Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/33

7 THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW 7 that bitterness and barrenness, that hard and cruel angularity and bleak glitter, which has led to their author being denounced for inhumanity. To the array of stabbing truths with which they bristle, thrusting out at us like spears, there is added yet another, perhaps the only one omitted, which trans- forms the fierce attack into a rescue. It sets them wavering and faltering, as in a blur of mist ; and that was all they needed to make them noble and reliable. We can trust them after that, for they have lost the hard exactness which has hitherto always made them so unreal. All Shaw's work hitherto has been too precise to be accurate ; it has been too exact to be true. One point more. A glance back at the quotations at the beginning of this article will show the reader that two other great minds have been before us in this suspicion of a stage behind the drop-scene. The fact will reassure some ; but others it may damp : a word of comment will satisfy both. It is true that both Stevenson and Rodin pushed the curtain aside — saw the performance going on secretly behind it; but the old Frenchman went no further than that cryptic phrase about the •' fraud," and the young Scotsman was compelled to leave the house abruptly before his little forecast was fulfilled. We may therefore enjoy both the sense of their patron- age and the prouder one of being pioneers. We still occupy the enviable position of first - nighters. And for my own part I confess that it is with a thrill of real excitement that I now stretch out my hand and press the prompter's bell. . . . II And instantly there vanishes, whipped away for ever, that striking picture of St. Bernard, the austere Irish eremite, staining his sackcloth to make it look