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 contented their souls With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals-- was more than he could endure. Accordingly his representative conducted an imaginary interview with "The Director-General of the Empire," who had added some fresh lines in violent and obscure abuse of rowing-men, and who explained that he never played games himself, but "spent all his spare time loafing and scoring off masters"--a further hit at _Stalky_. This mood of resentment had entirely passed by 1907, when _Punch_ depicted Mr. Kipling as "A Verry Parfit Nobel Knight"--on the occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Prize--and in 1910 the perusal of _Rewards and Fairies_ is compared to reading English history by the light of a Will-o'-the-Wisp. The reviewer notes defects in style and lucidity, but ends on a note of whole-hearted admiration:--