If all the dragons of old romance were loosed upon the fiction of our day, the result, one would imagine, would be something like that of a Chestertonian novel. But the dragons are dead and converted into poor fossil ichthyosauruses, incapable of biting the timidest damsel or the most corpulent knight that ever came out of the Stock Exchange. That is the tragedy of G.K.C.'s ideas, but it is also his opportunity. "Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catch-words," says Stevenson. "Give me my dragons," says G.K.C. in effect, "and I will give you your catch-words. You may have them in any one of a hundred different ways. I will drop them on you when you least expect them, and their disguises will outrange all those known to Scotland Yard and to Drury Lane combined. You may have catastrophes and comets and camels, if you will, but you will certainly have your catch-words." The first of Chesterton's novels, in order of their publication, is _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ (1904). This is extravagance itself; fiction in the sense only that the events never happened and never could have happened. The scene is placed in London, the time, about A.D. 1984. "This 'ere progress, it keeps on goin' on," somebody remarks in one of the novels of Mr. H. G. Wells. But it never goes on as the prophets said it would, and consequently England in those days does not greatly differ from the England of to-day. There have been changes, of course. Kings are now chosen in alphabetical rotation, and the choice falls upon a civil servant, Auberon Quin by name. Now Quin has a sense of humour, of absolute humour, as the Watts-Dunton definition already cited would have it called. He has two bosom friends who are also civil servants and whose humour is of the official variety, and whose outlook upon life is that of a Times leader. Quin's first official act is the publication of a proclamation ordering every London borough to build itself city walls, with gates to be closed at sunset, and to become possessed of Provosts in mediaeval attire, with guards of halberdiers. From his throne he attends to some of the picturesque details of the scheme, and enjoys the joke in silence. But after a few years of this a young man named Adam Wayne becomes Provost of Notting Hill, and to him his borough, and more especially the little street in which he has spent his life, are things of immense importance. Rather than allow that street to make way for a new thoroughfare, Wayne rallies his halberdiers to the defence of their borough. The Provosts of North Kensington and South Kensington, of West Kensington and Bayswater, rally their guards too, and attack Notting Hill, purposing to clear Wayne out of the way and to break down the offending street. Wayne is surrounded at night but converts defeat into victory by seizing the offices of a Gas Company and turning off the street lights. The next day he is besieged in his own street. By a