appearing at the end of 1872, with the date of 1873, passed through
three editions in that year, a fourth in 1874, and a fifth two years
later. It was thus by far Mr Arnold's most popular book; I repeat also
that it is quite his worst.

That it was in hopelessly bad taste here and there--in taste so bad
that Mr Arnold himself later cut out the most famous passage of the
book, to which accordingly we need here only allude--can be denied by
nobody except those persons who hold "good form" to be, as somebody or
other puts it, "an insular British delusion of the fifties and
sixties." But this excision of his and, I think, some others, besides
the "citations and illustrations" which he confesses to having
excluded from the popular edition, may give us the welcome leave to
deal very briefly with this side of the matter in other respects also.
We may pass over the fun which Mr Arnold had with Archbishop Thomson
(who, whatsoe'er the failings on his part, was at any rate a logician)
on the theory of causation; with the University of Cambridge about
_hominum divomque voluptas alma Venus_ (I have forgotten what was
the bearing of this joke, and it is probably not worth inquiring
into); with the Bishop of Gloucester about the Personality of God;
with the Athanasian Creed, and its "science got ruffled by fighting."
These things, as "form," class themselves; one mutters something well
known about _risu inepto_, and passes on. Such a tone on such a
subject can only be carried off completely by the gigantic strength of
Swift, though no doubt it is well enough in keeping with the merely
negative and destructive purpose of Voltaire. It would be cruel to
bring _Literature and Dogma_ into competition with _A Tale of a
Tub_; it would be more than unjust to bring it into comparison with
_Le Taureau blanc_. And neither comparison is necessary, because
the great fault of _Literature and Dogma_ appears, not when it is