I gather from Mr. Matthew Arnold's essays on criticism that the endeavour
of the critic should be to see the object criticized "as in itself it
really is," or as in another passage he says, "Real criticism obeys an
instinct prompting it to know the best that is known and thought in the
world." "In order to do or to be this, criticism," he says, in italics,
"ought to be _disinterested_." He points out how much English criticism
is not disinterested. He says, "We have the _Edinburgh Review_, existing
as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much play of mind as may suit
its being _that_; we have the _Quarterly Review_, existing as an organ of
the Tories, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we
have the _British Quarterly Review_, existing as an organ of the
political Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being
that; we have the _Times_ existing as an organ of the common satisfied
well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being
that. . . . Directly this play of mind wants to have more scope, and to
forget the pressure of practical considerations a little, it is checked,
it is made to feel the chain. We saw this the other day in the
extinction so much to be regretted of the _Home and Foreign Review_;
perhaps in no organ of criticism was there so much knowledge, so much
play of mind; but these could not save it. It must needs be that men
should act in sects and parties, that each of these sects and parties
should have its organ, and should make this organ subserve the interest
of its action; but it would be well too that there should be a criticism,
not the minister of those interests, nor their enemy, but absolutely and
entirely independent of them. No other criticism will ever attain any
real authority, or make any real way towards its end,--the creating a
current of true and fresh ideas."

This, it must be remembered, was written in 1865. Would Mr. Matthew
Arnold be happier now with the _Fortnightly_ and the _Nineteenth Century_