able for students of prose. It is not so idiosyncratic / as are the styles of Carlyle or Mr. Ruskin, not so inimitably individual; it is more conventional and unimpassioned, more expressive of the mood of prose, with little of the color and few of the overtones of poetry. Yet it is an intensely vital style, and everywhere exemplifies not simply the logic of good writing, but the intimate correspondence of phrase with thought and mood that great writers of prose continually secure. Individual it therefore is, and yet not arbitrarily or forbiddingly individual. Its merits and possible shortcomings are analyzed at length in the Introduction.

The more important dates in Arnold's life and a list of his main publications are given just after the Introduction. A brief sketch of his life may be found in Men of the Time, ed. 1887; a longer, more appreciative sketch, in Eminent Persons, or Biographies reprinted from the Times, vol. iv. Mr. Andrew Lang's article on Arnold, in the Century for April, 1882, also contains much interesting biographical detail.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.,
August, 1897.

*The date assigned each Selection is that of its earliest appear-

ance in print.

INTRODUCTION.

I.

ADMIRERS of Arnold's prose find it well to admit frankly that his style has an unfortunate knack of exciting prejudice. Emerson has somewhere spoken of the unkind trick fate plays a man when it gives him a strut in his gait. Here and there in Arnold's prose, there is just a trace-sometimes more than a trace-of such a strut. He condescends to his readers with a gracious elaborateness; he is at great pains to make them feel that they are his equals; he undervalues himself playfully; he assures us that "he is an unlearned belletristic trifler ";' he insists over and over again that "he is an unpretending writer, without a philosophy based on interdependent, subordinate, and coherent principles." All this he does, of course, smilingly; but the smile seems to many on whom its favors fall, supercilious; and the playful undervaluation of self looks shrewdly like an affectation. He is very debonair, this apologetic writer; very self-assured; at times even jaunty."

2

Thorough-going admirers of Arnold have always 1 Celtic Literature, p. 21.

2 Culture and Anarchy, p. 152; Friendship's Garland, p. 273. 3 Various critics have complained of Arnold's tone and bearing. Mr. Saintsbury, for example, objects to his “mincing” manner; Professor Jowett, to his "flippancy."