PREFACE
Poet, sailor, Grizzlebeard—this trinity sums up, not only the man who is Hilaire Belloc, but the vision of integrated humanity concretized in his work. Bellocian humanism is Hilaire Belloc grasped in the essence of his spirit, seen at the center of his being. Only a detailed biography will reveal to this generation the full flavour, the magnificence, of this latter-day Villon.
Nonetheless it seemed to me that the perfections symbolized by the Poet, the Sailor, the Grizzlebeard are not the peculiarities of one man whose life has spanned almost two ages. They are perfections essential to the integral completion of Christian humanity. With this thesis in mind, I wrote this book: an attempt not only to introduce the contemporary reader to Belloc, but also an attempt to disengage, from the vast corpus of Bellociana, those themes that are of permanent value.
What follows is not a biography, nor is it a book of literary criticism. It is, if you like, a “metaphysics of the concrete” seen through the eyes of a man rooted in the things that are.
CONTENTS
| ONE | Page |
| No Alienated Man | 1 |
| TWO | |
| Grizzlebeard: History From Within | 49 |
| THREE | |
| Christendom: “Esto Perpetua” | 84 |
| CONCLUSION | |
| The Future Place of Hilaire Belloc in English Letters | 101 |
| NOTES | 105 |
| List of Editions Cited | 106 |