KIPLING.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1645, 11 January 1913, Page 9

KIPLING.

• Tho issue in one volume of Kipling's verse forth this able review in the."Westminster,Gazette":— •.

. i It; is a desperate effort ,to : collect your ■thoughts after . three '■» consecutive .hours 'With Air. poetry. As' you.iay tho .book: down a dozen: jaunty 'metres are ' thrumming ' in' your, brain, , temporarily , banishing- all intellectual apprehension, :and overwhelming" you with and glitter and immense .energy \ of , tho performance. There is nothing in all literature quite like the noise that Mr. Kipling makes, or his power' of making cold print gallop and snout. One drawback, (perhaps a personal infirmity of the .writer)'is that, so"'many, .of tho measures' have .got attached to ;extremely --Vulgar tunes, which:'do. sensibly get in the way of.theh' appreciation: as;literature. Now-and again.this effect is'perfectly 'in . accord with' the intention,, but at other times 'it: is :disconcertingly, incongruous. You.cannot get a solemn cadence out.of'a tune which is irreparably associated with the great Mac. Another difficulty is that ,tho pace is;sometimes, so rapid that.it carries, you past the sense, when. that; is not. quite obvious. • Not- seldom you get borne along on a. flood of words the meaning of which becomes quite subordinate to their sound.. Finally you carry away the impression of an amazing virtuosity, but criticism "in tho: ordinary meaning of the word seems paralysed. You feel rather as if you must tnkea rest after a stimulating and exhausting athletic; exercise. • But Mr. Kipling's poems are not meant to be read on end as, the unfortunate reviewer must read them. They must be taken separately, with due care not to takejoo many of the same kind together. Dofiis duly at intervals, and they will , begid ■to ■ sort'.themselves out- ..Clearly there are -pieces ■' of.; high and original poetry; clearly there are other pieces of remarkably clever/W.ord-spihnuig, and ultimately' there is a remainder which is on a .perilous edge. between, verse and doggerel, and frequently topples over on to. the wrong 1 side. Many of the worst of the third group have,'we are glad to'say, been combed out of this collection, and with" few exceptions the. reader is spared the repetition of those shoe-castings over little England which'are Mr. Kipling's contribution to public affairs. The exceptions include, an ancient... outburst against the Irish party, sundry, scoldings on the: occasion of the Boer war, and that obscure enigmatical piece in which" the late Mr.' Eruger appears to be compared to Charles I. ..These,, by the lapse of timej have become and % few samples of them ought;,we suppose, .to be bopt ■ in-a represeirtaxiveicollectibn.of Mr. Kip? ling's works, but they, have nothing to dp with literature. Apart from these, there' is'another largo group which equally defy any mere literary.criticism. In these Mr.;! represents a'certaia phase.of the ■'late,;. Victorian.; .sentiment', as .typically anl quihtessentially,' ; .as": Charlotte Yonge or.. ■-.. a .phase... of ''-.early,; .Vjctorian. sentiment. '.Some' \of . them': .have got', beyond'' literature'.'and ■ into .the, ■ i language, and we can never, imagine them neglected by students of,the; manners and thought of these .times,- oven though they have. to'be laboriously, deciphered by the aid of special 'glossaries., ;If: we want to recover . the emotions of the last decade, of the nineteenth century—the sudden conviction of ; tho young people;that they had discovered or invented thS Empire,' their contempt for philosophers and stay-at-homes, their adoration of muscular and sanguinary heroes,working in jungles and forests, thoir belief : that only on battlefields', arid wild., frontiers were things Teally "done" nnd'did men comport themselves in a manly and masculine manner— for all this and much elso in line, with the same mood we go, to Mr.' Kipling, and especially |o 'Mr. Kipling's verse. We have': it in - the" "Barrack-Room Ballads," "The Islanders," the "Feet of the' Young Man," "Kitchener's,, School," the "Balla'd of East and-West," the .parable, I .of Tonilinson, who is sharply told to go land qualify himself for hell, if ho can't Teach heaven,..and a dozen ether pieces / f wh.ich ( we should haveliked to : seo brought 1 together into one'section. is the picture of the typical Empire-makers:

.TLeydo not consider, the meaning of things; they consult not creed ' nor - clan. Behold, they clap the slave on the back, •■. and behold he ariseth a man! They terribly carpet the earth with dead and before their cannon cool,' They walk unarmed by twos and throes to call tho living to school. / It is a^little.complacent, but the mixture of schoolmaster and man 'f wrath exactly hits off tho imperial idea of the nineties. - Reaction against smooth-spoken, academic English was also the mood of this hour. The music-hall gives the metes, tho barrack-room' the phraseology, and the Old Testament the doctrine. All particularly fine morals must be conveyed in cockney.; Sometimes it becomes sheer rowdyism, as in-"Et dona ferentes":

