92 INDOOR STUDIES 



what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty 

 and fitness of things." 



The spirit in which he approaches Butler's 

 " Analogy " is a fair sample of the spirit in which 

 he approaches most of his themes : — 



"Elsewhere I have remarked what advantage But- 

 ler had against the Deists of his own time in the 

 line of argument which he chose. But how does 

 his argument in itself stand the scrutiny of one who 

 has no counter-thesis, such as that of the Deists, to 

 make good against Butler? How does it affect one 

 who has no wish at all to doubt or cavil, like the 

 loose wits of fashionable society who angered Butler, 

 still less any wish to mock, but who comes to the 

 'Analogy ' with an honest desire to receive from it 

 anything which he finds he can use 1 " 



Matthew Arnold was probably the most deeply 

 imbued with the spirit of Greek culture of any Eng- 

 lish man of letters of our time. It is not that he 

 brings a modern mind to classic themes, as has been 

 so often done by our poets and essayists, but that he 

 brings a classic mind to modern themes, herein differ- 

 ing so widely from such a writer, for instance, as 

 Mr. Addington Symonds, who has written so much 

 and so well upon classic subjects, but in the modern 

 romantic spirit, rather than with the pure simplicity 

 of the antique, — in the spirit whose ruling sense is 

 a sense of the measureless, rather than of measure. 

 "Hellenic virtue," says Dr. Curtius, the German 

 historian of Greece, "consisted in measure," — "a 

 wise observance of right measure in all things." 



