No wonder, after this, that the ever-watchful purveyors of "Literary Gossip" rouse themselves up from lachrymose tenderness to positive passion _in re_ this marvellous Rudyard, and speak of him as "the stronger Dickens going forth conquering and to conquer." The phrase, "the stronger Dickens," is coming it very strong indeed, but--it's only the paragraph-men. These chroniclers of the time have pathetically informed us how on one occasion Kip ran away from the "clamour" (of the paragraph-men) to India to fetch his papa, and how his papa came back with him, to look after him, I suppose, and protect him from all the naughty, vicious people who wanted to blow his skin out into the size of a bull when Nature meant him to keep to the strict proportions of the other figure in the fable. Good Rudyard! Already the bloom is off the rye, just slightly, for if we are to believe the _Athenæum_, an Eden Phillpotts is "the new Kipling." "O Eden Phillpotts! Phoebus! What a name! To fill the speaking-trump of future Fame!" The "loose ungrammatical" Byron's lines fit Phillpotts as excellent well as Kipling. Phillpotts is really a fine name in every way--splendidly hideous, and available for all sorts of Savile Club and _Saturday Review_ witticisms, such as-- "Phill the Pott and fill the can Eden is our Coming Man!" Or this, sung slowly with religious nasal intonation to the well-known hymeneal melody-- "The voice that breathed o'er _Eden_, From _Athenæum_ bowers, Said 'Phillpotts' stories must be praised, He is a friend of ours!'"