88 INDOOR STUDIES 



and critical acumen; and because, to borrow a sen- 

 tence of Goetbe, he helps us to " attain certainty and 

 security in the appreciation of things exactly as they 

 are." Everywhere in his books we are brought 

 under the influence of a mind which indeed does not 

 iill and dilate us, but which clears our vision, which 

 sets going a process of crystallization in our thoughts, 

 and brings our knowledge, on a certain range of 

 subjects, to a higher state of clearness and purity. 



Let us admit that he is not a man to build upon; 

 he is in no sense a founder; he lacks the broad, 

 paternal, sympathetic human element that the first 

 order of men possess. He lays the emphasis upon 

 the more select, high-bred qualities. All his sym- 

 pathies are with the influences which make for 

 correctness, for discipline, for taste, for perfection, 

 rather than those that favor power, freedom, origi- 

 nality, individuality, and the more heroic and pri- 

 mary qualities. 



It is to be owned that there is a quality, a stimu- 

 lus, and helpfulness, which we must not expect of 

 Arnold; a power of poetry which his poems, perfect 

 as they are, do not afford us, but which we get in 

 much greater measure from poets far his inferior in 

 intelligence and thoroughness of culture, as in a few 

 poems of Keats; a power of prose which his lucid 

 sentences do not hold ; and a power of criticism 

 which his coolness and disinterestedness do not 

 attain to. But this last we must probably go out- 

 side of English literature to find. 



Arnold was a civilizing and centralizing force. 



