ALL'S WELLS!

When a magazine runs out of something to say it invariably turns to the choice of the ten or the twenty most famous or important somethings-or-other. H. G. Wells has been intrigued into choosing the latest group of importancies, and has picked the ten books which he thinks are the most important in the world's literature. His list is as surprising as his thoughts on other subjects of equal significance. The first amazing feature is that he includes no history of the world. He puts down Aristotle's "History of Animals", and Darwin's "Origin of the Species"; was it professional modesty that prevented the inclusion of his own compendium?

Religious books take four of his choices. He excludes the entire Bible on the ground that it is a whole literature, rather than a book, and merely chooses Isaiah and St. Mark as the two most significant books in the collection. The Koran and the "Great Learning" of Confucius, as the most representative books of two great civilizations, he throws in with the remark that "they were the creative and cohesive powers in the world second only to the Bible". Plato's "Republic" gets a place because Wells found it easy to read on the Downs of Sussex, and because he claims that it gives a sense "of liberation and enlargement". Bacon's "New Atlantis" he does not call a great book; in fact, with typical obstinacy, he calls it "not a very well-imagined nor a well-written book" and then includes it among the most important ten. "The Revolt of the Heavens" is a title of mystery to most readers, yet it comes as a natural choice in such a list. We must bear with Mr. Wells, and remember that if it isn't a great book, it is at least as great as the others included here, for it is the chef d'ocuvre of Copernicus. Shakespeare, the invariable choice of critics, is ignored in favor of Marco Polo's "Travels". Wells considers that the latter book was responsible for the discovery

America, which of course makes it infinitely more important than such a book as "The Merchant of Venice", which has done little more, he would probably say, than to arouse race riots.

There is one extenuation for his choice he admits that his books have been picked with more regard for their influence on mankind, than for their value as literature. He is not preparing the catalogue for a desert island library, or a five-foot shelf, but merely explaining, no doubt, the sources for his own greatest chapters. The "well-educated man", that much-advised individual, is under no compulsion to read them. Nor is he likely to be tempted