outer note of a song not human, the look in it as of bright, bewildered eyes with tears not theirs and alien wonder in the watch of them, the tender, marvellous, simple beauty of the poem, its charm, as of a sound or a flower of the sea, set it and save it apart from all others in a niche of the memory." These glowing words of Mr. Swinburne cause us to recollect that readers have now an excellent opportunity of comparing his style with Mr. Arnold's by reading together "Tristram of Lyonesse" and "Tristram and Iseult," in which the same legend is handled. Mr. Swinburne has many qualities as a poet which Mr. Arnold has not, yet not a few will be inclined to think that Mr. Arnold's thoughtful and touching treatment of the story is superior to Mr. Swinburne's more gorgeous but less impressive mode of dealing with it.

Mr. Arnold's first, and certainly not worst, work as a critic appeared in the form of prefaces to his poems. In 1857 he was appointed Professor of Poetry in Oxford University, which led to his publishing two series of "Lectures on Translating Homer" (1861-62), in which he advocates the use of the hexameter as the proper metre for the English translator of the author of the "Iliad." In 1865 appeared his most celebrated prose work, the "Essays in Criticism," a precious little book, to the influence of which much of the spirit of current criticism may be traced. Defining criticism as "a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world," Mr. Arnold spared no pains to make critics feel that their duty is "to see things as they are," to shun insular prejudice and self-complacency, to avoid all eccentricity and exaggeration, never to praise with blind enthusiasm or to condemn with equally blind indignation, and to keep themselves pure from the contagion of personal, or political, or national bias. In this, as in all his prose writings, he treated with an air of bantering ridicule, beneath which lay a serious purpose, the "Philistinism" of his countrymen, defining Philistinism as "on the side of beauty and taste, vulgarity; on the side of morality and feeling, coarseness; on the side of mind and spirit, unintelli

Sir Arthur Helps.

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gence." One book, "Friendship's Garland" (1871), he has entirely devoted to an assault on the kingdom of Philistia. To religious thought Mr. Arnold has contributed largely. Among his writings in this department may be mentioned "Literature and Dogma," "St. Paul and Protestantism," and "Last Essays on Church and State." These cannot be criticised here. Their main purport has been thus tersely summarised: "His design is to retain the morality of the Old and New Testament without retaining what he thinks superstitious excrescences-the miracles, the promises of a physical life after death, and the like. In his view it was in righteousness, in "conduct," that the prophets and our Lord placed the kingdom of heaven. He, too, holds that happiness depends on morality, and that the Bible is the great teacher and inspirer of morality. On the Continent it is being rejected because of its want of conformity to physical science. In England and America, where religion is still so strong, Mr. Arnold hopes to anticipate and weaken the crude scepticism which rejects what is true and divine because it is mixed up with what is human and erroneous." Such views as these, it is hardly necessary to say, have met with much powerful opposition; and there are few of Mr. Arnold's admirers who will not join in regretting that his advocacy of them has occupied so much time that he would have better employed in the field of literary and social criticism. Other writings of Mr. Arnold's, besides those mentioned, are "Culture and Anarchy," "Mixed Essays," and "Irish Essays." He has also edited selections from Wordsworth and from Byron, with very suggestive introductory essays; and has done other similar work.

One of the most pleasing of the few writers of the Victorian era whose fame has been won by essay-writing, as distinct from critical and biographical articles, is Sir Arthur Helps (18171875). His "Essays Written in the Intervals of Business" (1841), "Claims of Labour" (1844), and “Friends in Council" (1847-49), are full of wise and kindly reflections on our everyday experiences, and of sagacious and high-minded advice.

on the conduct of life. He also won for himself a high posi tion as an historian by his "Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen" (1848–51), and his "Spanish Conquest in America" (1855-61), and wrote one or two interesting novels touching on social questions. The chief attraction of his writings lies in their pure and graceful style and their elevated and healthy moral tone.

