KIPLING AS HISTORIAN.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1150, 10 June 1911, Page 9

KIPLING AS HISTORIAN.

Mr. Rudynrd Kipling is about lo make his first bow to tho public in the role of historian. "A School History of England" will be published shortly under the joint names oT Jlr. C.'li. L. Fletcher and Mr. Kipling It is an open secret that the more solid historical matter will bo contributed by the first of these authors, while Jlr. Kipling will be responsible for the more vivid parts of the narrative, and the poems which will supplement tho text.

There will be no fewer than twentythree ballads, which appear under such titles as "The Roman Centurion," "Tho Pirates of England," "Before the Edge-

hill Fight," "Tho Dutch in the Jledway," "The French Wars," and "Tho Beils and the Queen, 1011." Chapter 1 of the new history, which carries the reader from the earliest times to the departure of the Romans, opens with a poem, entitled "The River's Talc," from which the first stanza may ho quoted; "I wall: my beat before London Town, Five hours up and seven down, Up I go and I end my run A tide-end-lowii, which is Teddington. Down T come with the mud in my hands, And plaster it over the Jlaplin Wands. But I'd have you know that these waters of mine Were once a branch of the River Rhine, When hundreds of miles to the East I went,' And England was joined to the Continent. Jlr. Henry Ford will illustrate the new history with a number of drawings. It may be expectc-d in July.