Charles Kingsley and the Christian Social Movement (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter II. A Poet, his Birth and Environment. "And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying, here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee. 'Come wander with me, ' she said, 1 Into regions as yet untrod, And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God.' And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe. And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more wonderful tale." --Longfellow. "I believe God intended Kingsley to be, above all, a poet. I believe that in some of his poetry he rises higher than in all his prose, ay, to the level of his greatest contemporaries. I believe that since Shakespeare, there has been no such Shakespearean promise as that of The Saint's Tragedy." So wrote Mr. J. M. Ludlow a year or two ago in the pages of the Economic Review. And although, perhaps, we must allow something for the glamour of youthful memories in an old friend, there can be little doubt, I, think, of the truth of the first sentence. Charles Kingsley was essentially and before all things a poet. A richer, more sympathetic nature could hardly be conceived. He had, moreover, the heredity of a poet, and in early years he had the natural environment calculated to stimulate a poetic nature. Of a family belonging originally to Cheshire, but settled for many generations in Hampshire, Charles Kingsley was born in 1819, at Holne Vicarage, in Devonshire, "under the brow of Dartmoor," thus inhaling, so to speak, with his first breath, the daring spirit of the men of Devon, whose deeds of adventure and bravery he was afterwards to picture so graphically for his countrymen in the pages of...