the United Services College, Westward Ho, but was again in India in
1882, as assistant editor on _The Civil and Military Gazette_ and _The
Pioneer_. He remained on the staff of _The Pioneer_ for seven years,
and travelled over the five continents. By this time he had learned to
think of the world as a place rather more diversified than a walk from
Charing Cross to Whitehall would lead one to imagine; to see something
of men upon its frontiers, and to love England as men do who come back
to her from the ends of the earth. The whole of Mr Kipling's literary
biography is contained in the fact that Mr Kipling has been a great
traveller who is now inveterately at home.

Perhaps we should also note that Mr Kipling was a literary prodigy.
_Plain Tales from the Hills_ appeared in 1887. Mr Kipling at
twenty-two had shown his quality and had already mapped out in little
his career. In _Plain Tales from the Hills_ there are hints for almost
everything that their author afterwards accomplished. As the book of a
young journalist whose name had not yet been whispered among the
publishers and critics of London it was a miracle. If Mr Kipling had
been able to improve on _Plain Tales from the Hills_ as much as
Shakespeare improved on _Love's Labour's Lost_, as much as Shelley
improved on _Queen Mab_, Robert Browning on _Pauline_, Byron on _Hours
of Idleness_, he would to-day be without a peer. Mr Granville Barker
is often cited as a classical modern example of precocity, but he was
twenty-four when he wrote _The Marrying of Anne Leete_. Mr Henry James
was twenty-eight before he had published a characteristic word. Mr
Thomas Hardy at twenty-five had only printed a short story, and he was
more than thirty when his first novel appeared. Mr Kipling came upon
the public in 1886 without a preliminary stutter. Mr Kipling at
twenty-two could write as craftily as Mr Kipling can write after nearly
thirty years' experience. We shall not be greatly concerned in these