Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/77

51 MEEKNESS OF MR. RUDYARD KIPLING 51 with Beardsley. Mr. John Lane began to collect his first editions. Mr. Richard le Gallienne was told off to Bodley Head him. Mr. Edmund G-osse (this is perfectly true, I assure you), Mr. Gosse himself wrote almost tremblingly of *' the troubling thrill, the volup- tuous and agitating sentiment," which this artist's audacious words sent through his system. The little sun-baked books from Allahabad seemed, if anything, more golden than The Yellow Book. The test of the literary epicures became their capacity for properly savouring the subtle Kipling liqueur. . . . And then the exasperating fellow went popular. Ill What do you call the apostles of the Cubists? Cubicles? Very well then. Just consider the con- sternation of the cubicles if the general public began to clamour for Picassos. Think even of Mr. Roger Fry's chagrin if we made a popular favourite of Matisse. A consternation not dissimilar, I am per- fectly sure, shuddered through the initiates of the 'nineties. I don't suggest, of course, that the masked paling of critical approval, the soft extinction of the starrier estimates, was entirely due to the widening blaze of popularity ; but even critics are human, and it helped. It was impossible to watch their precious liqueur being drained like mere Bass without begin- ning to entertain doubts as to its quality. It was felt that the public's enjoyment of Kipling was too true to be good. Criticism grew querulous, qualified, hedged; Criticism discovered defects. The defects it discovered, the demands which it made, and the balking effect of all these hedges on Mr. Kipling's career, I will consider in a moment. What I want to insist on, first, is the entire wholesomeness of that popularity. It was — and is remaining — healthy