oofs corrected in pencil; or rather not
corrected; there were still thirteen errors uncorrected on one page;
mostly in quotations from Browning. A selection from a Scotch ballad
had been quoted from memory and three of the four lines were wrong, I
wrote to Chesterton saying that the firm thought the book was going
to "disgrace" them. His reply was like the trumpeting of a crushed
elephant. But the book was a huge success.*

[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, p. 14.]

In fact, it created a sensation and established G.K. in the front
rank. Not all the reviewers liked it, and one angry writer in the
_Athenaeum_ pointed out that, not content with innumerable
inaccuracies about Browning's descent and the events of his life,
G.K. had even invented a line in "Mr. Sludge the Medium." But every
important paper had not only a review but a long review, and the vast
majority were enthusiastic. Chesterton claimed Browning as a poet not
for experts but for every man. His treatment of the Browning love
affair, of the poet's obscurity, of "The Ring and the Book," all
receive this same praise of an originality which casts a true and
revealing light for his readers. As with all his literary criticism,
the most famous critics admitted that he had opened fresh windows on
the subject for themselves.

This attack on his inaccuracy and admiration for his insight
constantly recurs with Chesterton's literary work. Readers noted that
in the _Ballad of the White Horse_ he made Alfred's left wing face
Guthrum's left wing. He was amused when it was pointed out, but never
bothered to alter it. His memory was prodigious. All his friends
testify to his knowing by heart pages of his favourite authors (and
these were not few). Ten years after his time with Fisher Unwin,
Frances told Father O'Connor that he remembered all the plots and
most of the characters of the "thousands" of novels he had read for
the firm. But he trusted his memory too much and never verified.
Indeed, when it was a question merely of verbal quotation he said it
was pedantic to bother, and when latterly Dorothy Collins looked up
his references he barely tolerated it.

Again while he constantly declared that he was no scholar, he said
things illuminating even to scholars. Thus, much later, when
Chesterton's _St. Thomas Aquinas_ appeared, the Master-General of the
Dominican Order, Pere Gillet, O.P., lectured on and from it to large
meetings of Dominicans. Mr. Eccles tol