G K Chesterton

The Defendant G K Chesterton

One of the strangest examples of the degree to which ordinary life is undervalued isthe example of popular literature, the vast mass of which we contentedly describeas vulgar. The boy's novelette may be ignorant in a literary sense, which is only likesaying that a modern novel is ignorant in the chemical sense, or the economicsense, or the astronomical sense; but it is not vulgar intrinsically-it is the actualcentre of a million flaming imaginations. In former centuries the educated class ignored the ruck of vulgar literature. Theyignored, and therefore did not, properly speaking, despise it. Simple ignorance andindifference does not inflate the character with pride. A man does not walk downthe street giving a haughty twirl to his moustaches at the thought of his superiorityto some variety of deep-sea fishes. The old scholars left the whole under-world ofpopular compositions in a similar darkness.