THE GLARE OF PUBLICITY.
IT must be a singular experience, even for a man of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's exceedingly varied career, to wake up from a severe illness and find that two great peoples have been -interested in his fate, that he has been the subject of showers of telegrams, that an Emperor has grieved for him in
words which have the weight of a political manifesto, that scores of thousands who never heard of him before have
studied his works with attention, and that his value to his publishers has increased by hundreds, perhaps even thou- sands, a year. It is a kind of experience, however, which has happened once or twice before—e.g., the burst of attention which followed M. Zola's defiance of the French Staff—and which, as time rolls on, will probably be often repeated. What with their sharpened intelligence, with the excessive rapidity of intercommunication, with the competition of the journals, and with the instinctive love for gossip, the peoples which speak English are learning to watch all those who are in any way distinguished with the eager curiosity formerly reserved for the most startling and important events. They study their writings and their deeds, they inquire into the details of their daily lives, they, so to speak, make such inti- mate friends of them as to grow interested even in their relatives and their careers. That this is the fact will not be denied, for journalists and the compilers of bulletins acquire an almost instinctive discernment as to what the community desires to know, and it is difficult to avoid a speculation as to the result of such a new growth of opinion in its bearing both upon those who are its objects and those who are so eager to form and to express it. As regards the latter, we have not much doubt, though it is necessary to make some reserves. They will usually benefit, must benefit, on the whole, by the immense enlargement of their interests. They study personages who are not altogether like themselves, and lose thereby some of their limitations and insularity. Both Englishmen and Americans are much too apt to believe that all men are alike, want the same things, and fear the same occurrences; that they are, in fact, if good, like Anglo-Saxon ministers of religion, and if bad, like Anglo-Saxon reprobates ; and any study which, like this, shakes them out of this assumption must be good for their imaginations. Every human being is a separate entity, and an accurate appreciation of any one has the effect of a new branch of knowledge ; it at all events expands the mental horizon. Moreover, those who are thus interested must be inclined to study things written by the persons who have roused that interest, and the cases are rare in which the study is not instructive. With Mr. Rudyard Kipling it is more than instructive, the man not living who would not be the wiser for his poems or his "Jungle Book"; while even in a case like that of M. Zola men learn, at all events, how wide may be the difference between the work and the per- sonality from which it proceeds. M. Zola is, we think, impossible among men who speak English, and the recognition of that fact, of the possible coexistence in one mind of a spirit of antique heroism and self .sacrifice and a love of dirty detail, enlarges the perception of the almost infinite variety of human character. We dislike exceedingly the method in which the new knowledge is conveyed, which has the imper- fections of everything that is incomplete, but still in the balance which has always to be struck in a complex and puzzling world, the weight appears to us to incline rather to the good side.
We have much more doubt of the effect of the new process upon its objects. Can glare develop sight? Men exposed to such an ordeal as Mr. Rudyard Kipling, when he wakes to his fall consciousness of all that transpired during his illness, will have to pass through, must have some grand source of strength within themselves to escape altogether unharmed. Not to mention the temptation towards megalomania, that natural disease of Kings, heroes, and authors who are suc- cessful, the pressure of an opinion so heavy as that of a whole world must be dangerous to originality, must tempt its subject to repeat himself and make his defects more prominent, must, to employ a terminology better fitted for other subjects, even if it stimulates his brain, tend to impoverish his soul. It is from within, not from without, that a man of genius draws his inspiration, and the effect of international praise and sympathy in unstinted measure must be to increase the readiness to listen to the voices without, and the reluctance to rely exclusively upon the impulses from within. The solitariness as well as the solitude of the soul must be impaired. No man ever produced fine work of any kind who was never alone, and however can a man be alone with the murmur of an infinite multitude all addressed to himself for ever reverberating in the ear ? No doubt there are men who can be alone in any crowd, whose thoughts instinctively turn inwards, and who hardly see any but the internal light; but the roar of a multi- tude is like the roar of the sea, and has its compelling power upon the mind. It is possible to escape it, but it is through an exertion of the will in which much energy is dissipated, or by an inattention which shows of itself that some of the faculties have for the moment lost their force. It is hard to conceive even of a born orator like, say, John Bright think. ing his deepest thoughts while the House of Commons is cheering him, and that is the position of a man who becomes the centre of the sort of whirlwind of attention to which Mr. Kipling has been exposed. Such attention, if hostile, would kill, and we cannot believe that even though friendly it can remain without an impact more or less injurious. Perhaps Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who has with success distinctly grown more humble, more refined, more pitiful towards humanity, and who instinctively avoids the worshipping of society, will escape better than almost any man, but that he should escape altogether is hardly to be hoped. At least the eyes must be very strong which do not suffer from so sudden and so tremendous a glare. There is, of course, no remedy, at least for a European. An Asiatic might "let the legions thunder past," and plunge once more in his own mind, but that gift—for it is a gift, though Asia in using it haa rather benefited Europe than herself—is not often given to one of the audacious sons of Japlaet. They feel outside pressure upon their thoughts as the men of Asia do not, and though this is one of the causes of their efficiency, it leaves them liable to mental injuries from which their rivals are free. Their very souls are open to impacts from great ex- ternal shocks, and it is a great external shock which Mr. Kipling will feel when he knows how two continents were moved to watch by his sick-bed.
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