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FOREWORD 13
" La Princesse de Cleves " by. How, then,
does it stand ? With " Liaisons Dangereuses
" ? Hardly. W T
ell, is it of the class of
" Evelina " or of " Adolphe," or of " Consuelo "
even ? Mr. Bennett can be as sharp as a
special constable with : is it Thackeray as
good as " Pendennis " ? And, unless it be
infinitely better, what sense is there in
Mr. Wells ?
despising Thackeray and extolling
Pray, Mr. Bennett, how is good this book ?
Let us see I think I have a note on the
;
" his scientific romances " are " on
subject :
" " (
the plane of epic poetry and in
Tono-
Bungay '
he has achieved the same feat,
magnified by ten or a hundred " "
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." And now
what are we to say of " Manon Lescaut " ?
That it is a million times better than Milton
and knocks spots off Homer ? But all this
though distressing is not conclusive ; it
proves provinciality but it proves nothing
worse. Mr. Bennett may really have been
thinking all the time of " Robert Elsmere "
and " The Epic of Hades." About another of
his favourites, however, he is more precise :
" I re-read * A Man of Property,' " he says,
" immediately after re-reading Dostoievsky's