheric effect and the
dramatic character. «In one of his pictures of Cornwall,” says Mr.
Leslie Stephen,
we can tell the time of day and the state of the
weather, as if he were a meteorologist. ”
The verdict of time has placed Kingsley among the minor poets.
Great things were expected of the author of "The Saint's Tragedy. '
Andromeda' – the most successful attempt in the language in the
use of hexameter verse - fulfilled these expectations in a measure.
But his genius was not equal to a sustained flight. He will be best
remembered by those short dramatic lyrics which he sang in meas-
ures approaching perfection.


## p. 8614 (#222) ###########################################

8614
CHARLES KINGSLEY
Kingsley's is a character easy to criticize. He had a feminine
side, which in a truly feminine fashion admired force, however
exerted; a side which is responsible for that muscular Christianity”
whose paternity he denied. In his rôle of reformer his vehemence
and impetuosity stood him in good stead; but impatience like his is
the enemy of the grave and noble style. Though not profoundly
learned, he had wide and varied information. He came near being a
great preacher, for he chose living topics; and he had the gift of
clothing in picturesque imagery an abstract truth, first perceived per-
haps by a more original mind. He wrote one really great story,
(Hypatia'; and five brilliant ones: Yeast, (Alton Locke, Hereward
the Wake,' Westward Ho! ' and (Two Years Ago. His Water-
Babies) is one of the few perfect fairy stories in the language. Even
its moralities cannot wither it, nor its educational intention stale its
infinite variety. He had the lyric quality and the poet's heart. Had
he devoted himself to his favorite pursuit, he would have been a
famous naturalist. And from his first published work to his prema-
ture death he was a distinct moral force in England.
>
1
THE MERRY LARK WAS UP AND SINGING
T"
He merry, merry lark was up and singing,
And the hare was out and feeding on the lea,
And the merry, merry bells below were ringing,
When my child's laugh rang through me.
Now the hare is snatched and dead beside the snow-yard,
And the lark beside the dreary winter sea;
And my baby in his cradle in the church-yard
Waiteth there until the bells bring me.
1
1
THE DEAD CHURCH
W"
YILD, wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing?
Dark, dark night, wilt thou never wear away?
Cold, cold church, in thy death-sleep lying,
Thy Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter Day.
Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing:
Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath lain.
Weep, dear Lord, where thy bride is lying:
Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health
again.


## p. 8615 (#223) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8615
THE SANDS OF DEE
“Ό
Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee :)
The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
And all alone went she.
The western tide crept 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 rolling 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,
A drowned maiden's hair,
Above the nets at sea ? »
Was ne'er a 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 of Dee!
YOUTH AND AGE
WHEN
-
HEN all the world is young, lad, and everything is green,
And every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen,
Then boot, lad, and horse, lad, and round the world away,
And go it while you're young, lad;— each dog must have his day.
When all the world gets old, lad, and all the trees turn brown,
And all the jests get stale, lad, and all the wheels run down,
Then hie back to thy hame, lad, -the maimed and sick among:
Thank God! if then you find one face you loved when you were
young.


## p. 8616 (#224) ###########################################

8616
CHARLES KINGSLEY
A MYTH
-
FLOATING, a-floating
Across the sleeping sea,
All night I heard a singing bird
Upon the topmost tree.
A
“Oh, came you from the isles of Greece
Or from the banks of Seine;
Or off some tree in forests free,
Which fringe the western main ? »
"I came not off the Old World,
Nor yet from off the New;
But I am one of the birds of God
Which sing the whole night through. ”
“Oh, sing and wake the dawning -
Oh, whistle for the wind :
The night is long, the current strong,
My boat it lags behind. ”
“The current sweeps the Old World,
The current sweeps the New:
The wind will blow, the dawn will glow,
Ere thou hast sailed them through. ”
LONGINGS
From "The Saint's Tragedy)
>
0"
H! THAT we two were Maying
Down the stream of the soft spring breeze;
Like children with violets playing
In the shade of the whispering trees.
Oh! that we two sat dreaming
On the sward of some sheep-trimmed down,
Watching the white mist steaming
Over river and mead and town.
Oh! that we two lay sleeping
In our nest in the church-yard sod;
With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth’s breast,
And our souls at home with God.


## p. 8617 (#225) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8617
ANDROMEDA AND THE SEA-NYMPHS
From Andromeda)
A"*
18.
1
1
WED by her own rash words she was still, and her eyes to the
seaward
Looked for an answer of wrath: far off in the heart of the dark-
ness,
Bright white mists rose slowly; beneath them the wandering ocean
Glimmered and flowed to the deepest abyss; and the knees of the
maiden
Trembled and sank in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the midnight,
Rose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mystical sea-
maids.
Onward toward her they came, and her heart beat loud at their
coming,
Watching the bliss of the gods, as wakened the cliffs with their
laughter.
Onward they came in their joy, and before them the roll of the
surges
Sank, as the breeze sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked mar-
ble,
Awed; and the crags of the cliff and the pines of the mountain were
silent.
Onward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the
sea-nymphs,
Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving; and rainbows,
Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, light-
ing
Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Ne-
reus,
Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean.
Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which
they scattered,
Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the Tri-
tons
Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in wor-
ship
Hovered the terns, and the sea-gulls swept past them on silvery
pinions
Echoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins
Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which
bore them
Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the
maiden,


