Perhaps we should also note that Mr Kipling was a literary prodigy. _Plain Tales from the Hills_ appeared in 1887. Mr Kipling at twenty-two had shown his quality and had already mapped out in little his career. In _Plain Tales from the Hills_ there are hints for almost everything that their author afterwards accomplished. As the book of a young journalist whose name had not yet been whispered among the publishers and critics of London it was a miracle. If Mr Kipling had been able to improve on _Plain Tales from the Hills_ as much as Shakespeare improved on _Love's Labour's Lost_, as much as Shelley improved on _Queen Mab_, Robert Browning on _Pauline_, Byron on _Hours of Idleness_, he would to-day be without a peer. Mr Granville Barker is often cited as a classical modern example of precocity, but he was twenty-four when he wrote _The Marrying of Anne Leete_. Mr Henry James was twenty-eight before he had published a characteristic word. Mr Thomas Hardy at twenty-five had only printed a short story, and he was more than thirty when his first novel appeared. Mr Kipling came upon the public in 1886 without a preliminary stutter. Mr Kipling at twenty-two could write as craftily as Mr Kipling can write after nearly thirty years' experience. We shall not be greatly concerned in these pages to trace the progress of Mr Kipling's craft and wisdom. He was always crafty and always wise. He had done some of his best work at thirty. He recalls Hazlitt's curious saying that an improving author is never a great author. Mr Kipling is not an improving author. There has been a little moving up and down the scale of excellence; many things hinted in the early volumes from _Plain Tales from the Hills_ to _Many Inventions_ are developed more elaborately and surely in later volumes; the old craft has come to be used with an ease that has in it more of the insolence of a master than was possible in the author of 1887. But so far as literary finish is concerned, _Plain Tales from the Hills_ leaves little to be acquired. Already Mr Kipling wields his implement as deftly and firmly as many a skilled writer who was learning his lesson before Mr Kipling was born. Few authors have so surely scored their best in their earliest years. Authors are considered young to-day at thirty. Mr Kipling at that age had already written _The Jungle Book_.