nslating the French
phrase for playing truant as "he goes to the bushy school--or the
school among the bushes," he adds "not lightly to be confounded with
the Art School at Bushey." This is indefensible, but rare.
Christopher Morley has noted how "his play upon words often led to a
genuine play upon thoughts. . . . One of Chesterton's best
pleasantries was his remark on the so-called Emancipation of Women.
'Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry _We will
not be dictated to:_ and proceeded to become stenographers.'" He
complained in a review of a novel "Every modern man is an atlas
carrying the world; and we are introduced to a new cosmos with every
new character. . . . Each man has to be introduced accompanied by his
cosmos, like a jealous wife or on the principle of 'love me love my
dogma.'"

Each of Chesterton's readers can think of a hundred instances of this
inspired fooling: many have been given in this book and many will yet
be given. But the thing went far deeper than fooling: it has been
compared by Mr. Belloc to the gospel parables as a method of teaching
and of illumination. "He made men see what they had not seen before.
He made them _know_. He was an architect of certitude, whenever he
practiced the art in which he excelled."

Belloc's analysis of this special element in Chesterton's style,
alike written and spoken, is of first rate importance to an
understanding of the man whose mind at this date was still rapidly
developing while his method of expression had become what it remained
to the end of his life.

His unique, his capital, genius for illustration by parallel, by
example, is his peculiar mark. The word "peculiar" is here the
operative word. . . . No one whatsoever that I can recall in the
whole course of English letters had his amazing--I would almost say
superhuman--capacity for parallelism.

Now parallelism is a gift or method of vast effect in the
conveyance of truth.

Parallelism consists in the illustration of some unperceived truth
by its exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known
and perceived . . .

Whenever Chesterton begins a sentence with, "It is as though" (in
exploding a false bit of reasoning), you may expect a stroke of
parallelism as vivid as a lightning flash.

. . . Always, in whatever manner he launched the parallelism, he
produced the shock of illumination. He _taught_.

Parallelism