ation is not from the operating table. Here I am
reminded, though, of a modern instance to the contrary in prose. Mr. H.
G. Wells, who, as far as I know, has never written a line of verse, was
inspired a few years ago to write a short story, _Under the Knife_. Out
of a clock-dial, a brass rod, and a whiff of chloroform, he has conjured
for us a sensation of space and eternity, evoked the face of the
Unknowable, and an awesome, august voice, like the voice of the Judgment
Day; a great voice, perhaps the voice of science itself, uttering the
words: "There shall be no more pain!" I advise you to look up that
story, so human and so intimate, because Mr. Wells, the writer of prose
whose amazing inventiveness we all know, remains a poet even in his most
perverse moments of scorn for things as they are. His poetic imagination
is sometimes even greater than his inventiveness, I am not afraid to say.
But, indeed, imaginative faculty would make any man a poet--were he born
without tongue for speech and without hands to seize his fancy and fasten
her down to a wretched piece of paper.

* * * * *

The book {6} which in the course of the last few days I have opened and
shut several times is not imaginative. But, on the other hand, it is not
a dumb book, as some are. It has even a sort of sober and serious
eloquence, reminding us that not poetry alone is at fault in this matter.
Mr. Bourne begins his _Ascending Effort_ with a remark by Sir Francis
Galton upon Eugenics that "if the principles he was advocating were to
become effective they must be introduced into the national conscience,
like a new religion." "Introduced" suggests compulsory vaccination. Mr.
Bourne, who is not a theologian, wishes to league together not science
and religion, but science and the arts. "The intoxicating power of art,"
he thinks, is the very thing needed to give the desired effect to the
doctrines of science. In uninspired phrase he points to the arts playing
once upon a time a part in "popularising the Christian tenets." With
painstaking fervour as great as the fervour of prophets, but not so
persuasive, he foresees the arts some day popularising science. Until
that day dawns, science will continue to be lame and poetry blind. He
himself cannot smooth or even point out the way, though he thinks that "a
really prudent people would be greedy of beauty," and their public
authorities "as careful of the sense of comfort as of sanitation."

As