One
difference between them is that Belloc writes sociology as a textbook
while Chesterton writes it as a human document. All the wealth of
imagination that Belloc pours into _The Path to Rome_ or _The Four
Men_ he sternly excludes from the Servile State. The poet, traveller,
essayist is one man, the sociologist another.
The third field of influence was history. Here Belloc did Chesterton
two great services--he restored the proportion of English history,
and he put England back into its context. Since the Reformation,
English history had been written with all the stress on the
Protestant period. Lingard had written earlier but had not been
popularized and certainly would not be used at St. Paul's School. And
even Lingard had laid little stress on the social effects of the
Reformation. Mr. Hammond's contemporary work on English social
history fitted into Belloc's more vivid if less documented
vision--none of this could be disregarded by later writers.
Belloc, too, restored that earlier England to the Christendom to
which it belonged.
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