On Englishmen who welcomed home their army in 1855, the
strife from which shattered but victorious it had returned, loomed
as epoch-making and colossal, as claiming therefore permanent
record from some eloquent artist of attested descriptive power.
Soon the report gained ground that the destined chronicler was
Kinglake, and all men hailed the selection; yet the sceptic who in
looking back to-day decries the greatness of the campaign may
perhaps no less hesitate to approve the fitness of its chosen
annalist. His fame was due to the perfection of a single book; he
ranked as a potentate in STYLE. But literary perfection, whether
in prose or poetry, is a fragile quality, an afflatus irregular,
independent, unamenable to orders; the official tributes of a
Laureate we compliment at their best with the northern farmer's
verdict on the pulpit performances of his parson:
"An' I niver knaw'd wot a mean'd but I thow't a 'ad summut to saay,
And I thowt a said wot a owt to 'a said an' I comed awaay."
Set to compile a biography from thirty years of "Moniteurs," the
author of Waverley, like Lord Chesterfield's diamond pencil,
produced one miracle of dulness; it might well be feared that
Kinglake's volatile pen, when linked with forceful feeling and
bound to rigid task-work, might lose the charm of casual epigram,
easy luxuriance, playful egotism, vagrant allusion, which
established "Eothen" as a classic.
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