MATTHEW AENOLD'S CEITIOISM 89 



Out of the spirit -wliicli lie begets, and whicli begat 

 him, do not come the great leaders and reformers, 

 the one-sided, headstrong, fanatical men, men that 

 serve as the plowshare of the destinies to break up 

 the stubborn glebe of the world; but the wise, the 

 correct, the urbane, the flexible men, the men who 

 reap and enjoy and beautify the world. He says, 

 in. effect, there are enough insisting upon force, upon 

 genius, upon independence, upon rights ; he will lay 

 the stress upon culture, and upon duties, and upon 

 those things that make for perfection. 



The more vital and active forces of English liter- 

 ature of our century have been mainly forces of ex- 

 pansion and revolution, or Protestant forces; our 

 most puissant voices have been voices of dissent, and 

 have been a stimulus to individuality, separatism, 

 and to independence. But here is a voice of an- 

 other order; a voice closely allied to the best spirit 

 of Catholicism; one from which we will not learn 

 hero-worship, or Puritanism, or nonconformity, or 

 catch the spark of enthusiasm, or evolution, but 

 from which we learn the beauty of urbanity, and 

 the value of clear and fresh ideas. 



One never doubts Arnold's ability to estimate a 

 purely literary and artistic force, but one sees that it 

 is by no means certain that he will fully appreciate 

 a force of character, a force of patriotism, of con- 

 science, of religion, or any of the more violent revo- 

 lutionary forces, — that is, apart from a literary rep- 

 resentation of them, — because his point of view does 

 not command these things so completely as it does 