Ss the hard, .pent, rage ate inward, til some idiot went too far... . "let 'em havo it!" and they had it, and the snnio was bloody war. Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp, and beer-mug, chair and bootTill behind the fleeing legions Tose the long, hoarse yell for loot. . Then tho oil-cloth, with its nuiiibersj like a banner fluttered free; Then the grand, piano cantered, on three castors, down the quay; ' ■ White, anil breathing through their nos- ! trils; silent,' systematic, swift— They removed, effaced, abolished all vthat •man could heavo or lift. _■■.-_ Oh, my country, bless the training that from cot to castle runs— The pitfall of the stranger, but the bulwark of thy sons—; ' / .: This is dated 1896; and six years' later, after tho Boer, war, there is a little less assurance about tho complete adequacy of ','the blessed training that from cct to castle runs." The ■ refrain. is now, "we havo hadj a jolly good lesson, and it serves • us jolly well right." But this also is-iu keeping with tho spirit of the time, even to the rollicking gaiety of tho despondent chorus. . Far be it from us'to deny either, the genius or the bracing qualities of-many of these pieces. They did a service not easily overrated to loyal men and hue on the frontiers and in tho district camps;'l they enlarged the imagination of the English-6pealcing race, and they provided correctivo to sundry decadent tendencies which had'their, vogue at the end of tho century. But tho corrective also had its morbid side, and it is impossible to read somo of these pieces without feeling that the "passionless passion for slaughter" is more than'.a I phrase, 1 ' Is it, we wonder, a too superj.fiiie inodo'rm feeling which is revolted by I "Snarloyow," or the "Ballad of Boh Da Thone," or which feels in these reeking details that come tripping off the pen a sort of lese mnjeste against human kind? The vision of mangled corpses 6et to a jig in "Snarleyow" will not easily bear a second reading, if ono tries oven faintly to realise tho scene. We cannot profess to regret.it, if, 'as Mr. Shaw suggests, the Tommy Atkins of these ballads has given place to new typo of well-behaved and slightly depressed young men whom scientific warfare is said to require. For if tho real Tommy ever was the Tommy of tho Ballads, we misht infer one at least of tho

reasons for tho "jolly good lesson" which followed. i But if a third of this book seems like an incitement to somebody to call the polico or read tho Kiot Act, there is another third which contains some < f tho truest poetry that has been presented to this generation: There's a whisper down tho field where tho year has 6-aot her yield, And tho ricks stand grey to tho sun, Singing: over then, come over, for the bee has quit-tho clover, "And your English summer's done," You havo heard the beat of the off-shore wind, • And the thresh- of the deep-sea rain; You have heard, tho ..song—how 1 long! how longp Pull out on tho trial again. It is an oddity that the man who wrote, this .should also bo the blood-and-thnn-1 der militarist of other poems. Metre apart, is in.the exquisite Tennysonian manner. Unlikely as it may seem, Tennyson is about the only influence one can trace in Mr. Kipling's poems, except possibly for an occasional touch of Swinburne. "Tho Song of the Cities" is obviously modelled on "Tho Dream of Fair Women": ■ ' Single I grew like some green plant, whose root Creeps to tho ! garden water-pipes beneath. Feeding the flower; but ere my flower to fruit ' .' , m.- • Changed,|l was ripe to death. Clivo kissed me on the mouth and eyes and brow,. Wonderful kisses, so that I became Crowned above Queens-a withered beldame now Brooding on ancient fame.' The reader who had not seen either before would swear both to' be by the same hand. There is the' same cunning in the lovely "Sussex" which shows Mr. Kipling in his best : English country mood: ' No tender-hearted ' garden crowns, No bosomed woods adorn Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, But gnarled and writhen thornBare slopes where chasing shadows / skim, ;. •',,-!': And through the gaps revealed, Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,Blue goodness of the weald. This charming faculty, which Tennyson ihad and few others have had, of making perfect pictures, in a stanza or even a lino is also Mr. Kipling's. "Great spaces washed with sun,", ['lonely mountain M the northland, misty sweat-bath neath the line," "the land of the waiting springtime"—these and a dozen other snatches come back .• to us at.' odd moments. , Mr. Kipling, moreover, is one of the finest of deep-sea poets. No one in our time has quite his gift of bringing to our ears the mighty tramplings of the great waters, and few get the brine into their : verse as he does into his ; "Chantey's." If the critic has anything to say about these great descriptive pieces, it is merely ■ an occasional protest against that misplaced conceit of nu'eer and technical words which causes Mr. Kipling to break the rush of some of his finest passages and send the reader searching helplessly, for. a dictionary. I Without reserve, then, we may acclaim Mr. Kipling a niastcr of the graphic arts, and one of the greatest in our time. A different question arises if wo are_ asked, to treat his poetry as "a criticism of life" or himself as a teacher of these limes.. The, tribal'singer hymning the neolithic virtues soon exhausts his vein of thought, and is driven back again and again upon one - theme and one type of character, He may excite us and inflame" us, but seldom does he warm .us or cheer us or send us burrowing into the nature of things." For.food'and sustenance and the all-round interest in, human kind which is the mark of the greatest poetry, we must.still go to our Wordsworths and Brownings, but for the pride of lifo and tho lust of the eye no one in our time is the equal of Mr. Kipling. •:. - .