## p. 8618 (#226) ###########################################

8618
CHARLES KINGSLEY
Pawing the spray into gems, till the fiery rainfall, unharming,
Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of
the mermen.
Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness,
Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others,
Pitiful, floated in silence apart; in their bosoms the sea-boys,
Slain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus:
Hapless, whom never again on strand or on quay shall their mothers
Welcome with garlands and vows to the temple, but wearily pining
Gaze over island and bay for the sails of the sunken; they heedless
Sleep in soft bosoms forever, and dream of the surge and the sea-
maids.
Onward they passed in their joy; on their brows neither sorrow nor
anger;
Self-sufficing as gods, never heeding the woe of the maiden.
A FAREWELL
M
Y 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:
3
者
​Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.
34 3
WAITING FOR THE ARMADA
1
From (Westward Ho! )
EE those five talking earnestly, in the centre of a ring, which
S** longs to overhear and yet is too respectful to approach close
.
Those soft long eyes and pointed chin you recognize already:
they are Walter Raleigh's
. The fair young man in the flame-
colored doublet, whose arm is round Raleigh's neck, is Lord
Sheffield; opposite them stands, by the side of Sir Richard Gren-
ville, a man as stately even as he,– Lord Sheffield's uncle, the
-
Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral of Eng-
land; next to him is his son-in-law, Sir Robert Southwell, captain
of the Elizabeth Jonas: but who is that short, sturdy, plainly


## p. 8619 (#227) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8619
166
17
»
dressed man, who stands with legs a little apart and hands
behind his back, looking up, with keen gray eyes, into the face of
each speaker ? His cap is in his hands, so you can see the bul-
let head of crisp brown hair and the wrinkled forehead, as well
as the high cheek-bones, the short square face, the broad temples,
the thick lips which are yet firm as granite. A coarse plebeian
stamp of man: yet the whole figure and attitude are that of
boundless determination, self-possession, energy; and when at
last he speaks a few blunt words, all eyes are turned respectfully
upon him, — for his name is Francis Drake.
A burly, grizzled elder, in greasy sea-stained garments con-
trasting oddly with the huge gold chain about his neck, waddles
up, as if he had been born and had lived ever since in a gale of
wind at sea. The upper half of his sharp dogged visage seems
of brick-red leather, the lower of badger's fur; and as he claps
Drake on the back, and with broad Devon twang shouts, «Be
you a-coming to drink your wine, Francis Drake, or be you not ?
- saving your presence, my Lord;” the Lord High Admiral only
laughs, and bids Drake go and drink his wine: for John Haw-
kins, Admiral of the Port, is the Patriarch of Plymouth seamen,
if Drake be their hero, and says and does pretty much what
he likes in any company on earth; not to mention that to-day's
prospect of an Armageddon fight has shaken him altogether out
of his usual crabbed reserve, and made him overflow with loqua-
cious good-humor, even to his rival Drake.
So they push through the crowd, wherein is many another
man whom one would gladly have spoken with, face to face on
earth. Martin Frobisher and John Davis are sitting on that
bench, smoking tobacco from long silver pipes; and by them are
Fenton and Withrington, who have both tried to follow Drake's
path round the world, and failed, though by no fault of their
The man who pledges them better luck next time is
George Fenner, known to “the seven Portugals”; Leicester's pet,
and captain of the galleon which Elizabeth bought of him. That
short prim man in the huge yellow ruff, with sharp chin, minute
imperial, and self-satisfied smile, is Richard Hawkins, the Com-
plete Seaman, Admiral John's hereafter famous and hapless son.
The elder who is talking with him is his good uncle William,
whose monument still stands, or should stand, in Deptford
Church; for Admiral John set it up there but one year after this
time, and on it recorded how he was “A worshiper of the true
.
.
1
1
1
own.


## p. 8620 (#228) ###########################################

8620
CHARLES KINGSLEY
religion, an especial benefactor of poor sailors, a most just arbiter
in most difficult causes, and of a singular faith, piety, and pru.
dence. ” That, and the fact that he got creditably through some
sharp work at Porto Rico, is all I know of William Hawkins;
but if you or I, reader, can have as much or half as much said
of us when we have to follow him, we shall have no reason to
complain.
There is John Drake, Sir Francis's brother, ancestor of the
present stock of Drakes; and there is George, his nephew, a man
not over-wise, who has been round the world with Amyas; and
there is Amyas himself, talking to one who answers him with
fierce curt sentences, - Captain Barker of Bristol, brother of the
hapless Andrew Barker who found John Oxenham's guns, and
owing to a mutiny among his men perished by the Spaniards in
Honduras twelve years ago. Barker is now captain of the Vic-
tory, one of the Queen's best ships; and he has his accounts to
settle with the Dons, as Amyas has: so they are both growling
together in a corner, while all the rest are as merry as the flies
upon the vine above their heads.
But who is the aged man who sits upon a bench, against
the sunny south wall of the tavern, his long white beard flow-
ing almost to his waist, his hands upon his knees, his palsied
head moving slowly from side to side, to catch the scraps of dis-
course of the passing captains ?
It is old Martin Cockrem,
father of the ancient host, aged himself beyond the years of
men, who can recollect the bells of Plymouth ringing for the
coronation of Henry the Eighth, and who was the first English-
man, perhaps, who ever set foot on the soil of the New World.
There he sits, like an old Druid Tor of primeval granite amid
the tall wheat and rich clover crops of a modern farm.
seen the death of old Europe and the birth-throes of the new.
Go to him, and question him; for his senses are quick
and just now the old man seems uneasy.
rheumy eyes through the groups, and seems listening for a well-
known voice.
“Long life? Iss, fegs, I reckon, long enough already! Why,
I mind the beginning of it all, I do. I mind when there wasn't
a master mariner to Plymouth that thought there was aught
west of the Land's End except herrings. Why, they held then,
pure wratches, that if you sailed right west away far enough,
you'd surely come to the edge, and fall over cleve.
He has
as ever,
He is peering with
((
Iss —'twas


