s at times come out as
awkwardly as an elephant being steered backwards through a gate. He
pauses frequently to impress upon us not only the romance of the fact he
is stating but the romance of the circumstances in which somebody
discovered it. In _Chance_ and _Lord Jim_ he is not content to tell us a
straightforward story: he must show us at length the processes by which
it was pieced together. This method has its advantages. It gives us the
feeling, as I have said, that we are voyaging into strange seas and
harbours in search of mysterious clues. But the fatigue of
reconstruction is apt to tell on us before the end. One gets tired of
the thing just as one does of interviewing a host of strangers. That is
why some people fail to get through Mr. Conrad's long novels. They are
books of a thousand fascinations, but the best imagination in them is by
the way. Besides this, they have little of the economy of dramatic
writing, but are profusely descriptive, and most people are timid of an
epic of description.

Mr. Conrad's best work, then, is to be found, I agree with most people
in believing, in three of his volumes of short stories--in _Typhoon,
Youth_, and _'Twixt Land and Sea_. His fame will, I imagine, rest
chiefly on these, just as the fame of Wordsworth and Keats rests on
their shorter poems. Here is the pure gold of his romance--written in
terms largely of the life of the old sailing-ship. Here he has written
little epics of man's destiny, tragic, ironic, and heroic, which are
unique in modern (and, it is safe to say, in all) literature.

XXVI

MR. RUDYARD KIPLING

1. THE GOOD STORY-TELLER

Mr. Kipling is an author whom one has loved and hated a good deal. One
has loved him as the eternal schoolboy revelling in smells and bad
language and dangerous living. One has loved him less, but one has at
least listened to him, as the knowing youth who could tell one all about
the ladies of Simla. One has found him rather adorable as the favourite
uncle with the funny animal stories. One has been amazed by his
magnificent make-believe as he has told one about dim forgotten peoples
that have disappeared under the ground. One has detested him, on the
other hand, as the evangelist with the umbrella--the little Anglo-Indian
Prussian who sing hymns of hate and Hempire.

Luckily, this last Kipling is allowed an entirely free voice only in
verse. If one avoids _Barrack Room Ballads_ and _The Seven Seas_, one
misses the