opposed to the dreamer — the doer, who lists not to idle songs of empty days, but who goes forth and does things, with bended back and sweated brow and work- hardened hands. The most characteristic thing about Kipling is his love of actuality, his intense practicality, his proper and necessary respect for the hard-headed, hard-fisted fact. And, above all, he has preached the gospel of work, and as potently as Carlyle ever preached. For he has preached it not only to those in the high places, but to the common men, to the great sweating throng of common men who hear and understand yet stand agape at Carlyle's turgid utterance. Do the thing to your hand, and do it with all your might. Never mind what the thing is; so long as it is something. Do it. Do it and remember Tomlinson, sexless and soulless Tomlinson, who was denied at Heaven's gate.
The blundering centuries have perseveringly pottered and groped through the dark; but it remained for Kipling's century to roll in the sun, to formulate, in other words, the reign of law. And of the artists in Kipling's century, he of them all has driven the greater measure of law in the more consummate speech:
