Mr. Birrell, who was among the speakers at the Anchor
Dinner at Bristol on Monday, complained that unless people were prepared to declare that the patriotic muse of Rndyard Kipling in language, style, and matter marked the very high-water mark of English literature, there was something questionable about their patriotism and about their enthu- siasm. He must venture to protest against all this. "He was not prepared to believe that Kipling's muse really repre- sented in dignity or in feeling the heartfelt emotions of a great people." We think that Mr. Birrell should be a little more specific. We know that it is the fashion just now for those who agree politically with Mr. Birrell to insinuate that there is something vulgar, brutal, ruffianly, and so unworthy in Mr. Kipling's recent poems, but we cannot say that we see just grounds for the complaint, and we hold that an accusation of this kind to be fair ought to be specific, and not vague and general Mr. Kipling's first poem put with great force and dignity the essential element in the present quarrel,—the refusal of Englishmen wherever they live to be taxed without representation, to have no share in the Govern- ment, to be ruled by the will of a minority, and to live under a police and judicial system such as lately existed in Johannesburg. The other poem is a very taking and pic- turesque appeal for subscriptions in the vernacular of the street and camp. Of course this is vulgar in the sense that Burns, Lowell's " Biglow Papers," and Colonel Hay's "Pike County Ballads" are vulgar, but till these are condemned why should Mr. Kipling he denounced ?
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