The earliest use of 'best beloved' that I know is at the end of
Longfellow's
'Hymn to the Night', written in 1839,
which ends with the lines
Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best-beloved Night!
While Kipling is almost certain to have come across this, he might also
have
come across a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), who was
Britain’s
best-known preacher of the mid-Victorian age. In his heyday in the 1860s he
regularly preached to congregations of several thousands in halls and at the
Baptist Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. His sermons and theological
commentaries were widely published and very popular. He used 'The
Best-Beloved' as the title for a sermon on Jesus. Kipling was probably
responsible for popularising another phrase of Spurgeon's - 'poor benighted
heathen' - by using it in 'Fuzzy Wuzzy' (see note in NRG).
Roger Ayers
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