se of private
judgment. His admiration for the acknowledged masters of human
utterance--Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe--was genuine
and enthusiastic, and incomparably better informed than that of some
more conventional critics. Yet this cordial submission to recognized
authority, this honest loyalty to established reputation, did not
blind him to defects; did not seduce him into indiscriminating praise;
did not deter him from exposing the tendency to verbiage in Burke and
Jeremy Taylor, the excess blankness of much of Wordsworth's blank
verse, the undercurrent of mediocrity in Macaulay, the absurdities of
Mr. Ruskin's etymology. And as in great matters, so in small. Whatever
literary production was brought under Matthew Arnold's notice, his
judgment was clear, sympathetic, and independent. He had the readiest
appreciation of true excellence, a quick intolerance of turgidity and
inflation--of what he called endeavors to render platitude endurable
by making it pompous, and lively horror of affectation and
unreality."--Mr. GEORGE RUSSELL.

"In his work as literary critic Arnold has occupied a high place
among the foremost prose writers of the time. His style is in marked
contrast to the dithyrambic eloquence of Carlyle, or to Ruskin's
pure and radiant coloring. It is a quiet style, restrained, clear,
discriminating, incisive, with little glow of ardor or passion.
Notwithstanding its scrupulous assumption of urbanity, it is often
a merciless style, indescribably irritating to an opponent by
its undercurrent of sarcastic humor, and its calm air of assured
superiority. By his insistence on a high standard of technical
excellence, and by his admirable presentation of certain principles of
literary judgment, Arnold performed a great work for literature. On
the other hand, we miss here, as in his poetry, the human element, the
comprehensive sympathy that we recognize in the criticism of Carlyle.
Yet Carlyle could not have written the essay _On Translating Homer_,
with all its scholarly discrimination in style and technique, any
more than Arnold could have produced Carlyle's large-hearted essay on
_Burns_. Arnold's varied energy and highly trained intelligence
have been felt in many different fields. He has won a peculiar and
honorable place in the poetry of the century; he has excelled as
literary critic, he has labored in the cause of education, and
finally, in his _Culture and Anarchy_, he has set forth his sch