sanitary inspector. He had every qualification for living in a
villa--except the necessary indifference to his brethren living in
pigstyes. But for the small fact that he hates with a sickening hatred
the hypocrisy and class cruelty, he would really accept and admire the
bathroom and the bicycle and asbestos-stove, having no memory of rivers
or of roaring fires. In these things, like Mr. Straker, he is the New
Man. But for his great soul he might have accepted modern civilisation;
it was a wonderful escape. This man whom men so foolishly call crazy and
anarchic has really a dangerous affinity to the fourth-rate perfections
of our provincial and Protestant civilisation. He might even have been
respectable if he had had less self-respect.

His fulfilled fame and this tone of repose and reason in his life,
together with the large circle of his private kindness and the regard of
his fellow-artists, should permit us to end the record in a tone of
almost patriarchal quiet. If I wished to complete such a picture I could
add many touches: that he has consented to wear evening dress; that he
has supported the _Times_ Book Club; and that his beard has turned grey;
the last to his regret, as he wanted it to remain red till they had
completed colour-photography. He can mix with the most conservative
statesmen; his tone grows continuously more gentle in the matter of
religion. It would be easy to end with the lion lying down with the
lamb, the wild Irishman tamed or taming everybody, Shaw reconciled to
the British public as the British public is certainly largely reconciled
to Shaw.

But as I put these last papers together, having finished this rude
study, I hear a piece of news. His latest play, _The Showing Up of
Blanco Posnet_, has been forbidden by the Censor. As far as I can
discover, it has been forbidden because one of the characters professes
a belief in God and states his conviction that God has got him. This is
wholesome; this is like one crack of thunder in a clear sky. Not so
easily does the prince of this world forgive. Shaw's religious training
and instinct is not mine, but in all honest religion there is something
that is hateful to the prosperous compromise of our time. You are free
in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He
exists and is evil; you are free to say (like poor old Renan) that He
would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a metaphor or a
mystification; you may