Enthusiasts for Belloc always seem to have to work hard to justify their enthusiasm, especially when they are trying to convince those who do not share Belloc's self-consciously old-fashioned Catholic sensibilities. In the Introduction, Ronald Knox earnestly attempts to set Belloc alongside Gray, or Pope, or Dryden, and - mentioning his classical learning - attempts to praise his cadences above those of Housman; but even he is forced to agree with Belloc's own self-assessment as a mainly casual versifier, not a poet. Other than a couple of immortal epigrams, barely a dozen of these verses struck me as worthy of note, and several of them I felt I could improve myself! The tone is often redolent of his friend Chesterton in its combination of bold English patriotism, not-always-understated Catholic piety, romanticized love of Charlemagne and the Crusaders, biting humour, and satiric wit; but he doesn't really have Chesterton's poetic imagination. He nearly succeeds in some of his simple lyrics, though sharing with Housman and Hardy the tendency to mar a plain and beautiful line with a Latinate polysyllable; but too often, having found a good line or phrase, he resorts to repeating it, and the rhythm of his verse is too often irregular or deficient when with more care it could have been made less jarringly uneven. In longer verses, he often spends more time than is justified on building up some portentous passage towards a deliberately banal conclusion. Given more time away from his professional prose writing, I suppose he might have been able to produce poetry on a level with the best of Chesterton's; but I rather suspect that he would not, in the event, have bothered. MB 16-i-2019 ( )