is thoughts--such as
they are--start forth living before us. But do we then think a Kipling
proved equal to a Shakespeare in sheer excellence of his gift? That is
another question. The things which Shakespeare realizes and expresses
demand powers of realization and expression more far-reaching and more
subtle than are required by those things to which a Kipling gives shape
and form. In Shakespeare are multitudes of deep and rare reflections,
vivid imaginings, penetrations of sympathy and insight, and all so
clearly crystallized, with such apparent ease, that they become ours at
once, as if they were natural to us. His communication of the most
subtle states of mind is complete. But in a Kipling we cannot pretend
that there is infinite subtlety and elusiveness, that there is a cosmic
condensing of a whole nebula of spiritual experience. His task was less
hard.

And what then of Homer? Can we call _his_ task a difficult one? Is he,
too, full of infinitely delicate or far-reaching thoughts and feelings?
No. But his aim is to reproduce all the freshness and breeziness of a
fresh and breezy atmosphere, to make us live again amid all that
simple wholesome strenuousness of the childhood of the western world.
That, too, is exceedingly elusive, and almost impossible to
catch--immeasurably more difficult than all those coarsely, if
strenuously, marked characteristics of the British soldier and other
bold figures on the canvas of Kipling.

That, I believe, is the right attitude to assume, when we endeavour to
measure the literary power of one writer against that of another--if we
must do such a thing at all. It is not the morality or non-morality, the
importance or non-importance, the beauty or ugliness, inherent in what
is said, which determine the degree of the literary gift. It is rather
the relative elusiveness of the thing said, the difficulty of
surrounding it, of condensing it, of giving it perfect body, and
communicating it in that body. And that is why it is an error to put,
let us say Gray, in the foremost rank of literary artists. How well he
does this thing! But was it, after all, so transcendently difficult to
do?

The vaguer, the deeper, the more comprehensive, the subtler the thought
or feeling or fancy, the greater demand is there upon the literary
power. One can say no more. It is as in sculpture, which finds it
infinitely easier to give embodiment to straining muscles and an
agonized face than to carve a stat