He who would stir us now by fiction must either give us an entirely new
background, or reveal to us the soul of man in its innermost workings.
The first is for the moment being done for us by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. As
one turns over the pages of his _Plain Tales from the Hills_, one feels
as if one were seated under a palm-tree reading life by superb flashes of
vulgarity. The bright colours of the bazaars dazzle one's eyes. The
jaded, second-rate Anglo-Indians are in exquisite incongruity with their
surroundings. The mere lack of style in the story-teller gives an odd
journalistic realism to what he tells us. From the point of view of
literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the
point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than
any one has ever known it. Dickens knew its clothes and its comedy. Mr.
Kipling knows its essence and its seriousness. He is our first authority
on the second-rate, and has seen marvellous things through keyholes, and
his backgrounds are real works of art. As for the second condition, we
have had Browning, and Meredith is with us. But there is still much to
be done in the sphere of introspection. People sometimes say that
fiction is getting too morbid. As far as psychology is concerned, it has
never been morbid enough. We have merely touched the surface of the
soul, that is all. In one single ivory cell of the brain there are
stored away things more marvellous and more terrible than even they have
dreamed of, who, like the author of _Le Rouge et le Noir_, have sought to
track the soul into its most secret places, and to make life confess its
dearest sins. Still, there is a limit even to the number of untried
backgrounds, and it is possible that a further development of the habit
of introspection may prove fatal to that creative faculty to which it
seeks to supply fresh material. I myself am inclined to think that
creation is doomed. It springs from too primitive, too natural an
impulse. However this may be, it is certain that the subject-matter at
the disposal of creation is always diminishing, while the subject-matter
of criticism increases daily. There are always new attitudes for the
mind, and new points of view. The duty of imposing form upon chaos does
not grow less as the world advances. There was never a time when
Criticism was more needed than it is now. It is only by its means that
Humanity can become conscious of the point at which it has arrived.--_The
Critic as Artist_.