considered by other generations from the merely formal
point of view. Nor can those claims be said to be very securely based
in respect of matter. It is impossible to believe that posterity will
trouble itself about the dreary apologetics of undogmatism on which he
wasted so much precious time and energy; they will have been arranged
by the Prince's governor on the shelves, with Hobbes's mathematics and
Southey's political essays. "But the criticism," it will be said,
"_that_ ought to endure." No doubt from some points of view it ought,
but will it? So long, or as soon, as English literature is
intelligently taught in universities, it is sure of its place in any
decently arranged course of Higher Rhetoric; so long, or as soon, as
critics consider themselves bound to study the history and documents
of their business, it will be read by them. But what hold does this
give it? Certainly not a stronger hold than that of Dryden's _Essay of
Dramatic Poesy_, which, though some of us may know it by heart, can
scarcely be said to be a commonly read classic.

The fact is--and no one knew this fact more thoroughly, or would have
acknowledged it more frankly, than Mr Arnold himself--that criticism
has, of all literature that is really literature, the most precarious
existence. Each generation likes, and is hardly wrong in liking, to
create for itself in this province, to which creation is so scornfully
denied by some; and old critics are to all but experts (and apparently
to some of them) as useless as old moons. Nor can one help regretting
that so long a time has been lost in putting before the public a
cheap, complete, handy, and fairly handsome edition of the whole of Mr
Arnold's prose. There is no doubt at all that the existence of such an
edition, even before his death, was part cause, and a large part of
the cause, of the great and continued popularity of De Quincey; and it
is a thousand pities that, before a generation arises which knows him
not, Mr Arnold is not allowed the same chance. As it is, not a little
of his work has never been reprinted at all; some of the rest is
difficult of access, and what there is exists in numerous volumes of
different forms, some cheap, some dear, the whole cumbersome. And if
his prose work seems to me inferior to his poetical in absolute and
perennial value, its value is still very great. Not so much English
prose has that character of grace, of elegance, which has been
vindicated for this,