he _Strand Magazine_! In "Tono-Bungay" he has achieved the
same feat, magnified by ten--or a hundred, without the aid of symbolic
artifice. I have used the word "epic," and I insist on it. There are
passages toward the close of the book which may fitly be compared with the
lyrical freedoms of no matter what epic, and which display an
unsurpassable dexterity of hand. Such is the scene in which George
deflects his flying-machine so as to avoid Beatrice and her horse by
sweeping over them. A new thrill, there, in the sexual vibrations! One
thinks of it afterwards. And yet such flashes are lost when one
contemplates the steady shining of the whole. "Tono-Bungay," to my mind,
marks the junction of the two paths which the variety of Wells's gift has
enabled him to follow simultaneously, and, at the same time, it is his
most distinguished and most powerful book.

* * * * *

I have spoken of the angry and the infuriated. Fury can be hot or cold. Of
the cold variety is Claudius Clear's in the _British Weekly_. "Extremely
clever," says Claudius Clear. "There is, however, no sign of any new
power." But, by way of further praise: "The episodes are carefully
selected and put together with skill, and there are few really dull
passages." This about the man of whom Maeterlinck has written that he has
"the most complete and the most logical imagination of the age." (I think
Claudius Clear may have been under the impression that he was reviewing a
two-hundred-and-fifty-guinea prize novel, selected by Messrs. Lang and
Shorter.) Further, "He writes always from the point of a B.Sc." But the
most humorous part of the criticism is this. After stating that Ponderevo
acknowledges himself to be a liar, a swindler, a thief, an adulterer, and
a murderer, Claudius Clear then proceeds: "He is not in the least ashamed
of these things. He explains them away with the utmost facility, and we
find him at the age of forty-five, _not unhappy, and successfully engaged
in problems of aerial navigation_" (my italics). Oh! candid simplicity of
soul! Wells, why did you not bring down the wrath of God, or at least make
the adulterer fail in the problems of flight? In quoting a description of
the Frapps, Claudius Clear says: "I must earnestly apologize for
extracting the following passage." Why? As Claudius Clear gets into his
third column his fury turns from cold to hot: "It is impossible for me in
these columns to reproduce or to