"Except in a few instances which might easily be numbered on the fingers of one hand, nothing in the books we have named is at all likely to live or deserves to live.... It will probably be answered that this sweeping condemnation is not of much value against the emphatic approval of the British public and the aforesaid chorus of critics in praise of the new Genius.... And the English critics have this to plead in excuse of their hyperbolical appreciation of the Stronger Dickens, that his first work came to them fathered with responsible guarantee from men who should have known better, that it was in the way of a revelation of Anglo-Indian society, a-letting in the light of truth on places which had been very dark indeed. "Now the average English critic knows very little of the intricacies of social life in India, and in the enthusiasm which Mrs. Hauksbee and kindred creations inspired he accepted too readily as true types what are, in fact, caricatures, or distorted presentments, of some of the more poisonous social characteristics to be found in Anglo-Indian as well as in every other civilised society.... Do not let us be understood as recklessly running down Kipling and all his works.... He possesses in a high degree the power of describing a certain class of emotions, and the flights of his imagination in some directions are extremely bold and original. In such tales, for instance, as 'The Man who would be a King' (_sic_) and 'The Ride of Morrowby Jukes' (_sic_) there are qualities of the imagination which equal, if they do not surpass, anything in the same line with which we are acquainted.... The capital charge, in the opinion of many, the head and front of his offending, is that he has traduced a whole society, and has spread libels broadcast. Anglo-Indian society may in some respects be below the average level of the best society in the Western world, where the rush and stir of life and the collision of intellects combine to keep the atmosphere clearer and more bracing than in this land of tennis, office boxes, frontier wars, and enervation. But as far as it falls below what many would wish it to be, so far it rises above the description of it which now passes current at home under the sanction of Kipling's name.... For whether Kipling is treating of Indian subjects pure and simple, of Anglo-Indian subjects, or is attempting a Western theme, the personality of the writer is pervasive and intrusive everywhere, with all its limitations of vision and information, as well as with its eternal panoply of cheap smartness and spiced vulgarity.... Smartness is always first with him, and Truth may shift for herself."