that we daily gaze upon. Chesterton finds scope for all kinds of subjects in this book, from a 'Piece of Chalk' to 'A Dragon's Grandmother.' Provided we believe in dragons, there is good reason to suppose that they have grandmothers. It is not so easy to write a good essay on the subject. Chesterton does so with great skill, and it makes it quite certain to be so intellectual as to hate fairies is a piteous condition.

What he brings out in this particular essay is that what modern intellectualism has done is to make 'the hero extraordinary, the tale ordinary,' whereas the fairy tale makes 'the hero ordinary, the tale extraordinary.'

In this book of short essays it is only possible to take a few, but care has been taken to attempt to show the enormous versatility of Chesterton's mind. It has been said quite wrongly that Chesterton cannot describe pathos. This is certainly untrue. He can so admirably describe humour that he cannot help knowing the pathetic, which is often so akin to humour. I am not sure that this ability to describe the melancholy is not to be seen in one of these essays that narrates how he travelled in a train in which there was a dead man whose end he never knew.

Perhaps there is nothing more interesting than turning out one's pockets—all sorts of long forgotten mementoes cause a lump in the throat or a gleam in the eye; but it is very annoying, on arriving at a station where tickets are collected, to find everything that relates to your past twenty years of life and be unable to find the ticket that makes you a legitimate rider on the iron way. This is what Chesterton describes in a delightful essay.

One day, so Chesterton tells us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore than by way of Kennington. In a few words, it is what we mean when we say, as every traveller says at times, 'Home, sweet home.' I fancy this is what Mr. Chesterton means. It is a beautiful thought—a fine love of the home, a strange understanding of the wish of the traveller who once more wishes to see the old cottage before he journeys 'across the Bar.'

The sight of chained convicts being taken to a prison causes Chesterton to essay on the 'filthy torture' of our prisons, the whole system of which is a 'relic of sin.' Perhaps he is right! But is it that the prisons are wrong, or is it that society makes criminals? After all, convicts are chained that they shall not endure a worse penalty for attempted escape. At present prisons are as necessary to the State as milk is to a baby; the thing against them is that they turn criminal men into criminal devils.

At his home in Beaconsfield, Chesterton has a wonderful toy theatre. He writes in this book a sketch about it. This toy theatre has a certain philosophy. 'It can produce large events in a small space; it could represent the earthquake in Jamaica or the Day of Judgment.' We must take Chesterton's word for it. I am not convinced that the toy theatre of Chesterton has added to philosophy; I don't think it has made any remarkable contribution to thought, nor is it, as he claims, more interesting and better than a West-end theatre; but I do believe that in having amused a few hundred children it has a place in the Book of Life—perhaps near the name of Santa Claus.

While it is true that 'Tremendous Trifles' is not nearly as important as some of the Chesterton books, it is true to say that it is a remarkably pleasant book about small things that are really tremendous when we come to study them.

'The Defendant' is, as the title suggests, a defence of all kinds of things that are usually attacked by other people.

It takes a brave man to defend 'penny dreadfuls.' Chesterton assumes this rôle. He defends them on their remarkable powers of imagination. One has only to study Sexton Blake to discover the intricate psychology of that wondrous personality who can solve the foulest murder or unravel stories that the divorce courts would quail before.

There is something to be said for the skeleton so long as he doesn't come out of his cupboard. Chesterton defends skeletons. 'The truth is that man's horror of the skeleton is not horror of death at all; it is that the skeleton reminds him that his appearance is shamelessly grotesque.' But he sees no objection to this at all. After all, he says, the frog and the hippopotamus are happy. Why, then, should man dislike it that his anatomy without flesh is inelegant?

It is to be expected that Chesterton would write a defence of baby worship, because they are so 'very serious and in consequence very happy.' 'The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together.' Probably we are all agreed that the defence of baby worship is a desirable thing; possibly it is the only point upon which there is universal agreement with Chesterton.

'The Defendant' is a series of papers that are light, but conceal a depth of thought behind them. They demonstrate that there is something to be said for everything which may be a slight solution of the eternal problem that theological professors are paid to try and discover, the problem of evil. It may be that there is really no such thing, but it would be disastrous to these professors to discover this, so the dear old problem goes on from year to year.

As an essayist, Chesterton is never dull: the philosophy contained in his essays is not prosy. The only fault is that he is at times so clever that it is a little difficult to know what he means. But this really does not matter, as a shrewd critic of one of his books made it public through the Press that Chesterton did not know himself what he meant. But I wonder if he did really know?

Chapter Two

DICKENS

If there is fault to be found in Chesterton's masterly study of Charles Dickens it lies in the fact that in parts of the book the meaning is not always clear, or, rather, it is not always so at a first reading. Whether this may be justly termed a fault depends largely upon what the reader of a critical study demands.

If he desires that he shall read Chesterton superficially and yet understand, he will be doomed to disappointment. Perhaps of all writers Chesterton must be read with the head between the hands, with a fierce determination that the meaning veiled in brilliant paradox shall be sought out.

He is not only a keen critic, he is also a deliberate commentator. The difference is fundamental. The commentator builds upon the foundation the critic has erected; he does not merely state what he thinks about a book or character, rather he explains the criticism already made.

This is the method adopted with regard to Dickens. Chesterton has written a commentary on the soul of Dickens, he has not in any strict sense written a biography; this was not necessary; the difficulty of Dickens lies in the interpretation of his work; his life, though having a great influence on his writings, has been written so often that Chesterton has refrained from building on 'another's foundation.' In a word, it is an intensely original work, far more than our critic's companion book on Browning.

As was Browning born to a world in the throes of the aftermath of the French Revolution, so was Dickens. Chesterton lays great stress on the youth of Dickens; it is only right that he should do this; the early life of Dickens was probably responsible