speeches in modern books better than the conversations in _The Four
Men._ Mr. Belloc is not one of those disciples of realism who believe
that the art of conversation is dead, and that modern people are only
capable of addressing each other in one-line sentences. He has the
traditional love of the fine speech such as we find it in the ancient
poets and historians and dramatists and satirists. He loves a monologue
that passes from mockery to regret, that gathers up by the way anecdote
and history and essay and foolery, that is half a narrative of things
seen and half an irresponsible imagination. He can describe a runaway
horse with the farcical realism of the authors of _Some Experiences of
an Irish R.M._, can parody a judge, can paint a portrait, and can steep
a landscape in vision. Two recent critics have described him as "the
best English prose writer since Dryden," but that only means that Mr.
Belloc's rush of genius has quite naturally swept them off their feet.

If Mr. Belloc's love of country is an indulgence, his moods of
suspicion and contempt are something of the same kind. He is nothing of
a philanthropist in any sense of the word. He has no illusions about the
virtue of the human race. He takes pleasure in scorn, and there is a
flavour of bitterness in his jests. His fiction largely belongs to the
comedy of corruption. He enjoys--and so do we--the thought of the poet
in Sussex who had no money except three shillings, "and a French penny,
which last some one had given him out of charity, taking him for a
beggar a little way-out of Brightling that very day." When he describes
the popular rejoicings at the result of Mr. Clutterbuck's election, he
comments: "The populace were wild with joy at their victory, and that
portion of them who as bitterly mourned defeat would have been roughly
handled had they not numbered quite half this vast assembly of human
beings." He is satirist and ironist even more than historian. His
ironical essays are the best of their kind that have been written in