The Flying Inn. By G. K. Chesterton. (Methuen and Co.
6e.)—" G. K. C." is our real and only romantic. He sees the world and this dull human life of ours as one great adventure; he cries "Follow, follow !" and we chase across the boundaries of true romance. For his new book, read on a grey day, we give him our thanks. At first we were under the impression that Mr Chesterton bad collected his "Songs of the Simple Life,'; thought them too good to be lost in the pages of the New Witness, and deliberately written a wild romance which should contain them; but if they are introduced after the manner of lyrics in a musical comedy, they are none the less admirable poetry. Were there space we should dearly like to quote the "Song of the Wicked Grocer." Many will find themselves ill-content with The Flying Inn, for there is in it no sequence of plot, only the fortunes of the last innkeeper of England fleeing with his sign before the Moslem law forbidding the sale of intoxicating liquors everywhere, save where an old inn sign shall still stand. And we do not expect from Mr.. Chesterton even one split infinitive, nor the repetition of pro. nouns which looks like the work of a younger writer ; some times, too, he falls into exaggeration and artificiality, and when he says that "white morning lay about the grey stony streets like spilt milk," we venture to think that he is not quite certain of his own meaning. But, for all that, the brilliancy of his writing and the paradoxical humour of his opinions are beyond praise, and leave us feeling, in our happiness, a little mad, and yet supremely sane.
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