LINES ON A NEW HISTORY
Weary of Macaulay, never nodding,
Weary of the stodginess of Stubbs,
Weary of the scientific plodding
Of the school that only digs and grubs;
I salute, with grateful admiration
Foreign to the hireling eulogist,
Chesterton’s red hot self-revelation
In the guise of England’s annalist.
Here is no parade of erudition,
No pretence of calm judicial tone,
But the stimulating ebullition
Of a sort of humanized cyclone;
Unafraid of flagrant paradoxes,
Unashamed of often seeing red,
Here’s a thinker who the compass boxes
Standing most at ease upon his head.
Yet with all this acrobatic frolic
There’s a core of sanity behind
Madness that is never melancholic,
Passion never cruel or unkind;
And, although his wealth of purple patches
Some precisians may excessive deem,
Still the decoration always matches
Something rich and splendid in the theme.
Not a textbook—that may be admitted—
Full of dates and Treaties and of Pacts,
For our author cannot be acquitted
Of a liberal handling of his facts;
But a stirring proof of Britain’s title,
Less in Empire than in soul, of “Great,”
And a frank and generous recital
Of “the glories of our blood and State.”