## p. 8621 (#229) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8621
dark parts round here, till Captain Will arose; and the first of it
I mind was inside the bar of San ucar, and he and I were boys
about a ten year old, aboord of a Dartmouth ship, and went for
wine; and there come in over the bar he that was the beginning
of it all. ”
“Columbus? "
“Iss, fegs, he did, not a pistol-shot from us; and I saw mun
stand on the poop, so plain as I see you: no great shakes of a
man to look to neither; there's a sight better here, to plase me:
and we was disappointed, we lads, for we surely expected to see
mun with a goolden crown on, and a sceptre to a's hand, we did,
and the ship o' mun all over like Solomon's temple for gloory.
And I mind that same year, too, seeing Vasco da Gama, as was
going out over the bar, when he found the Bona Speranza, and
sailed round it to the Indies. Ah, that was the making of they
rascally Portingals, it was! . . . And our crew told what they
seen and heerd; but nobody minded sich things. 'Twas dark
parts and Popish, then; and nobody knowed nothing, nor got no
schooling, nor cared for nothing, but scrattling up and down
alongshore like to prawns in a pule. Iss, sitting in darkness, we
was, and the shadow of death, till the day-spring from on high
arose, and shined upon us poor out-o'-the-way folk - the Lord
be praised! And now, look to mun! ” and he waved his hand
all round — "look to mun! Look to the works of the Lord!
Look to the captains! Oh blessed sight! And one's been to
the Brazils, and one to the Indies, and the Spanish Main, and
the Northwest, and the Rooshias, and the Chinas, and up the
Straits, and round the Cape, and round the world of God too,
bless his holy name; and I seed the beginning of it; and I'll see
the end of it too, I will! I was born into the old times, but I'll
see the wondrous works of the new yet, I will! I'll see they
bloody Spaniards swept off the seas before I die, if my old eyes
can reach so far as outside the Sound. I shall, I knows it. I
says my prayers for it every night: don't I, Mary? You'll bate
mun, sure as Judgment, you'll bate mun! The Lord'll fight for
ye. Nothing'll stand against ye.
.
I've seed it all along — ever
since I was with young master to the Honduras. They can't
bide the push of us!
You'll bate mun off the face of the seas,
and be masters of the round world, and all that therein is.
then I'll just turn my old face to the wall, and depart in peace,
according to His word. ”
-
-


## p. 8622 (#230) ###########################################

86 2 2
CHARLES KINGSLEY
A PURITAN CRUSADER
From Plays and Puritans)
Spicturesque enough.
URELY these Puritans were dramatic enough, poetic enough,
We do not speak of such fanatics as
Balfour of Burley, or any other extravagant person whom it
may have suited Walter Scott to take as a typical personage.
We speak of the average Puritan nobleman, gentleman, merchant,
or farmer: and hold him to have been a picturesque and poetical
man,-a man of higher imagination and deeper feeling than the
average of court poets; and a man of sound taste also. What
is to be said about his opinions about the stage has been seen
already; but it seems to have escaped most persons' notice, that
either all England is grown very foolish, or the Puritan opinions
on several matters have been justified by time.
On the matter of the stage, the world has certainly come over
to their way of thinking. Few highly educated men now think it
worth while to go to see any play, and that exactly for the same
reasons as the Puritans put forward; and still fewer highly edu-
cated men think it worth while to write plays, finding that since
the grosser excitements of the imagination have become forbidden
themes there is really very little to write about.
But in the matter of dress and of manners, the Puritan tri-
umph has been complete. Even their worst enemies have come
over to their side, and « the whirligig of time has brought its
revenges. ”
Most of their canons of taste have become those of all
England. High-Churchmen, who still call them Roundheads and
Cropped-ears, go about rounder-headed and closer cropt than they
ever went. They held it more rational to cut the hair to a com-
fortable length than to wear effeminate curls down the back:
we cut ours much shorter than they ever did. They held (with
the Spaniards, then the finest gentlemen in the world) that sad
(that is, dark) colors — above all, black
were the fittest for all
stately and earnest gentlemen: we all, from the Tractarian to the
Anythingarian, are exactly of the same opinion. They held that
lace, perfumes, and jewelry on a man were marks of unmanly fop-
pishness and vanity: so hold the finest gentlemen in England
They thought it equally absurd and sinful for a man to
carry his income on his back, and bedizen himself out in reds,
blues, and greens, ribbons, knots, slashes, and « treble, quadruple,
1
1
1
1
now.


