Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/181

 :: 1866. Posthumous, and edited by Mr. Edward Maitland, were:
 * 1) ‘The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ,’ London, 1882, 4to; revised ed. 1887; 3rd ed. 1890; in this work Mr. Edward Maitland assisted.
 * 2) ‘The Virgin of the World,’ translated, with a preface, from ‘Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus,’ 1885, 4to.
 * 3) ‘Astrology theologised,’ 1886, 4to, a reprint, with a preface, of a work of Valentine Weigelius.
 * 4) ‘Health, Beauty, and the Toilet,’ London, 1886, 8vo (2nd ed. same year), a reprint of letters which appeared, 1884–6, in the ‘Lady's Pictorial.’ These occasioned some adverse criticism, as sanctioning artificial aids to beauty.
 * 1) ‘Dreams and Dream Stories,’ 1888, 8vo.
 * 2) ‘Clothed with the Sun,’ New York, 1889, 4to, a curious collection of what are termed by the editor ‘illuminations.’



KINGSLAND,. [See, 1592–1663, first ; , 1668–1725, third .]

KINGSLEY, CHARLES (1819–1875), author, son of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, first of Battramsley House in the New Forest, by his wife, daughter of Nathan Lucas of Barbadoes and Rushford Lodge, Norfolk, was born on 12 June 1819 at Holne Vicarage, Devonshire. His father, a descendant of an old family which had produced many soldiers, had been bred as a country gentleman; but, from the carelessness of his guardians during a long minority, had been forced to adopt a profession, and had taken orders after thirty. He became acquainted, while studying at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, with [q. v.], then professor of divinity, and in 1819 bishop of Peterborough. He took a curacy in the fens, and afterwards at Holne, whence he moved to Burton-on-Trent and Clifton in Nottinghamshire. He held the valuable living of Barnack in Northamptonshire (between Peterborough and Stamford) from 1824 to 1830, until the son of Bishop Marsh could take orders. He caught ague in the fen country, and was advised to remove to Devonshire, where he was presented to Clovelly. He remained there till, in 1836, he became rector of St. Luke's, Chelsea. He died on 29 Feb. 1860 at the Chelsea rectory, in his seventy-eighth year.

Charles was a precocious child, writing sermons and poems at the age of four. He was delicate and sensitive, and retained through life the impressions made upon him by the scenery of the fens and of Clovelly. At Clovelly he learnt to boat, to ride, and to collect shells. In 1831 he was sent to a school at Clifton, and saw the Bristol riots of August 1831, which he says for some years made him a thorough aristocrat. In 1832 he was sent to the grammar school at Helston, Cornwall, then under [q. v.], though it is said that [q. v.] wished him to go to Eton, from reports of his early promise. Kingsley was not a close student, though he showed great intellectual activity. He was not popular, rather despising his fellows, caring little for the regular games, although fond of feats of agility and of long excursions in search of plants and geological specimens. He wrote a good deal of poetry and poetical prose. In 1836 he went with his family to London, and became a student at King's College, London, walking in and out from Chelsea. He worked hard, but found London life dismal, and was not a little bored by the parish work in which his father and mother were absorbed. He describes the district visitors as ugly and splay-footed beings, ‘three-fourths of whom can't sing, and the other quarter sing miles out of tune, with voices like love-sick parrots.’ In October 1838 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, and at the end of his first year gained a scholarship. In the following vacation, while staying with his father in the country, he met, on 6 July 1839, his future wife, Fanny, daughter of Pascoe Grenfell. That, he said afterwards, was ‘my real wedding-day.’ They began an occasional correspondence, in which Kingsley confessed very fully to the religious doubts by which he, like others, was tormented at the time of the Oxford movement. He was occasionally so much depressed by these thoughts, and by the uncertainty of any fulfilment of his hopes, that he sometimes thought of leaving Cambridge to ‘become a wild prairie hunter.’ His attachment to Miss Grenfell operated as an invaluable restraint. He read Coleridge, Carlyle, and Maurice with great interest. Meanwhile, though his studies seem to have been rather desultory, he was popular at college, and threw himself into every kind of sport to distract his mind. He rowed, though he did not attain to the first boat, but specially delighted in fishing expeditions into the fens and elsewhere, rode out to Sedgwick's equestrian lectures on geology, and learnt boxing under a negro prize-fighter. He was a good pedestrian, and once walked