In Belloc we find the perfect union of the French and English minds.
Rabelaisian in fecundity, wit, and irrepressible sparkle, he is also of
English blood and sinew, wedded to the sweet Sussex weald. History,
politics, economics, military topography, poetry, novels, satires,
nonsense rhymes--all these we may set aside as the hundred curiosities
of an eager mind. (The dons, by the way, say that in his historical work
he generalizes too hastily; but was ever history more crisply written?)
It is in the essays, the thousand little inquirendoes into the nature of
anything, everything or nothing, that one comes closest to the real man.
His prose leaps and sparks from the pen. It is whimsical, tender,
biting, garrulous. It is familiar and unfettered as open-air talk. His
passion for places--roads, rivers, hills, and inns; his dancing
persiflage and buoyancy; his Borrovian love of vagabondage--these are
the glories of a style that is quick, close-knit, virile, and vibrant.
Here Belloc ranks with Bunyan, Swift, and Defoe.
Whoso dotes upon fine prose, prose interlaced with humour, pathos, and
whim, orchestrated to a steady rhythm, coruscated with an exquisite
tenderness for all that is lovable and high spirited on this dancing
earth, go you now to some bookseller and procure for yourself a little
volume called "A Picked Company" where Mr. E.V. Lucas has gathered some
of the best of Mr. Belloc's pieces. Therein will you find love of food,
companionship, cider and light wines; love of children, artillery, and
inns in the outlands; love of salt water, great winds, and brown hills
at twilight--in short, passionate devotion to all the dear devices that
make life so sweet. Hear him on "A Great Wind":
A great wind is every man's friend, and its strength is the strength
of good fellowship; and even doing battle with it is something
worthy and well chosen. It is health in us, I say, to be full of
heartiness and of the joy of the world, and of whether we have such
health our comfort in a great wind is a good test indeed. No man
spends his day upon the mountains when the wind is out, riding
against it or pushing forward on foot through the gale, but at the
end of his day feels that he has had a great host about him. It is
as though he had experienced armies. The days of high winds are days
of innumerable sounds, innumerable in variation of tone and of
intensity, playing upon and awakening innumerable powers in man. And
the days of high wind are days in which a physical compulsion has
been about us and we have met pressure and blows, resisted and
turned them; it enlivens us with the simulacrum of war by which
nations live, and in the just pursuit of which men in companionship
are at their noblest.