Mr. Kipling has a literary progenitor, it is Mr. Bret Harte. Among
his earlier verses a few are what an imitator of the American might
have written in India. But it is a wild judgment which traces Mr.
Kipling's success to his use, for example, of Anglo-Indian phrases
and scraps of native dialects. The presence of these elements is
among the causes which have made Englishmen think Anglo-Indian
literature tediously provincial, and India a bore. Mr. Kipling, on
the other hand, makes us regard the continent which was a bore an
enchanted land, full of marvels and magic which are real. There
has, indeed, arisen a taste for exotic literature: people have
become alive to the strangeness and fascination of the world beyond
the bounds of Europe and the United States. But that is only
because men of imagination and literary skill have been the new
conquerors--the Corteses and Balboas of India, Africa, Australia,
Japan, and the isles of the southern seas. All such conquerors,
whether they write with the polish of M. Pierre Loti, or with the
carelessness of Mr. Boldrewood, have, at least, seen new worlds for
themselves; have gone out of the streets of the over-populated lands
into the open air; have sailed and ridden, walked and hunted; have
escaped from the fog and smoke of towns. New strength has come from
fresher air into their brains and blood; hence the novelty and
buoyancy of the stories which they tell. Hence, too, they are
rather to be counted among romanticists than realists, however real
is the essential truth of their books. They have found so much to
see and to record, that they are not tempted to use the microscope,
and pore for ever on the minute in character. A great deal of
realism, especially in France, attracts because it is novel, because
M. Zola and others have also found new worlds to conquer. But
certain provinces in those worlds were not unknown to, but were
voluntarily neglected by, earlier explorers. They were the "Bad