lsewhere, With a mere passing indication of the fact that Matthew
Arnold here, like every good critic of this century, avowedly pursues
that plan of "placing" writers which some of his own admirers so
foolishly decry, I may observe that this is a _locus classicus_
for his own special kind of criticism. It is possible--I do not know
whether he did so--that Sir Mountstuart may, on receiving the letter,
have smiled and thought of "Mon siege est fait"; but I am sure he
would be the first to admit that the cases were different. I do not
myself think that Mr Arnold's strong point was that complete grasp of
a literary personality, and its place, which some critics aim at but
which few achieve. His impatience--here perhaps half implied and later
openly avowed--of the historic estimate in literature, would of itself
have made this process irksome to him. But on the lines of his own
special vocation as a critic it was not only irksome, it was
unnecessary. His function was to mark the special--perhaps it would be
safer to say _a_ special--tendency of his man, and to bring that
out with all his devices of ingenious reduplication, fascinating
rhetoric, and skilful parading of certain favourite axioms and general
principles. This function would not have been assisted--I think it
nearly certain that it would have been hampered and baulked--by that
attempt to find "the whole" which the Greek philosopher and poet so
sadly and so truly declares that few boast to find. It was a side, a
face, a phase of each man and writer, that he wished to bring out;
and, though he might sometimes exaggerate this, yet his exaggeration
was scarcely illegitimate. To bring out something he had to block out
much. If he had attempted to show the whole Goethe, the whole Heine,
the whole Homer or Shakespeare even, they would have been difficult if
not impossible to group and to compare in the fashion in which he
wished to deal with them.

And except on the sheer assumption, which is surely a fallacy, that
_suppressio veri_ is always and not only sometimes _suggestio
falsi_, I do not see that he exceeded a due licence in this matter,
while that he was wise in his generation there can be no doubt. He
wanted to influence the average Englishman, and he knew perfectly well
there is nothing the average Englishman dislikes so much as guarded
and elaborately conditioned statements. The immense popularity and
influence of Macaulay had been due to his hatred of half-ligh