extol writers who are a little
problematical, who approach the second class, above the unquestioned
masters. And there was the yet further stimulus of redressing wrongs.
Gray, though a most scholarly poet, has always pleased the vulgar
rather than the critics, and he had the singular fate of being
dispraised both by Johnson and by Wordsworth. But in this paper of Mr
Arnold's the wheel came full circle. Everything that can possibly be
said for Gray--more than some of us would by any means indorse--is
here said for him: here he has provided an everlasting critical
harbour, into which he may retreat whensoever the popular or the
critical breeze turns adverse.

And the Keats, less disputable in its general estimate, is equally
good in itself, and specially interesting as a capital example of Mr
Arnold's polemic--_the_ capital example, indeed, if we except the
not wholly dissimilar but much later article on Shelley's _Life_.
He is rather unduly severe on the single letter of Keats which he
quotes; but that was his way, and it is after all only a justifiable
rhetorical _reculade_, with the intent to leap upon the maudlin
defenders of the poet as a sort of hero of M. Feydeau, and rend them.
The improvement of the mere fashion, as compared with the
fantasticalities of the _Friendship's Garland_ period, is simply
enormous. And the praise which follows is praise really in the grand
style--praise, the style and quality of which are positively rejoicing
to the heart from their combination of fervour and accuracy, from
their absolute fulfilment of the ideal of a word shockingly misused in
these latter days, the word Appreciation. The personal sympathy which
Mr Arnold evidently had with Gray neither makes nor mars here; all is
purely critical, purely literary. And yet higher praise has never been
given by any save the mere superlative-sloppers of the lower press,
nor juster criticism meted out by the veriest critical Rhadamanthus.
Of its scale and kind, this, I think, is the most perfect example of
Mr Arnold's critical power, and it is so late that it shows that power
to have been not merely far off exhaustion, but actually, like sound
old wine, certain to improve for years to come.

In the seven years that were left to him after the publication of the
_Byron_, Mr Arnold did not entirely confine himself to the
service of his only true mistress Literature. But he never fell again
so completely into the power of Duessa as he had fal