SOURCE: “A Teutonic Minstrel,” in The New Statesman, Vol. XX, No. 505, December 16, 1922, pp. 335-36.

In the following review of Chesterton's The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses, H. E. P. describes Chesterton as a patriotic poet whose facility with words usually overcomes any flaws in his verse.

There are some books of verse which to criticise scrupulously seems almost a sacrilege. They may be full of eccentricities, carelessness, and distortions of metaphor and expression, laying themselves open to protest or damaging parody, but withal so full of vision, emotion, and rich music that the confounding cussedness and impish obscurity which sprawls into every third page gets very nearly obliterated when an unprejudiced reviewer pronounces a final judgment. Mr. G. K. Chesterton's Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses is one of these extraordinary books. The present reviewer would begin by saying that Mr. Chesterton is intensely original...