long-winded. A quick
eye for ideas may actually make a writer slow in reaching his goal,
just as a quick eye for landscapes might make a motorist slow in
reaching Brighton. An original man has to pause at every allusion or
simile to re-explain historical parallels, to re-shape distorted words.
Any ordinary leader-writer (let us say) might write swiftly and smoothly
something like this: "The element of religion in the Puritan rebellion,
if hostile to art, yet saved the movement from some of the evils in
which the French Revolution involved morality." Now a man like Mr. Shaw,
who has his own views on everything, would be forced to make the
sentence long and broken instead of swift and smooth. He would say
something like: "The element of religion, as I explain religion, in the
Puritan rebellion (which you wholly misunderstand) if hostile to
art--that is what I mean by art--may have saved it from some evils
(remember my definition of evil) in which the French Revolution--of
which I have my own opinion--involved morality, which I will define for
you in a minute." That is the worst of being a really universal sceptic
and philosopher; it is such slow work. The very forest of the man's
thoughts chokes up his thoroughfare. A man must be orthodox upon most
things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.

Now the same difficulty which affects the work of Bernard Shaw affects
also any book about him. There is an unavoidable artistic necessity to
put the preface before the play; that is, there is a necessity to say
something of what Bernard Shaw's experience means before one even says
what it was. We have to mention what he did when we have already
explained why he did it. Viewed superficially, his life consists of
fairly conventional incidents, and might easily fall under fairly
conventional phrases. It might be the life of any Dublin clerk or
Manchester Socialist or London author. If I touch on the man's life
before his work, it will seem trivial; yet taken with his work it is
most important. In short, one could scarcely know what Shaw's doings
meant unless one knew what he meant by them. This difficulty in mere
order and construction has puzzled me very much. I am going to overcome
it, clumsily perhaps, but in the way which affects me as most sincere.
Before I write even a slight suggestion of his relation to the stage, I
am going to write of three soils or atmospheres out of which that
relation grew. In other w