sible humour.

All satire, as we have said, has a definite moral intent, whether it be
to restrain a corrupt politician or a bad poet, and this makes it
serious, sometimes painful, always, in failure, heavy and unpleasant.
The little book called _The Aftermath: or Caliban's Guide to Letters_ is
not altogether a success. One might believe that Mr. Belloc's disgust
with the tricks of journalism has killed, as never his disgust with the
tricks of government, his sense of joy in human pretence. These
sketches, by just a little, fail to give one a feeling of rejoicing in
the author's wit: they seem bitter, strained, and, while one appreciates
the justice of the serious charge, the humour which was to carry it off,
becomes from time to time heavy and lifeless. It is even a depressing
book: but this may be because the deepest rooted of our illusions,
deeper than the illusion about politics, is the illusion concerning the
cleverness of authors.

The skit, written with Mr. G. K. Chesterton, on the proceedings of the
Tariff Reform Commission, is, on the other hand, one shout of laughter:
as though that singular inquiry could not raise bitterness or indeed any
emotion but delight in the breasts of true observers of humanity. It is
a pity it is no longer obtainable.

The two or three satirical poems show a very definite and determined
purpose, a sort of ugly competent squaring of the fists, a fighting that
pleases by clean hard hitting.

It must have been a great pleasure to Mr. Belloc to write:

We also know the sacred height
Up on Tugela side,
Where the three hundred fought with Beit
And fair young Wernher died.

* * * * *

The little empty homes forlorn,
The ruined synagogues that mourn
In Frankfort and Berlin;
We knew them when the peace was torn--
We of a nobler lineage born--
And now by all the gods of scorn
We mean to rub them in.

It must have been a great relief, too, to have planted such sound and
swinging blows on the enemy's person. The enemy is not appreciably
inconvenienced, but--Mr. Belloc has probably told himself--a few have
chuckled, and that begins it.

In such a way we come naturally to the five satirical novels, obviously
an illustration of the passage in _The Party System_, where Mr. Belloc
advocates the annulling of political evils by laughing at them. It is
not our business here to analyse these compositions from the po