" FIRESIDE STUDIES."* THE regretted and premature death of Mr.
Kingsley so soon after the publication of these volumes gives to them a posthumous interest. The seven essays which comprise Fireside Studies are highly entertaining, and contain no marks of the depression that results from weariness or pain. It is evident, however, that the author was incapable of revising his proofs, and the pages. abound with trivial errors and misprints that should have been cor- rected by the printer's reader. The author's style reminds us some- times of the familiar talk of a clever, humorous man across the dinner- table. Mr. Kingsley is often careless, but he is always amusing ; he- has ample knowledge at his command, has read many books, and formed an independent judgment of them, and in a loose, easy sort of way gives in Fireside Studies the opinions he has arrived at. Whether readers care for literature or not, they will like Mr. Kingsley's pleasant method of taking them into his confidence,, and as they turn over page after page, will feel more and more certain that they are in extremely good company.
The first volume opens with a suggestive and elaborate paper on "The Fathers of the Spectator," in which Mr. Kingsley pro- nounces judgment in a genial fashion upon Steele, Addison, and some of the smaller men who made themselves a name a century and a half ago as contributors to Steele's famous journal. The temptation to spend an agreeable hour with these delightful writers is one not easily to be resisted by a reader who has once- felt the peculiar charm of the Queen Anne essayists. What that charm is cannot be stated in a few words, and at best must be suggested rather than defined. Partly, no doubt, it is due to the novelty of the society to which we are introduced. Everything is strange to us, and gives scope for the fancy.. The manners, the costume, the subjects that then proved attractive to the town, the courtship of the gentlemen, the coquetry of the ladies, the amusements of idle folk, even the serious thoughts entertained by the more thoughtful,- belong to a different world from that in which we are living- Much also is due to the exquisite language of Addison, and to the pathetic simplicity of Steele. In their special line these essayists have never been surpassed, yet no doubt some readers will be a. little startled by Mr. Kingsley's assertion that the railer is " one of the greatest English classics," and that of the Spectator " the sentiments are transcendent, and the prose absolutely incom- parable." The writer endeavours to do justice to Steele (though • Fireside studies. By Henry Kingsley. 2 vole. London: Chatto and Windom. he is far, we think, from doing justice to his wife), and there is some truth in the following estimate of his character:-
'�
A good man, and a very clever one. He had one great blessing in life, the friendship of Addison ; he had one great misfortune, a posthu- mous reputation greater than his own. He lived with Addison, worked with Addison, and is always spoken of in comparison with him. Addi- son was so greatly his superior, that Richard Steele will suffer for all time.by enforced comparison with a much grander man."
It must be remembered, however, and Mr. Kingsley does not forget, how much Addison gained from his friendship with Steele, and that this friendship may be accounted also one great blessing in his life. Steele prepared the soil for the seed sown by his friend, and the probability is that without this assistance he would never have discovered his peculiar genius :—
" Nothing in the history of literature," writes Mr. Kingsley, " is more beautiful than the unswerving admiration which two men like Steele and Tickell had for Addison. No great literary man bad such singular good-fortune as had Addison when he met with Steele. The world is fearfully apt to take a man at his own valuation ; had the world taken Addison at his own valuation, we should have heard but little of those of his works by which he will live for ever. Steele, the bold originator and speculator, made himself his impresario, never for an instant com- paring himself to his acknowledged master, but following him with brave and noble humility,---no jackal, but a true English mastiff."
In this essay, full of interest as it is, we constantly meet with doubtful statements and objectionable epithets. Mr. Kingsley, as we have already hinted, sometimes writes rashly, as a man might talk with friends round him at a social meal. He does not weigh his words, and calls bad names with an energy and sincerity that would do credit to Billingsgate ; yet one cannot help smiling to think that the men whom he designates as "savage wretches" and "splendid vipers" and "detestable creatures " have been sleeping in their graves for more than a century and a half.
Mr. Kingsley, as we learn from the dedication of these volumes, resided at Cuckfield, a charming Sussex village, just far enough from the railway to enjoy its advantages, without having its old- fashioned peace disturbed by the incursions of holiday-makers from Brighton, which is about twelve miles distant. Cuckfield should be visited in spring-time, for its best charms are rural, and seldom elsewhere have we seen a greater profusion or variety of wild-flowers. The walks are numerous and unconfined, meadow- paths can be followed in every direction, and the high ground on which the village stands commands an extensive and lovely pro- spect, bounded by the Sussex Downs. Here is Mr. Kingsley's picture of the pretty place which is supposed, particularly by the inhabitants, to be the healthiest town in England :—
" Coming to the summit of the steep little street on the old London road, the traveller sees the rather steep little street drop suddenly below him, and in the distance, over the tops of the houses, the pearl- grey wall of the Downs between him and the sea, cut almost to the zenith by the tall spire of the church. Reaching the churchyard, he finds that he is at the edge of a vast, thickly-wooded valley, about nine miles broad, bounded on the farther side by the long, high mass of the Downs, rising to heights of over eight hundred feet; far to the left is the back of Beachy Head, far to the right the bills beyond Chichester. The church is one of the most beautiful in England, cared for like a jewel, and the wondrous old houses abutting into it would be highly remark- able elsewhere. In short, there are few places like Cuckfield Church- yard, but still more remarkable than church or churchyard is Cuckfield Place, close by, with the finest lime avenue of its length in England, its Tudor house, and its deer park, most artistically broken into glade and lawn ; the dearly loved haunt of Shelley, and the original of the ' Rook- wood' of Harrison Ainsworth. Even more interesting than even Cuckfield Place, however, is Ockenden, also a beautiful Tudor house, the back premises of which are actually in the town, but whose south front, fenced by a great terraced garden of flowers of groat length, gives upon the park of Cuckfield Place."
