who can make us laugh.

The thing which strikes everybody who reads Kipling--and who does
not?--is the truly astonishing range of his knowledge of technicalities.
He is very often beyond me altogether, but I presume him to be accurate,
because nobody finds him out, and that is a thing which specialists are
so fond of doing that we may be sure they would have been about him in
clouds if he had been vulnerable. He gives one the impression at times
of being arrogant about this special fund of knowledge. But he
nowhere cares to make his modesty conspicuous to the reader, and his
cocksureness is only the obverse of his best literary virtue. It comes
from the very crispness and definiteness with which he sees things.
There are no clouds about the edges of his perceptions. They are all
clear and _nette_, Things observed by such a man dogmatise to the mind,
and it is natural that he should dogmatise as to what he sees with such
apparent precision and completeness.

A recent writer, anonymous, but speaking from a respectable vehicle
as platform, has told us that the short story is the highest form into
which any expression of the art of fiction can be cast. This to me looks
very like nonsense. I do not know any short story which can take rank
with 'Pere Goriot,' or 'Vanity Fair,' or 'David Copper-field.' The short
story has charms of its own, and makes demands of its own. What those
demands are only the writers who have subjected themselves to its
tyranny can know. The ordinary man who tries this form of art finds
early that he is emptying his mental pockets. Kipling's riches in this
respect have looked as if they were without end, and no man before him
has paid away so much. But it has to be remembered here that in many
examples of his power in this way he has been purely episodic, and the
discovery or creation of an episode is a much simpler thing than the
discovery or creation of a story proper, which is a collection of
episodes, arranged in close sequence, and leading to a catastrophe,
tragic or comic, as the theme may determine.

In estimating the value of any writer's work you must take his range
into consideration. Kipling stretches, in emotion, from deep seriousness
to exuberant laughter; and his grasp of character is quite firm and
sure, whether he deal with Mrs. Hawksbee or with Dinah Shadd; with
a field officer or with Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd; with the
Inspector of Forests or with Mowgli. He knows the ways o