## p. 8623 (#231) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8623
:
-
»
-
dædalian ruffs, built up on iron and timber, which have more
arches in them for pride than London Bridge for use": we, if we
met such a ruffed and ruffled worthy as used to swagger by doz-
ens up and down Paul's Walk, not knowing how to get a dinner,
much less to pay his tailor, should look on him as firstly a fool,
and secondly a swindler; while if we met an old Puritan, we
should consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely dressed,
but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste: and when
we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the
harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of dice in one
pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbrokers' duplicates in the
other; that his thoughts were altogether of citizens' wives and
their too easy virtue; and that he could not open his mouth
without a dozen oaths,- then we should consider the Puritan
(even though he did quote Scripture somewhat through his nose)
as the gentleman; and the courtier as a most offensive specimen
of the “snob triumphant,” glorying in his shame. The picture
is not ours, nor even the Puritan’s. It is Bishop Hall's, Bishop
Earle's; it is Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Jonson's, Shakespeare's, - the
picture which every dramatist, as well as satirist, has drawn of
the "gallant” of the seventeenth century. No one can read those
writers honestly without seeing that the Puritan and not the
Cavalier conception of what a British gentleman should be, is
the one accepted by the whole nation at this day.
In applying the same canon to the dress of women, they were
wrong. As in other matters, they had hold of one pole of a
double truth, and erred in applying it exclusively to all cases,
But there are two things to be said for them: first, that the
dress of that day was palpably an incentive to the profligacy of
that day, and therefore had to be protested against; while in
these more moral times, ornaments and fashions may be harm-
lessly used which then could not be used without harm. Next,
it is undeniable that sober dressing is more and more becoming
the fashion among well-bred women; and that among them too
the Puritan canons are gaining ground.
We have just said that the Puritans held too exclusively to
one pole of a double truth. They did so, no doubt, in their
Hatred of the drama. Their belief that human relations were,
if not exactly sinful, at least altogether carnal and unspiritual,
Prevented their conceiving the possibility of any truly Christian
drama; and led them at times into strange and sad errors, like
ul


## p. 8624 (#232) ###########################################

8624
CHARLES KINGSLEY
}
ET
.
-
that New England ukase of Cotton Mather's, who is said to have
punished the woman who should kiss her infant on the Sabbath
day. * Yet their extravagances on this point were but the honest
revulsion from other extravagances on the opposite side. If the
undistinguishing and immoral Autotheism of the playwrights, and
the luxury and heathendom of the higher classes, first in Italy
and then in England, were the natural revolt of the human mind
against the Manichæism of monkery, then the severity and exclus-
iveness of Puritanism was a natural and necessary revolt against
that luxury and immorality; a protest for man's God-given superi-
ority over nature, against that Naturalism which threatened to
end in sheer animalism. While Italian prelates have found an
apologist in Mr. Roscoe, and English playwrights in Mr. Gifford,
the old Puritans- who felt and asserted, however extravagantly,
that there was an eternal law which was above all Borgias and
Machiavels, Stuarts and Fletchers — have surely a right to a fair
trial. If they went too far in their contempt for humanity,
certainly no one interfered to set them right. The Anglicans of
that time, who held intrinsically the same anthropologic notions,
and yet wanted the courage and sincerity to carry them out as
honestly, neither could nor would throw any light upon the con-
troversy.
But as for these Puritans having been merely the sour, nar-
row, inhuman persons they are vulgarly supposed to have been,
credat Judæus. There were sour and narrow men among them;
so there were in the opposite party. No Puritan could have had
less poetry in him, less taste, less feeling, than Laud himself.
But is there no poetry save words ? no drama save that which
is presented on the stage ? Is this glorious earth, and the souls
of living men, mere prose as long as
"carent vate sacro,” who
will forsooth do them the honor to make poetry out of a little of
them (and of how little ! ) by translating them into words, which
he himself, just in proportion as he is a good poet, will confess
to be clumsy, tawdry, ineffectual? Was there no poetry in these
Puritans because they wrote no poetry? We do not mean now
the unwritten tragedy of the battle psalm and the charge; but
simple idyllic poetry and quiet home drama,- love poetry of
the heart and the hearth, and the beauties of every-day human
life. Take the most commonplace of them: was Zeal-for-Truth
.
* Of course neither this supposed enactment nor the other “Blue Laws »
ever existed, being pure inventions of a revengeful Loyalist. — Ev.
1
11
+
1
U


## p. 8625 (#233) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8625
Thoresby of Thoresby Rise in Deeping Fen, because his father
had thought fit to give him an ugly and silly name, the less of a
noble lad ? Did his name prevent his being six feet high ? Were
his shoulders the less broad for it, his cheeks the less ruddy for
it ? He wore his flaxen hair of the same length that every one
now wears his, instead of letting it hang half-way to his waist in
essenced curls; but was he therefore the less of a true Viking's
son, bold-hearted as his sea-roving ancestors who won the Dane.
lagh by Canute's side, and settled there on Thoresby Rise, to grow
wheat and breed horses, generation succeeding generation, in the
old moated grange? He carried a Bible in his jack-boot; but did
that prevent him, as Oliver rode past him with an approving
smile on Naseby field, thinking himself a very handsome fellow,
with his mustache and imperial, and bright-red coat, and cuirass
well polished, in spite of many a dint, as he sate his father's
great black horse as gracefully and firmly as any long-locked and
essenced cavalier in front of him ? Or did it prevent him think-
ing too, for a moment, with a throb of the heart, that sweet
Cousin Patience far away at home, could she but see him, might
have the same opinion of him as he had of himself? Was he
the worse for the thought? He was certainly not the worse for
checking it the next instant, with manly shame for letting such
< carnal vanities” rise in his heart while he was doing the Lord's
work” in the teeth of death and hell; but was there no poetry in
him then ? No poetry in him, five minutes after, as the long
Tapier swung round his head, redder and redder at every sweep?
We are befooled by names. Call him Crusader instead of Round-
head, and he seems at once (granting him only sincerity, which
he had, and that of a right awful kind) as complete a knight-
errant as ever watched and prayed, ere putting on his spurs, in
fantastic Gothic chapel, beneath “storied windows richly dight. ”
Was there no poetry in him, either, half an hour afterwards, as he
lay bleeding across the corpse of the gallant horse, waiting for
his turn with the surgeon, and fumbled for the Bible in his boot,
and tried to hum a psalm, and thought of Cousin Patience, and
his father, and his mother, and how they would hear at least
that he had played the man in Israel that day, and resisted unto
blood, striving against sin and the Man of Sin ?
And was there no poetry in him too, as he came wearied
a long Thoresby dike, in the quiet autumn eve, home to the house
of his forefathers; and saw afar off the knot of tall poplars rising
1
务
​1
»
XV-540


