文档介绍：A W. Kinglake - A Biographical and Literary Study
A W. Kinglake - A
Biographical and Literary
Study
by Rev. W. Tcikwell
1
A W. Kinglake - A Biographical and Literary Study
PREFACE
IT is just eleven years since Kinglake passed away, and his life has
not yet been separately memorialized. A few years more, and the
personal side of him would be irrecoverable, though by personality, no
less than by authorship, he made his contemporary mark. When a tomb
has been closed for centuries, the effaced lineaments of its tenant can be
re-coloured only by the idealizing hand of genius, as Scott drew
Claverhouse, and Carlyle drew Cromwell. But, to the biographer of the
lately dead, men have a right to say, as Saul said to the Witch of Endor,
"Call up Samuel!" In your study of a life so recent as Kinglake's, give
us, if you choose, some critical synopsis of his monumental writings,
some salvage from his ephemeral and scattered papers; trace so much of
his youthful training as shaped the development of his character; depict,
with wise restraint, his political and public life: but also, and above all,
re-clothe him "in his habit as he lived," as friends and associates knew
him; recover his traits of voice and manner, his conversational wit or
wisdom, epigram or paradox, his explosions of sarcasm and his
eccentricities of reserve, his words of winningness and acts of kindness:
and, since one half of his life was social, introduce us to panions
who shared his lighter hour and evoked his finer fancies; take us to the
Athenaeum "Corner," or to Holland House, and flash on us at least a
glimpse of the brilliant men and women who formed the setting to his
sparkle; "DIC IN AMICITIAM COEANT ET FOEDERA JUNGANT."
This I have endeavoured to do, with such aid as I mand
from his few remaining contemporaries. His letters to his family were
destroyed by his own desire; on those written to Madame Novikoff no
such embargo was laid, nor does she believe that it wa