letters while avoiding quotation from or reference to his published
works is simply not to tell it. At Christopher Dawson's suggestion I
have re-read all the books _in the order in which they were written_,
thus trying to get the development of Gilbert's mind perfectly clear
to myself and to trace the influences that affected him at various
dates. For this reason I have analysed certain of the books and not
others--those which showed this mental development most clearly at
various stages, or those (too many alas) which are out of print and
hard to obtain. But whenever possible in illustrating his mental
history I have used unpublished material, so that even the most
ardent Chestertonian will find much that is new to him.

For the period of Gilbert's youth there are many exercise books,
mostly only half filled, containing sketches and caricatures, lists
of tithes for short stories and chapters, unfinished short stories.
Several completed fairy stories and some of the best drawings were
published in _The Coloured Lands_. Others are hints later used in his
own novels: there is a fragment of _The Ball and the Cross_, a first
suggestion for _The Man Who Was Thursday_, a rather more developed
adumbration of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_. This I think is later
than most of the notebooks; but, after the change in handwriting,
apparently deliberately and carefully made by Gilbert around the date
at which he left St. Paul's for the Slade School, it is almost
impossible to establish a date at all exactly for any one of these
notebooks. Notes made later when he had formed the habit of dictation
became difficult to read, not through bad handwriting, but because
words are abbreviated and letters omitted.

Some of the exercise books appear to have been begun, thrown aside
and used again later. There is among them one only of real