"Mr. Shaw cannot realise his own pertness, nor can he preserve his own gravity, for more than a few moments at a time. Even when he sets out to be funny for fun's sake, he must needs always pretend that there is a serious reason for the emprise; and he pretends so strenuously that he ends by convincing us almost as fully as he convinces himself. Thus the absurdity, whatever it be, comes off doubly well. Conversely, even when he is really engrossed in some process of serious argument, or moved to real eloquence by one of his social ideals, he emits involuntarily some wild jape which makes the whole thing ridiculous — as ridiculous to himself as to us; and straightway he proceeds to caricature his own thesis till everything is topsy-turvy; and we, rolling with laughter, look up and find him no longer on his head, but on his heels, talking away quite gravely; and this sets us off again. For, of course, when seriousness and frivolity thus co-exist inseparably in a man, the seriousness is nullified by the frivolity. The latter is fed by the former, but, graceless and vampire-like, kills it. As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality he is immortal. Posterity will not, I fancy, read his writings. He has not enough of the specific art-sense for writing. I will not exasperate him by complaining that he has no sense of beauty in the use of his medium: the idea of beauty is a red rag to him, as we know. I will merely suggest that he has in his writing the qualities of a public speaker rather than of a writer. He does not write with that closeness which is the result not of haste but of leisure, and which is the main secret of good literature. He is too glib, too fluent, too diffuse, and too loud. Glibness and fluency, loudness and diffusion, are just the qualities needed for addressing an audience. But between speaking and writing there is a vast difference. A good writer cannot make good speeches, and Mr. Shaw's seems an instance to prove that a good speaker cannot write well. We, his contemporaries, can read him with delight, even though we seem to miss the reporter's interpolation of "laughter", "cheers", "interruption", and so forth. But relentlessly, in course of time, lack of solid form "tells on" writing. However interesting a writer may be, he will not, unless he be a strict artist, be read by posterity. Style, as has been said, is the one antiseptic. But, though Mr. Shaw's writing be not good enough for the next generation, he himself, being so signally unique, is good enough for all time. I wish I had the leisure to be his Boswell, and he the kindness to be my Johnson."