sinuation against opponents; and this, not from any
deficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from a
deliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from an
overruling ever-present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a
more than judicial calmness.

IX

ECCE HOMO[11]

[11]
_Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Guardian_,
7th February 1866.

This is a dangerous book to review. The critic of it, if he is prudent,
will feel that it is more than most books a touchstone of his own
capacity, and that in giving his judgment upon it he cannot help giving
his own measure and betraying what he is himself worth. All the
unconscious guiding which a name, even if hitherto unknown, gives to
opinion is wanting. The first aspect of the book is perplexing; closer
examination does not clear up all the questions which present
themselves; and many people, after they have read it through, will not
feel quite certain what it means. Much of what is on the surface and
much of what is inherent in the nature of the work will jar painfully
on many minds; while others who begin to read it under one set of
impressions may by the time they have got to the end complain of having
been taken in. There can be no doubt on which side the book is; but it
may be open to debate from which side it has come. The unknown champion
who comes into the lists with barred vizor and no cognisance on his
shield leaves it not long uncertain for which of the contending parties
he appears; but his weapons and his manner of fighting are not the
ordinary ones of the side which he takes; and there is a force in his
arm, and a sweep in his stroke, which is not that of common men. The
book is one which it is easy to take exception to, and perhaps still
easier to praise at random; but the subject is put before us in so
unusual a way, and one so removed from the ordinary grooves of thought,
that in trying to form an adequate estimate of the work as a whole, a
man feels as he does when he is in the presence of something utterly
unfamiliar and unique, when common rules and inferences fail him, and
in pronouncing upon which he must make something of a venture.

In making our own venture we will begin with what seems to us
incontestable. In the first place, but that it has been questioned, we
should say that there could be no question of the surpassing ability
which the book displays. It is far beyond the pow