ualised illusion, and that now out of
it all rises man, beginning to perceive his larger self, his universal
brotherhood, and a collective synthetic purpose to increase Power and
realise Beauty...."

* * * * *

And now that I have attempted my interpretation, I look back and
confess that it is a very personal reading of my subject. I may have
sought too eagerly for all those passages in which I found a note that
roused in me the most thrilling response. I may have omitted to
display vital issues that more truly characterise H.G. Wells than the
appealing urgencies, idealisms, and fluencies that I have found most
sympathetic and most admirable. But if I appear to have done him an
injustice in some particulars, it is rather because I have been
absorbed by the issue I sought to reveal, than because I deliberately
weighed and rejected others. This short essay can be no more than an
introduction to the works it describes. It was never intended to be
critical. I have had no intention of discussing technique, nor of
weighing Mr Wells against his contemporaries in any literary scale.
But I have attempted to interpret the spirit and the message that I
have found in his books; and I have made the essay in the hope that
any reader who may consequently be stirred to read or to re-read Wells
will do so with a mind prepared to look below the surface expression.

I feel no shade of hesitation when I say that H.G. Wells is a great
writer. His fecundity, his mastery of language, his comprehension of
character are gifts and abilities that certain of his contemporaries
have in equal, or in some particulars in larger measure. But he alone
has used his perfected art for a definite end. He has not been content
to record his observations of the world as he has seen it, to
elaborate this or that analysis of human motive, or to relate the
history of a few selected lives. He has done all this, but he has done
infinitely more by pointing the possible road of our endeavour.
Through all his work moves the urgency of one who would create
something more than a mere work of art to amuse the multitude or
afford satisfaction to the critic. His chief achievement is that he
has set up the ideal of a finer civilisation, of a more generous life
than that in which we live; an ideal that, if it is still too high for
us of this generation, will be appreciated and followed by the people
of the future.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF