G K Chesterton

The Defendant G K Chesterton

To-day, however, we have reversed this principle. We do despise vulgar compositions, and we donot ignore them. We are in some danger of becoming petty in our study of pettiness; there is aterrible Circean law in the background that if the soul stoops too ostentatiously to examine anythingit never gets up again. There is no class of vulgar publications about which there is, to my mind, more utterly ridiculous exaggeration and misconception than the current boys' literature of thelowest stratum. This class of composition has presumably always existed, and must exist. It has nomore claim to be good literature than the daily conversation of its readers to be fine oratory, or thelodging-houses and tenements they inhabit to be sublime architecture. But people must haveconversation, they must have houses, and they must have stories. The simple need for some kind ofideal world in which fictitious persons play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older thanthe rules of good art, and much more important. Every one of us in childhood has constructed suchan invisible dramatis personæ, but it never occurred to our nurses to correct the composition by carefulcomparison with Balzac. In the East the professional story-teller goes from village to village with asmall carpet; and I wish sincerely that anyone had the moral courage to spread that carpet and sit onit in Ludgate Circus. But it is not probable that all the tales of the carpet-bearer are little gems oforiginal artistic workmanship. Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is aluxury; fiction is a necessity. A work of art can hardly be too short, for its climax is its merit. A storycan never be too long, for its conclusion is merely to be deplored, like the last halfpenny or the lastpipelight. And so, while the increase of the artistic conscience tends in more ambitious works tobrevity and impressionism, voluminous industry still marks the producer of the true romantic trash. There was no end to the ballads of Robin Hood; there is no end to the volumes about DickDeadshot and the Avenging Nine. These two heroes are deliberately conceived as immortal.