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The carping at “The New Machiavelli” is naught.  For myself I anticipated for it a vast deal more carping than it has in fact occasioned.  And I am very content to observe a marked increase of generosity in the reception of Mr. Wells’s work.  To me the welcome accorded to his best books has always seemed to lack spontaneity, to be characterized by a mean reluctance.  And yet if there is a novelist writing to-day who by generosity has deserved generosity, that novelist is H.G.  Wells.  Astounding width of observation; a marvellously true perspective; an extraordinary grasp of the real significance of innumerable phenomena utterly diverse; profound emotional power; dazzling verbal skill:  these are qualities which Mr. Wells indubitably has.  But the qualities which consecrate these other qualities are his priceless and total sincerity, and the splendid human generosity which colours that sincerity.  What above all else we want in this island of intellectual dishonesty is some one who will tell us the truth “and chance it.”  H.G.  Wells is pre-eminently that man.  He might have told us the truth with cynicism; he might have told it meanly; he might have told it tediously—­and he would still have been invaluable.  But it does just happen that he has combined a disconcerting and entrancing candour with a warmth of generosity towards mankind and an inspiring faith in mankind such as no other living writer, not even the most sentimental, has surpassed.  And yet in the immediate past we have heard journalists pronouncing coldly:  “This thing is not so bad.”  And we have heard journalists asserting in tones of shocked reprehension:  “This thing is not free from faults!” Who the deuce said it was free from faults?  But where in fiction, ancient or modern, will you find another philosophical picture of a whole epoch and society as brilliant and as honest as “The New Machiavelli”?  Well, I will tell you where you will find it.  You will find it in “Tono-Bungay.”  H.G.  Wells is a bit of sheer luck for England.  Some countries don’t know their luck.  And as I do not believe that England is worse than another, I will say that no country knows its luck.  However, as regards this particular bit, there are now some clear signs of a growing perception.

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The social and political questions raised in “The New Machiavelli” might be discussed at length with great advantage.  But this province is not mine.  Nor could the rightness or the wrongness of the hero’s views and acts affect the artistic value of the novel.  On purely artistic grounds the novel might be criticized in several ways unfavourably.  But in my opinion it has only one fault that to any appreciable extent impairs its artistic worth.  The politically-creative part, as distinguished from the politically-shattering part, is not convincing.  The hero’s change of party, and his popular success with the policy of the endowment of motherhood are indeed strangely unconvincing—­inconceivable to common sense.  Here the author’s hand has trembled, and his persuasive power forsaken him.  Happily he recaptured it for the final catastrophe, which is absolutely magnificent, a masterpiece of unforced poignant tragedy and unsentimental tenderness.