SOURCE: “A Modern Exuberant,” The Times Literary Supplement, No. 1089, November 30, 1922, p. 779.

In the following review of works by and about G. K. Chesterton, the reviewer observes that Chesterton's The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses reveals the poet's talent as a “dignified” rhetorician as well as his flair for lively verse.

There was room for a critical monograph on the work of Mr. Chesterton, and after the publication of Mr. Braybrooke's little volume there is still room. One can only regret that Mr. Braybrooke has attempted a task for which he appears to possess inadequate qualification. His loosely strung series of platitudes cannot for a moment be mistaken for the critical appreciation that it sets out to be.

Yet Mr. Chesterton's writings present many problems that might be discussed with profit. There is, for example, the paradox that his prose style is at once brilliant and tedious...