art and philosophy! Why not a sermon on that?

G.B.S.

Note in the Introduction to _David Copperfield_ what G.K. says as to
the break between the two halves of the book. He calls it an instance
of weariness in Dickens--a solitary instance. Is not Shaw's
explanation at once fascinating and probable?

Kate Perugini, the daughter of Dickens, wrote two letters of immense
enthusiasm about the book saying it was the best thing written about
her father since Forster's biography. But she shatters the theory put
forth by Chesterton that Dickens thrown into intimacy with a large
family of girls fell in love with them all and happened unluckily to
marry the wrong sister. At the time of the marriage her mother, the
eldest of the sisters, was only eighteen, Mary between fourteen and
fifteen "very young and childish in appearance," Georgina eight and
Helen three! Nothing could better illustrate the clash between
enthusiasm and despair that fills a Chestertonian while reading any
of his literary biographies. For so much is built on this theory
which the slightest investigation would have shown to be baseless.

_Heretics_ aroused animosity in many minds. Dealing with Browning or
Dickens a man may encounter literary prejudices or enthusiasms, but
there is not the intensity of feeling that he finds when he gets into
the field with his own contemporaries. Reviewers who had been
extending a friendly welcome to a beginner found that beginner
attacking landmarks in the world of letters, venturing to detest
Ibsen and to ask William Archer whether he hung up his stocking on
Ibsen's birthday, accusing Kipling of lack of patriotism. It is, said
one angrily, "unbecoming to spend most of his time criticising his
contemporaries." "His sense of mental perspective is an extremely
deficient one." "The manufacture of paradoxes is really one of the
simplest processes conceivable." "Mr. Chesterton's sententious
wisdom."

In fact it was like the scene in _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ when
most people present were purple with anger but an intellectual few
were purple with laughter. And even now most of the reviewers seemed
not to understand where G.K. stood or what was his philosophy.
"Bernard Shaw," says one, "whom _as a disciple_* he naturally
exalts." This, after a series of books in which G.K. had exposed,
with perfect lucidity and a wealth of examples, a view of life
differing from Shaw's in almost every particular. One reviewer
clearly d