y, or in the main, or even in any considerable part, a
literary interest. With Spinoza it is a philosophical-religious
interest, with Marcus Aurelius a moral-religious, almost purely. The
one may indeed illustrate that attempt to see things in a perfectly
white light which Mr Arnold thought so important in literature; the
other, that attention to conduct which he thought more important
still. But they illustrate these things in themselves, not in relation
to literature. They are less literary even than St Francis; far less
than the author of the _Imitation_.

It cannot therefore but be suspected that in including them Mr Arnold,
unconsciously perhaps, but more probably with some consciousness, was
feeling his way towards that wide extension of the province of the
critic, that resurrection of the general Socratic attitude, which he
afterwards adventured. But it cannot be said that his experiments are
on this particular occasion in any way disastrous. With both his
subjects he had the very strongest sympathy--with Spinoza (as already
with Heine) as a remarkable example of the Hebraic spirit and genius,
rebellious to or transcending the usual limitations of Hebraism; with
Marcus Aurelius as an example of that non-Christian morality and
religiosity which also had so strong an attraction for him. There is
no trace in either essay of the disquieting and almost dismaying
jocularity which was later to invade his discussion of such things: we
are still far from Bottles; the three Lord Shaftesburys relieve us by
not even threatening to appear. And accordingly the two essays add in
no small degree, though somewhat after the fashion of an appendix or
belated episode, to the charm of the book. They have an unction which
never, as it so often does in the case of Mr Arnold's dangerous master
and model Renan, degenerates into unctuosity; they are nobly serious,
but without being in the least dull; they contain some exceedingly
just and at the same time perfectly urbane criticism of the ordinary
reviewing kind, and though they are not without instances of the
author's by-blows of slightly unproved opinion, yet these are by no
means eminent in them, and are not of a provocative nature. And I do
not think it fanciful to suppose that the note of grave if
unclassified piety, of reconciliation and resignation, with which they
close the book, was intended--that it was a deliberate "evening
voluntary" to play out of church the assistants at a