s so
that they may be swallowed harmlessly like pills. With true Anglo-Saxon
conceit we had thought that our own Mr. Wells was the most universal of
these universal geniuses. He has so diligently brought science, ethics,
sex, marriage, sociology, God, and everything else--properly
deodorized, of course--to the desk of the ordinary man, that he may
lean back in his swivel-chair and receive faint susuration from the
sense of progress and the complexity of life, without even having to go
to the window to look at the sparrows sitting in rows on the
telephone-wires, so that really it seemed inconceivable that anyone
should be more universal. It was rumored that there lay the ultimate
proof of Anglo-Saxon ascendancy. What other race had produced a great
universal genius?

But all that was before the discovery of Blasco Ibanez.

On the backs of certain of Blasco Ibanez's novels published by the Casa
Prometeo in Valencia is this significant advertisement: _Obras de
Vulgarizacion Popular_ ("Works of Popular Vulgarization"). Under it is
an astounding list of volumes, all either translated or edited or
arranged, if not written from cover to cover, by one tireless pen,--I
mean typewriter. Ten volumes of universal history, three volumes of the
French Revolution translated from Michelet, a universal geography, a
social history, works on science, cookery and house-cleaning, nine
volumes of Blasco Ibanez's own history of the European war, and a
translation of the Arabian Nights, a thousand and one of them without
an hour missing. "Works of Popular Vulgarization." I admit that in
Spanish the word _vulgarizacion_ has not yet sunk to its inevitable
meaning, but can it long stand such a strain? Add to that list a round
two dozen novels and some books of travel, and who can deny that Blasco
Ibanez is a great universal genius? Read his novels and you will find
that he has looked at the stars and knows Lord Kelvin's theory of
vortices and the nebular hypothesis and the direction of ocean currents
and the qualities of kelp and the direction the codfish go in Iceland
waters when the northeast wind blows; that he knows about Gothic
architecture and Byzantine painting, the social movement in Jerez and
the exports of Patagonia, the wall-paper of Paris apartment houses and
the red paste with which countesses polish their fingernails in Monte
Carlo.

The very pattern of a modern major-general. And, like the great
universal geniuses of the Renais