In William Blissett's masterful study The Porpoise and the Otter, we encounter dapper, choosy Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) and the massive untidy G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), together again in the great age of verbal parody, penetrating caricature, and the writer as personality. In considering their life and works, Professor Blissett discloses a host of new details bearing on how the two essayist-cartoonists viewed their Edwardian world with its roots in Victorian grandeur and facing a troubled new century.