When common sense
rises to the lyric, as it does in the latter half of the tale, you have
something formidable. Here Wells has united the daily verifiable actualism
of novels like "Love and Mr. Lewisham" and "Kipps," with the large manner
of the paramount synthetic scenes in (what general usage compels me to
term) his "scientific romances." In the scientific romance he achieved, by
means of parables (I employ the word roughly) a criticism of tendencies
and institutions which is on the plane of epic poetry. For example, the
criticism of specialization in "The First Men in the Moon," the mighty
ridicule of the institution of sovereignty in "When the Sleeper Wakes,"
and the exquisite blighting of human narrow-mindedness in "The Country of
the Blind"--this last one of the radiant gems of contemporary literature,
and printed in the _Strand Magazine_! In "Tono-Bungay" he has achieved the
same feat, magnified by ten--or a hundred, without the aid of symbolic
artifice. I have used the word "epic," and I insist on it. There are
passages toward the close of the book which may fitly be compared with the
lyrical freedoms of no matter what epic, and which display an
unsurpassable dexterity of hand. Such is the scene in which George
deflects his flying-machine so as to avoid Beatrice and her horse by
sweeping over them.
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