BOOKS.

A DIVERSITY OF CREATURES.*

THE public are always thankful for a book of stories and poems by Mr. Kipling. They will be doubly thankful for the new volume at this moment, and especially for the fact that so much of it is written in the old vein of laughter and tears, but of laughter and tears not drawn directly from war. By this we do not mean that the war does not breathe an inspiration through its pages. That would be- to accuse Mr. Kipling of an inhumanity which never could be his. We would imply, rather, that this is a book, not dipped in earthquake and eclipse, but showing the sunlight of old days, though the sterner music of the guns is not muted. Mr. Kipling would be the last man in the world to he afraid of looking on the dread face of war, but he shows us by the present book, and this is a great thing, that his spirit has not been bent or his mind sterilized by the bloody onset of the Boche. His mind and heart are as ready as ever to stimulate and refresh his fellow-countrymen. We recall the French poet's legend of the Prussian Queen—Queen Luise- who sent her children to pick flowers for her. They could find none that were not flecked with blood. Mr. Kipling's flowers are not so stained, even though we catch the roar of tho cannon in his book.

In this review we are not going to criticize but to enjoy. The pleasures which Mr. Kipling puts before us are too precious to be dissipated in literary dialectic. We shall name some of these pleasures in the reviewer's own order of enjoyment. First, and a long way first., comes the amazingly delightful poem " The Land," which follows a poignant story of the soil entitled " The Friendly Brook (March, 1914)." Mr. Kipling gives us in the prose his best Sussex. In the poem he not only gives us good Sussex, but reveals that extraordinary vividness of outlook on English history which he has shown over since he struck the Peek's Hill vein and struck it rich. Here are the first three stanzas :— " When Julius Fabrieius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald, In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field, He called to him Hobdenius—a Briton of the Clay, Saying : What about that River-piece for layin' in to hay ? ' And the aged Hobden answered : I remember as a lad My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad. An' the more that you neglect her the less you'll get her clean. Have it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd dreon.' So they drained it long and crossways in the lavish Roman style. Still we find among the river-drift their flakes of ancient tile, And in drouthy middle August, when the bones of meadows show,

We can trace the lines they followed sixteen hundred years ago."

But Fabricius dies, " as even Prefects do," to bo succeeded

• 4 Diversity of Creatures. By Rudyard Kipling. London : Id.aomillan and Co. 165.1

by Ogior the Dane and William of Waronne. To each one of them old Hobden gives his sage advice, and when the brook over-

flows and floods the meadow, or the land wants lime, or whatever it may be, " runs the show." At last the poet-owner has to confess, like all the others before him, that, whoever pays the taxes, it is Hobden who owns the land and exercises all the beneficial rights thereon :-

" Georgii. Quinti Anne Se4-eto, I, who own the River-field, Am fortified with title-deeds, attested, signed and sealed, Guaranteeing me, my assigns, my executors and heirs All sorts of powers and profits which—are neither mine nor

theirs.

I have rights of chase and warren, as my dignity requires. I can fish—but Hobden tickles. I can shoot—but Hobden wires. I repair, but he reopens, certain gaps which, men allege, Have been used by every Hobden since a Hobdon swapped a

hedge.

Shall I dog his morning progress o'er the track-betraying dew ? Demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew ? Confiscate his evening faggot into which the conies ran, And summons him to judgment ? 1 would sooner summons

Pan." • The poem ends as delightfully as it begins :- " Hob, what about that River-bit ? ' I turn to him again With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.

Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but'—and so ho takes command.

For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land."

We feel convinced that our readers will agree that not in the whole splendid record of Mr. Kipling's historical verso is there anything to beat this fascinating piece of history in pemmican. Another very characteristic but perfectly different piece of poetry is " The Com- forters," an exhortation to the happy to deal. gently and carefully with the broken and unhappy :- " Chase not with undesired largesse Of sympathy the heart Which, knowing her own bitterness, Presumes to dwell apart.

Employ not that glad hand to raise The God-forgotten head To Heaven, and all the neighbours' gazo — Cover thy mouth instead.

