Mr. Kipunc/S Five Nations. 843 PRODUCED by UNZ.ORG

Mr. KipUnc/s Five Nations. 843 tion ; his ideas are many but his words this banquet. In this attitude the poet are few. He dislikes action, yet he at descended to the arena of strife, on a tracts the active. He seeks no recloMies, level with others of not half his merit yet he is acclaimed. In a study of Mal- who had dinners given in their honor. larm^ and his salon which appeared in How difficult it is to refuse at the right 1892,1 said: " In this poet we find a phi moment! The art of saying " no " is the losopher free from superstition and pre supreme art in the life of every thinker. judice, a thinker who embraces all that Of all things connected with the daily is vital in art, music, and literature." routine of a man of talent, tliis thing of But the best minds are often led into knowing when and how to I'efuse is the foolish acts, even against their better simplest and the rarest. It is so easy to judgment. The poet was inveigled into know and so hard to do. But until we accepting a banquet in his honor, offered learn to do it we can expect nothing but by a number of his admirers, at which misunderstanding and failure. conventional toasts, speeches, and re It was remarked by a journalist that sponses, prearranged and machine-made, Mallarm^, at this banquet, looked as if were the order of the evening. He was he had come to bury his last friend. proclaimed " prince " of the young poets; And no wonder ; for he had descended but Mallarm^ sat immovable, fatigued, from his sanctuary in the Rue de Rome and bored. It was no place for him. to a place where his star gave no light. When a wise man is placed in a ridiculous He was attracted beyond his orbit by position, the fools, as Goethe says, have the comets and meteors of the phenome their innings. We blunder the moment nal world, and he could say with Joseph we cease to reason and permit others to Roux : '• When I return from the coun reason for us. Mallarm^, who was king try of men I take nothing with me but in his own sphere, cut a poor figure at illusions and disillusions." Francis Grierson. MR. KIPLING'S FIVE NATIONS. A NEW volume of poetry from the hand him the gift of magical utterance, what, of a man of recognized power is like a after all, is the verdict which he brings message brought from a battlefield. in ? Better equipped than the rest of us One's chief interest is in learning how as to eye and mind and tongue, what has the battle is going. Whether the mes he to tell us of the world, and the soul, senger arrives on foot or on horseback, and the life of man in organized society ? whether he gasps his tidings in quick, This very old query asserts itself with breathless sentences, or weaves them into quiet persistence as one turns the pages elaborate parable and allegory, are of The Five Nations.' Here is verse merely matters of detail. The main written by one of the most widely known question is, Are we winning or losing ? authors of the English-speaking world. No doubt, whenever a poet makes a Many of these poems have been cabled fresh report upon human life, the manner in which he phrases his verdict demands ^ The Five Nations. By RUDYAKD KIPLINO. close scrutiny, because without that mas New York : Doubleday, Page & Co. 1903. Also in the Outward Bound Edition of Mr. tery of musical phrase he might almost Kipling's writings, Vol. XXI. New York: as well be inarticulate. But, granting Charles Serihner's Sons. 1903. PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 844 Mr. Kipling's Five Nations. across the seas and discussed as events force, its occasional defects of taste and of international significance. They liave its frequent lapses into mere rhymed bois- been produced by an exceptionally inter terousness were easily forgiven. It is esting man. Winning his first successes true that these poems were curiously de as a journalist, and carrying something ficient, as a whole, in new felicities in the of the journalistic knack into almost all interpretation of Nature. They spoke his subsequent work, Mr. Kipling gained but little to the mind. Back of the eye fame at twenty-three, and has held it de that caught so avidly at many varieties servedly. His artistic resources are un of the human species, there was evident, questionable : in keenness of observation, in almost all of his many poems deal in technical knowledge of his chosen ing with alien races, a hard racial pride. fields, and in sheer myth-making imagi Yet The Seven Seas touched the unquiet nation, he leads the writers of his day. heart of youth. Its glorification of brute He