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Transcriber's note


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errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other
inconsistencies are as in the original.



HILAIRE BELLOC




WORKS BY HILAIRE BELLOC.


   PARIS
   MARIE ANTOINETTE
   EMMANUEL BURDEN, MERCHANT
   HILLS AND THE SEA
   ON NOTHING
   ON EVERYTHING
   ON SOMETHING
   FIRST AND LAST
   THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER
   A PICKED COMPANY




[Illustration: HILAIRE BELLOC]




   HILAIRE BELLOC

   THE MAN AND HIS WORK

   BY

   C. CREIGHTON MANDELL

   and

   EDWARD SHANKS


   WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

   G. K. CHESTERTON


   METHUEN & CO. LTD.

   36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

   LONDON




_First Published in 1916_




   TO
   H. L. HUTTON
   OF MERCHANT TAYLORS' SCHOOL




INTRODUCTION

BY

G. K. CHESTERTON


When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us that
he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more uproarious
and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked into the
night; and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. When I have
said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not merely _bons
mots,_ I have said all that can be said in the most serious aspect about
the man who has made the greatest fight for good things of all the men
of my time.

We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho restaurant;
his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist and French
Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes, which are like
a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin. He was talking about
King John, who, he positively assured me, was _not_ (as was often
asserted) the best king that ever reigned in England. Still, there were
allowances to be made for him; I mean King John, not Belloc. "He had
been Regent," said Belloc with forbearance, "and in all the Middle Ages
there is no example of a successful Regent." I, for one, had not come
provided with any successful Regents with whom to counter this
generalization; and when I came to think of it, it was quite true. I
have noticed the same thing about many other sweeping remarks coming
from the same source.

The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt for
three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about the
South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most of us
were writing on the _Speaker_, edited by Mr. J. L. Hammond with an
independence of idealism to which I shall always think that we owe much
of the cleaner political criticism of to-day; and Belloc himself was
writing in it studies of what proved to be the most baffling irony. To
understand how his Latin mastery, especially