he violates our conventions. It does us good to reëxamine the ground for these conventions. Let us admit that he is deficient in rhythm. Rhythm is what we ask for in a lullaby, not in a battle-slogan or an alarm of fire. The man who strives to shake you out of your self-satisfaction, and to nerve you for conflict or danger, ought hardly to be quarrelled with because he refuses to sing you to sleep. Kipling's message is not for the ear, but for the emotions and the will.

Of course this peremptory, challenging style is not universally popular. He or she — more often shewhose ideal of literature is completely met by the elaborately polite while beautiful style of Addison, whose taste is unpleasantly disturbed by Swift and wholly outraged by Carlyle, — such a reader will certainly shrink from the brusqueness of these "straight-flung words and few." Kipling's style is not custom-made. Like Whitman, he has "gone freely with powerful uneducated persons." Readers who look for evening clothes and court bows who care less for literary manner than for literary manners—will cut his acquaintance just as soon as he ceases to be a fashionable fad.

25. INFLUENCE. - Is Mr. Kipling a classic? Who knows, or cares? His fate will probably be

the common one :

"Some of him lived, but the most of him died

(Even as you and I !) "'

The permanency of his fame is doubtless Mr. Kipling's least concern. Is it not the third-rate poet who sighs with Cowley:

"What shall I do to be forever known

And make the age to come my own"?

Time takes fine revenges on all such.

But whether or not Mr. Kipling is a classic, it cannot be disputed that he is a force.

The man

who has created a new respect for poetry, who has conquered a new class of readers, who is already quoted, imitated, parodied in every English-speaking land, who, while still in his early thirties, influences the policy of nations and marks time for their marching feet, who gathers the civilized world at his bedside to pray for his recovery, surely this man is something far greater than the occupant of a literary pedestal he is the leader and friend of our com

mon race.

26. SUMMARY.—I have attempted to show in this chapter on what grounds Mr. Kipling's work may properly be called great; I have attempted to trace the development of his dramatic genius through three stages which I have ventured to call the satiric, the sympathetic, and the spiritual; and I have finally discussed a number of his general characteristics in detail. In so short a treatise it can hardly be hoped that anything more than an intelligent outline has been furnished the student, yet the writer trusts a few things have been made clear:

1. Mr. Kipling is the most prominent figure in the world of letters, and has made the most rapid of modern literary reputations.

2. He has conquered three classes: the literary class who read for style; the average reader who reads for amusement; the non-reading class who are fascinated by his familiarity with their material world of commerce, trade, and machinery.

3. He is a great political force.

4. His work is notable for power, originality, range, health, and sincerity.

5. Nature is to him simply the background for the play of strenuous human emotions.

6. His philosophy of life is marked by vigor and optimism.

7. His temper is distinctly masculine. He is always strong, and sometimes coarse.

8. His manner is realistic; his aim idealistic.

9. His forte is description, and he is a master of language.

10. His characterization is not always good, and is never of the highest kind.

11. His ability to invent plots seems exhaustless, and his mastery of the short-story form is unrivalled in contemporary literature. He has not, however,

been especially successful in writing novels.

12. His verse is brilliant and rhetorical, and has at least once attained the "nobly plain manner” of the highest poetry.

CHAPTER THREE

INDEX TO MR. KIPLING'S PRINCIPAL WRITINGS

AMERICAN, AN. (The Seven Seas.)- This description of the typical American contains much wholesome criticism. While it aims to be just, it is hardly calculated to flatter national vanity. It is in part a parody on Emerson's Brahma, but it is much longer than the earlier poem. A sample of its quality may be had from the next to the last of its fourteen stanzas:

"Enslaved, illogical, elate,

He greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate

Or match with Destiny for beers.”

"To me it gives a sense of his penetration and his grasp that nothing else does. I am tempted to call the piece the most important thing, intellectually, in Mr. Kipling's new volume of The Seven Seas."-W. D. Howells.

AMERICAN NOTES. This series of letters contributed to a newspaper in India (the Pioneer, Allahabad), was the result of Mr. Kipling's American tour of 1889. Their publication in book form by a New York house (1891) was unauthorized. They are satiric pictures of society in the United States. Marred by journalistic smartness and superficiality and by very evident prejudice against America, but entertaining and clever. (See the American Bookman for April, 1898.)

(87)

The complete series of letters of which these are a part were published in the Pioneer under the title From Sea to Sea, and have this year (1899) been republished in book form under the original title by Mr. Kipling's authorized publishers, Doubleday & McClure Company. (See From Sea to Sea.) AMIR'S HOMILy, The. (Life's Handicap.)- A thief, brought to trial before the Amir, avers that he stole because he was starving, having been unable to find work. The despot tells him that he lies, "since any man who will, may find work and daily bread." The magistrate then relates a tale of his "evil days," when he himself was starving. He refused gifts, asking only for work. He was finally successful. Day after day he wrought as a coolie on a daily wage of four annas. Then turning to the prisoner he commands that he be led away to execution. AMONG THE RAILWAY FOLK. (See From Sea to Sea.) ANCHOR SONG. (The Seven Seas.) A sailor-song — first published as Envoy to Many Inventions, and subsequently included in The Seven Seas. It has a rhythmical movement, but fairly bristles with nautical terms.

"A magnificent bit of long-syllable versification.” Academy.

ANGUTIVUN TINA. A poem following "Quiquern " in the Second Jungle Book. It is supposedly a free translation of the Song of the Returning Hunter, as the Esquimaux sang it after seal-spearing.

"

ANSWER, AN. (Ballads.) The truth that grief and apparent failure are justified if they form part of God's purpose is taught in this parable of a rose, who, tattered and stem-broken, complains to God, and receives an answer which comforts her as she bows her head to die.