A new thrill, there, in the sexual vibrations! One
thinks of it afterwards. And yet such flashes are lost when one
contemplates the steady shining of the whole. "Tono-Bungay," to my mind,
marks the junction of the two paths which the variety of Wells's gift has
enabled him to follow simultaneously, and, at the same time, it is his
most distinguished and most powerful book.
* * * * *
I have spoken of the angry and the infuriated. Fury can be hot or cold. Of
the cold variety is Claudius Clear's in the _British Weekly_. "Extremely
clever," says Claudius Clear. "There is, however, no sign of any new
power." But, by way of further praise: "The episodes are carefully
selected and put together with skill, and there are few really dull
passages." This about the man of whom Maeterlinck has written that he has
"the most complete and the most logical imagination of the age." (I think
Claudius Clear may have been under the impression that he was reviewing a
two-hundred-and-fifty-guinea prize novel, selected by Messrs. Lang and
Shorter.) Further, "He writes always from the point of a B.Sc." But the
most humorous part of the criticism is this. After stating that Ponderevo
acknowledges himself to be a liar, a swindler, a thief, an adulterer, and
a murderer, Claudius Clear then proceeds: "He is not in the least ashamed
of these things.
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