GKC Wednesday

Chesterton Short(s)

When Max Beerbohm took over for Shaw as the drama critic for the English Saturday Review, Shaw introduced him with the following, "The younger generation is knocking at the door, and as I open it there steps sprightly in the incomparable Max."

"The incomparable Max." The name stuck, but Beerbohm mildly protested it:

Note that I am not incomparable. Compare me. Compare as essayist (for instance) with other essayists. Point out how much less human I am than Lamb, how much less intellectual than Hazlitt, and what an ignoramus beside Belloc; and how Chesterton's high spirits and abundance shame me.

Joseph Epstein, Partial Payments (Norton, 1989), p. 102.