lively chapters in "Red Letter Days of my Life," Lady Gregory's
interesting recollections of the Athenaeum Club in Blackwood of
December, 1895, the somewhat slender notice in the "Dictionary of
National Biography," have all been carefully digested. From these,
and, as will be seen, from other sources, the present Memoir has
been compiled; an endeavour--sera tamen--to lay before the
countless readers and admirers of his books a fairly adequate
appreciation, hitherto unattempted, of their author.

I have to acknowledge the great kindness of Canon William
Warburton, who examined his brother Eliot's diaries on my behalf,
obtained information from Dean Boyle and Sir M. Grant Duff, cleared
up for me not a few obscure allusions in the "Eothen" pages. My
highly valued friend, Mrs. Hamilton Kinglake, of Taunton, his
sister-in-law, last surviving relative of his own generation, has
helped me with facts which no one else could have recalled. To Mr.
Estcott, his old acquaintance and Somersetshire neighbour, I am
indebted for recollections manifold and interesting; but above all
I tender thanks to Madame Novikoff, his intimate associate and
correspondent during the last twenty years of his life, who has
supplemented her brilliant sketch of him in "La Nouvelle Revue" of
1896 by oral and written information lavish in quantity and of
paramount biographical value. Kinglake's external life, his
literary and political career, his speeches, and the more fugitive
productions of his pen, were recoverable from public sources; but
his personal and private side, as it showed itself to the few close
intimates who still survive, must have remained to myself and
others meagre, superficial, disappointing, without Madame
Novikoff's unreserved and sympathetic confidence.