## p. 8626 (#234) ###########################################

8626
CHARLES KINGSLEY
D
over the broad misty flat, and the one great abele tossing its
sheets of silver in the dying gusts, and knew that they stood
before his father's door ? Who can tell all the pretty child
memories which fitted across his brain at that sight, and made
him forget that he was a wounded cripple?
There is the dike
where he and his brothers snared the great pike which stole the
ducklings — how many years ago ? — while pretty little Patience
stood by trembling, and shrieked at each snap of the brute's wide
jaws; and there, down that long dark lode, ruffling with crimson
in the sunset breeze, he and his brothers skated home in triumph
with Patience when his uncle died. What a day that was! when
in the clear bright winter noon they laid the gate upon the ice,
and tied the beef-bones under the four corners, and packed little
Patience on it! -How pretty she looked, though her eyes were
red with weeping, as she peeped out from among the heap of
blankets and horse-hides; and how merrily their long fen-runners
whistled along the ice-lane, between the high bank of sighing
reed, at a pace like the race-horse's, to the dear old home among
the poplar-trees. And now he was going home to meet her after
a mighty victory, a deliverance from heaven; second only in his
eyes to that Red Sea one. Was there no poetry in his heart at
that thought ? Did not the glowing sunset, and the reed-beds
which it transfigured before him into sheets of golden flame, seem
tokens that the glory of God was going before him in his path ?
Did not the sweet clamor of the wild-fowl, gathering for one rich
pæan ere ey sank into rest, seem to him as God's bells chiming
him home in triumph, with peals sweeter and bolder than those
of Lincoln or Peterborough steeple-house? Did not the very
lapwing, as she tumbled softly wailing before him, as she did
years ago, seem to welcome the wanderer home in the name of
heaven?
Fair Patience, too — though she was a Puritan, yet did not
her cheek flush, her eyes grow dim, like any other girl's, as she
saw far off the red coat, like a sliding spark of fire, coming slowly
along the strait fen-bank, and fled up-stairs into her chamber to
pray, half that it might be, half that it might not be he? Was
there no happy storm of human tears and human laughter when
he entered the court-yard gate ? Did not the old dog lick his
Puritan hand as lovingly as if it had been a Cavalier's ? Did not
lads and lasses run out shouting ? Did not the old yeoman
father
hug him, weep over him, hold him at arm's-length, and hug him
1
1
1


## p. 8627 (#235) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8627
one
more
again, as heartily as any other John Bull; even though the next
moment he called all to kneel down and thank Him who had
sent his boy home again, after bestowing on him the grace to
bind kings in chains and nobles with links of iron, and contend
to death for the faith delivered to the saints? And did not Zeal-
for-Truth look about as wistfully for Patience as any other man
would have done; longing to see her, yet not daring even to ask
for her ? And when she came down at last, was she the less
lovely in his eyes because she came, not flaunting with bare
bosom, in tawdry finery and paint, but shrouded close in coif and
pinner, hiding from all the world beauty which was there still,
but was meant for one alone, and that only if God willed, in
God's good time? And was there no faltering of their voices, no
light in their eyes, no trembling pressure of their hands, which
said more, and was -ay, and more beautiful in the sight
of Him who made them — than all Herrick's Dianemes, Waller's
Saccharissas, flames, darts, posies, love-knots, anagrams, and the
rest of the insincere cant of the court ? What if Zeal-for-Truth
had never strung two rhymes together in his life? Did not his
heart go for inspiration to a loftier Helicon, when it whispered to
itself, “My love, my dove, my undefiled, is but one,” than if he
had filled pages with sonnets about Venuses and Cupids, love-
sick shepherds and cruel nymphs ?
And was there no poetry - true idyllic poetry, as of Longfel-
low's Evangeline' itself — in that trip round the old farm next
morning; when Zeal-for-Truth, after looking over every heifer
and
peeping into every sty, would needs canter down by his
father's side to the horse-fen, with his arm in a sling; while the
partridges whirreď up before them, and the lurchers flashed like
gray snakes after the hare, and the colts came whinnying round,
with staring eyes and streaming manes; and the two chatted'
on in the same sober business-like English tone, alternately of
the Lord's great dealings” by General Cromwell, the pride of
all honest fen-men, and the price of troop-horses at the next
Horncastle fair ?
Poetry in those old Puritans? Why not? They were men
of like passions with ourselves. They loved, they married, they
brought up children; they feared, they sinned, they sorrowed,
they fought — they conquered. There was poetry enough in
them, be sure, though they acted it like men instead of singing
it like birds.
»
}
»


