on Wells was published in 1915. In my own recent rereading of the tales I have been much struck by their purposefulness with reference to Mr. Wells's main intention. They are all essays toward a new point of view, essays toward seeing things differently, essays toward liberating the mind and the imagination from the nightmare of our present life and plunging them into another sort of nightmare! They are the religious myths and heroic fables and allegories in the new scriptures which Mr. Wells has been writing for our generation. Boys and girls will read them for their surface meaning as they read Gulliver, but persons of my generation may return to them and find a fresh fascination in regarding them as the meaningful grandiose "poetry" of the leader of the English intelligentsia.
I am supported in this notion by Mr. Wells's prefatory note in the Atlantic Edition on "The Island of Dr. Moreau." It originated, he tells us, as an imaginative response to the pitiful downfall and scandalous trial of a man of genius—presumably Oscar Wilde—which took place in 1895. It was written, he says, "just to give the utmost vividness to that conception of men as hewn and confused and tormented beasts." He calls it a "theological grotesque." Unless one so regards it it is quite too horrible to read. If one thinks of Dr. Moreau as a man cutting up living beasts and reshaping them, it is unendurable. But if one thinks of Dr. Moreau as God cutting up living men and reshaping them, then it is quite what we are accustomed to, and causes no gooseflesh. But if one takes a step further and thinks of Dr. Moreau as Mr. Wells, exploring the plasticity of men and states, attempting to
