G.K. Chesterton on the American Episode in 'Martin Chuzzlewit'.

G.K. Chesterton’s notes on the novels of Dickens were collected introductions to the Everyman editions. He claims against the general critical judgment that the American section of ‘Chuzzlewit’ was a satiric triumph. That would be his reaching after paradox tic I think. My feeling is that we had reportage with extra added acerbity and quite close to the maundering cant that is a continuing tradition. Even the intelligentsia's call to repentance has a note of triumph these days. See how we beat our breasts and rend our garments! It doesn’t fit, it’s out of tune with the sublime comedy of the rest of the book - the ‘gravy’ that has added 20 years to Mrs. Todgers life, the imperturbable recoveries of Pecksniff, Mark Tapley’s seeking creditable jolliness. The quality of invention is not there in the American episode. �

G.K. Chesterton: A Biography (2012)

 I have just recently finished reading Ian Ker’s biography of G.K. Chesterton (pub.2012).  It is a very literary biography with a great many quotations from the enormous oeuvre.  I would consider it essential reading for the Chestertonian of course but also the general reader might be surprised at the high regard for his books on Dickens, Browning, Aquinas and Francis of Assisi.  The problem with Chesterton is the stylistic quirk of his continuous  reaching after paradox.  William James found it wearing and I can understand that because to the scientific mind with its straightforward logical catenary of conclusions, the doubling back and lateral thinking breaks the forward momentum of inquiry.  It is also difficult to remember and frustrates the illative sense which I think is a good thing.  The regular cognitive pathways that have become habitual are deleted and what you might have thought was easy going terrain switchbacks furiously.   Are we marching nonstop and getting nowhere?   There is no converging by a gradual series of argued for conclusions rather the sudden illumination.  

In his 'Eugenics and Other Evils' (1922) he mocks the assumed superiority of progressive thinking. The spoiling of the eugenics movement by Teutonic enthusiasm has made support for it disreputable but the nibbling at the tempting edges of it by present day progressives makes Chesterton a little scabrous to their eyes.  An interesting indication of this tendency is found here:

Cain on Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a well-known essayist in Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a critic of eugenics, as well as a critic of many other issues. Chesterton’s essay, “What is Eugenics?,” is a much cited essay on the subject and merits reading.

Chesterton was criticised for anti-semitism, and his language in “What is Eugenics” will strike the modern reader as offensive. His essay is made available here as a primary historical source meriting critical study. Other editions are available. The text is online, too. Chesterton’s essay likely was the spark for Leonard Darwin to use the same title for his pro-eugenics popular book, What is Eugenics?, in 1928.

This particular copy shows the signed of close reading. Marginalia comments are by an unknown contemporary hand who had a clear antipathy for Chesterton’s views.

Looking at the copy of the pdf which Prof. Cain reproduces at the bottom of his blog post the notes which are written on it are written in Irish the old fashioned Gaelic script,( the present is Roman with h for aspiration).  In fact there is no antipathy shown in that annotator’s underlining which select the most egregiously nasty examples of the eugenicist’s program.  The discerning student of the prof. will be aware of the correct answer on that topic.

Peadar O’Morain the inditer of those notes, teipeadh ort/theip tu/theip ort (you failed).

Dean Inge (of St.Paul's) on Eugenics and the White Race

That ideas have the power to unhinge
is perfectly shown by Dean Inge
Who engaged in polemics
On the subject of eugenics
whilst going about unfrocked.