## p. 8628 (#236) ###########################################

8628
CHARLES KINGSLEY
THE SALMON RIVER
From the "Water-Babies)
>
A
ND then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw a sight.
He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout;
for they would not move an inch to take a fly, though there
were thousands on the water, but lay dozing at the bottom under
the shade of the stones; and Tom lay dozing too, and was glad
to cuddle their smooth, cool sides, for the water was quite warm
and unpleasant.
But toward evening it grew suddenly dark; and Tom looked
up and saw a blanket of black clouds lying right across the
valley above his head, resting on the crags right and left. He
felt not quite frightened, but very still; for everything was still.
There was not a whisper of wind nor a chirp of a bird to be
heard; and next a few great drops of rain fell plop into the
water, and one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop his head
down quickly enough.
And then the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed, and
leaped across Vendale and back again, from cloud to cloud and
cliff to cliff, till the very rocks in the stream seemed to shake;
and Tom looked up at it through the water, and thought it the
finest thing he ever saw in his life.
But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain
came down by bucketfuls, and the hail hammered like shot on
the stream, and churned it into foam; and soon the stream rose
and rushed down, higher and higher and fouler and fouler, full
of beetles, and sticks and straws, and worms and addle-eggs, and
wood-lice and leeches, and odds and ends, and omnium-gatherums,
and this, that, and the other, enough to fill nine museums.
Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a
rock. But the trout did not; for out they rushed from among
the stones, and began gobbling the beetles and leeches in the
most greedy and quarrelsome way; and swimming about with
great worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging and kicking
to get them away from each other.
And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a new
sight,- all the bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turn-
ing and twisting along, all down-stream and away. They had
been hiding for weeks past in the cracks of the rocks, and in
burrows in the mud; and Tom had hardly ever seen them, except


## p. 8629 (#237) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8629
(C
now and then at night; but now they were all out, and went
hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite fright-
ened. And as they hurried past he could hear them say to each
other, “We must run, we must run. What a jolly thunder-storm!
Down to the sea, down to the sea! ”
And then the otter came by with all her brood, twining and
sweeping along as fast as the eels themselves; and she spied Tom
as she came by, and said:
Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world. Come
along, children, never mind those nasty eels: we shall breakfast
on salmon to-morrow. Down to the sea, down to the sea! »
Then came a flash brighter than all the rest; and by the light
of it - in the thousandth part of a second they were gone again,
but he had seen them, he was certain of it — three beautiful
Little white girls, with their arms twined round each other's
necks, floating down the torrent as they sang, "Down to the sea,
down to the sea ! »
“Oh, stay! Wait for me! ” cried Tom; but they were gone;
yet he could hear their voices clear and sweet through the roar
of thunder and water and wind, singing as they died away,
“Down to the sea! ”
«Down to the sea ? ” said Tom: "everything is going to the
sea, and I will go too. Good-by, trout. ” But the trout were so
busy gobbling worms that they never turned to answer him; so
that Tom was spared the pain of bidding them farewell.
And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright
flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone
out one moment as clear as day, and the next were dark as
night; past dark hovers under swirling banks, from which great
trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him to be good to eat, and
turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them home again with a
tremendous scolding for daring to meddle with a water-baby; on
through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom was
deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along
deep reaches, where the white water-lilies tossed and flapped
beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages, under dark
bridge arches, and away and away to the sea. And Tom could
not stop, and did not care to stop: he would see the great world
below, and the salmon and the breakers and the wide, wide sea.
And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out in the
salmon river,
*
1
4


## p. 8630 (#238) ###########################################

8630
CHARLES KINGSLEY
!
1
1
1
And what sort of a river was it? Was it like an Irish stream
winding through the brown bogs, where the wild ducks squatter
up from among the white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and
fro, crying, “Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep," and Dennis tells
you strange stories of the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake
which lies in the black peat pools, among the old pine stems, and
puts his head out at night to snap at the cattle as they come
down to drink ? But you must not believe all that Dennis tells
you, mind; for if you ask him —
Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis ? »
“Is it salmon, thin, your Honor manes ? Salmon ? Cart-loads
it is of thim, thin, an' ridgmens, shouldthering ache ither out of
water, av ye'd but the luck to see thim. ”
Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a rise.
But there can't be a salmon here, Dennis! and if you'll but
think, if one had come up last tide, he'd be gone to the higher
pools by now. ”
« Sure, thin, and your Honor's the thrue fisherman, and un-
derstands it all like a book. Why, ye spake as if ye'd known the
wather a thousand years! As I said, how could there be a fish
here at all, just now? »
“But you said just now they were shouldering each other out
of water. "
And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome,
sly, soft, sleepy, good-natured, untrustable, Irish gray eye, and
answer with the prettiest smile:-
"Sure, and didn't I think your Honor would like a pleasant
answer ? »
So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in the habit of
giving pleasant answers; but instead of being angry with him,
you must remember that he is a poor Paddy, and knows no bet-
ter: so you must just burst out laughing; and then he will burst
out laughing too, and slave for you, and trot about after you,
and show you good sport if he can,- for he is an affectionate fel-
low, and as fond of sport as you are,- and if he can't, tell you
fibs instead, a hundred an hour; and wonder all the while why
poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland
and some other places, where folk have taken up a ridiculous
fancy that honesty is the best policy.
Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is remarkable
chiefly (at least, till this last year) for containing no salmon, as
2
!
1
1


