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are made, showing a right spirit towards us, we do great violence to every republican principle and every manly instinct, and render ourselves more despicable in his sight by prostrating ourselves before him in this unmanly way, even though our exalted motive be a further cementing of the coveted friendship of the two greatest nations of the world; for, should either nation make manhood and principle a price of friendship, it were better that that friendship should go unpurchased. Were Mr. Kipling a great man, which we do not believe him to be, we should, at least during his present attitude towards us, never join in unmerited laudations of his talent and works, were he ever so great an intellectual prodigy; and the generous-spirited American who essays to show the world his noble spirit of charity by much praise of him, would, in nine cases out of ten, not speak to his next door neighbor for much less serious offences than Mr. Kipling's. We fear that if the much-talked of Anglo-Saxon alliance is attempted on the line of worshiping unrelenting detractors, the day of its consummation will be postponed.

We wonder whether time has so altered Mr. Kipling's idea of our country and its people as to enable him to give us a more favorable version of his "American Notes". When will he break silence

and relieve the suspense? Until then the extravagant homage, scarcely "on this side of idolatry" by an American citizen, whatever may be the motive, whether from an over-weening admiration of talent, from mercenary motives, or to further noble ends of international friendship, it is one and the same, in the language of Mr. Kipling, "He earns not only the contempt of his brethren but the amused scorn of the Briton."

CHAPTER III.

KIPLING'S ORIGINALITY.

King, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name.
Is the sun dimmed that gnats do fly in it?
The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wings
He can at pleasure stint their melody.

Tamora, in Titus Andronicus.

We are creators in the intellectual world as little as in the physical.-Tyndall.

Much has been written concerning Mr. Kipling's originality, as if no other author were ever quite so original, as though originality were the only qualification needed in the production of great literary works. Few are the thinkers to-day even that are adding much to the world's great stock of knowledge. Genius is displaying itself in presenting old ideas in new attire, mainly after the custom of the times. Literature, like our sciences, is but beginnings and first principles enlarged upon through successive ages.

But in the sense that Mr. Kipling is not a servile imitator, in the sense that he expresses thought in a way somewhat peculiar to himself, he is, in a measure, original. But what of that? He

is no more original than many others except that he descends to a lower plain for many of his heroes and themes. As a poet he is no more original than Bret Harte, Saxe, or Miller, or Phoebe Carey, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and is the latter's inferior in strength, passion, and beauty of expression. He is no more original than Holmes, less brilliant and certainly less delicate. Where is there one who has written of Kipling's exhilarating humor as the scholarly Lowell wrote of Holmes?

"There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit, A Leyden-jar always full charged from which flit The electrical tingles, hit after hit.

His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric

In so kindly a manner that nobody knows

What to do but just join in the laugh, friends and foes."

We concede that a person might be quite original in doing things other persons are accustomed to do. One often thinks the same thoughts others have thought, and yet the thought be quite original with each. How often do we find feelings and sentiments we have long entertained crystalized by others into beautiful verse or well shaped maxims. In the one instance the germ thought under more favorable circumstances not only germinates, grows, and buds, but blooms and bears fruit, amid sunshine and sweet fragrance; while in the other instance the same rich seed

thought may reach various lower stages of development, or lie dormant as a seed in the bosom of mother earth, for decades and decades in the mind of another awaiting a more favorable condition.

It is not sufficient originality that the track of the plagiarist, or the marks of the copyist be not discoverable in Kipling's verse, but that originality is wanting, which by conception, imagination, beauty, grace, and diction, instead of mere awkward virility and disdainful boldness, would rank the author of "The Seven Seas" the peer of even our nineteenth century poets. Impartial criticism will find nothing in the verse herein reviewed to lay alongside of "The Lady of the Lake", "Marmion", "Childe Harold", "Thanatopsis", "Enoch Arden", "Evangeline", "The Raven", and scores of occasional productions from the pens of authors "all unknown to fame." We go further, and assert without fear of successful contradiction from unbiased men and women of judgment and taste, without regard to the sociology sought to be inculcated by the author of the poem, that Edward Markham's "The Man with the Hoe" evinces a higher order of poetic genius than Rudyard Kipling's much talked of "Recessional", or the equally famous "White Man's Burden".

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