d the Teuton_; and he wrote in 1863
the delightful nondescript of _The Water Babies_, part story, part
satire, part Rabelaisian _fatrasie_, but almost all charming, and
perhaps the latest book in which his powers appear at their very best.
These powers, as exhibited in his novels, with a not dissimilar
exhibition in little in his essays, are so remarkable that in certain
senses Kingsley may, with a little kindness, be put in the very first
class of English novelists, and might be put there by the sternest
critical impartiality were it not for his concomitant defects. These
defects are fairly numerous, and they are unfortunately of a kind not
likely to escape attention. He was a rather violent, though a very
generous partisan, and was perpetually going out of his way to provoke
those on the other side by "flings" of this or that kind. He was
extremely fond of arguing, but was a most poor and unhappy logician. One
of the best known and most unfortunate episodes of his literary life was
the controversy into which he plunged with Newman in 1864. Kingsley had
before on various occasions spoken enthusiastically of Newman's genius
and character: the reference to the peculiar estimate of truth held by
some Roman Catholics, and approved, or supposed to be approved, by
Newman, which was the text for the latter's wrath, was anything but
offensive, and it afterwards became certain, through the publication of
the _Apologia_, that the future Cardinal, with the inspiration of a born
controversialist, had simply made Kingsley the handle for which he had
been waiting. A very little dialectical skill would have brought
Kingsley out of the contest with honours at least divided; but, as it
was, he played like a child into Newman's hands, and not only did much
to re-establish that great man in public opinion, but subjected himself
at the time, and to some extent since, to an obloquy at least as unjust
as that which had rested upon Newman. This maladroitness appears
constantly in the novels themselves, and it is accompanied not merely by
the most curious and outrageous blunders in fact (such as that which
represents Marlowe as dying in the time of James the First, not that of
Elizabeth), but by odd lapses of taste in certain points, and in some
(chiefly his later) books by a haphazard and inartistic construction.

We must, of course, allow for these things, which are the more annoying
in that they are simply a case of those which _incuria fud