y to treat with disrespect--is
largely due to Pater's laborious simplicity of style. But it was a
greater than either Walter Pater or Mr. Chesterton who first pointed out
that the language which appealed to the understanding of the common man
was also that which expressed the highest culture. Mr. Chesterton's
habit of paradox will always obscure his meanings for the common man. He
has a vast amount to tell him, but much of it he will never understand.

Paradox, when it has become a habit, is always dangerous. Introduced on
rare and fitting occasions, it may be powerful and even convincing, but
when it is repeated constantly and upon all sorts of subjects, we cannot
but dispute its right and question its validity. Its effect is not
conviction but vertigo. It is like trying to live in a house constructed
so as to be continually turning upside down. After a certain time,
during which terror and dizziness alternate, the most indulgent reader
is apt to turn round upon the builder of such a house with some
asperity. And, after all, the general judgment may be right and Mr.
Chesterton wrong.

Upon analysis, his paradox reveals as its chief and most essential
element a certain habit of mind which always tends to see and appreciate
the reverse of accepted opinions. So much is this the case that it is
possible in many instances to anticipate what he will say upon a
subject. It is on record that one reader, coming to his chapter on Omar
Khayyam, said to himself, "Now he will be saying that Omar is not drunk
enough"; and he went on to read, "It is not poetical drinking, which is
joyous and instinctive; it is rational drinking, which is as prosaic as
an investment, as unsavoury as a dose of camomile." Similarly we are
told that Browning is only felt to be obscure because he is too
pellucid. Such apparent contradictoriness is everywhere in his work, but
along with it goes a curious ingenuity and nimbleness of mind. He cannot
think about anything without remembering something else, apparently out
of all possible connection with it, and instantly discovering some
clever idea, the introduction of which will bring the two together.
Christianity "is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like
a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the
pattern of the cross."

In all this there are certain familiar mechanisms which constitute
almost a routine of manipulation for the manufacture of paradoxes. One
such