Could a falser note have been struck? Of course, Gunga Din never said anything of the kind. It was Mr. Rudyard Kipling who said it, because it was one of those superficially smart things which he and his friends, the groundlings, cannot resist. Again and again he does it. The fat Babu Harendra sends the head of a Burman dacoit chief in a packet to an English officer who had, in a moment of baffled impotence, promised 'a hundred' for it; and this is the way the Babu Harendra Mukerji opens his letter:
'Dear Sir,—I have honour to send, as you said,
For final approval (see under) Boh's Head.'
Of course, that 'for final approval (see under)' was never written by the Babu. The real writer was aut Kipling aut diabolus. Now, what is the good of giving an intensely realistic picture, crammed with technical terms and concentrated characterisation, to end it up with a piece of burlesque like this?
But false characterisation in his art is, unhappily, only too well matched with inconsequence in his criticism. The same unscrupulousness which causes him to indulge in cheap wit at the expense of the sincerity of his dramatis personœ, causes him to indulge in antiquated sentimental clap-trap at the expense of his own. There was, from Mr. Kipling's
