matter in other respects also.
We may pass over the fun which Mr Arnold had with Archbishop Thomson
(who, whatsoe'er the failings on his part, was at any rate a logician)
on the theory of causation; with the University of Cambridge about
_hominum divomque voluptas alma Venus_ (I have forgotten what was
the bearing of this joke, and it is probably not worth inquiring
into); with the Bishop of Gloucester about the Personality of God;
with the Athanasian Creed, and its "science got ruffled by fighting."
These things, as "form," class themselves; one mutters something well
known about _risu inepto_, and passes on. Such a tone on such a
subject can only be carried off completely by the gigantic strength of
Swift, though no doubt it is well enough in keeping with the merely
negative and destructive purpose of Voltaire. It would be cruel to
bring _Literature and Dogma_ into competition with _A Tale of a
Tub_; it would be more than unjust to bring it into comparison with
_Le Taureau blanc_. And neither comparison is necessary, because
the great fault of _Literature and Dogma_ appears, not when it is
considered as a piece of doubtful or not doubtful taste, but when it
is regarded as a serious composition.

In the first place, the child-like fashion in which Mr Arnold
swallowed the results of that very remarkable "science," Biblical
criticism, has always struck some readers with astonishment and a kind
of terror. This new La Fontaine asking everybody, "Avez-vous lu
Kuenen?" is a lesson more humbling to the pride of literature than
almost any that can be found. "The prophecy of the details of Peter's
death," we are told in _Literature and Dogma_, "is almost
certainly an addition after the event, _because it is not at all in
the manner of Jesus_." Observe that we have absolutely no details,
no evidence of any sort whatever, outside the Gospels for the "manner
of Jesus." It is not, as in some at least of the more risky exercises
of profane criticism in a similar field, as if we had some absolutely
or almost absolutely authenticated documents, and others to judge by
them. External evidence, except for the mere fact of Christ's
existence and death, we have none. So you must, by the inner light,
pick and choose out of the very same documents, resting on the very
same authority, what, according to your good pleasure, is "in the
manner of Jesus," and then black-mark the rest as being not so. Of
course, when Mr Arnold thus wrote, the met