SOURCE: "The Manuscript Poetry of Hilaire Belloc," in The Chesterton Review, Vol. XII, No. 2, May, 1986, pp. 221-29.

In the following essay, Markel asserts that some of Belloc 's unpublished verses are "equal in quality to his best published poetry."

On January 13, 1911, the Northern Newspaper Syndicate responded to Hilaire Belloc's offer to write an article for them:

We are pleased that you are agreeable to write for us and as to title, we think if the article is called "What can be done with a Million" it would serve our purpose. As to terms, for the short article we require we do not see our way to pay more than £7.7s.

Could Belloc himself have written two sentences with more of a sting? He needed the £7.7s, so he wrote about how to spend a million, just as he wrote scores of other articles that he did not care...