of Jack than the sea stories of Clark Russell or Stevenson. Kipling has done for the British soldier what Marryat has done for the British sailor. I will not maintain that Marryat's worth as a literary man is to be compared to Kipling's. The two authors have only this in common, that they introduce their countrymen to the fortunes of individuals which those great aggregates, the army and the fleet, put together, and that they show these primitive, robust figures in their unadorned nakedness, and awaken interest in their joys and sorrows. Kipling has the advatage over Stevenson, because his observations are more deeply rooted in life, and because his method of presentation is more natural; as we see, for example, in "Treasure Island," "The Wrecker," or "The Ebb Tide." Everything that expresses energy has the greatest attraction for Kipling, showing his own youthful, strong nature; and therefore his strength lies in the faithful presentation of primitive characters. Kipling does not conceal any of the failings of his characters, nor does he throw a veil over their moral degeneracy. On the contrary, the ugliness of actuality seems more characteristic and therefore more attractive. He quite intentionally disdains every attempt to seek for poetry for art's sake amid inartistic reality. If the tales and verse of Kipling had such immense success the reason for it lies in his going to the other extreme. People overlooked the lack of one factor because the other, being perceptibly absent from the average modern production, was here impressively felt. The charm of Kipling's writings therefore lies chiefly in the unusual fidelity to life and in the strong accentuation of the environment, so that everything actual may aid the intention of the author, and so that individual tales lacking tendency and ethical aim may reflect nature and

humanity. The Quarterly Review draws a parallel between Kipling and Balzac, to whom, despite his faults, French literature owes a great debt. While this realistic tendency soon produced fruit in Germany, the weak attempts to vindicate the rights of realism in the English novel have had but little success. The decisive appearance of Kipling has convinced the English people how abstractly and untruthfully their authors write, in spite of a Dickens; and how the greater number of them make the mistake of presenting "what is beautiful in nature, noble in man, pure and chaste in woman's heart," but fall into the error of overlooking the beautiful in the actual. The picture which Kipling draws of AngloIndian life is so full of filth and roughness that it can be presented only by an artist who despises the truth of the beautiful as such. He speaks of the frivolous life of society there as of a necessary evil from which a pleasure is to be snatched, rather than a something to be bewailed. By preference he reveals the brutal life of the soldier, the core of goodness which may be hidden in him shines forth only obscurely. And yet the author feels sympathy and friendship for his Mulvaney. His natives, in the face of their surrender to their fate, bear hatred and envy in their hearts towards the foreign interlopers. In truth, the modern Indian must present a dark picture, not wholly without sunshine, and yet, since the beauty of which nothing is deprived is unnoticed, the general effect must be very little pleasing. Indeed, Kipling himself says that it is his aim to light up "the dirty corner” of the room; but we cannot know this small part, even by the most circumstantial description, if no light is shed on the rest of the chamber. As Mr. Barrie says, there is a lack of perspective. If an artist wishes to represent a human hand, however artistic his

work, it would be incomplete if we had not the body to which it belongs for comparison. The remark of the artist that the hand alone is not the whole figure is as little satisfying as Kipling's declaration that the dirty corner is not the whole room. Kipling, like a very modern young man, is quite at home in the narrow circle which he has chosen for himself; and since he has honesty and talent enough, he is successful within his limits in giving a most minute and detailed picture of this section.

Unfortunately Kipling has been too consistently faithful to his aim of regarding the dirty corner before other considerations. The old ideas are repeated, from the earliest attempts up to the last and best stories and verse, although in new garments. The "Departmental Ditties" contain the theme presentations which deal with the life of Anglo-Indian society-the sin against the sixth commandment. This, which he calls "official sinning," is certainly · so deeply rooted in human nature that the treatment of this subject necessarily exercises a peculiar charm for an artist, and must always arouse interest as well. On this subject Kipling displays a keen sense of fitness: he never treats of adultery with frivolity. The crime exists and he neither reflects on its harmful results nor dallies over scenes of sensuality. He seizes upon it as a present reality and it offers him material, like all other realities. Still further, it appears to him the essence of Indian society, and therefore he puts it in the foreground; for he seeks to lay hold not on the lovely side of life, but on the characteristic. The gravest faults have been attributed to Kipling in the Free Review, by E. Newman." This writer ascribes to him a brutal, abnormal character, approaching to madness. But could a bestial nature have a deep and true understanding of children's minds and for the tenderest

• Contemporary Review, Vol. LIX, p. 364 ff.

