The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-11-11

| l suspect there are more ministers
who read the reports of prize-fights
than would be willing to confess, Per-
haps it is a relic of our fallen nature.
| Nothing sells a newspaper like a muir
der Sin forces itself to the front as
the protogonist in every great drama.
| Even Milton had to make the devil his
| hero. Possibly the cause is a profound
dissatisfaction with ordinary life. Job
complains, Achilles sulks, Prometheus
rebels and Faust makes pact with the
| enemy. Evil seems to be the energetic
| force of the universe. Even in the
physical world, those lurid villains of
natures melodrama the lightning and
the storm, get more attention than the
beneficent agencies of the light and the
dew Kipling's writings abound In
those tragic descriptions which may be
called the literary of revolt.
Another faculty which astonishes us
in this author is his command of tech
nical phraseology Read that wonder
full piece of language mechanism 1.-THE
Bridge Builders in THE Days Work"
Here materalism is made articulate.
| Every bolt, every screw has literary
value. Wonderfully real is the work
| of him who can be an engineer with the
bridge builders, a warrior with Sol
| diers Three" laughing lad with Wee
| Willie Wrinkle" and we might almost
say, ghost with phantom kin, and
| beast with the well met tigers of the
| Jungle Indeed if we were to adopt
the absurd theory of the realists that
no one can adequately describe that
which he has not seen or experienced,
we should be bound to declare that this
versatile author had no less than forty
Vocations and had tried his hand at
everything. But the theory is prepCs-
ferrous, Balzac, chief of French novel
lists, If not Of those Of every land, I'M
read and untraveled, trod in fiction the
whole round of human passion, and
Shakespeare, prince of dramatists.
though a peasant, ate and slept in
thought with kings. This faculty is the
result of severe training rather than of
life-experience. 1t is the gift of potent
analysis, the gift of Darwin in cience
of Edison in invention, Of Turner in
painting and of Bismarck in statesman
ship.
Still another reason for the authors
success is his ear for the popular note.
When the scent of war was in the air
he described the navy, when the entente
between Great Britain and America
arose he wrote of 1.-THE White Mans
Burden" When the Queens jubilee
was about to be celebrated he penned
THE Recessional Hymn" Combine
these four gifts, the Journalists ear to
catch the passing note, the poets swift
and sure touch, the preachers hatred
to shams, and the mechanics study of
the minutest part of his art and you
have the secret of Rudyard Kipling.
But will this literary artist live? Is
he to be classed among the mmortals?
In spite of his worldwide fame and his
rare combination of talents. we feel
obliged to answer this question in the
negative. For this great writer has de-
fects which are serious and fatal.
In the first place he is weak in con-
structive imagination. Endowed to the
last degree in his powers of analysis, he
is decidedly lacking in synthesis. His
stories are short, and he seems incapa-
BILE of sustained flight. OF the only
two long novels he has attempted, the |
Light That Failed" threatens to break
down at the end Of every chapter, and
in Captain Courageous" the story be-
comes stranded. He is the Stonewall |
Jackson of literature. He knows how
to make raid, but not how to general |
an army.
Further, he fails with his women |
The greatest novelists have been sue
cessful in depicting the character of wo-
men. Kipling does not distort but he |
fails to develop. The plot is always J
made for the man. The woman is
shadowy She is not portrait, but a
sketch; not a substance, but a silhou-
cite, Besides the nobility of JEANNE
Deans in Sir Walter Scott's Heart of
Midlothian" or the greatness of soul
displayed in the Romola of George Eli
OTIS famous novel of that name, or even
the wicked women that stride across the
French stage of fiction, how crude, pu-
Grille and abortive appear the attempts
Of this writer to portray the difficult
sex. Other novelists have drawn weak
and commonplace characters, because
human nature in general is weak and
but here you feel the
weakness to be in the author rather
than in the actor.
And we are obliged to add that with
all Kipling's genius, to the average
nan he is not interesting. He lacks the
art of storytelling. Often he is intol-
erably dull. This may seem like hypo-
criticism, for even Homer mods and
George Eliot sometimes strikes the
wrong key; but in fiction only the story
S immortal and Kipling has no story.
rhe wonderful powers of the great Eng
ish woman are at her best in Middle
march" and Daniel Deronda," but
hese once famous novels are already
ouched with mildew, while her adam
3ede' still has the freshness of the
morning rose Why are her greatest
works neglected The reason, too much
genius, too little story. OF Kiplng,
Mark Twain says in his quaint way
He is the prince of story-tellers minus
he story"
Perhaps a more serious defect is his
ack of sympathy with his heroes. In
pite of that intenseness and moral
there is sort of aloofness
bout the author. With all his multi
ude of Details he seems to see only |
rom the outside To achieve perma
tent success, the creator must be at one
With the created. He must see with
heir eyes, hear with their ears and feel
With their hearts. 1t is this intensity
H. g