he most provoking) of books; and the fascination and provocation
should surely have been felt even by others. As always with the
author, there is nothing easier than to pick holes in it: in fact, on
his own principles, one is simply bound to pick holes. He evidently
enjoyed himself very much in the _Preface:_ but it may be doubted
whether the severe Goddess of Taste can have altogether smiled on his
enjoyment. He is superciliously bland to the unlucky and no doubt
rather unwise Mr Wright (_v. supra_): he tells the _Guardian_ in a
periphrasis that it is dull, and "Presbyter Anglicanus" that he is
born of Hyrcanian tigers, and the editor of the _Saturday Review_ that
he is a late and embarrassed convert to the Philistines. He introduces
not merely Mr Spurgeon, a Philistine of some substance and memory, but
hapless forgotten shadows like "Mr Clay," "Mr Diffanger," "Inspector
Tanner," "Professor Pepper" to the contempt of the world. And then,
when we are beginning to find all this laughter rather
"thorn-crackling" and a little forced, the thing ends with the famous
and magnificent _epiphonema_ (as they would have said in the old days)
to Oxford, which must for ever conciliate all sons of hers and all
gracious outsiders to its author, just as it turns generation after
generation of her enemies sick with an agonised grin.

So, again, one may marvel, and almost grow angry, at the whim which
made Mr Arnold waste two whole essays on an amiable and interesting
person like Eugenie de Guerin and a mere nobody like her brother. They
are very pretty essays in themselves; but then (as Mr Arnold has
taught us), "all depends on the subject," and the subjects here are so
exceedingly unimportant! Besides, as he himself almost openly
confessed, and as everybody admits now, he really did not understand
French poetry at all. When we come to "Keats and Guerin," there is
nothing for it but to take refuge in Byron's

"_Such_ names coupled!"

and pass with averted face. Seventy-two mortal pages of Matthew
Arnold's, at his very best time, wasted on a brother and sister who
happened to be taken up by Sainte-Beuve!

But the rest of the book is entirely free from liability to any such
criticism as this. To some criticism--even to a good deal--it is
beyond doubt exposed. The first and most famous paper--the general
manifesto, as the earlier _Preface_ to the _Poems_ is the
special one, of its author's literary creed--on _The Function of
Critici