MATTHEW AENOLD'S CRITICISM 99 



to kindle and quicken his feeling for beautiful and 

 sublime truths. Valuable as these things are, it is 

 to be admitted that those poems that are concrete 

 wholes, like the organic products of nature, will 

 always rank the higher with a pure artistic taste. 



Whatever be our opinion of the value of his criti- 

 cism, we must certainly credit Arnold with a steady 

 and sincere eifort to see things whole, to grasp the 

 totality of life, all the parts duly subordinated 

 and brought into harmony with one another. His 

 watchword on all occasions is totality, or perfection. 

 He has shown us the shortcomings of Puritanism, of 

 Liberalism, and of all forms of religious dissent, 

 when tried by the spirit of Hellenism. We have 

 been made to see very clearly wherein John Bull 

 is not a Greek, and we can divine the grounds 

 of his irritation by the comparison. It is because 

 the critic could look in the face of his great achieve- 

 ment in the world and blame him for being John 

 Bull. The concession that after all he at times in 

 his history exhibited the grand style, the style of 

 the Homeric poems, was a compliment he did not 

 appreciate. 



"English civilization, the humanizing, the bring- 

 ing into one harmonious and truly human life of 

 the whole body of English society, — that is what 

 interests me. I try to be a disinterested observer 

 of all which really helps and hinders that." 



He recognizes four principal needs in the life of 

 every people and community, — the need of conduct, 

 the need of beauty, the need of knowledge, and the 



