General observation on the book-"The Cholera Camp"-Kipling's "bloom of freshness"-Com- ments on "Danny Deever," "Tommy," "Fuzzy- "Departmental Ditties" "Public Waste," in which the poet trifles with the subject of official corruption. "Municipal"-Its humor destroyed by its repulsiveness. "A Code of Morals"-Low To the Unknown Goddess"-"My Rival"-"The Ballad of Burial”—“Christmas in India' -The latter a disappointment to Kipling's friends.— "The Ballad of Jakko Hill"-"The Plea of the Simla Dancers"-"The Ballad of Fisher's Board- ing House"-"Certain Maxims of Hafiz"-"One The menial part women are made to play in Mr. Kipling's verse-Sets off his women in a worse light than his men-"Delilah"-"Women in Pink Dominoes"-"Anne of Austria"-"The Ladies" -"Mary, Pity Women"-"The Song of the Women"-Only an apparent exception-Emerson on "Philanthropy"-"The Betrothed"-Holland's No apology for low taste in the present age- tender thoughts and feelings of many writers Pages 182-202. W E have never been ambitious of writing a book so finished in every part, so approved in every detail, so nice in all its selections of metaphor and simile, form and color, that the most delicate aesthetic sense would not be offended; a book of such rhetorical completeness that none but the most learned in the grammar of our language could appreciate. Nor have we made the least effort to try the literary merits of the several productions herein reviewed according to such standards as Taine or Ruskin or Kame. Not only would such a standard be unskillfully used, but the fact that such a test of merit had been applied to some of Mr. Kipling's most creditable poetical effusions, to say nothing of such stuff as his "Barrack-Room Ballads" and "Departmental Ditties," would seem to people of ordinary literary attainments as ridiculous, if not manifestly unfair. We do not say that none of Mr. Kipling's poetry has any merit, far from it. A certain species of merit may be found even in many of his ballads and ditties. But we must remember that Rudyard Kipling is the one star in the literary firmament of to-day, a star of the first magnitude in the estimation of many, whose brilliancy even now dazzles and bewilders the beholder, while mounting rapidly toward the distant meridian of its greatest ascendency. Our object is not to detract from his fame, if we could,-nor can criticism detract one iota from the merits of his verse, upon which his fame seems to his devotees destined to stand, but our criticism is the natural consequence of thoughtful, earnest inquiry seeking for the foundation on which that fame is to rest. In our review of his "American Notes," while we have retorted in a way that to those who have never read the book, may seem in a measure severe, yet we assure you that when you shall have read both the book and the criticism, and, too, in the light of the criticisms we have from time to time received at the hands of other British writers, of whose injustice Mr. Kipling was no doubt aware, an impartial verdict will be that our criticism is perfectly justifiable. Our apology for the appearance of this little volume, our claim on your attention, reader, is this: If an alien who had arraigned almost everything that is American, as Mr. Kipling has done in a book replete as no book ever before with taunts and sneers; if a Briton who has since written volumes of verse without one expression of regret, or one tribute to our national greatness, can have a hearing before those he has repeatedly sneered, whose institutions, customs, and manners, belied and belittled, he has published to all the world, why may not one have also a hearing before a tri |