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nature with delight and with insight, but never forgets 
that man is more than nature ; he uses nature to interpret 
man. This is partly true of most of our earlier poets. It 
is true of Shakespeare—yet Shakespeare wrote “A 
Midsummer Night’s Dream.’’ It is less true of Milton ; 
“© TAllegro ’’ and ‘‘ Il Penseroso ’’ already shew that more 
immediate sympathy with nature which grows so deep and 
mysterious in Shelley, or Mr. Hardy’s novels, and in some 
of the best of our quite modern poets. With them nature 
is no longer the scene, so to speak, of the drama of man’s 
life ; man and nature are interfused in one universal life. 
That might be said of Kingsley, but it would not be the 
whole truth. He is both simpler and more in downright 
earnest. His love of nature is informed with real 
knowledge ; hence the downright earnestness. When he 
acquiesced in his friend’s judgment about what part of his 
work would live, they were both no doubt thinking of his 
literary work. Nor would Kingsley have claimed to be a 
man of science in the sense that his friend Huxley was. 
How nearly he approached such men is a question to be 
answered by those who have themselves enjoyed an 
education in science. It is indisputable that his knowledge 
has given a great impulse to scientific study in Chester, and 
that could hardly have been possible unless there had been 
something solid behind his enthusiasm. His science was 
perhaps like his history. In each he was a brilliant amateur. 
But in each he is apt to be judged unjustly, because his 
conspicuously creative faculty makes it hard to believe that 
he excelled in the more plodding virtue of erudition. At 
any rate this is certain. His love of nature was rendered 
earnest, even severe, by his unusually scientific knowledge. 
But it was also more simple than the modern poets’. 
More simple ; not less profound. The distinction might 
be thus expressed. Kingsley, like Isaiah, takes God for 
granted. The modern poet sees man and nature as 
interacting parts in a movement which is inexplicably 
divine. Kingsley sees them as a sacrament of the divine ; 
and though he too is unable to explain the divine, yet he is 
satisfied to sum up all hope and doubt and mystery in the 
name, God. Readers of Aeschylus will remember a chorus 
in the ‘‘ Agamemnon ’’ where that most theological 
dramatist professes a kindred faith ; and it might be said 
that Aeschylus was to Euripides in this respect what 
Kingsley is to these more modern poets. In “ Drifting 
Away ”’ he has himself laid bare the working of this 
ultimate faith. 
They drift away. Ah, God! they drift for ever. 
I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea, 
Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river, 
Round whom the tide-waifs hang—then drift to sea. 