aspects of them? Kipling's "His Majesty the King," "Wee Willie Winkie," and "Baa Baa Black Sheep" fill every reader with emotion and sympathy. Would we not prefer to think that the author of such words as these is himself abnormal? "The mind of the child as of the insane is sufficiently abnormal to be readily understood by Mr. Kipling." The fact against this view is that Kipling's women are commonly cold-hearted, superficial natures, like his favorite figure, the wise, humorous Mrs. Hauksbee, "the most wonderful woman in India," or the unfeeling, ambitious Maisie in "The Light That Failed." In the portrayal of noble feminine figures, both Meredith and, of earlier authors, George Eliot, are far superior, while Stevenson betrays a timidity at the introduction of women, and can never manage to be quite just to their characters. The reason why women with tender feelings are so seldom found in Kipling's stories is for the most part because he has never had the fortune to know them in his circle, and has never felt a genuine inclination for a sensitive woman. "Have ye iver fallen in love, Sorr?" Mulvaney asks him in "The Courting of Dinah Shadd." When so addressed he answered nothing, but "preserved the silence of the damned;" and his silence is rightly interpreted in the added words: "Thin I will assume that ye have not." The brutality of soldiers and officers in India doubtless stands out strongly in Kipling's stories. Has the author gone beyond the truth? The error is perhaps only in the great clearness with which the nature of that brutality is shown. In all men there still lurks something of the brute; more in some, less in others. Never before in English literature has any one so boldly sought to convince us that even rough men are yet so far removed from the brute that it can live familiarly with them. p. 236.

Kipling tells frivolous adventures, and yet we listen to him as if they were heroic deeds, which we should have liked to experience. He carouses with his soldiers and laughs at their jests, and while we know them to be rough we share his pleasures in them. The civil service officer, who is cut off from all intercourse with men, gives himself up in despair to the feeling of desolation, until he finds relief and consolation in drunkenness; and we pity him and are not terrified at the frightful irregularities to which vice leads him. We must not forget that India is not a civilized state in the European sense. The men who are sent there, separated from home and friends, must gradually take on something of the rough character of their environment. Evil tendencies there certainly degenerate more easily into vices. We have to judge the morality of such a country as if it formed a world by itself. Kipling by his candor has done a good work, in so far as the Englishman is in the habit of ignoring the existence of vice even when he sees it with his own eyes; as he, on the other hand, makes the stupid blunder of overlooking virtue when he meets it. That he takes account of English prudery at the expense of naturalness is as praiseworthy as the fact that his naturalness has a gross rawness is blameworthy. It is true that he does not pay full tribute to chastity; it is untrue that he is ever vulgar. Above all it must not be forgotten that in the variegated Indian life, even as Kipling represents it, there is hidden a large share of poetry and romance. Every one of his tales is proof of his ⚫own words: "Some people say that there is no romance in India. Those people are wrong. Our lives hold quite as much romance as is good for us. Sometimes more."

But the eager welcome that Kipling's writings have called forth is not to be

10 Quarterly Review, Vol. CLXXV, p. 34.

ascribed to his sturdy realism alone, but also to the special department from which his materials are taken. With a few exceptions, his stories deal with Anglo-Indian life. The name of India arouses the interest of the Englishman. His queen is Empress of this powerful realm. He has conquered it in fierce battles, under generals whose statues adorn the Metropolis. He knows that this land has a wild natural beauty, that dangers from climate, men and wild beasts threaten his brother. He owes to India immeasurable wealth, and his best troops go there to maintain possession. But what most interests him is the peculiar Anglo-Indian life in all its variety among the soldiers and the natives and in society, which has first been revealed to him by the realistic sketches of Kipling. "India has furnished him with an ample field, which, in spite of some earlier sketches, had remained, until the appearance of the "Plain Tales," almost as untrodden as the Highlands were when Sir Walter Scott drew the curtain from before that weird landscape in Waverley."1o All classes of Englishmen were interested. High and low seized eagerly upon these fresh, lively descriptions, which for the first time brought near to their imagination the theatre of British greatness in the East, and made clear to them the contrast between modern India and the poetic wonderland of the past. "It is not a golden country, though poets have sung otherwise. There men die with great swiftness, and those who live suffer many and curious things."" These "curious things" have a greater interest than eastern fables and the vanished glories of the old Moguls. Englishmen showed their gratitude to the author who gave them a deep insight into the present circumstances of their countrymen and shed light on their relations to one another and to the natives. For many whose rela

1 Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney.

tives live in India as soldiers, officers, farmers, and merchants, Kipling's stories must have an almost personal interest; for their friends must often have found themselves in similar situations. More than this, there is the great variety of the subjects dealt with. "These tales," says Kipling in the introduction to his second most important collection of sketches, "Life's Handicap," "have been collected from all places, and all sorts of people, from priests in the Chubara, from Ala Yar the carver, Jiwun the carpenter, nameless men on steamers and trains round the world, women spinning outside their cottages in the twilight, officers and gentlemen now dead and buried, and a few, but these are my very best, my father gave me;" and there is another circumstance, more worthy of note, which has done very much to heighten the enthusiasm for Kipling-his feeling for English nationality, which is particularly expressed in the sailor stories and songs. These sketches and poems, so remarkable in many ways, must arouse in the breast of every Englishman the pleasing thought that they are written by a man who has the proud consciousness of belonging to the greatest nation in the world. The strange view of the Quarterly Review that his patriotism is mere policy seems irreconcilable with his honorable character. That part of the stories that deal with Anglo-Indian life falls naturally into the following groups: the British soldier, the civil service officer, society, the native and the child in India. We shall go more particularly into the contents of these in a separate article.

