He was hailed as a Realist, who had come to knock the romantic stuffing out of poetry more effectually even than did Whitman; since although Whitman has shown us man as he is, Kipling shows us men as they are moreover, he had a sense of humor denied to the American.

Consequently the average man, who feels much about poetry as Sir Isaac Newton did when he called it “ingenious nonsense,” took Kipling at once to his heart. “There is no romantic high- faulting about this fellow,” said the average man. Mr. Kipling is steeped in romance. He has felt the glamour and the wonder of life, as fully as the most ardent Romantic, only he does not always speak of these things. He feels them, and he can suggest both in prose and verse; but he speaks of everyday matters and familiar common places.