Of this class of fun Chesterton is an easy master. It makes him a fearsome controversialist on the platform or in his favourite lists, the columns of a newspaper. But he uses his strength a little tyrannously. He is an adept at begging the question. The lost art called ignoratio elenchi has been privately rediscovered by him, to the surprise of many excellent and honest debaters, who have never succeeded in scoring the most obvious points in the face of Chesterton's power of emitting a string of epigrams and pretending it is a chain of argument. The case, in whatever form it is put, is always fresh and vigorous. Another epigrammatist, Oscar Wilde, in comparison with him may be said to have used the midnight oil so liberally in the preparation of his witticisms, that one might almost detect the fishy odour. But as with his prose so with his verses; Chesterton's productions are so fresh that they seem to spring from his vitality rather than his intellect. They are generally a trifle ragged and unpolished as if, like all their author's productions, they were strangers to revision. And vitality demands boisterous movement, more even than coherence. Sometimes the boisterousness is apparently unsupported by the sense of the words. So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather, The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell, But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather, For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell. Here the stanza actually goes with such a swing that the reader will in all probability not notice that the lines have no particular meaning. On the other hand, Chesterton's poetry has exuberant moments of sheer delight. In one of his essays he is lamenting the songlessness of modern life and suggests one or two chanties. Here they are: Chorus of Bank Clerks: Up, my lads, and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er. Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: "Two and Two are Four." Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the sophists roar, Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four. Chorus of Bank Clerks when there is a run on the bank: There's a run upon the Bank-- Stand away! For the Manager's a crank and the Secretary drank, and the Upper Tooting Bank Turns to bay! Stand close: there is a run On the Bank. Of our ship, our royal one, let the ringing legend run, that she fired with every gun Ere she sank. The Post Office Hymn would begin as follows: O'er London our letters are shaken like snow, Our wires o'er the world like the thunderbolts go. The news that may marry a maiden in Sark, Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park. Chorus (with a swing of joy and energy): Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park. The joke becomes simply immense when we picture the actual singing of the songs.