Just now we observed that Kipling made a doubly happy stroke in the choice of his material, by opening the way for a new direction of taste, and in awakening the attention and sympathy of his countrymen for this theme which he has made his own. But had

he followed contemporary methods in the treatment of these subjects, the success of his writings would have been very much less. A change in the manner of presentation and in style showed itself to be very necessary, because the novels of late years had shown a uniform mediocrity in these things as well. Two extremes made themselves unpleasantly felt: either an endless longwindedness wearied the reader, or an affected brevity-the "scrappy, snappy style"-which attempted to bring about powerful effects by deliberated surprises, fatigued the imagination by over stimulation. English novels, even by the greatest authors, lay too much stress on side-issues; superfluity of beauty in detail may destroy the uniformity and the continuity of flow. Walter Scott goes too much into details in his descriptions of nature and in his portraits. Charles Dickens tries the patience of the reader by his long talks on hard problems. Of the modern novelists Stevenson is most praised as the one who writes the purest English and the best style. But he is thoroughly ornate, and directs the attention from the main issue and concentrates it too much on the incidental, through his love for external adornments. The common wares which of late years have been flooding the market, show so distinct a tendency to dally over the obvious or to idly dissect the simplest processes and to give detailed descriptions of everyday happenings, that the little merit which these hodge-podges have in themselves is entirely based on trivialities and commonplaces. But how can we expect a man to reproduce for us a clear picture of nature and humanity when he himself has received vague and uncertain impresses from the outer world? Kipling's works do not share in this lack: he has the right word for the right thing. What he clearly receives he reproduces in short sentences with freshness and life. We

see what he depicts. Byron's saying, "Words are things," which does not always find substantiation, is fully true of Kipling. Often substantive and verb is enough to put the concrete object clearly before our eyes or to allow us to think and experience the abstract conception in the intended meaning. If an adjective is used, it has the power to give the color necessary to the individuality of the object. As he says in "A Song of the English," "Through the naked words and mean May you see the truth between." It is his aim to so clearly mirror received impressions that the effect is felt by the reader as forcibly as by himself. And in fact he unites an admirable gift of observation with extraordinary skill in presenting the picture with such clearness that every feature of the original is contained in it. Yet he does not lose himself in details which obliterate the character of the thing. His English contemporaries will mention every tree, every stone, almost every blade of grass, to present a landscape. If they are depicting a person, they are not satisfied with a circumstantial description of his appearance, demeanor, dress, countenance, without also bringing in, as worthy of consideration, the buttons and seams of his coat as well.

In many passages of Kipling there is a fine blending of objectivity and poetry." An example of this is found in "The City of Dreadful Night": "The witchery of the moonlight was everywhere; and the world was horribly changed. Overhead blazed the unwinking eye of the moon. Straight on as а bar of polished steel ran the road to the City of Dreadful Night; and on either side of the road lay corpses on beds in fantastic attitudes-one hundred and seventy bodies of men. Some shrouded all in white with bound-up mouths;

e. g. in Namgay Doola, Through the Fire, etc. (Life's Handicap.)

some naked and black as ebony in the strong light; and one that lay face upwards with dropped jaw, far away from the others-silvery white and ashen gray." But even what is a pure creation of the fancy Kipling sees so distinctly that, for example, we might accept the marvellous in the "Ride of Morrowbie" as actual fact. In the wish to reproduce an impression in its original nature, so that the reader may feel it with the same immediate power, Kipling often allows himself to do violence to the rules of correct style. The fault of this method of procedure is that he violates the sentence-structure and so leaves grammar out of consideration. We meet with frequent telegram-like, short, broken-off sentences. from which the subject or predicate is lacking. It is hard to see any advantage in such sentences as, "Sometimes more," "But nothing else," etc., which hardly deserve the name of sentences; and to praise the author for such things by naming him "the ungrammatical Byron" is nonsense. Just as disturbing are the scattered, short remarks which contain raw, unripe judgments, as, "This is wrong," "India is the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases," etc. Superlatives, too, are applied too lavishly. Kipling seems to have an excessive self-consciousness; and his so celebrated virility shows its harmful results in leading him to overlook the teaching which great models have given. Kipling would not have damaged his originality if he had observed moderation in expression, and had not permitted himself to be carried away by the vivacity of the subject. Art is not to be taught, but technical perfection is essential to the painter, sculptor, or actor, and in the same way authors can learn to see their own failings from the beauty of the works of the great masters. Scott and Dickens read the classic authors with the greatest zeal, and strove to