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UTEKARY.
The elementary fact about I.owcll, the one which lie never
allows his readers to forget, was that he was born and bred n
New EngJandcr. He reverts to it again and again, referring
to the dialect of Hosca Iligclow as his mother tongue. In
truth he was a Yankee of the Yankees in birth, training and
temperament. This does not conflict with the idea that he
was a cosmopolitan. In him as in other men was a certain
dualism of character, "lie beat his poetry out" from the
clash and contact of two inlluences. lie was at once a Yankee
and a European, a provincial and a cosmopolitan, a preacher
and a poet, a vehement partisan and a critic of wide culture.
The New England, the "down east" farmer as a distinctive
class has well nigh passed away. It was Lowell who pre
served their rhetoric and provincialisms by giving these a place
in literature. He was versatile without being shallow. Every
thing he wrote was scholarly and thoughtful. He mastered
the literature of half a dozen nations and when in the diplo
matic service was a model ambassador, at the same time achiev
ing in London a social success such as has fallen to few men,
even to those who have breathed the air of society from
bovhood.
lly far the most concise, just and interesting of the many
articles which the writings of Rudyard Kipling have called
forth, is that found in a recent number of the Etiinlmrg
Review. The writer of this does not give the long list of Kip
ligs's works. He does not exhaustively review each. All that
he does do, and that very sensibly, is to give an estimate of
Richard Kipling's ability as a writer and then to class his books
in a general way, 'jiving the virtues and faults of each class.
The present is an age of literary common-place. The
writer who wishes to become popular must show oiiginality
and independence. This is especially true of novelists, for
fiction is the only literary food of thousands. It is this pre
cious gift that has made the name of Rudyard Kipling a most
notable one. He tells stories of real incidents in ordinary life.
His method is one of pictoral treatment in which daring direct
ness ami sharpness of outline arc the characteristics. The
reader is astonished by the apparent ease with which the
effects are produced. The gift of telling a good short story is
a rare one and Mr. Kipling possesses it to a remarkable degree.
He is, therefore, fortunate both in his matter and in his man
ner. In his matter because it is new, real and deals with inci
dent in a narrative form; in his manner because it is direct,
concentrated and suited for an age in which all who wish to
read, wish also to run. In both respects, he fdls a real liter
ary want. Nevertheless, the praise bestowed upon Mr. Kip
ling's work has been extravagant. His merits still lie in the
promise rather than in the performance,
He has published some seventy stories, a novel, and a vol
ume of verse, nil of which illustrate with more or less force
his drift of dramatic representation. Yet he would undoubt
edly have been wiser if he had put two-thirds of the stories
into the fire or left them in the comparative oblivion of the
Indian journals, in which they originally appeared.
Mr. Kipling's stories may be divided in three classes: talcs
of Indian society, tales of the barrack-room, and talcs of child
life. The literary merits of the three classes are very different.
The first class comprises a collection of "queer stories" of the
same sort that appear in the pages of a society weekly. They
arc uniformly trivial, vulgar and smart, though not a few of
them are decidedly clever. In these stories the professional
instincts of the paragraphist of society newspaper seems to
overpower the natural instincts of refinement nnd good breed
ing. Life in the hill stations of India may be vicious, frivo
lous and mean, but apart from the faults which may justly be
attributed to the subject rather than the author, Mr. Kipling's
work is pervaded with gratuitous touches of vulgarity and
coarseness which may possibly lead to the ruin of his reputa
tion. The second class comprises a study of the Ihitish priv
ate in peace and war which, in their way, are masterly pro
ductions. European society in India does not present a pleas
ing or a dignified aspect and Mr. Kipling applies his caustic
pretty freely to the pedantry of official life, to the vanity and
vices of a fashionable cantonment and to the rough-and-ready
humor of the Uritish soldier abroad. Mr. Kipling's war
pictures are niarvelously picturesque, vivid and dramatic. His
battle scenes have all the brutality, movement and ferocity of
reality. It is here that he is seen at his best, though he
reserves fine touches of his pen for his sketches of Indian life
and native character. There he has no equal. No other writer
has had the same sympathy for the childlike simplicity, the
patient fidelity and sensibility of the Hindoo; these life-like
pictures of the world in which Mr. Kipling spent his early
life are the best parts of his work.
His pictures of child-life are popular but the subject is so
much easier that the artistic value of the triumph is little test
of latent or revealed skill. His style is one that lends itself
readily to epigram, for epigram comes readily to a man who
sees clearly and comprehensively and expresses his visions with
corresponding definitcness and concentration. On the other
hand, Mr. Kipling's manner is calculated to display the con
spicuous faults of his matter. Unless it is regulated by a cor
rect and re find taste, it readily degenerates from genuine
cleverness into mere smartness and downright vulgarity.
A critic who does not think that Rudyard Kipling's sister
shows her brother's talent, says that the young woman's story,
"The Heart of a Maid," is "very crude and girlish."
The "History of David Grieve" is the title of Mrs. Humphrey-Ward's
new novel and the book is said to trace the
practical application of the doctrines of Robert Elsmerc in
Work among the poor of London.
Mine. Adam in the November number of the North Amer
ican tells us that 1'rcnch novels are not true to French life. In
the first place they are all written, edited, read, and criticised
in Paris, and Paris, she says, is not France. The French novel -ist
may have been born in a province, but almost invariably
before attempting to write, goes to Paris to secure adequate
experience of Parisian life. He does not even learn to know
Paris, but only that "world" which includes the nobility, the
upper middle class, professional men, and politicians. This
world has to supply him with the subject for his work and of
course he treats it superficially. Mme. Adam thinks that
decentralization in literature as well as in politics is coming
and will bring to the surface a more wholesome variety of
French no"el,