easons for this prophesied ostracism were perhaps vague, but they were
understood to be broad-based upon the unprecedented audacity of the
novel. And really in this exciting year, with Sir Percy Bunting in charge
of the national sense of decency, and Mr. W.T. Stead still gloating after
twenty-five years over his success in keeping Sir Charles Dilke out of
office--you never can tell what may happen!

* * * * *

However, it is all over now. "The New Machiavelli" has been received with
the respect and with the enthusiasm which its tremendous qualities
deserve. It is a great success. And the reviews have on the whole been
generous. It was perhaps not to be expected that certain Radical dailies
should swallow the entire violent dose of the book without kicking up a
fuss; but, indeed, Mr. Scott-James, in the _Daily News_, ought to know
better than to go running about after autobiography in fiction. The human
nose was not designed by an all-merciful providence for this purpose. Mr.
Scott-James has undoubted gifts as a critic, and his temperament is
sympathetic; and the men most capable of appreciating him, and whose
appreciation he would probably like to retain, would esteem him even more
highly if he could get into his head the simple fact that a novel is a
novel. I have suffered myself from this very provincial mania for
chemically testing novels for traces of autobiography. There are some
critics of fiction who talk about autobiography in fiction in the tone of
a doctor who has found arsenic in the stomach at a post-mortem inquiry.
The truth is that whenever a scene in a novel is _really_ convincing, a
certain type of critical and uncreative mind will infallibly mutter in
accents of pain, "Autobiography!" When I was discussing this topic the
other day a novelist not inferior to Mr. Wells suddenly exclaimed: "I say!
Supposing we _did_ write autobiography!"... Yes, if we did, what a
celestial rumpus there would be!

* * * * *

The carping at "The New Machiavelli" is naught. For myself I anticipated
for it a vast deal more carping than it has in fact occasioned. And I am
very content to observe a marked increase of generosity in the reception
of Mr. Wells's work. To me the welcome accorded to his best books has
always seemed to lack spontaneity, to be characterized by a mean
reluctance. And yet if there is a novelist writing to-day who by
generosity has deserved