Four Men: A Farrago

"It has been proved in the life of every man that though his loves are human, and therefore changeable, yet in proportion as he attaches them to things unchangeable, so they mature and broaden."

"Purportedly set in 1902, this tale was begun in 1907 but not published until 1912. The pilgrims here are Belloc and three others who meet on October 29 in an inn called the George, just inside Sussex, and decide to walk from one end of the county to the other. The idea for this walk is hatched by Belloc himself who feels that yearning of Odysseus 'to see once more the smoke going up from his own land, and after that to die.' He is soon joined by the three who, rather than use their given names, are each called by a nom-de-promenade: the Sailor, the Poet, and Grizzlebeard.... The attentive reader of Belloc will sense that they are themselves aspects of Belloc, who goes by the name 'Myself' on this journey. Like The Path to Rome, this farrago includes all that one could want of poetic descriptions of the land and Belloc's own pencil sketches of it mingled with the jokes, songs, stories, and profundities for which Belloc is justly famous."-David Deavel, The Imaginative Conservative

"Few writers have felt so intensely the sense of exile, and hence the love of home, to the degree to which it is invoked by Belloc.... It is in this soil-soul nexus that the nub of Belloc's profundity is to be discovered. It manifests itself in the tension between permanence and mutability and finds infectious expression in the perfect balance between wistfulness and whimsy. Although these qualities are to be found in all of Belloc's work, as expressions of the very spirit of the man himself, they are to be found to an exceptional degree in The Path to Rome and The Four Men.... The Four Men rivals it, and perhaps surpasses it, as a vehicle for Belloc's wit and wisdom, or as an outpouring of his irrepressible personality."-Joseph Pearce, Crisis Magazine

"Humorous, thought-provoking, evoking friendship, tradition, good beer and song, and recovering, 'while they yet could be recovered, the principal joys of the soul, ' The Four Men is one of Belloc's most delightful literary works."-Sean P. Dailey