270 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lacked the last tale perhaps not the last for In the Rukh appeared in 

 Many Inventions, published by D. Appleton and Company in 1893. For 

 the first time, therefore, we now have a properly classified exhibition of the 

 wealth which Mr. Kipling has added to imaginative literature. The titles 

 of the volumes under the present systematic arrangement are Plain Tales 

 from the Hills, Soldiers Three and Military Tales (two volumes), In Black 

 and White, The Phantom Rickshaw, Under the Deodars and Other Stories, 

 The Jungle Books, The Light that Failed, and The Naulakha. The illus- 

 trations have been photographed from reliefs modeled in clay by Mr. 

 Kipling's father. The light paper, handsome type, with its firm, clear 

 impression, the generous margins, and dignified binding are reasons for 

 congratulations to publisher aud reader alike. 



If this were the place for purely literary comment upon Mr. Kipling's 

 splendid gifts much might be written of the tremendous power of his best 

 expression, the resonance of his song, his quick insight into motives, and his 

 control of a gamut which might be deemed to run from Hood to Poe, since 

 his imagination, power of sympathy, and his quick humor thrill us, or move 

 us to laughter, at his will. But all this the reading world has recognized. 

 Very little, however, has been said of Mr. Kipling's application, possibly 

 more or less unconscious, of scientific principles in his work. It is quite 

 unnecessary to explain that Mr. Kipling is not an ethnologist because he 

 differentiates the Hindu, Sikh, or Afghan so consistently, or because in all 

 his work he expresses more forcibly than any other writer the characteris- 

 tics which have made England a great imperial power. He is not an alien- 

 ist because of The Madness of Private Ortheris, or The Man who Was, or 

 In the Matter of a Private, or The Phantom Rickshaw, or The Disturber of 

 Traffic, or At the End of the Passage, and yet a professional alienist might 

 well accept his diagnosis of certain phases of mental aberration, his descrip- 

 tion of the effects of certain hallucinations and illusions, and his description 

 of severe mental shock and aphasia in The Man who would be King, and 

 elsewhere. He is not a physiologist, but his exactness in indicating the 

 physiological effects of strong emotions witness Mulvaney in battle is 

 another indication of the quality of his analytic observation. To cite a very 

 different instance, in a preface to Wee Willie Winkle Mr. Kipling has 

 illustrated his attitude toward children in saying: "If a mere man keeps 

 very quiet and humbles himself properly, and refrains from talking down 

 to his superiors, the children will sometimes be good to him, and let him 

 see what they think about the world." This, as Mr. Gosse has said, suggests 

 the collector of exact data, the naturalist lying quietly in the grass and 

 noting the habits of birds and animals. 



The wonderful Jungle Stories have added a new character to fiction in 

 Mowgli, yet if we judge the other characters by our special standard Mr. 

 Kipling's power of getting at the roots of things of reasoning to causes 

 is perhaps less apparent in these stories for a reason not far to seek. 

 Certain familiar motives shown in mating and in jealousy, in the father's 

 place as provider and in the mother's care for her young, in instincts of 

 self-defense and revenge, and in quasi-tribal organization and leadership 

 would naturally lend themselves to a writer's purposes. But while certain 

 truthful characteristics are retained, the developed personification of Mr. 

 Kipling's animal heroes takes them almost as much out of the field of exact 

 observation as the animals of our own Indian mvthology. The reason of 



