rable
taste, not a grain too much or too little of that _moi_ so
_haissable_ in excess, so piquant as a mere seasoning, being
introduced: and the panegyric is skilful in the extreme. To be sure,
Mr Hamerton reappears, and Mr Arnold joins in the chorus of delight
because the French peasant no longer takes off his hat. Alas! there is
no need to go to the country of _La Terre_ to discover this sign
of moral elevation. But the delusion itself is only another proof of
Mr Arnold's constancy to his early ideas. And looking back on the
whole volume, one is almost tempted to say that, barring the first
_Essays in Criticism_ itself, he had written no better book.

Before very long the skill in selecting and editing which had been
first applied to Johnson's _Lives_ found extended opportunities.
Mr Arnold had much earlier, in the _Essays in Criticism_,
expressed a wish that the practice of introducing books by a critical
and biographical Essay, which had long been naturalised in France, and
had in former times not been unknown in England, should be revived
among us. His words had been heard even before he himself took up the
practice, and for about the usual time--your thirty years is as a
matter of fact your generation--it flourished and prospered, not let
us hope to the great detriment of readers, and certainly to the modest
advantage of the public man when vexed by want of pence. Nor can it
exactly be said to have ceased--though for some years grumbles have
been uttered. "Why," says one haughty critic,--"why mar a beautiful
edition of So-and-so's works by incorporating with them this or that
man's estimate of their value?" "The publishers," says an inspired
_communique_, "are beginning to recognise that the public has no
need of such things in the case of works of established repute, of
which there is nothing new to be said." No doubt both these are
genuine utterances: no doubt the haughty critic would have steadily
refused to "mar" the book by _his_ estimate if he had been asked
to do so; no doubt the particular firm of publishers were not in the
least influenced by a desire to save the ten, twenty, fifty, or a
hundred guineas which this or that man might have demanded for saying
nothing new.

But Mr Arnold did not agree with these severe folk. He thought--and
not a few good wits have thought with him--not only that these
Introductions are an opportunity for men like himself, with original
gifts of thought and style, to disp