g Valhalla of pagan divinities; and indeed
throughout Mr. Kipling's work the heavens and the earth are mingled in a
most inextricable and astonishing fashion. It is said that not long ago,
during the launch of a Chinese battleship at one of our British yards,
they were burning papers to the gods in a small joss-house upon the
pier, while the great vessel, fitted with all the most modern machinery,
was leaving the stocks. There is something about the tale that reminds
us of Mr. Kipling. Now he is the prophet of Jehovah, now the Corybantic
pagan priest, now the interpreter of the soul of machines. He is
everything and everybody. He knows the heart of the unborn, and, telling
of days far in the future, can make them as living and real as the hours
of to-day. It was the late Professor James who said of him, "Kipling is
elemental; he is down among the roots of all things. He is universal
like the sun. He is at home everywhere. When he dies they won't be able
to get any grave to hold him. They will have to bury him under a
pyramid." In our reckoning such a man hardly counts. It would be most
interesting, if it were as yet possible, to speculate as to whether his
permanent influence has been more on the side of a kind of a wild
Titanic paganism, or of that ancient Calvinistic God whom Macandrew
worships in the temple of his engine-room.

We now come to a later phase, for which we may take as representative
writers the names of Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Science, for
the meantime at least, has disentangled herself from her former
materialism, and a nobly ideal and spiritual view of science has come
again. It may even be hoped that the pagan view will never be able again
to assert itself with the same impressiveness as in the past. But social
conditions are to-day in the throes of their strife, and from that
quarter of the stage there appear such writers as those we are now to
consider. They both present themselves as idealists. Mr. Wells has
published a long volume about his religion, and Mr. Shaw prefaces his
plays with essays as long or even longer than the plays themselves,
dealing with all manner of the most serious subjects. The surface
flippancy both of prefaces and plays has repelled some readers in spite
of all their cleverness, and tended towards an unjust judgment that he
is upsetting the universe with his tongue in his cheek all the time.
Later one comes to realise that this is not the case, that Mr. Shaw do