It is said that he cannot be taken seriously, that he will defend anything
or attack anything, that he will do anything to startle and amuse.
All this is not only untrue, but it is, glaringly, the opposite of
the truth; it is as wild as to say that Dickens had not the boisterous
masculinity of Jane Austen. The whole force and triumph of Mr. Bernard
Shaw lie in the fact that he is a thoroughly consistent man.
So far from his power consisting in jumping through hoops or standing on
his head, his power consists in holding his own fortress night and day.
He puts the Shaw test rapidly and rigorously to everything
that happens in heaven or earth. His standard never varies.
The thing which weak-minded revolutionists and weak-minded Conservatives
really hate (and fear) in him, is exactly this, that his scales,
such as they are, are held even, and that his law, such as it is,
is justly enforced. You may attack his principles, as I do; but I
do not know of any instance in which you can attack their application.
If he dislikes lawlessness, he dislikes the lawlessness of Socialists
as much as that of Individualists. If he dislikes the fever of patriotism,
he dislikes it in Boers and Irishmen as well as in Englishmen.
If he dislikes the vows and bonds of marriage, he dislikes still
more the fiercer bonds and wilder vows that are made by lawless love.
If he laughs at the authority of priests, he laughs louder at the pomposity
of men of science. If he condemns the irresponsibility of faith,
he condemns with a sane consistency the equal irresponsibility of art.
He has pleased all the bohemians by saying that women are equal to men;
but he has infuriated them by suggesting that men are equal to women.
He is almost mechanically just; he has something of the terrible
quality of a machine. The man who is really wild and whirling,
the man who is really fantastic and incalculable, is not Mr. Shaw,
but the average Cabinet Minister. It is Sir Michael Hicks-Beach who
jumps through hoops. It is Sir Henry Fowler who stands on his head.