this
inalienable and mystic right, the only man not in the secret was G. K.
Chesterton.

There are few tasks so ungrateful as the criticism of a critic's
criticisms, unless it be the job of criticizing the criticisms of a
critic's critics. The first is part of the task of him who would write a
book in which all Chesterton's works are duly and fitly considered; and
the second will not be wholly escaped by him. Concerned as we are,
however, with the ideas of one who was far more interested in putting
the world to rights than with guiding men and women around literary
edifices, there is no need for us to give any very detailed study to
Chesterton's critical work. Bacon said "distilled books are like common
distilled waters, flashy things." A second distillation, perhaps even a
third, suggests a Euclidean flatness. The sheer management of a point of
view, however, is always instructive. We have seen an author use his
exceptional powers of criticism upon society in general, and ideas at
large. How is he able to deal with ideas and inventions stated in a more
definite and particular manner? The latter task is the more difficult of
the two. We all know perfectly well, to take an analogous illustration,
how to deal with the Prussian militarist class, the "Junker caste," and
so on. But we differ hopelessly on the treatment to be meted out to the
National Service League.

The outstanding feature of Chesterton's critical work is that it has no
outstanding features which differentiate it from his other writings. He
is always the journalist, writing for the day only. This leads him to
treat all his subjects with special reference to his own day.
Sometimes, as in the essay on Byron in _Twelve Types_, his own day is so
much under discussion that poor Byron is left out in the cold to warm
himself before a feebly flickering epigram. In writing of Dickens,
Chesterton says that he "can be criticized as a contemporary of Bernard
Shaw or Anatole France or C. F. G. Masterman . . . his name comes to the
tongue when we are talking of Christian Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt or
County Council Steamboats or Guilds of Play." And Chesterton does
criticize Dickens as the contemporary of all these phenomena. In point
of fact, to G.K.C. everybody is either a contemporary or a Victorian,
and "I also was born a Victorian." Little Dorrit sets him talking about
Gissing, Hard Times suggests Herbert Spencer, American Notes leads to
the mention of Maxim Gor