eved?" and on which critics agree to differ. We may include with
them the disparaging passage on Gautier (of whom I suspect Mr Arnold
knew little, and whom he was not quite fitted to judge had he known
more) and the exaltation of "life" and "conduct" and all the rest of
it. These are the colours of the regiment, the blazonry of the knight;
we take them with it and him, and having once said our say against
them, pass them as admitted.

But what is really precious is first the excellent criticism scattered
broadcast all over the essay, and secondly, the onslaught on the
Wordsworthians. They might perhaps retort with a _tu quoque_.
When Mr Arnold attacks these poor folk for saying that Wordsworth's
poetry is precious because its philosophy is sound, we remember a
certain Preface with its "all depends on the subject," and chuckle a
little, a very little. But Mr Arnold is right here. No philosophy, no
subject, will make poetry without poetical treatment, and the
consequence is that _The Excursion_ and _The Prelude_ are,
as wholes, not good poems at all. They contain, indeed, passages of
magnificent poetry. But how one longs, how, as one sees from this
essay, Mr Arnold longed, for some mercury-process which would simply
amalgamate the gold out of them and allow us to throw the dross down
any nearest cataract, or let it be blown away by any casual hurricane!

The Byron paper contains more disputable statements--indeed the
passage about Shelley, if it were quite serious, which may be doubted,
would almost disqualify Mr Arnold as a critic of poetry. But it is
hardly less interesting, and scarcely at all less valuable. In the
first place, it is a very great thing that a man should be able to
admire both Byron and Wordsworth. Of a mere Byronite, indeed, Mr
Arnold has even less than he has of a Wordsworthian pure and simple.
He makes the most damaging admissions; he has to fall back on Goethe
for comfort and confirmation; he is greatly disturbed by M. Scherer's
rough treatment of his subject. In no essay, I think, does he quote so
much from others, does he seem to feel it such a relief to find a
backer, a somebody to fight with on a side point, a somebody (for
instance Professor Nichol) to correct and gloss and digress upon while
complimenting him. Mr Arnold is obviously not at ease in this
Zion--which indeed is a Zion of an odd kind. Yet this very uneasiness
gives to the _Essay_ a glancing variety, a sort of animation and
excite