Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/215

THE GUILT OF MR. CHESTERTON 189 him by letting out in polemical battles that are only a little less unreal than villanelles. Whilst lacking a public as eager as the Elizabethan for blank verse and drama, he tries to pack his energies into tushery like this. Perhaps it isn't such an innocent thing to give away sovereigns for shillings. There is such a thing as degrading the currency. Something might surely be said about images and superscriptions. Nay, if one only had the eloquence it is little Father Brown we would paraphrase, pinning our quarry with the very appeal which he used to convert Flambeau : — " Oh, yes," said his meek voice in the garden, as he looked up at the great, easy figure making its glittering escape. " I know you not only forced the pantomime but put it to a double use. You had the clever notion of hiding the real jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. But now I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you ; don't fancy they will last at that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, bvit no man has ever been able to keep on one level of badness. That road goes down and down. I know the woods look very free behind you. Flambeau ; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey. But some day you will be an old grey monkey. Flambeau. You will sit up in your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-tops will be very bare." And, instead? Well, we suppose it is true that we can never hope to see Mr. Chesterton clinging to the face of some cathedral cheerily chiselling away ; and the vision of him, booted and spurred, leading his men at the charge is doubtless also doomed to remain just a figure in a dream. And to speak of poetic dramas is also perhaps too optimistic ; Mr. Trench leaving the Haymarket and all. But there is one fine form of art — a little ailing just now, it is true, but immensely capable of revitalization — which would give him just the scope he requires. It calls for pageantry, poetry, and puns with an equal distinctness : it could both