at Carlyle's turgid utterance. Do the thing to your hand,
and do it with all your might. Never mind what the thing is; so long as
it is something. Do it. Do it and remember Tomlinson, sexless and
soulless Tomlinson, who was denied at Heaven's gate.

The blundering centuries have perseveringly pottered and groped through
the dark; but it remained for Kipling's century to roll in the sun, to
formulate, in other words, the reign of law. And of the artists in
Kipling's century, he of them all has driven the greater measure of law
in the more consummate speech:

Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience.
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap what he hath sown;
By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord.

--And so it runs, from McAndrew's _Law_, _Order_, _Duty_, _and
Restraint_, to his last least line, whether of _The Vampire_ or _The
Recessional_. And no prophet out of Israel has cried out more loudly the
sins of the people, nor called them more awfully to repent.

"But he is vulgar, he stirs the puddle of life," object the fluttering,
chirping gentlemen, the Tomlinsonian men. Well, and isn't life vulgar?
Can you divorce the facts of life? Much of good is there, and much of
ill; but who may draw aside his garment and say, "I am none of them"?
Can you say that the part is greater than the whole? that the whole is
more or less than the sum of the parts? As for the puddle of life, the
stench is offensive to you? Well, and what then? Do you not live in it?
Why do you not make it clean? Do you clamour for a filter to make clean
only your own particular portion? And, made clean, are you wroth because
Kipling has stirred it muddy again? At least he has stirred it
healthily, with steady vigour and good-will. He has not brought to the
surface merely its dregs, but its most significant values. He has told
the centuries to come of our lyings and our lusts, but he has also told
the centuries to come of the seriousness which is underneath our lyings
and our lusts. And he has told us, too, and always has he told us, to be
clean and strong and to walk upright and manlike.

"But he has no sympathy," the fluttering gentlemen chirp. "We admire his
art and intellectual brilliancy, we all admire his art and intellectual
brilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare rhythmical sense; but . . .
he is totally devoid of