A. W. Kinglake | Page 9

heart to find amongst his
friends such men as Kinglake and Venables, Higgins, Rawlinson,
Carlyle, Ashburton and Hallam, Milman, Macaulay, Wilberforce,
looking on kindly." He dines out in all directions, himself giving
dinners at Long's Hotel. "Did you ever meet Kinglake at my rooms?"
writes Monckton Milnes 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