outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing,
roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find
the sun cockney and the stars suburban.



IV. Mr. Bernard Shaw


In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities,
when genial old Ibsen filled the world with wholesome joy, and the
kindly tales of the forgotten Emile Zola kept our firesides merry
and pure, it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
It may be doubted whether it is always or even generally a disadvantage.
The man who is misunderstood has always this advantage over his enemies,
that they do not know his weak point or his plan of campaign.
They go out against a bird with nets and against a fish with arrows.
There are several modern examples of this situation. Mr. Chamberlain,
for instance, is a very good one. He constantly eludes or vanquishes
his opponents because his real powers and deficiencies are quite
different to those with which he is credited, both by friends and foes.
His friends depict him as a strenuous man of action; his opponents
depict him as a coarse man of business; when, as a fact, he is neither
one nor the other, but an admirable romantic orator and romantic actor.
He has one power which is the soul of melodrama--the power of pretending,
even when backed by a huge majority, that he has his back to the wall.
For all mobs are so far chivalrous that their heroes must make
some show of misfortune--that sort of hypocrisy is the homage
that strength pays to weakness. He talks foolishly and yet
very finely about his own city that has never deserted him.