Roman and the Teuton | Page 5

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.
I am not so blinded by my friendship for Kingsley as to say that these
lectures are throughout what academical lectures ought to be. I only
wish some one would tell me what academical lectures at Oxford and
Cambridge can be, as long as the present system of teaching and
examining is maintained. It is easy to say what these lectures are not.

They do not profess to contain the results of long continued original
research. They are not based on a critical appreciation of the authorities
which had to be consulted. They are not well arranged, systematic or
complete. All this the suddenly elected professor of history at
Cambridge would have been the first to grant. 'I am not here,' he says,
'to teach you history. I am here to teach you how to teach yourselves
history.' I must say even more. It seems to me that these lectures were
not always written in a perfectly impartial and judicial spirit, and that
occasionally they are unjust to the historians who, from no other motive
but a sincere regard for truth, thought it their duty to withhold their
assent from many of the commonly received statements of mediaeval
chroniclers.
But for all that, let us see what these Lectures are, and whether there is
not room for them by the side of other works. First of all, according to
the unanimous testimony of those who heard them delivered at
Cambridge, they stirred up the interest of young men, and made them
ask for books which Undergraduates had never asked for before at the
University libraries. They made many people who read them afterwards,
take a new interest in old and half-forgotten kings and battles, and they
extorted even from unfriendly critics the admission that certain chapters,
such as, for instance, 'The Monk as a Civiliser,' displayed in an
unexpected way his power of appreciating the good points in characters,
otherwise most antipathic to the apostle of Manly Christianity. They
contain, in fact, the thoughts of a