In this old house, still belonging to the same family, lived in the seventeenth century a certain Timothy Burrell, who wrote a diary, out of which Mr. Kingsley has managed to extract some amusing matter. The master had a coachman, who, like a few in modern days, was apt to drink more ale than was good for him. The diary is illustrated with drawings, and when " John Coachman" is mentioned, a large pot of beer is drawn in the margin. At length John, after many escapades, upsets the family coach, and is himself mortally injured. 14s. 11d. is paid to the "saddler " for plasters, pectorals, and purges, in this fatal illness, the end of which is notified by Mr. Burrell, who draws the last pot of beer on the margin of the entry. A charitable and genial man Timothy Burrell must have been, and Mr. Kingsley's illustrations of his diary afford some entertaining reading. The average expenditure of this country gentleman was between £300 and £400 a year, "sometimes below the former sum, never exceeding the latter, yet with such an expenditure he distributed considerable sums to the deserving and undeserving," and could afford to give liberally to the fund for the Protestants expelled by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Money went a long way in those days. A pair of coach horses cost Mr. Burrell 135 ; his car- riage was bought for £28; bis footman received 30s. a year for wages ; and a " fat cow, twenty stone and a quarter,"could be pur- chased for £8. Another " Sussex worthy," the Rev. Giles Moore, who lived at the same time as Timothy Burrell, likewise kept a diary; his home was at Horsted Keynes, about five miles from Cuck- field. Mr. Giles Moore has also some curious entries. He gives a man 5s. to begin the world with, and 5s. to another man to get him out of Horsham Jail ; 6d. goes to the " howling boys," who are still, as Mr. Kingsley reminds us, a Sussex institution, and 2s. 6d. is bestowed on a poor scholar. Mr. Moore had "to take his tithes pretty much as he could get them," and one October he received five pigs, a rabbit, a piece of pork, and three bottles of mead. This was not the only discomfort to which the parson had to submit, for the payment of tithes in those days did not con- duce to the respect of parishioners, and the poor man records how a certain William Payne lays down 20s. on the table and calls him "a knavish priest," which accusation, to make the matter worse, was distinctly heard in the kitchen. Mr. Moore was in the habit of riding to London at least twice every year, and he went there in the plague year, but the only mention he makes of that terrible time is the following :—" Gave at the fast for• the sickness one shilling," adding that this was annus memorabilia. The Plague happily did not come near his village. Again he went to London during September, the month of the Great Fire, and he notes having spent occasionally in board, &c., 3s. 10d., but says not a word of the Fire until October, when he writes, "To the building of London after the Fire I gave 11."
Mr. Kingsley's third essay is on " Andrew Marvell," who, he is careful to point out, was not born, as the biographers generally say, at Hull, but at Winestead, a small village, which is now a station on the North-Eastern Railway. Mr. Grosart has settled this fact, but the writer observes that he was not the discoverer of it, as he finds the statement in a book written eight years earlier. There is plenty of matter worth reading in this article, but we must pass it by, with theremark that the author is careless of his criticisms when he terms the Rehearsal Transposed "one of the finest of British classics." He has done good service, however, in pointing out the versatile genius of this poet, who obtained the greatest honour possible in his age,—the praise of Milton. We agree in the main with Mr. Kingsley in his judgments of Ben Jonson, of Marlowe, and of Beaumont and Fletcher, and nothing can be more just than his criticism of " rare Ben," as a lyrical and rural poet. We find it hard work to read his comedies, still harder to read his tragedies, but a few of his lyrics are excelled only by Shakespeare, and his descriptions of rural life are as fresh and wholesome as the scenes he paints. Mr. Kingsley com- pares Jonson to an English meadow, with a flower here and there ; when you do get one, however, he adds, with some confusion of metaphor, " it is a real gem." The " Fletcher and Beaumont " paper (why Mr. Kingsley has changed the usual order of the names we cannot say) contains much agreeable literary gossip ; and the account given of Bishop Fletcher, the poet's father, makes it likely that the son's moral training was but lightly cared for. It was this Fletcher who, as Dean of Peterborough, attended Mary Queen of Scots upon the scaffold, and insulted her in that supreme moment by stammering out the desire of Elizabeth that she should change her faith. Mr. Kingsley is at home in his chitchat about the race of Beaumonts and Fletchers, and knows much more of the poets plays than we can pretend to know. Some of their plays must always be read by readers of the poetical drama, but even Leigh Hunt, notwith- standing his high admiration of Beaumont and Fletcher's genius, allows that they are the two most licentious writers of a licentious age, and that few even of the lovers of books read their works through. Those who do not care to turn to the originals may learn a good deal about the plays from Mr. Kingsley, though it is hardly needful to say that his prose does not convey, or attempt to convey, any adequate impression of the twin-authors poetry. The reader of these brightly-written papers may be inclined to regret that Mr. Kingsley did not give more of his time to literary criticism. As a critic, he possessed one virtue which will cover many defects,—a sincere and generous appreciation of all noble work.
Previous page
