The following extracts on Arnold as a critic are quoted from
well-known authorities.

"Arnold's prose has little trace of the wistful melancholy of his
verse. It is almost always urbane, vivacious, light-hearted. The
classical bent of his mind shows itself here, unmixed with the
inheritance of romantic feeling which colors his poetry. Not only is
his prose classical in quality, by virtue of its restraint, of its
definite aim, and of the dry white light of intellect which suffuses
it; but the doctrine which he spent his life in preaching is based
upon a classical ideal, the ideal of symmetry, wholeness, or, as he
daringly called it, _perfection_.... Wherever, in religion, politics,
education, or literature, he saw his countrymen under the domination
of narrow ideals, he came speaking the mystic word of deliverance,
'Culture.' Culture, acquaintance with the best which has been thought
and done in the world, is his panacea for all ills.... In almost all
of his prose writing he attacks some form of 'Philistinism,' by which
word he characterized the narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction of
the British middle class.

"Arnold's tone is admirably fitted to the peculiar task he had to
perform.... In _Culture and Anarchy_ and many successive works, he
made his plea for the gospel of ideas with urbanity and playful grace,
as befitted the Hellenic spirit, bringing 'sweetness and light' into
the dark places of British prejudice. Sometimes, as in _Literature and
Dogma_, where he pleads for a more liberal and literary reading of the
Bible, his manner is quiet, suave, and gently persuasive. At other
times, as in _Friendship's Garland_, he shoots the arrows of his
sarcasm into the ranks of the Philistines with a delicate raillery and
scorn, all the more exasperating to his foes, because it is veiled by