More work to be done on that but it summarises the interests of the ‘Gloomy Dean’ of Saint Paul’s (1860 - 1954) who feared that the pure race of the Saxon would be diluted beyond repair by inferior types breeding unchecked and in general we would be overwhelmed by exponential population growth. The wrong sort of people were having too many children. He was also a naturist as if there wasn’t already enough suffering in the world.
Dean Inge wiki

I have been reading his Outspoken Essays (second series).
Outspoken Essays

One of them is on Eugenics (from Edinburgh Review 1922 and in it he mentions his nemesis G.K. Chesterton. Russell Sparkes in an informative essay
G.K.C. and Eugenics
details G.K.C’s successful battle against the introduction of what he called ‘the feeble minded bill’:

The United Kingdom was one of the few major countries where eugenics was not effectively put into law. Yet people should not feel smug that it did not happen in Britain – because it nearly did. The United Kingdom escaped eugenics laws by the skin of its teeth, as they were backed by some of the most powerful people in the land. As far as can be seen, only one public figure waged a vigorous, and ultimately successful, campaign against the proposed Mental Deficiency Bill in 1912. That man was G. K. Chesterton. The battle against eugenics is Chesterton's great, unknown victory. To explore it properly, I have given a brief introduction to the subject, followed by an account of Chesterton's battle against what he called the "feeble minded Bill." An account of draconian eugenics laws in the United States, including forced sterilisation, shows what might have happened in Britain without his fight against it. Lastly, I have included some pieces from Chesterton's 1922 book, Eugenics and Other Evils, which show, once again, what great prophetic insight he possessed.

Throughout the Outspoken Essays Dean Inge worries about the ‘white race’.

Religious institutions are by far the toughest and most long-lived of all human associations. Nothing could destroy the Christian Churches except the complete decay and submergence of the white race, a most improbable contingency.

Dean Inge on the Roman Catholic Church:

The Roman Catholic Church is a bitter and unscrupulous opponent both of eugenics and of birth-control. I read in one of their organs the astounding statement that ' since posterity does not exist, we can, properly speaking, have no duties towards it.' Only those who have tried to rouse the public conscience on these questions know how fierce is the antagonism of the greatest among the Christian Churches to any recognition of scientific ethics.

The prejudices against eugenics are still strong. They find vent in such strange ebullitions as a recent book by G. K. Chesterton, and in frequent denunciations on the part of Roman Catholics. It is, however, strange that Christians should be anti-eugenists. For though religion is the strongest of nurtural influences, the religion of Christ, like eugenics, makes nature, not nurture, its end.

Dean Inge draws comfort from the assurances of Havelock Ellis and Sir Francis Galton concerning the superior stock bred out of the Anglican clergy:

Vaerting and Havelock Ellis agree that the list of distinguished clergymen's sons is long and illustrious; and Sir Francis Galton told me in conversation that he considered the clergy the very best sires from the eugenic point of view. I will not speculate on the causes of this; but everyone must have noticed the extremely robust appearance of the old-fashioned parson (the younger clergy are mostly drawn from a different class), and the facts, as ascertained by impartial investigators, are certainly a strong argument against clerical celibacy.

Previously in the essay he traces his mother’s line starting from his great grandfather Ralph Churton, Archdeacon, Scholar and Divine. Modest about his own achievements he instructs us to ‘see Who’s Who’.

Insolens Verbum

I am reading The Man who was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton and as ever wonder whether his over use of paradoxes(oi) was a severe defect of his style. They seem like shiny, glittery objects which have a mesmeric effect and stun the judgement by their patent cleverality. It is, I suggest, a corollary of the principle mentioned by Coleridge in Essays on the Principles of Method:

For if he be, as we now assume, a well-educated man as well as a man of superior powers, he will not fail to follow the golden rule of Julius Caesar, Insolens verbum, tanquam scopulum, evitare. (De Analogia) Unless where new things necessitate new terms, he will avoid an unusual word as a rock.

Avoid reefs - you tend to get stuck on them. Unusual juxtapositions have that effect for they require unpacking. Richard Whately in his Rhetoric has the better procedure. First expatiate and then summate by the apothegm or other device. Oops, insolens verba.

Still, I enjoy his paradoxes, which is undoubtedly a defect in me:

"Listen to me," cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. "Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—"

((Full Quote from Caesar: tamquam scopulum, sic fugias inauditum atque insolens verbum trans:avoid a strange and unfamiliar word as you would a dangerous reef ))