A. W. Kinglake | Page 9

to MacCarthy: "he has had immense success. I now rather wish I had written his book, WHICH I COULD HAVE DONE--AT LEAST NEARLY." We are reminded of Charles Lamb--"here's Wordsworth says he could have written Hamlet, IF HE HAD HAD A MIND." "A delightful Voltairean volume," Milnes elsewhere calls it.
"Eothen" was reviewed in the "Quarterly" by Eliot Warburton. "Other books," he says, "contain facts and statistics about the East; this book gives the East itself in vital actual reality. Its style is conversational; or the soliloquy rather of a man convincing and amusing himself as he proceeds, without reverence for others' faith, or lenity towards others' prejudices. It is a real book, not a sham; it equals Anastasius, rivals 'Vathek;' its terseness, vigour, bold imagery, recall the grand style of Fuller and of South, to which the author adds a spirit, freshness, delicacy, all his own." Kinglake, in turn, reviewed "The Crescent and the Cross" in an article called "The French Lake." From a cordial notice of the book he passes to a history of French ambition in the Levant. It was Bonaparte's fixed idea to become an Oriental conqueror--a second Alexander: Egypt in his grasp, he would pass on to India. He sought alliance against the English with Tippoo Saib, and spent whole days stretched upon maps of Asia. He was baffled, first at Aboukir, then at Acre; but the partition of Turkey at Tilsit showed that he had not abandoned his design. To have refrained from seizing Egypt after his withdrawal was a political 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 of England," he produced a playful, lightly touched, yet sincerely constructed sketch of woman's characteristics, seductions, attainments; the extent and secret of her fascination and her deeper influence; her defects, foibles, misconceptions. He was greatly vexed to learn that his criticism of "Palm Leaves" was considered hostile, and begged Warburton to explain. His praise, he said, had been looked upon as irony, his bantering taken to express bitterness. Warburton added his own conviction that the notice was tributary to Milnes's fame, and Milnes accepted the explanation. But the chief interest of this paper lies in the beautiful passage which ends it. "The world must go on its own way, for all that we can say against it. Beauty, though it beams over the organization of a doll, will have its hour of empire; the most torpid heiress will easily get herself married; but the wife whose sweet nature can kindle worthy delights is she that brings to her hearth a joyous, hopeful, ardent spirit, and that subtle power whose sources we can hardly trace, but which yet so irradiates a home that all who come near are filled and inspired by a deep sense of womanly presence. We best learn the unsuspected might of a being like this when we try the weight of that sadness which hangs like lead upon the room, the gallery, the stairs, where once her footstep sounded, and now is heard no more. It is not less the energy than the grace and gentleness of this character that works the enchantment. Books can instruct, and books can exalt and purify; beauty of face and beauty of form will come with bright pictures and statues, and for the government of a household hired menials will suffice; but fondness and hate, daring hopes, lively fears, the lust of glory and the scorn of base deeds, sweet charity, faithfulness, pride, and, chief over all, the impetuous will, lending might and power to feeling:- these are the rib of the man, and from these, deep veiled in the mystery of her very loveliness, his true companion sprang. A being thus ardent will often go wrong in her strenuous course; will often alarm, sometimes provoke; will now and then work mischief and even perhaps grievous harm; but she will be our own Eve after all; the sweet-speaking tempter whom heaven created to be the joy and the trouble of this pleasing anxious existence; to shame us away from the hiding-places of a slothful neutrality, and lead us abroad in the world, men militant here on earth, enduring quiet, content with strife, and looking for peace hereafter." {11} Beautiful words indeed! how came the author of a tribute so caressingly appreciative, so eloquently sincere, to remain himself outside the gates of Paradise? how could the pen which in the Crimean chapter on the Holy Shrines traced so exquisitely the delicate fancifulness of purest sexual love, perpetrate that elaborate sneer over the bachelor obsequies of Carrigaholt--"the lowly grave, that is the