## p. 8631 (#239) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8631
they have been all poached out by the enlighted peasantry, to
prevent the Cythrawl Sassenach (which means you, my little dear,
your kith and kin, and signifies much the same as the Chinese
Fan Quei) from coming bothering into Wales, with good tackle
and ready money, and civilization and common honesty, and other
like things of which the Cymry stand in no need whatsoever ?
Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among
the Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are gray, under
the wise new fishing-laws — when Winchester apprentices shall
covenant, as they did three hundred years ago, not to be made
to eat salmon more than three days a week, and fresh-run fish
shall be as plentiful under Salisbury spire as they are in Holly-
h ole at Christchurch; in the good time coming, when folks shall
see that of all Heaven's gifts of food, the one to be protected
most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon, who is generous
e nough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to come
back next year weighing five pounds, without having cost the
soil or the State one farthing?
Or was it like a Scotch stream such as Arthur Clough drew
in his Bothie?
«Where over a ledge of granite
Into a granite basin the amber torrent descended.
Beautiful there for the color derived from green rocks under;
Beautiful most of all, where beads of foam uprising
Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the still-
(
ness.
Cliff
over cliff for its sides, with rowan
boughs. ”
and pendent birch
.
Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish such
a stream as that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be
roaring down in full spate, like coffee covered with scald cream,
while the fish are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in
a boat-race, or flashing up the cataract like silver arrows, out
of the fiercest of the foam; or whether the fall be dwindled to
a single thread, and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a
turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in one dark
cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their time till the
ra in creeps back again off the sea You will not care much, if
you have eyes and brains; for you will lay down your rod con-
te ntedly, and drink in at your eyes the beauty of that glorious
place, and listen to the water-ouzel piping on the stones, and
9


## p. 8632 (#240) ###########################################

8632
CHARLES KINGSLEY
« You
-
watch the yellow roes come down to drink and look up at you
with their great soft, trustful eyes, as much as to say,
could not have the heart to shoot at us. " And then, if you have
,
sense, you will turn and talk to the great giant of a gilly who
lies basking on the stone beside you. He will tell you no fibs,
my little man, for he is a Scotchman, and fears God; and as you
talk with him you will be surprised more and more at his knowl-
edge, his sense, his humor, his courtesy; and you will find out -
unless you have found it out before — that a man may learn
from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had
been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London.
No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at Harthover.
It was such a stream as you see in dear old Bewick — Bewick,
who was born and bred upon them. A full hundred yards broad
it was, sliding on from broad pool to broad shallow, and broad
shallow to broad pool, over great fields of shingle, under oak and
ash coverts, past low cliffs of sandstone, past green meadows and
fair parks, and a great house of gray stone, and brown moors
above, and here and there against the sky the smoking chimney
of a colliery. You must look at Bewick to see just what it was
like, for he has drawn it a hundred times with the care and the
love of a true north-countryman; and even if you do not care
about the salmon river, you ought like all good boys to know
your Bewick.
At least, so old Sir John used to say; and very sensibly he
put it too, as he was wont to do:-
" If they want to describe a finished young gentleman in
France, I hear, they say of him, Il sait son Rabelais. ' But if I
want to describe one in England, I say, 'He knows his Bewick. '
And I think that is the higher compliment. ”


## p. 8632 (#241) ###########################################

|||


## p. 8632 (#242) ###########################################


ISIONI
PA12102
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## p. 8632 (#243) ###########################################

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interesting phases of the life in wie Ita
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royalfy liim for his elected work in the murid. I! W.
born in
Ciritmas week, 1865, in Bumbay, a city he has cel? r? :/? in ve mingo!
(tiry
"A husid mills rors througe where I g! ? n
A'i raeus frun al: lards »
Hi! ),
(11111
bus father, Jr. Loshwoord Kipling, is a cured writer, art toucher,
! 111. 781, who has use his taltit in priskiria pictures and dieses
fir tice in Biak ani W? p=> starciard in of 1,1; wei's
Birks, published by the Scribners in Vw York it 13. ,7. Russis
ich vile viits passed in England, giviig him the 11,7%! ! ! ! ! se
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Wireles? ile, in the int. Viis oi ? ppging 1. *? ? (
lui C "Copy,” tu.
which :1. vre was a ivlisi call in the coilposting-pow. 11, he was doing


## p. 8632 (#244) ###########################################

41
1
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و وو ، کھو


## p. 8633 (#245) ###########################################

8633
RUDYARD KIPLING
(1865-)
:
UDYARD KIPLING, still a young man in the early thirties, is a
dominant figure and force in cur nt English literature. He
has passed successfully through the preliminary stages of
uncritical popularity to receive the most careful critical consideration
as story-teller and poet. He has brought a new and striking person-
ality into the literature of the day: with a splendid vigor, breadth,
and directness he has given literary expression to entirely fresh and
interesting phases of the life in wide regions of the English-speaking
peoples; and he has with a noble realism proved in his work the
possibility, to genius, of using the practical rushing late nineteenth
century — with its machinery, science-worship, and struggle for place
-as rich material for imaginative treatment in literature. In a fairly
epic way he has constituted himself, in song and story, the chronicler
and minstrel of the far-scattered colonial English.
Kipling's birth, education, and early experience were such as to
qualify him for his elected work in the world. He was born in
Christmas week, 1865, in Bombay, a city he has celebrated in verse:
-
“A thousand mills roar through me where I glean
All races from all lands. »
$1
11
16
3
His father, Mr. Lockwood Kipling, is a cultured writer, art teacher,
and illustrator, who has used his talent in making pictures and deco-
rations for the “In Black and White ) standard edition of his son's
works, published by the Scribners in New York in 1897. Rudyard's
school-life was passed in England, giving him the opportunity to see
the Britisher in his native island. Then, when he was but seventeen,
came the return to India for rough-and-ready journalistic work, as
sub-editor of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette,— with all its
necessity of close observation and inevitable assimilation of that life.
Kipling took the shortest cut to the writer's trade; namely, he wrote
daily and under pressure.
Some of his best tales — notably “The
Man Who Would Be King'— vividly present this newspaper experi-
ence, which was indubitably a good thing for a man like Kipling.
Meanwhile, in the intervals of supplying mere prosaic “copy,” for
which there was a loud call in the composing-room, he was doing


