To compare an idyll with an epic, it may be said, is like comparing
a cameo with a Grecian temple: be it so; but the temple falls in
ruins, the cameo is preserved in cabinets; and it is possible that
a century hence the Crimean history will be forgotten, while
"Eothen" is read and enjoyed. The best judges at the time
pronounced that as a lasting monument of literary force the work
was over refined: "Kinglake," said Sir George Cornewall Lewis,
"tries to write better than he can write"; quoting, perhaps
unconsciously, the epigram of a French art critic a hundred years
before-- Il cherche toujours a faire mieux qu'il ne fait. {22} He
lavished on it far more pains than on "Eothen": the proof sheets
were a black sea of erasures, intercalations, blots; the original
chaotic manuscript pages had to be disentangled by a calligraphic
Taunton bookseller before they could be sent to press. This
fastidiousness in part gained its purpose; won temporary success;
gave to his style the glitter, rapidity, point, effectiveness, of a
pungent editorial; went home, stormed, convinced, vindicated,
damaged, triumphed: but it missed by excessive polish the
reposeful, unlaboured, classic grace essential to the highest art.
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