The quivering chin, the bitten lip, The cold and sweating brow, Later may yearn for fellowship— Not now, you ass, not now ! "

That is good and wise, as indeed is all the poem, but perhaps the two final stanzas are the wisest of all :— " E'en from good words thyself refrain, And tremblingly admit There is no anodyne for pain Except the shock of it.

So, when thine own dark hour shall fall, Unchallenged eanst thou say : I never worried you at all, For God's sake go away ! ' " Admirable too in their way are the poems called " The Press " and " Jobson's Amen " ; but it is hopeless to attempt to quote either of them, or the translation from Horace. We must, however, say some- thing about " The Legend of Mirth," not so much for its sense, though that is good enough, as for its sound. Here Mr. Kipling, to amuse himself and us, has suddenly pounced upon Drydon in his best mood—i.e., when ho opens the great stops in the organ of the

heroic couplet. He has carried off the secret, and set the mighty pipes resounding for his own needs. Puck has got not only into the church, but into the organ loft, and sits up at the keyboard for all the world like one of the Vicars Choral. Mr. Kipling, t hough he may choose to write Cockney, is, and always has been, one of the most scholarly of

our poets. The legend tells us how the four Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Azrael, got busy in the four quarters of the universe to which they were severally allotted ; how zeal, and

with it pride, a little outran discretion ; and how the Spirit of Mirth was sent to humanize them. Here is the description of how the four Archangels, having received their original charge, aped to under-

take it, " And when the Charges were allotted burst Tumultuous-winged from out the assembly first. Zeal was their spur that bade them strictly heed Their own high judgment on their lightest deed. Zeal was their spur that, when relief was given, Urged them unwearied to fresh toil in Heaven ; For Honour's sake perfecting every task Beyond what e'en Perfection's self could ask."

Metrically that is pure Dryden ; but Mr. Kipling is never an imitator, and it is also in spirit pure Kipling, and is without Dryden's touch of

glorious, self-satisfied magnanimity.

And now for the prose. We have mentioned tho grim little story,

" The Friendly Brook," but what pleases us even more is a delightful, amazingly sensational, and amazingly vraisemblable story, " The Edge of the Evening," which many of our readers will remember to have read " somewhere in the magazines." Here we are intro- duced once more to that fascinating hero " Laughton 0. Zigler," the immortal Zigler of " The Captive," one of Mr. Kipling's most artful and most sustained creations. Zigler has become an Aseerican millionaire, ensconced in a huge classical house in the middle of a valet park, with a mixed house party to match, and an inimitable British butler to keep him straight socially, all of which -affords a pleasing background to a great aerial adventure. But we are not going to spoil the surprise for our readers. We merely put up a finger-post to the delights before them. The story is, however, introduced by a wicked parody of Landor's " Rose Aylmer," which we cannot refrain from sharing with our readers :— " Ah What avails the classic bent, -And what the chosen word, Against the undoctorod incident That actually occurred ?

And what is Art whereto we press Through paint and prose and rhyme— When Nature in her nakedness Defeats us every time ? "

That was true when Mr. Kipling wrote, but how much truer now, when the tanks are romping and snorting down the trench line, flattening out dug-outs, or, again, deploying with the infantry in order to make them " feel comfortable " as they go over the top ; when a naval Lieutenant attends'at Buckingham Palace to receive the Victoria Cross for some nameless deed of gallantry which cannot be disclosed until the end of the war ; when, as Mr. Kipling himself has told us, a submarine in mid-sea dives because its " owner " sees a brown hand clutching at his periscope ; or when an aeroplane alights with deft neatness at the aerodrome, and the helpers who run to it find the observer dead and the pilot in " the agony "- his last ounce of energy, his last drop of blood, given to accomplish a good landfall. Fact has so far outrun romance that Mr. Kipling's neat little poem of 1913 has become the merest of commonplaces.

Very grim is the story of " Mary Postgate " ; but as we have shown, the book is not all grimness. There is food for all palates. There aro schoolboy stories, like " Regulus," in which " Mr. King," and " Stalky," and " Beetle," and the rest of them reappear ; and there is " The Honours of War," which is also a " Stalky," though not a schoolboy, story. " Swept and Garnished " and " Mary Postgate " are stories written in 1915.