ist of Latin
and Greek words; and they have little more than forty letters, of which
barely more than half are consonants. They would be almost pure
hexameters, if in lieu of the long a[a-macron]nd, we could put
e[e-breve]t, or _te_ [tau epsilon]. And there are only three Saxon words
in the two lines. But hexameters consisting of purely English words,
especially of Anglo-Saxon words, halt and stammer like a schoolboy's
exercise. The attempt of Kingsley in _Andromeda_ is most ingenious and
most instructive.

I have dwelt so much upon Kingsley's poetry because, though he was hardly
a "minor poet,"--an order which now boasts sixty members--he wrote a few
short pieces which came wonderfully near being a great success. And
again, it is the imaginative element in all his work, the creative fire
and the vivid life which he threw into his prose as much as his verse,
into his controversies as much as into his fictions, that gave them their
popularity and their savour. Nearly every one of Kingsley's imaginative
works was polemical, full of controversy, theological, political, social,
and racial; and this alone prevented them from being great works.
Interesting works they are; full of vigour, beauty, and ardent
conception; and it is wonderful that so much art and fancy could be
thrown into what is in substance polemical pamphleteering.

Of them all _Hypatia_ is the best known and the best conceived.
_Hypatia_ was written in 1853 in the prime of his manhood and was on the
face of it a controversial work. Its sub-title was--_New Foes with an
Old Face_,--its preface elaborates the moral and spiritual ideas that it
teaches, the very titles of the chapters bear biblical phrases and
classical moralising as their style. I should be sorry to guarantee the
accuracy of the local colouring and the detail of its elaborate history;
but the life, realism, and pictorial brilliancy of the scenes give it a
power which is rare indeed in an historical novel. It has not the great
and full knowledge of _Romola_, much less the consummate style and
setting of _Esmond_; but it has a vividness, a rapidity, a definiteness
which completely enthral the imagination and stamp its scenes on the
memory. It is that rare thing, an historical romance which does not
drag. It is not one of those romances of which we fail to understand the
incidents, and often forget what it is that the personages are struggling
so fiercely to obtain. No one who has read