of whom one writes. It preserves two
very important things--modesty in the biographer and mystery in the
biography.

For the purpose of our present generalisation it is only necessary to
say that Shaw, as a musical critic, summed himself up as "The Perfect
Wagnerite"; he threw himself into subtle and yet trenchant eulogy of
that revolutionary voice in music. It was the same with the other arts.
As he was a Perfect Wagnerite in music, so he was a Perfect Whistlerite
in painting; so above all he was a Perfect Ibsenite in drama. And with
this we enter that part of his career with which this book is more
specially concerned. When Mr. William Archer got him established as
dramatic critic of the _Saturday Review_, he became for the first time
"a star of the stage"; a shooting star and sometimes a destroying comet.

On the day of that appointment opened one of the very few exhilarating
and honest battles that broke the silence of the slow and cynical
collapse of the nineteenth century. Bernard Shaw the demagogue had got
his cart and his trumpet; and was resolved to make them like the car of
destiny and the trumpet of judgment. He had not the servility of the
ordinary rebel, who is content to go on rebelling against kings and
priests, because such rebellion is as old and as established as any
priests or kings. He cast about him for something to attack which was
not merely powerful or placid, but was unattacked. After a little quite
sincere reflection, he found it. He would not be content to be a common
atheist; he wished to blaspheme something in which even atheists
believed. He was not satisfied with being revolutionary; there were so
many revolutionists. He wanted to pick out some prominent institution
which had been irrationally and instinctively accepted by the most
violent and profane; something of which Mr. Foote would speak as
respectfully on the front page of the _Freethinker_ as Mr. St. Loe
Strachey on the front page of the _Spectator_. He found the thing; he
found the great unassailed English institution--Shakespeare.

But Shaw's attack on Shakespeare, though exaggerated for the fun of the
thing, was not by any means the mere folly or firework paradox that has
been supposed. He meant what he said; what was called his levity was
merely the laughter of a man who enjoyed saying what he meant--an
occupation which is indeed one of the greatest larks in life. Moreover,
it can honestly be said that Shaw did good by shakin