Produced by David Clarke, Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) G. K. CHESTERTON _UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME:_ W. B. YEATS BY FORREST REID J. M. SYNGE BY P. P. HOWE HENRY JAMES BY FORD MADOX HUEFFER HENRIK IBSEN BY R. ELLIS ROBERTS THOMAS HARDY BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE BERNARD SHAW BY P. P. HOWE WALTER PATER BY EDWARD THOMAS WALT WHITMAN BY BASIL DE SELINCOURT SAMUEL BUTLER BY GILBERT CANNAN A. C. SWINBURNE BY EDWARD THOMAS GEORGE GISSING BY FRANK SWINNERTON R. L. STEVENSON BY FRANK SWINNERTON RUDYARD KIPLING BY CYRIL FALLS WILLIAM MORRIS BY JOHN DRINKWATER ROBERT BRIDGES BY F. E. BRETT YOUNG FYODOR DOSTOIEVSKY BY J. MIDDLETON MURRY MAURICE MAETERLINCK BY UNA TAYLOR [Illustration: G. K. Chesterton. from a photograph by Hector Murchison] G. K. CHESTERTON A CRITICAL STUDY BY JULIUS WEST LONDON MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXV I HAVE to express my gratitude to Messrs. Burns and Oates, Messrs. Methuen and Co., and Mr. Martin Seeker for their kind permission to quote from works by Mr. G. K. Chesterton published by them. I have also to express my qualified thanks to Mr. John Lane for his conditional permission to quote from books by the same author published by him. My thanks are further due, for a similar reason, to Mr. Chesterton himself. TO J. C. SQUIRE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 11 II. THE ROMANCER 23 III. THE MAKER OF MAGIC 59 IV. THE CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS 76 V. THE HUMORIST AND THE POET 91 VI. THE RELIGION OF A DEBATER 109 VII. THE POLITICIAN WHO COULD NOT TELL THE TIME 136 VIII. A DECADENT OF SORTS 163 BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 I INTRODUCTORY