qual to Hazlitt, or condemn him as being
inferior to J.S. Mill. Comparisons are usually odious, which is
precisely the reason so much use is made of them. In this case any
comparison is not only odious; it is worse, it is merely futile, for
the very simple fact that there has been no essayist ever quite like
Chesterton, which is a compliment to him, because it proves what every
one who knows is assured, that he is unique.

There are, of course, as is to be expected, people who do not like his
essays. The reason is not far to seek, as in everything else people set
up for themselves standards which they do not like to see set aside.
Consequently people who had read Lamb, Hazlitt, Hume, and E.V. Lucas
astutely thought that no essayist could be such who did not adhere to
the style of one of these four. Therefore they were a little alarmed and
upset when there descended upon them a strange genius who not only upset
all the rules of essay writing, but was at the same time acclaimed by
all sections of the Press as one of the finest essayists of the day.

With the advent of Chesterton the essay received a shock. It had to
realize that it was a larger and wider thing than it had been before. As
it had been almost insular, so it became international; as it had been
almost theological in its orthodoxy, so it became in its catholicity
well-nigh heretical. Which is the best possible definition of a heresy?
It is the expanding of orthodoxy or the lessening of it. Thus Chesterton
was a pioneer. He gave to the essay a new impetus--almost, we might say,
a 'sketch' form; it dealt with subjects not so much in a dissertation as
in a dissection. Having dissected one way so that we are quite sure no
other method would do, he calmly dissects again in the opposite manner,
leaving us gasping, and finding that there really are two ways of
looking at every question--a thing we never realize till we think
about it. I have in this chapter taken five of Chesterton's most
characteristic books of essays, displaying the enormous depth of his
intellect, the vast range of subject, the unique use of paradox. Of
these five books I have again taken rather necessarily at random
subjects depicting the above Chestertonian attributes, with an attempt
to give some idea of what it really means when we say that he is an
essayist.

That Chesterton's book of essays, entitled 'Heretics,' should have an
introductory and a concluding chapter on the importance of orth