ing the mystic word of deliverance,
'Culture.' Culture, acquaintance with the best which has been thought
and done in the world, is his panacea for all ills.... In almost all
of his prose writing he attacks some form of 'Philistinism,' by which
word he characterized the narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction of
the British middle class.

"Arnold's tone is admirably fitted to the peculiar task he had to
perform.... In _Culture and Anarchy_ and many successive works, he
made his plea for the gospel of ideas with urbanity and playful grace,
as befitted the Hellenic spirit, bringing 'sweetness and light' into
the dark places of British prejudice. Sometimes, as in _Literature and
Dogma_, where he pleads for a more liberal and literary reading of the
Bible, his manner is quiet, suave, and gently persuasive. At other
times, as in _Friendship's Garland_, he shoots the arrows of his
sarcasm into the ranks of the Philistines with a delicate raillery and
scorn, all the more exasperating to his foes, because it is veiled by
a mock humility, and is scrupulously polite.

"Of Arnold's literary criticism, the most notable single piece is the
famous essay _On Translating Homer_, which deserves careful study
for the enlightenment it offers concerning many of the fundamental
questions of style. The essays on Wordsworth and on Byron from _Essays
in Criticism_, and that on Emerson, from _Discourses in America_,
furnish good examples of Arnold's charm of manner and weight of matter
in this province.

"The total impression which Arnold makes in his prose may be described
as that of a spiritual man-of-the-world. In comparison with Carlyle,
Buskin, and Newman, he is worldly. For the romantic passion and mystic
vision of these men he substitutes an ideal of balanced cultivation,
the ideal of the trained, sympathetic, cosmopolitan gentleman. He
marks a return to the conventions of life after the storm and stress
of the romantic age. Yet in his own way he also was a prophet and a
preacher, striving whole-heartedly to release his countrymen from
bondage to mean things, and pointing their gaze to that symmetry and
balance of character which has seemed to many noble minds the true
goal of human endeavor."--MOODY AND LOVETT, _A History of English
Literature_.

"As a literary critic, his taste, his temper, his judgment were pretty
nearly infallible. He combined a loyal and reasonable submission
to literary authority, with a free and even daring u