Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/137

111 THE ARTLESSNESS OF MR. H. G. WELLS Mr. Wells's Marriage is a strange, restless, ricochet- ting, exhilarating book ; but to feel the full glow of the adventure you must see the book itself as part of it and make its author a dramatis persona. Stamped on its flyleaf are the words Fraternally to Arnold Bennett, and the Masonic style of the salute may give the key to the tone of the pages that in- stantly follow. Not otherwise might two philosophers exchange glances over the unconscious heads of the mob they seek to serve, and these opening chapters (a good fifth of the book) are very omniscient indeed. Readers may remember a kind of manifesto Mr. Wells issued a little while ago, a Declaration of Fiction's Independence and the handsome intentions of the Novelist: "We are going to write about the whole of human life ; we are going to deal with political questions, and religious questions, and social questions." Well, these pages have the air of being written from the summit of their elevating petard. They are so confoundedly superior. Produced in accord- ance with a lofty theory of conception, they seem, so to say, a bit eugenical : mighty clever, very pre- cocious, and all that, but — priggish. They are written in the knuckle-rapping style. The particular question they are going to put us right about is this little matter of Marriage; they will just let us see, as brightly as possible, the kind of muddle we poor mortals have made of it. Instantly, affably, with a ui