s
of the second. In the study of art, poetry, or philosophy, he had the
most undivided and disinterested love for the object in itself, the
greatest aversion to mixing up with it anything accidental or personal.
His interest was in literature itself; and it was this which gave so
rare a stamp to his character, which kept him so free from all taint of
littleness. In the saturnalia of ignoble personal passions, of which
the struggle for literary success, in old and crowded communities,
offers so sad a spectacle, he never mingled. He had not yet traduced his
friends, nor flattered his enemies, nor disparaged what he admired, nor
praised what he despised. Those who knew him well had the conviction
that, even with time, these literary arts would never be his. His poem,
_The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich_, has some admirable Homeric
qualities--out-of-doors freshness, life, naturalness, buoyant rapidity.
Some of the expressions in that poem ... come back now to my ear with
the true Homeric ring. But that in him of which I think oftenest is the
Homeric simplicity of his literary life."

We have seen more than once that, according to Arnold, poetry was a
criticism of life; but he always maintained that this was true of poetry
only because poetry is part of literature, and all literature was a
criticism of life. One may demur to the statement as greatly too
unguarded in its terms, but certainly he was true to his own doctrine,
and in practice, from first to last, he used literature as a medium for
criticising the life and conduct of his fellow-men. In the last year of
his life he produced with approbation "a favourite saying of Ptolemy the
astronomer, which Bacon quotes in its Latin version thus:--_Quum fini
appropinquas, bonum cum augmento operare_"--"As you draw near to your
latter end, redouble your efforts to do good." And this redoubled effort
was in his case all of a piece with what had gone before. In 1863 he
wrote to a friend: "In trying to heal the British demoniac, true
doctrine is not enough; one must convey the true doctrine with studied
moderation; for, if one commits the least extravagance, the poor madman
seizes hold of this, tears and rends it, and quite fails to perceive
that you have said anything else."

All his literary life was spent in trying to convey "true doctrine with
studied moderation." And in his true doctrine nothing was more
conspicuous than his insistence, early and late, on the supreme
importance o