the other to satirise and, in effect, to group into one
sloppy-thinking mass every other kind of Englishman, not excepting
philosophers, politicians and social reformers. This broad
generalisation omits any consideration of the merely uneducated, such
as Hoopdriver or Kipps, and the many women he has drawn. But the
former, however sympathetically treated, are certainly not idealised;
and among the latter, the only real creation, in my opinion, is Susan
Ponderevo in _Tono-Bungay_; although there is a possible composite of
various women in the later books that may represent the general
insurgent character of recent young womanhood. But now that I have
made this too definite statement I want to go back over it, touch it
up and smooth it out. For if I have found Mr Wells' character types
too few and too specialised; and as if, with regard to his more or
less idealised males--such as Capes, George Ponderevo, Remington,
Trafford, Stafford--he had modelled and re-modelled them in the effort
to build up one finally estimable figure of masculine ability; there
still remains an enormous gallery of subsidiary portraits, for the
most part faintly caricatured, of men and women who do stand for
something in modern life; portraits that are valuable, interesting and
memorable. Nevertheless, I submit that Mr Wells' novels will not live
by reason of their characterisation.

The desire to write essays in this class of fiction does not seem to
have overcome Wells until the last few years. Before 1909, he had
written all his sociology and all his romances, with the exception of
_The World Set Free_, but only three novels--namely, _The Wheels of
Chance_, _Love and Mr Lewisham_ and _Kipps_; and none of them gives
any indication of the characteristic method of the later work.

The first of the three, published in 1896, is in one respect a