Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/78

52 52 MEEKNESS OF MR. RUDYARD KIPLING and sound. There is probably no living writer who is regarded, in England, with such widespread and spon- taneous veneration. It is the nearest thing we have nowadays to the reverence that used to be excited by the great literary figures of last century. It is touching, it is beautiful, it is altogether honest, real, and good. Bank clerks and clerics, doctors and drapers, journalists, joiners, engineers — they all speak of this man and his work much as another kind of people speak of Wagner. Only, honestly. There is no priggishness about it, nor any desire either to impress or be improved ; and yet they find beauty in his work, they find magic and strangeness, and they find hints of inscrutable forces and mysterious powers, and constant reminders of something unimaginable beyond ; they experience that rich commotion of the blood we call romance, and are thrilled and renewed by it much as others of us are supposed to be thrilled and renewed by past poetry. And at the same time, unlike so much of their " romancing," it is never a mere dallying with lotus-land sensations, a coloured refuge from the drudgery of day. Its action is always to excite their zest for actual life, to send them back into reality more exultantly — not because of any particular philosophy it may teach, any "gospel of work" or the like, but simply because it names and uses, and irresistibly sanc- tifies, the actual trite tools of each man's trade. Much has been written of Mr. Kipling's capacity for picking up knowledge from technical experts ; far too little of the lessons the experts learned from him. He has renewed the workman's pride in his work and restored their mystery to the crafts. I believe he has done more than any man of his time to make the middle- classes less dully middle-class. . . . But all this the ten superior ones were in no position to foresee. Said they, " Yellow Book ? — we meant, of course. Yellow Press." Said they, " But