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.
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