able to conceal from his generation the deep difference between
artifice and inspiration. A crafty author will often employ his best
phrases to describe the thing he has never really seen with the eye of
genius. His manner will be most assured where his matter is the least
authentic. His points will be most effectively made where there is the
least necessity to make them. Mr Kipling, writing as a soldier, is
more a soldier than any soldier who ever lived. Thereby the discerning
reader will infer that Mr Kipling was not born to write as a soldier.
He will know that Mr Kipling is not profoundly and instinctively an
atavistic prophet, because his atavism is more atavistic than the
atavism of the first man who ever was born. He will also realise that
Mr Kipling writes so effectively about India because he ought to be
writing about England and Fairyland and the Jungle. He will realise,
in short, that Mr Kipling is an imaginative man of letters who has
wonderful visions when he stays at home, and who needs all his craft as
an expert literary artificer to persuade his readers that these visions
are not seriously impaired when he ventures abroad.




VIII

THE POEMS

Only the briefest epilogue is necessary concerning Mr Kipling's poetry.
We have concluded as to his prose stories that his best work is in the
pure fancy of _The Jungle Book_, and that we descend thence through his
English tales and his celebration of the work of the world to clever
stories of India and _Soldiers Three_. Upon each of these levels we