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 the companions who shared his
lighter hour and evoked his finer fancies; take us to the Athenaeum