May, 1876.
Hardly a man of letters followed him to the grave, or spoke, in print,
a word in his praise.

And yet, by all accounts, he was a wholly amiable ne'er-do-well--a
wonderful flyfisher, an extremely clever amateur artist, a lover of
horses and dogs and children (surely, if we except a chapter of Victor
Hugo's, the children in _Ravenshoe_ are the most delightful in
fiction), and a joyous companion.

"To us children," writes Mr. Maurice Kingsley, "Uncle Henry's
settling in Eversley was a great event.... At times he fairly
bubbled over with humour; while his knowledge of slang--Burschen,
Bargee, Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms--was
awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on
his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the
opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old
songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were
between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I
believe, who ever knew by heart the famous _Irish Court
Scenes_--naughtiest and most humorous of tales--unpublished, of
course, but handed down from generation to generation of the
faithful. Most delightful was an interview between his late
Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showman, which ended
up with, 'No, George the Fourth, you shall not have my
Rumptifoozle!' What said animal was, or the authenticity of the
story, he never would divulge."

I think it is to the conversational quality of their style--its
ridiculous and good-humored impertinences and surprises--that his best
books owe a great deal of their charm. The footnotes are a study in
themselves, and range from the mineral strata of Australia to the best
way of sliding down banisters. Of the three tales already republished
in this pleasant edition, _Ravenshoe_ has always seemed to me the best
in every respect; and in spite of its feeble plot and its impossible
lay-figures--Erne, Sir George Hillyar, and the painfully inane
Gerty--I should rank _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ above the more
terrifically imagined and more neatly constructed _Geoffry Hamlyn_.
But this is an opinion on which I lay no stress.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_. By Henry Kingsley. New
Edition, with a Memoir by Clement Shorter. London: Ward, Lock &
Bowden.

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE

January 10