SOURCE: “Chesterton and T. S. Eliot,” in The Chesterton Review, Vol. II, No. 2, Spring-Summer, 1976, pp. 184-96.

In the following essay, Kirk compares the poetry and philosophies of T. S. Eliot and G. K. Chesterton, noting that although the two writers were both considered conservative, “Christian apologists” each approached Christianity via different, sometimes antagonistic, routes.

In 1917, there appeared in the pages of a rather odd little London magazine called The Egoist a mordant reference to G.K. Chesterton, then at the height of his influence:

I have seen the forces of death with Mr. Chesterton at the head upon a white horse. Mr. Pound, Mr. Joyce, and Mr. Lewis write living English; one does not realise the awfulness of death until one meets with the living language.

The author of these sentences was known to a few as a poet who recently had produced a slim volume of verse...