f that feud. I admit that the general attitude of artists to
critics is unfair. They expect from critics an imaginative comprehension
which in the nature of the case only a creative artist can possess. On the
other hand, a creative artist cannot do the work of a critic because he
has neither the time nor the inclination to master the necessary critical
apparatus. Hence critical work seldom or never satisfies the artist, and
the artist's ideal of what critical work ought to be is an impossible
dream. I find confirmation of my view in other arts than my own. The
critical work of Mr. Bernhard Berenson, for instance, seems to me
wonderful and satisfying. But when I mention Mr. Berenson to a painter I
invariably discover that that painter's secret attitude towards Mr.
Berenson is--well, aristocratic. The finest, and the only first-rate,
criticism is produced when, by an exceptional accident, a creative artist
of balanced and powerful temperament is moved to deal exhaustively with a
subject. Among standard critical works the one that has most impressed me
is Lessing's "Laocoon"--at any rate the literary parts of it. Here (I have
joyously said to myself) is somebody who knows what he is talking about!
Here is some one who has _been there_.

RUDYARD KIPLING

[_4 Nov. '09_]

After a long period of abstention from Rudyard Kipling, I have just read
"Actions and Reactions." It has induced gloom in me; yet a modified gloom.
Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since "Plain Tales from the
Hills" delighted first Anglo-Indian, and then English society. There was
nothing of permanent value in that book, and in my extremest youth I never
imagined otherwise. But "The Story of the Gadsbys" impressed me. So did
"Barrack-room Ballads." So did pieces of "Soldiers Three." So did "Life's
Handicap" and "Many Inventions." So did "The Jungle Book," despite its
wild natural history. And I remember my eagerness for the publication of
"The Seven Seas." I remember going early in the morning to Denny's
bookshop to buy it. I remember the crimson piles of it in every bookshop
in London. And I remember that I perused it, gulped it down, with deep
joy. And I remember the personal anxiety which I felt when Kipling lay
very dangerously ill in New York. For a fortnight, then, Kipling's
temperature was the most important news of the day. I remember giving a
party with a programme of music, in that fortnight, and I began the
proceedings by reading a