was not born to succeed as "a mere man of
letters," and assuredly not as a writer of romances. His own statement
that he "exhausted romanticism before he was ten years old" is
historically inaccurate. He started a literary career early, but at
twenty-nine he was still a romantic young man who had written reams of
romantic literature, and had signally failed. He was right to abandon
romance; it had never inspired him, and it was entirely natural and
human that he should ever after disown and abuse this treacherous
mistress. It is characteristic that what really did inspire him and
set him moving upon the course ever after to be his own was an event
unconnected with those personal, intimate issues of experience which
usually feed the flame of imaginative art. It was a debating speech by
Henry George which aroused the reforming ardour thenceforward
essential and characteristic in Mr. Shaw, a speech which sent him to
Karl Marx, and made him a "man with some business in the world."
Henry George sent him to Karl Marx, and Karl Marx sent him to that
group of clever people among whom were Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland,
Sidney Olivier, and--of main importance--Sidney Webb.

"Quite the cleverest thing I ever did in my life," Mr. Shaw is
reported to have said to his American interviewer, "was to force my
friendship on Webb, to extort his, and keep it." Mr. Sidney Webb was
then, as now, the constructive encyclopaedist, the man who, wherever he
went, "knew more than anybody present." "The truth of the matter is
that Webb and I are very useful to each other. We are in perfect
contrast, each supplying the deficiency in the other.... As I am an
incorrigible mountebank, and Webb is one of the simplest of geniuses,
I have always been in the centre of the stage, whilst Webb has been
prompting me, invisible, from the side." It was this singular union
more than anything else which gave direction and motive force to the
propaganda carried on by the Fabian Society for a quarter of a
century, whilst to Mr. Shaw personally it gave the consistency of
thought and definiteness of aim which underlie all his later work. We
cannot, of course, neglect the intellectual influence of Ibsen and
Nietzsche, Wagner and Samuel Butler, the individualists and
aristocrats who corrected the mob-sentiment of old-fashioned
socialism; but these and similar influences matured in him through his
Fabianism.

Bernard Shaw, of the Fabian Society, ceased to be a private c