When Stevenson died in his early prime in 1894, a very different temper inspired _Punch's_ tribute to the Great Romancer:--
The lighthouse-builder raised no light That shall outshine the flame Of genius in its mellowest might, That beacons him to fame. And Pala's peak shall do yet more Than the great light at Skerryvore To magnify his name, Who mourned, when stricken flesh would tire, That he was weaker than his sire.
Teller of Tales! Of tales so told That all the world must list: Story sheer witchery, style pure gold, Yet with that tricksy twist Of Puck-like mockery which betrays The wanderer in this world's mad maze, Not blindly optimist, Who wooes Romance, yet sadly knows That Life's sole growth is not the Rose.
So when in 1901 the late Mr. W. E. Henley published his famous disparagement of the official life of Stevenson, _Punch_, in an address to the "Beloved Shade" of R. L. S., uttered an indignant protest against the attack on his memory.
_Punch_ enthusiastically greeted the Ruritanian romances of "Anthony Hope" as an antidote to the ultra-realistic novel, and Mr. Kipling's _Jungle Book_ was welcomed in 1894 with a salvo of puns on the Kip-lingo of the Laureate of the Jingle-Jungle, the Bard of the Bandar-log. In 1895 _The Men that Fought at Minden_ is described as "perhaps the most coarse and unattractive specimen of verse that this great young man has yet put forth--a jumble of words without a trace of swing or music. All this Tommy Atkins business is about played out." In 1898, in the series of "Letters to the Celebrated," "The Vagrant," while deprecating the "orgy of Imperialism" which Mr. Kipling had helped to foster, frankly admitted that he was largely responsible for "a quickened sense of the greatness of our mother-land, and a new sympathy for those who fight our battles"; and predicted that his greatest and most enduring title to fame would rest on his verse. In 1899 Mr. Kipling is rebuked for his glorification of machinery--he is called "the Polytechnic Poet"--slang and militarism, while the parody of _Stalky and Co._ is distinctly hostile to what Punch evidently considered an ignoble travesty of Public School traditions. Punch had himself repeatedly assailed the fetish-worship of Athletics, but Mr. Kipling's _Island Race_--with its bitter reference to those who