One of the ablest journalists of the day, and one of the first writers on subjects connected with political history, is John Morley (born 1838). Mr. Morley early took to journalism, and was connected as editor with several not very successful journalistic adventures. In 1867 he succeeded Mr. G. H. Lewes as editor of the Fortnightly Review, which he conducted with marked ability till October 1882, when he was succeeded by Mr. T. H. S. Escott. Towards the close of 1880 he became editor of the Fall Mall Gazette, when that post was vacated by Mr. Frederick Greenwood, owing to the political views of himself and the proprietor of that paper being found to be at variance. On his journalistic labours Mr. Morley has brought to bear a moral earnestness, a depth of conviction, and a ripeness and power of style surpassed by no living newspaper-writer. His principal works are two volumes on "Edmund Burke," an "Essay on Compromise;" studies of some of the leading characters of the period of the French Revolution,-Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot; and a "Life of Richard Cobden," which may fairly claim to be more powerfully written and to contain more suggestive thought than any political biography in the language.

There are many other living essayists and critics who do credit to their age both by their literary skill and their patient research and wide knowledge. Among authors of the socalled "æsthetic" school, who have written with a refinement and subtlety of thought and an elaboration of form which would have been a stumbling-block to critics of the Macaulay and Jeffrey type, and which is foolishness to the Philistines, Mr. Walter H. Pater (born 1838) is especially noteworthy. His "Studies in the History of the Renaissance" (1873),

Cardinal Newman.

441 while assailed by many critics on account of their dilettanteism, the supreme position they assign to art, and as being permeated by the tone of an inner circle of illuminati, was welcomed by cultivated and discerning readers for the finish and picturesqueness of its composition. The "History of the Renaissance in Italy," the chief work of John Addington Symonds (born 1840), which was published in 1875-81, has been accepted as the standard authority on the subject, and is written in a style which, though occasionally overloaded with ornament, is rarely deficient in grace and colour. Rev. Mark Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford (born 1813), has, among other scholarly productions, written a "Life of Casaubon" (1875), a type of scholar now altogether extinct, with an insight and sympathy which, added to his wide knowledge of the subject, make it one of the best biographies of its class. There is a distinction and strenuousness about Mr. Pattison's style which lift it above the ordinary level, but at the same time it is sometimes careless and even ungrammatical. A host of other writers who have done good service to the cause of literature-Dr. John Brown, Leslie Stephen, William Minto, Edward Dowden, George Saintsbury, R. L. Stevenson, and many others-occur to us as we write, but these we must refrain from particularising.

With the theologians, the philosophers, and the men of science of our own times we do not propose to deal. To enter at any length upon their characteristics would lead us greatly beyond our limits, besides being in some measure alien to the purpose of this work; and to give, on the other hand, a barren catalogue of names and dates would be profitless and tedious. There are few writers whose style deserves higher praise than that of Cardinal Newman (born 1801), the leading spirit in the "Oxford movement," which may be said to have been at its height between 1835-45, and which finally led so many distinguished members of the Church of England within. the pale of the Church of Rome. The finish and urbanity of Cardinal Newman's prose have been universally commended, even by those who are most strenuously opposed to his opinions,

and he is also the author of some of the finest religious verse in the language. Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872), the leader of the "Broad Church" school, is a great figure in the history of theological thought in England; and the same may be said of the late Dean Stanley (1815-1881), who always wrote in an easy and graceful, if not very powerful style. The sermons of Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853) show very well the favourable influence which literary taste and culture may have on pulpit oratory. But we need not go on mentioning more names. In philosophy, the names of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), of Herbert Spencer (born 1820), and of Alexander Bain (1818), are perhaps the best known to general readers among those who have made their mark in the world of metaphysical speculation. The number and eminence of the men of science who appeared in the Victorian era will strike future historians as one of its most noticeable features. The theory of Evolution propounded by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) has had a powerful influence not only on scientific but on many other forms of thought-historic, scientific, and philosophical. The elegance and lucidity of style which is now a common characteristic of scientific men is one of the most marked features of the time. It is no longer the rule for chemists and natural historians to be incapable, when called on to address a general audience, of writing save in a jargon lacking ease, finish, and intelligibility. On the other hand, such men as Sir Charles Lyell, Michael Faraday, Professor Huxley, Professor Tyndall have shown that they can use the English language so skilfully, that had they made literature instead of science their specialty, they would assuredly have obtained scarcely less high honours in that profession than in that which they chose.