Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/88

62 62 MEEKNESS OF MR. RUDYARD KIPLING have already in some sort seen. Driving into the dark- ness that beleaguers us, swirling and thrusting like a searchlight in a forest, it could bring out the essential structure of events and display the soaring pillars of contemporary achievement. It might not be the perfect definition ; it might tend too much to turn the tides into firm floors, the branching constellations into rafters ; but it would be enormously exhilarating. It would give toil a conscious habitation ; and like actual architecture, like statuary, like all firm material forms, it would create the very emotions it lacks the power to re- produce. The Bookman, 1912.