Kinglake returned from Algiers in 1844 to find himself famous both in the literary and social world; for his book had gone through three editions and was the universal theme. Lockhart opened to him the "Quarterly." "Who is Eothen?" wrote Macvey Napier, editor of the "Edinburgh," to Hayward: "I know he is a lawyer and highly respectable; but I should like to know a little more of his personal history: he is very clever but very peculiar." Thackeray, later on, expresses affectionate gratitude for his presence at the "Lectures on English Humourists":—"it goes to a man's heart to find amongst his friends such men as Kinglake and Venables, Higgins, Rawlinson, Carlyle, Ashburton and Hallam, Milman, Macaulay, Wilberforce, looking on kindly." He dines out in all directions, himself giving dinners at Long's Hotel. "Did you ever meet Kinglake at my rooms?" writes Monckton Milnes to MacCarthy: "he has had immense success. I now rather wish I had written his book, which I could have done—at least nearly." We are reminded of Charles Lamb—"here's Wordsworth says he could have written Hamlet, if he had had a mind." "A delightful Voltairean volume," Milnes elsewhere calls it.

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