Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/143

THE ARTLESSNESS OF MR. H. G. WELLS 117 that sets it skew. Had Trafford and Marjorie gone swinging off to Labrador in sheer joy of living, look- ing merely for fun, then the snowfields and the tonic roughness and the astringent loneliness would have braced them up no end. It is their owlish proposal to make the trip a solemn rite, to spend a solid winter in a hut " thinking all things out afresh," that robs the results of credibility ; and that pompous proposal is the result of the muddle which is the result of Mr. Wells'a own proposal. It is the kind of sentimentality that so often comes in when the intelligence, like a nouveau Hche, assumes jaunty control of things older and deeper than itself. Mr. Wells's genius is far too big to be packed into a definition — even (as this book shows) when the definition is framed by himself; but it may be suggested that his decisive gift is a vivid faculty for bold improvisation, for striking out swift generali- zations and potent impromptus, and backing them up, as they spring, giving them life and validity, with images of an animal accuracy, phrases of a pouncing precision, and sudden epithets that leap like arrows to their mark. Watch him roughing out a new house, a new State, a new Time : it is like seeing a master draughtsman working with swift coloured chalks — dashing in towers with a touch, swirling out vistas, dropping details in their wake like gems. Certainly in this book it is the flashes and splashes and sudden unforeseen sallies that are reliable, that reveal ; it is the deliberate calculations that go wrong. And their error is increased by the very benignance behind them. For the philanthropic purpose argues (does it not?) a lack of that proud humility which is the mark of the creator in this kind. Into the darkness, in search of enlightenment, the good novelist sends his little creatures — there to suffer and explore and fight ex- perimentally — miraculous pioneer-projections of us watching humans behind. But the whole value of