Tne Uses or Diversity. A book of essays by G. K. Chesterton. (Me-thuan. 68, net.)
People are puzzled, even exasperated, by Mr, Chesterton because they expect him to grow better or worse, and he does neither. He does not appear to take more trouble, to think more coherently, or to base his statements more on what he knows; yet, though he does not improve, neither does he deteriorate. This book is like all his books of essays; it has this obvious defect, that you may turn the page thinking you are just finding your way into the middle of the essay and discover that it has come to_an end, Yet from this book, as from the others, one could make a collection of things admirably said, by which we mean also that they are true as well og surprising and that they get half their force from their context; they are not mere epigrams, but part of an argument of a view of life. Thus, asking why Tennyson though a master in poetry is now treated coldly, ha answers that he was the poet of the popular science of his day. "He was the perfectly educated man of classics and the half-educated man science." That is true; we are impatient of Tennyson because he did versify ideas which were half-baked, and we suspect a, skill so used even where it is used for better things. And Mr. Chesterton compares. him in this respect with Byron. "The misanthropio idea, as in Byron, is not a truth, but it is one: of the immortal lies. As long as humanity exists, humanity can be hated. Wherever one shall gather by himself, Byron is in the midst of him.' ' That phrase, one of the immortal lies, is brilliant because it is true: and it becomes brilliant only in its context as the} climax of a process of thought.
A Hatr-wirrep UNiverseE, Again, Mr. Chesterton analyses thus the irritation of Mr. Shaw and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.