ration and gratitude, the time has gone by for English charlatanry
to expect from our hands anything but the scourging it deserves.

_Essays in Criticism_. By MATTHEW ARNOLD. Boston: Ticknor &
Fields.

A more satisfactory volume of English prose than this has not come into
our hands since the first appearance of the famous "Essays and Reviews."
Differing widely from that collection in kind and scope, it yet belongs
in the main to the same school of liberal thought in which England has
made of late such rapid strides.

As a poet, Matthew Arnold had been known among us for a decade or more
of years, and, though not celebrated with the wide popularity of
Tennyson, had been as cordially cherished as the Laureate himself by all
who valued in poetry the indications of profound intellectual experience
as well as the singer's native gift. Those who are most familiar with
the verses of the Oxford Professor will be least surprised with the
critical insight and judicial wisdom of these Essays. For, independently
of any question of natural affinity or natural incompatibility between
the functions of bard and critic, there is that in Mr. Arnold's poetry
which makes the fortune of the essayist,--an intense subjectiveness
united to an analytic subtilty, which would mar the beauty of his verse,
as it certainly does that of Mr. Browning, were it not compensated by a
depth and truth of poetic feeling, in which Arnold far excels Browning,
and has no superior among recent English poets. Some of his poems are
critical essays, without losing the distinctive character of poetry; and
some of his best criticisms are done in verse. What better, for example,
than the sentence on Byron in "Memorial Verses"?

"He taught us little: but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of Passion with Eternal Law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife."

Or that on Goethe in "Obermann"?

"For he pursued a lonely road,
His eye on Nature's plan,--
Neither made man too much a God,
Nor God too much a man."

Of living Englishmen, it seems to us that Matthew Arnold combines in the
highest degree great wealth of literary culture with the deepest
thoughtfulness. This makes the charm of the present volume. Also, to his
honor be it said,--and let due commendation be given to that trait,--he
i