MATTHEW ARNOLD'S CEITICISM 121 



with it and drawing out its secret by a kind of lit- 

 erary clairvoyance. 



Arnold has not, in the same measure, this kind of 

 power. He is less sympathetic and more analytical 

 in his method, and more given to definition and to 

 final judgments. He is also fuller of the spirit of 

 reproof and discipline than the rrenchman. The 

 force of nature and character are less with him, and 

 the authority of the rules and standards more. One 

 would rather submit a bold and original genius to 

 the judgment of the Frenchman; he would see more 

 reason for justifying it upon its own grounds, for 

 allowing it to be a law unto itself; but for a com- 

 parative judgment, to know where your original 

 genius departs from the highest standards, wherein 

 he transgresses the law, etc., one would go to Ar- 

 nold. 



A recent English reviewer says that there are but 

 two English authors of the present day whose works 

 are preeminent for quality of style, namely, John 

 Morley and Cardinal Newman. But one would say 

 that the man of all others among recent English 

 writers who had in a preeminent degree the gift of 

 what we call style — that quality in literature which 

 is like the sheen of a bird's plumage — was Matthew 

 Arnold. That Morley has this quality is by no 

 means so certain. Morley is a vigorous, brilliant, 

 versatile writer, but his quality is not distinctively 

 literary, and his sentences do not have a power and 

 a charm by virtue of their very texture and sequence 

 alone. Eew writers, of any time or land, have had 



