The poor—the slaves who really stoop under the burden of life—have often been mad, scatter-brained and cruel, but never hopeless. That is a class privilege, like cigars. Their drivelling literature will always be a ‘blood and thunder’ literature, as simple as the thunder of heaven and the blood of men.
On a friend’s recommendation, I picked up the Project Gutenberg version of G. K. Chesterton’s The Defendant. (My link, of course, is to a version you’ll have to pay for. You think we’re running a charity here?) It’s pretty standard Chesterton, which is to say, eccentrically stimulating.
The book’s title, as the author himself admits in the Foreword, is awkwardly put. Chesterton does not stand in his own defense here, but in defense of various topics he has chosen for no other reason than that they’re out of fashion (or were at the time). Subjects include: “Penny Dreadful” novels, skeletons, publicity, nonsense, “ugly things,” slang, detective stories, and patriotism. It helps, in reading, to have some general idea of intellectual fashions around the turn of the 20th Century. Although Christianity is mentioned, this is not one of Chesterton’s most Christian (or Catholic) works.
The Defendant isn’t one of the most memorable books in G. K.’s ouvre, but it’s definitely worth reading. There are excellent moments:
“There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorne says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.”
“Scripture says that one star differeth from another in glory, and the same conception applies to noses.”