## p. 8634 (#246) ###########################################

8634
RUDYARD KIPLING
>
what many another hard-worked newspaper man has done before
him. turning out stories and verses — which were quickly caught up
by the press and circulated through East India. Then Kipling, in
1886, having attained to man's estate in years, had bound up
in
rough fashion in his office a small volume of his verse: "a lean
oblong docket, wire-stitched, to imitate a D. 0. government envelope,
printed on one side only, bound in brown paper and secured with red
tape. ” And this bard's bantling had a good sale thereabouts; and as
he himself puts it, (at last the book came to London with a gilt
top and a stiff back. ” Its subsequent history is not private: few first
volumes have had so cordial a reception. The Indian stories too,
Plain Tales from the Hills) (1888), were collected in book shape,
eagerly read by the writer's local clientèle, and found a continually
widening public. Kipling's verse and prose were of honestest birth:
sprung from local experience, his writings appealed primarily to a
local audience; but possessing the essential qualities and interests,
the work proved acceptable to anybody on earth capable of being
moved by the earnest, truthful, forcible portrayal of life in words.
When Plain Tales from the Hills) appeared as a book, it was seen
to be the manifesto of a new talent. The vitality, distinction, new-
ness of theme, the pathos, drama, and humor of the work, set it clean
aside from anything else contemporaneous in fiction of the short-
story kind. The defects in the earlier books were an occasional
abuse of the technical in word or allusion, and a young-man cynicism,
appearing especially in the Gadsby series,-a mood soon sloughed off
by the maturer Kipling. But the merits were of the overpowering
sort, and the dynamic force of the tales was beyond question. That
a man but little more than twenty should have written them made
the performance spectacular. In the use of plain Biblical language
and the selection of realistic themes there was something of the
audacity and immediateness of journalism; but the result almost
always justified the method.
The tales found in the volumes — about a dozen in number –
published between 1886 and 1895, are of several kinds. Some treat
pathetic, realistic, or weirdly sombre situations, either of native or
soldier life: a class containing some masterpieces, of which «The Man
Who Would Be King,' (The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes,' (The
Mark of the Beast,' Without Benefit of Clergy,) (The Phantom Rick-
shaw,' and Beyond the Pale) are illustrations. Another division, of
which (Wee Willie Winkie) is the type, grouped in the book Wee
Willie Winkie and Other Stories) (1888), deals with children, and
exhibits a very winning aspect of the author. Still another contains
the humorous cycle personified in the inimitable triad Mulvaney,
Ortheris, and Learoyd, brought into an artistic unity by their common
(


## p. 8635 (#247) ###########################################

RUDYARD KIPLING
8635
1112
.
lot as British-Indian privates (with Dinah Shadd as a minor deity),
one of the most spontaneous and successful of 'Kipling's ventures.
The three sharply differentiated individualities have a reality as tan-
gible as Dumas's Guardsmen. The range and variety of the stories
under these heads furnish an emphatic testimonial to Kipling's many-
sidedness. The successive volumes of short stories, from (Plain
Tales' to Many Inventions) in 1893, have only strengthened the
feeling made by his début. The work has been prevailingly, though
by no means exclusively, inspired by Anglo-Indian motives; -- one
such exception as the superbly imaginative psychologic study, A
Disturber of Traffic, indicates his independence of any prescribed
place or subject. Kipling went to England in 1889, and a little later
settled in the United States, where he married Miss Balestier, the
sister of his friend Wolcott Balestier, with whom he collaborated in
the novel “The Naulakha”; a name he afterwards gave to the sightly
house he has built in Brattleboro, Vermont. His English and Ameri-
can experience has entered into and somewhat conditioned his fiction,
which so far however has made its most distinct impression when it
has come out of the East. But whatever the material of the art, the
Kiplingesque attributes are pretty steadily present: a sinewy vernac-
ular strength and beauty of diction; a wonderful power to see and to
represent with bold synthetic effect; and a deep, broad, brotherly
apprehension of the large fundamental passions and interests of
humanity. If one had to name off-hand the qualities most noticeable
in Kipling's short stories, one would say, strength and democratic
sympathy.
Having done short-story work of so much power and flexibility,
Kipling in 1894 produced that unique and wonderful series of animal
fables, The Jungle Book); a Second Jungle Book' following in 1895.
Here was an absolutely fresh handling of the beast-epic,- a theme
familiar since the Middle Ages. But Kipling's attitude is new: the
beast kind are considered from their own side of the fence, and man
is an inferior rather than superior race.