improved for a time in
literary form, but his excitable nerve-system, his impulsive imagination,
drove him into tasks for which he had no gift, and where he floated
hither and thither without sure guide. From the time of his official
success, that is, for the last fifteen years of his life, he produced
nothing worthy of himself, and much that was manifest book-making--the
mere outpouring of the professional preacher and story-teller. Of his
historical and philosophical work I shall not speak at all. His shallow
Cambridge Inaugural Lecture, given by him as Professor of History, was
torn to pieces in the _Westminster Review_ (vol. xix. p. 305, April
1861), it is said, by a brother Professor of History. Much less need we
speak of his miserable duel with Cardinal Newman, wherein he was so
shamefully worsted. For fifteen years he poured out lectures, sermons,
tales, travels, poems, dialogues, children's books, and historical,
philosophical, theological, social, scientific, and sanitary essays--but
the Charles Kingsley of _Yeast_, of _Alton Locke_, of _Hypatia_, of
_Westward Ho!_ of the Ballads and Poems, we never knew again. He burnt
out his fiery spirit at last, at the age of fifty-five, in a series of
restless enterprises, and a vehement outpouring of miscellaneous
eloquence.

Charles Kingsley was a man of genius, half poet, half controversialist.
The two elements did not blend altogether well. His poetic passion
carried away his reason and often confused his logic. His argumentative
vehemence too often marred his fine imagination. Thus his _Saint's
Tragedy_ is partly a satire on Romanism, and his ballad in _Yeast_ is
mainly a radical pamphlet. Hardly one of his books is without a
controversial preface, controversial titles, chapters, or passages on
questions of theology, churches, races, politics, or society. Indeed,
excepting some of his poems, and some of his popular or children's books
(but not even all of these), all his works are of a controversial kind.
Whatever he did he did with heart, and this was at once his merit and his
weakness. Before all things, he was a preacher, a priest of the English
Church, a Christian minister. He was, indeed, a liberal priest,
sometimes even too free and easy. He brings in the sacred name perhaps
more often than any other writer, and he does so not always in a devout
way. He seemed at last to use the word "God" as if it were an expletive
or mere intensive like a Greek