Mr. Arnold Bennett (1867), has one thing in common with Mr. Wells; he also has a touch of romanticism in his nature, though it is less pronounced and not mingled with the sentimentalism from which Wells is never wholly free.
But unlike Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett is half ashamed of his romanticism, and hurries its gay coloring into his lighter writings, in order that he may present the life he is more concerned to portray, in a stern grey light.
Moreover, Mr. Bennett, whatever revolutionary sentiment he may possess, allows none to colour his work as a story-teller. Wells’ imagination, half fascinated half repelled by the reactionary forces that keep it drab and monotonous, is less concerned to abolish than to analyze and discuss them. Bennett neither attacks them nor dissects them.