workmanship, and it was especially the
note of those days to demand brilliant plays and brilliant short
stories. And when they got them, they got them from a couple of
moralists. The best short stories were written by a man trying to
preach Imperialism. The best plays were written by a man trying to
preach Socialism. All the art of all the artists looked tiny and
tedious beside the art which was a byproduct of propaganda.

The reason, indeed, is very simple. A man cannot be wise enough to be
a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. A
man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the
energy to wish to pass beyond it. A small artist is content with art;
a great artist is content with nothing except everything. So we find
that when real forces, good or bad, like Kipling and G. B. S., enter
our arena, they bring with them not only startling and arresting art,
but very startling and arresting dogmas. And they care even more, and
desire us to care even more, about their startling and arresting dogmas
than about their startling and arresting art. Mr. Shaw is a good
dramatist, but what he desires more than anything else to be is a good
politician. Mr. Rudyard Kipling is by divine caprice and natural
genius an unconventional poet; but what he desires more than anything
else to be is a conventional poet. He desires to be the poet of his
people, bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh, understanding
their origins, celebrating their destiny. He desires to be Poet
Laureate, a most sensible and honourable and public-spirited desire.
Having been given by the gods originality--that is, disagreement with
others--he desires divinely to agree with them. But the most striking
instance of all, more striking, I think, even than either of these, is
the instance of Mr. H. G. Wells. He began in a sort of insane infancy
of pure art. He began by making a new heaven and a new earth, with the
same irresponsible instinct by which men buy a new necktie or
button-hole. He began by trifling with the stars and systems in order
to make ephemeral anecdotes; he killed the universe for a joke. He has
since become more and more serious, and has become, as men inevitably
do when they become more and more serious, more and more parochial. He
was frivolous about the twilight of the gods; but he is serious about
the London omnibus. He was careless in "The Time Machine," for that
dealt only with the destin