Anybody who fancies himself in heroic declamation will probably, if he happens to read “Lepanto,” read it aloud. He is likely then to be so pleased with its brave colors and insistent sonority that he will repeat it a second and perhaps a third time. After that he is sure to avoid it as he would a Sousa march, not wishing to strut always with brass and drums. But he will find no relief in this book. All the poems are not quite so loud, but all—except the humorous topical verse—are equally emphatic. Words like pomp, gorgeous, thunder, ancient, crimson, scorn, myriad, blazing, thousandfold, giant, trumpets, immortal, golden, jewelled, stars, passion, repeat themselves endlessly in walloping anapaests and staccato iambics until the only thing left with any power to stir is silence.

Perhaps it is natural that a man who cannot write prose without twisting it into paradox should proclaim his verse with such bravado. He roars out his “Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,” and his “Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,” as if they were the sort of thing he cared most about in the world. After a while one wonders why he rarely speaks of anything as if he had really seen it with his own eyes and were filled with it, so that he could not crowd it into words at all unless they were his own authentic symbols. Here is no sensitive reverence for reality. What seems to exalt Mr. Chesterton most is his rectangular way of arranging images in his mind, enabling him to speak like a journalist, comfortably, of primary colors and big noises and people all good or all bad. There is scarcely a poem in the book which does not seem an attitude.

The attitude that Mr. Chesterton least tires of emphasizing is his religious orthodoxy. Although only a small section is devoted to “religious poems,” thirty-six of the fifty nine poems in the volume mention God, and all are full of churchly words. Even the “love poems” include titles like “Love's Trappist” and “Confessional,” and are sprinkled with such phrases as “my soul's anointed” and “the fires that over Sodom fell.” We are likely to conclude that Mr. Chesterton is unwaveringly orthodox about the same time we conclude he is not a poet.

Mr. Chesterton's orthodoxy gives him counters of thought and emotion with which he plays a game of definite rules, protected from any real uncertainty and from any real hostility except on the part of those who may try to break up the game. This man is red, that one is black. Each thing has one name, sanctified by authority, and you can shout it as many times and as loudly as you please. There is an understandable mechanism behind the world; it gives you assurance and relieves you of the arduous necessity of knowing each thing by itself. All you have to do is to classify it. This kind of orthodoxy is not confined to people of any religious creed. It is common to Mr. Chesterton, Mr. Roosevelt, the Marxian Socialist, and the jingo in time of war. If you have accepted a mechanical orthodoxy it is easy to speak familiarly of God, believe in unconditional generalities, or write emphatic verse.

Yet true poets have been orthodox as often as not. What is the difference between the kind of orthodoxy Mr. Chesterton uses and the kind a genuine poet has? How is it that what in another man might be simplicity and courage becomes in him banality and bravado?

Let us suppose that a mind keen for paradox and alive to the mysteries of reality, begins adventurously to explore everything that may interest him in the circle of his distance. And suppose that at length he finds himself far from his starting point, a little bewildered, homesick for something sure and accustomed. He wants to go back. But long ago he has told himself that his soul is free, that he is a fearless man and self-sufficient. Therefore he does not admit that he is tired, but invents a bold reason to still his pride. Going home is the adventure! This thing that we call the distance is really nothing at all; it offers not a goal, but a beginning. Did not his ancestors come out of it to build their house? He will return within the walls, that his own garden is a microcosm of the forest, knowing that everything in the world has its symbol in his domestic kingdom. He will sit quiet, sleep long and grow fat, and still be at peace with his adventure. One can really know the distance only when it is far away.

And so Mr. Chesterton's apparent naïveté is really an inverted subtlety, his orthodoxy a defensive reaction against beterodoxy. This interest in places over the horizon, which he has pushed out of his consciousness by an effort of will, reappears disguised. He must talk vociferously about the mystery of his garden, lest the mystery of the hills overwhelm him. He must prate eternally about romance, lest the genuine romance should make him uncomfortable again. But he is so busy in protestation that all the while he never really sees even his own garden.

Does this hypothesis account for Mr. Chesterton? Try it, the next time you feel an unacknowledged insincerity in him. Remember it, when he grows orotund in verse, or defends his orthodoxy in prose with engaging contradiction and an elaborate pretense of freedom. Such a hidden conflict may go far to explain him, if it explains the diffeence between the man who believes quite simply that the universe is his garden, and the man who has deliberately chosen to assert that his garden is the universe.