As a Newman fan I've found it difficult to see Kingsley in a very positive light, nor have I made any effort to change that. Also, although I come of that stock, I have developed a pretty strong dislike of good old hearty English anti-Catholicism, of which his quarrel with Newman reeks. But I have run across bits and pieces here and there which made me think that he really wasn't so bad on his own.
I can't remember how it happened, but somehow my household came into possession of a copy of this caricature of Kingsley:
It doesn't fit my mental image of him at all, as being stout and complacent. It makes me like him a little better. My wife sees it as just an amusing picture of a strange old man, and sort of wanted to hang it, but I really don't want to see it that often.
I actually jabbed Kingsley (or rather his novel Yeast: A Problem) in a satire of mine on lexicography, ornithology, and philosophy of language because of his meditation upon, yes, sewage (part of a, well, underground stream of Victorian social thought, the proper use of sewage for public benefit): "But so it is throughout the world. Only look down over that bridge-parapet, at that huge black-mouthed sewer, vomiting its pestilential riches across the mud. There it runs, and will run, hurrying to the sea vast stores of wealth, elaborated by Nature's chemistry into the ready materials of food; which proclaim, too, by their own foul smell, God's will that they should be buried out of sight in the fruitful all-regenerating grave of earth: there it runs, turning them all into the seeds of pestilence, filth, and drunkenness." (In any case, I found Victor Hugo's meditations upon sewage in Les Misérables much more interesting, however much of their time.) Apart from his wrangling with Newman, that was pretty much my only familiarity with Kingsley...or so I thought. Just clicking on the link above, I found that I had read "The Last Buccaneer" in high school, I think, and yet while it made little impression on me at the time, I was quite pleased to find it again. It raised my estimation of Kingsley slightly.
Good, carefully written dactylic hexameters, obeying all the rules (some, but not too many spondaic substitutions for specific feet; the fifth foot always a dactyl; the sixth either a spondee or a trochee). It rolls nicely, but it doesn't, somehow, rouse up, doesn't really punch through. A little blandly written, I feel.
The one line I find hard to parse is "Hebé, Harmonié, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodité"; tricky to take "Harmoni/é, and the" as two consecutive dactyls: ungainly, hard to say. Also "Harmonié" isn't that goddess's name (she's the goddess, unsurprisingly, of harmony and concord: in the Roman pantheon she's called Concordia) -- her name is simpler: Ἁρμονία, Harmonia, but that doesn't allow Kingsley to over-stress the final syllable so as to start-up a new dactyl.
Yeah, but easing the "Hebé" line a little is the pause, the slight caesura, Kingsley tends to put in the middle of the third foot. It's there from the opening two lines:
Ò-ver the / sèa pàst / Crète ║ on the / Syr-i-an / shòre to the / sòuth-ward
Dwèlls in the / wèll-tìlled / lòw-land ║ a / dàrk-hàired / Æth-i-op / pèo-ple
to the closing two lines:
Swèet-ly and / sòl-emn-ly / sàng she, ║ and / plànned nèw / lès-sons for / mòrt-als:
Hàp-py, who / hèar-ing o- / bèy her, ║ the / wìse ùn-/ sùlli-ed A- / thèn-é.
Athene's chanting over her loom seems to have two ends. Chant contains the instructions for the weaver's pattern and keeps the weaver focused so there's no error (something I learned about in Virginia Postrel's The Fabric of Civilization). But also Athene seems to be creating human goods through her chant. Her words are generative. Her words are - with an Olympian gloss - Logos.
As a Newman fan I've found it difficult to see Kingsley in a very positive light, nor have I made any effort to change that. Also, although I come of that stock, I have developed a pretty strong dislike of good old hearty English anti-Catholicism, of which his quarrel with Newman reeks. But I have run across bits and pieces here and there which made me think that he really wasn't so bad on his own.
I can't remember how it happened, but somehow my household came into possession of a copy of this caricature of Kingsley:
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2KE4778/vanity-fair-spy-cartoon-canon-charles-kingsley-the-apostle-of-the-flesh-1872-2KE4778.jpg
It doesn't fit my mental image of him at all, as being stout and complacent. It makes me like him a little better. My wife sees it as just an amusing picture of a strange old man, and sort of wanted to hang it, but I really don't want to see it that often.
I actually jabbed Kingsley (or rather his novel Yeast: A Problem) in a satire of mine on lexicography, ornithology, and philosophy of language because of his meditation upon, yes, sewage (part of a, well, underground stream of Victorian social thought, the proper use of sewage for public benefit): "But so it is throughout the world. Only look down over that bridge-parapet, at that huge black-mouthed sewer, vomiting its pestilential riches across the mud. There it runs, and will run, hurrying to the sea vast stores of wealth, elaborated by Nature's chemistry into the ready materials of food; which proclaim, too, by their own foul smell, God's will that they should be buried out of sight in the fruitful all-regenerating grave of earth: there it runs, turning them all into the seeds of pestilence, filth, and drunkenness." (In any case, I found Victor Hugo's meditations upon sewage in Les Misérables much more interesting, however much of their time.) Apart from his wrangling with Newman, that was pretty much my only familiarity with Kingsley...or so I thought. Just clicking on the link above, I found that I had read "The Last Buccaneer" in high school, I think, and yet while it made little impression on me at the time, I was quite pleased to find it again. It raised my estimation of Kingsley slightly.
Good, carefully written dactylic hexameters, obeying all the rules (some, but not too many spondaic substitutions for specific feet; the fifth foot always a dactyl; the sixth either a spondee or a trochee). It rolls nicely, but it doesn't, somehow, rouse up, doesn't really punch through. A little blandly written, I feel.
The one line I find hard to parse is "Hebé, Harmonié, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodité"; tricky to take "Harmoni/é, and the" as two consecutive dactyls: ungainly, hard to say. Also "Harmonié" isn't that goddess's name (she's the goddess, unsurprisingly, of harmony and concord: in the Roman pantheon she's called Concordia) -- her name is simpler: Ἁρμονία, Harmonia, but that doesn't allow Kingsley to over-stress the final syllable so as to start-up a new dactyl.
Yeah, but easing the "Hebé" line a little is the pause, the slight caesura, Kingsley tends to put in the middle of the third foot. It's there from the opening two lines:
Ò-ver the / sèa pàst / Crète ║ on the / Syr-i-an / shòre to the / sòuth-ward
Dwèlls in the / wèll-tìlled / lòw-land ║ a / dàrk-hàired / Æth-i-op / pèo-ple
to the closing two lines:
Swèet-ly and / sòl-emn-ly / sàng she, ║ and / plànned nèw / lès-sons for / mòrt-als:
Hàp-py, who / hèar-ing o- / bèy her, ║ the / wìse ùn-/ sùlli-ed A- / thèn-é.
"it doesn't, somehow, rouse up, doesn't really punch through. A little blandly written, I feel."
More or less my reaction.
It flows quite nicely, if this is indeed amongst the best, the Greeks were advanced, perhaps beyond ourselves.
The Roman wall painting may be nearer to the legend, but its beauty with almost no background, almost equals the others.
"hard-driving steam engine"...Bravo! (When I first typed this, it came out as 'hard-deriving steam engine...')
Athene's chanting over her loom seems to have two ends. Chant contains the instructions for the weaver's pattern and keeps the weaver focused so there's no error (something I learned about in Virginia Postrel's The Fabric of Civilization). But also Athene seems to be creating human goods through her chant. Her words are generative. Her words are - with an Olympian gloss - Logos.