o notable
_Quarterly_ articles, already glanced at, on M. Scherer as "A
French Critic on Milton" and "A French Critic on Goethe." There was a
very strong sympathy, creditable to both, between the two. M. Scherer
went further than Mr Arnold in the negative character of his views on
religion; but they agreed as to dogma. His literary criticism was
somewhat harder and drier than Mr Arnold's; but the two agreed in
acuteness, lucidity, and a wide, if not quite a thoroughgoing, use of
the comparative method. Both were absolutely at one in their
uncompromising exaltation of "conduct." So that Mr Arnold was writing
quite _con amore_ when he took up his pen to recommend M. Scherer
to the British public, which mostly knew him not at that time.

But he did not begin directly with his main subject. He had always, as
we have seen, had a particular grudge at Macaulay, who indeed
represented in many ways the tendencies which Mr Arnold was born to
oppose. Now just at this time certain younger critics, while by no
means championing Macaulay generally, had raised pretty loud and
repeated protests against Mr Arnold's exaggerated depreciation of the
_Lays_ as "pinchbeck"; and I am rather disposed to think that he
took this opportunity for a sort of sally in flank. He fastens on one
of Macaulay's weakest points, a point the weakness of which was
admitted by Macaulay himself--the "gaudily and ungracefully
ornamented" (as its author calls it) _Essay on Milton_. And he
points out, with truth enough, that its "gaudy and ungraceful
ornament" is by no means its only fault--that it is bad as criticism,
that it shows no clear grasp of Milton's real merits, that it ignores
his faults, that it attributes to him qualities which were the very
reverse of his real qualities. He next deals slighter but still
telling blows at Addison, defends Johnson, in passing, as only
negatively deficient in the necessary qualifications, not positively
conventional like Addison, or rhetorical like Macaulay, and then with
a turn, itself excellently rhetorical in the good sense, passes to M.
Scherer's own dealings with the subject. Thenceforward he rather
effaces himself, and chiefly abstracts and summarises the "French
Critic's" deliverances, laying special stress on the encomiums given
to Milton's style. The piece is one of his most artfully constructed;
and I do not anywhere know a better example of ingenious and
attractive introduction of a friend, as we may call it,