Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/199

 actual work of Mr. Rudyard Kipling as a writer of verse divides itself in the most obvious way into two parts—his first book of verse and his second book of verse, Departmental Ditties and Barrack-Room Ballads. Further developments in this work are possible, and even probable, but at present it surely suffices, for the inevitably partial purposes of contemporary criticism, that these two books mark, and mark clearly, two distinct ages of effort and achievement.

Mr. Kipling seems to have small belief in what the old-fashioned authors used to call the intelligent reader. At any rate, he would seem to consider that either an explanatory 'prelude' or 'envoi,' or occasionally both, are desirable adjuncts to every book. Sometimes his prelude will be an unmistakable finger-post, inscribed legibly for the perusal of all. Then, if he indulges in an envoi, we shall find him speaking 187