has traveled greatly, and has written force was synchronous with a recrudes about men and animals and things, up cence of theories of " white man's " gov and down the globe, with an eagerness, ernment, the world over. Its vigorous a vividness, and a sincerity of conviction character-drawing, as in Tomlinson and that have carried him very far. He has in McAndrew's Hymn, pleased not only made easy conquest of the hearts of chil the secretly feeble literary folk who love dren, first with his wonderful Jungle the praise of action, but also the non-lit Books, where his best powers have had erary persons who would have been de their freest play, and latterly with the terred by such consummate character- delightful Just So Stories,^ which have studies as The Northern Farmer, or Era now taken their place in the long row Lippo Lippi. Finally, in depicting cer of volumes of the Outward Bound Edi tain moods and temperaments, as in the tion. It is needless to say that Mr. Kip Wanderlust or the homesickness of Man- ling belongs in the very front rank of dalay, the L'Envoi to Life's Handicap, living story-writers, and he has proved the Anchor Song and For to Admire, his capacity to write poems which in Mr. Kipling showed extraordinary psy stantly irritate or uplift a whole nation. chological insight and produced genuine poetry of the human heart. His earliest verse, indeed, was uncom monly barren, both in ideas and form. It All this rich achievement lingers in showed imitative dexterity in practicing the memoiy as one reads The Five Na upon the styles of many masters, and tions. Here is the same personality, little more. Among the works of even coloring every page. But has the author third-rate English poets it would be hard grown, either in wisdom or in stature? to find more consistently uninteresting The title of the volume indicates its po metrical experiments than those which litical drift. The London Spectator says : Mr. Kipling has chosen to preserve.^ " The name is in itself an act of imperial But before long came the Barrack-Room interpretation, and signifies that within Ballads of 1889-91, and The Seven Seas, our free empire stand the five free na revealing a maturer hand and the stamp tions of Canada, Australia, New Zea of a virile personality. Verse so chal land, South Africa, and ' the islands of lenging in its front, so novel in its rhyth the sea.' " Is the book mainly a clever mical patterns, so irresistible in its humor example of pamphleteering in verse, — and pathos, could not fail to make its way. a passionate defense of the Imperial In view of such incontestable positive England that now is, — or does it betray ^ Just So Stories. By RUDYARD KIPLING. ^ See his Early Verse. Vol. XVII. of the The Outward Bound Edition, Vol. XX. New Outward Bound Edition. York: Charles Seribner's Sons. 1903. PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 3Ir. Kipling's Five Nations. 845 a prophetic soul dreaming of things to contains no poems of exceptional power. come when there shall be better watch For impassioned imagination, there are words for humanity than are to be found The Bell Buoy, and White Horses, and in militant Anglo-Saxonisra ? The Destroyers. A subtle and haunting The new volume opens with one of nostalgia lurks in The Song of Diego those dedicatory poems which have often Valdez, Chant-Pagan, The Feet of the proved the fundamental seriousness with Young Men, and Lichtenberg. Such which Mr. Kipling confronts his poetic praise of the virtue of discipline as Tlie task ; and it closes with the well-known White Man's Burden, such a savage Recessional of 1897. Between these political fable as The Truce of the Bear, limits there are examples of most of the such merry and picturesque sketching of types of verse with which the author has national types as Piet and Pharaoh and caught the ear of his generation. There the Sergeant would make The Five Na is little that exhibits new aspects of his tions a notable collection, even if it did genius, and those readers who have fol not close with the Recessional. Yet lowed his recent verse as printed in the upon a second and third reading some of periodicals will scarcely find in the score the old limitations of Mr. Kipling's verse or more of unpublished pieces anything disclose themselves. Despite the per to modify substantially their estimate of sonal ardor of the author, and the fact Mr. Kipling as a poet. Of advance in that he draws upon so many quarters of the technique of his art there is notlilng the globe for his subjects, his poems are to record.

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