r and called "atmosphere."
Chesterton's peculiar "atmosphere" rises like a sweet exhalation from
the very ink he sheds. And it is frankly indefinable, as all genuine
style is. The insincere stylists can be reduced to a formula, because
they work from a formula; Pater may be brought down to an arrangement of
adjectives and commas, Doctor Johnson to a succession of rhythms,
carefully pruned of excrescences, and so on, but the stylist who writes
as God made him defies such analysis. Meredith and Shaw and Chesterton
will remain mysteries even unto the latest research student of the
Universities of Jena and Chicago. Patient students (something of the
sort is already being done) will count up the number of nouns and verbs
and commas in _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ and will express the result
in such a form as this--[A]

_ _
/ / nouns cubed _________ sin A
Chesterton (G. K.) = | | ------ + / .2log bn - -----
_/_/ verbs squared \/ c e 47

But they will fail to touch the essential Chesterton, because one of
the beauties of this form of analysis is that when the formula has been
obtained, nobody is any the wiser as to the manner of its use. We know
that James Smith is composed of beef and beer and bread, because all
evidence goes to show that these are the only things he ever absorbs,
but nobody has ever suggested that a synthesis of foodstuffs will ever
give us James Smith.

Now the difficulty of dealing with the humour of Chesterton is that, in
doing so, one is compelled to handle it, to its detriment. If in the
chapter on his Romances any reader thought he detected the voice and the
style of Chesterton, he is grievously mistaken. He only saw the
scaffolding, which bears the same relation to the finished product as
the skeleton bears to the human body.

Consider these things:

If you throw one bomb you are only a murderer; but
if you keep on persistently throwing bombs, you
are in awful danger of at last becoming a prig.

If we all floated in the air like bubbles, free to
drift anywhere at any instant, the practical
result would be that no one would have the courage
to begin a conversation.

If the public schools stuck up a notice it ought
to be inscribed, "For the Fathers of Gentlemen
only." In two generations they can do the