The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-31
Matthew Arnold's Criticisms.

He was not conscious of a deep debt to living writers, His fathers beneh- cent influence he unfailingly acknowl- edged, and perhaps 1t is not unfair to say-judging form these letters-that to obtain Matthew Arnold's unquali-
 fled admiration the recipient must needs be an Arnold. Clough, he ad- mits, in some degree helped to, form his mind; from Sainte-Beuve he learnt not Q little; but he saw with too much of sad or amused lucidity the defects of his eminent contemporaries to be able to sQuander on any an unmingled en- thusiasm. Tennyson is mot great and powerful spirit in any line'; with all his temperament and artistic skill'' he is deficient in intellectual power" Mrs Browning is "hopelessly confirmed in her alteration from health, nature, beauty and truth" Thackeray is mot,
 to my thinking, a great writer" The mind of Charlotte Bronte contains nothing but hunger, rebellion and rage" F'roude has very sinister ways of looking at history" Freeman is "an ardent, learned and honest man, but he is a ferocious pedant." Stubbs lis not
 ferocious, but not without his dash of
 pedantry." MT Hutton of the Specta-
 tor has the fault of seeing so very far
 into milestone" Bishop Wilberforce
 has a truly emotional spirit" but mo
 real power of mind" Ruskin it is im-
 possible to like, and yet, improved by evening dress, plain black and white, and by his fancy being forbidden to range through the world of colored cra- vats," he grows slightly attract i've. Carlyle "I never much liked He seemed to me to be carrying coals to Newcastle" as our proverb says: preaching earnestness to nation which had plenty of it by nature" Henry Taylor is mot very interesting; l he talks too slow and is little pom pOus" Victor Hugo is not to be taken
 'so prodigiously au serieuX' as Renan seems to take him. Swnburne is "a sort of pseudo-Shelley with fatal
 habit of using hundred words where one would suffice" Saeley is lacking in lucidity. Disraelis speeches are heavy pompous pounding" and Glad- stones are emotional verbiage" Lord Salisbury is ga dangerous man,
 chiefly from want of any fine sense and experience of literature and it's benefi- cent functions"
 1 Had any of these eminent persons
 been a cat, a dog, a pony, a pig, Mat thew Arnold would have adored them,
 for he lavishes unstinted devotion on
 members of each species; to be a poet, | a historian, a critic, or statesman
 was to run the risk of forfeiting his complete esteem. Yet it should be re- membered that his criticism was with
 out real bitterness: it was the flick of a 1 whip carried By his intelligence, not an i outbreak of cynicism or misanthropy | I speak as one who was a victim I | had not to wait until now to ascertain | that Professor Dowden in his Life of l Shelley was "toO much for my pa-
 tience." It would have been pleasure 1 to me if Matthew Arnold had liked anything that I had written. But one
 does not need bribe to feel honor and
 affection for one to whom we all owe
 so much; and sometimes it is good to,
 have a loyal regard which is not re-
 turned. My feeling towards the writer
 of these letters is expressed in Goethe's
 words: 'I love you; what is that to
 ?"-Edwagd Dowden in London l Saturday Review.