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Never did Demosthenes expose their faults to the Athenians more frankly
and fearlessly, and with such manliness that at the time of his death
there was no person in the British Islands more generally respected. On
a trial vote that was taken by a London newspaper for membership to a
proposed British Academy, Gladstone received the largest number of
ballots, Tennyson the next and Matthew Arnold came third. He was
considered the best literary critic in England, and if he had outlived
Tennyson he would have succeeded him as laureate. He showed a dignified
reserve in only publishing a very few books. Two small volumes of
poetry, his "Essays in Criticism", which has become a standard work, and
his American essays, are all that I know of. For all that, few writers
were more celebrated in his own time, and it may be said that he fully
deserved his monument in Westminster Abbey.
However, it must be admitted that as a critic he had certain
peculiarities. He was, perhaps, too sensitive and impressible; too
easily thrown off his guard by qualities in a writer for which he had an
aversion. He would not only mention them once, but again and again. He
ignored Schiller, who was at least one of the world's greatest
dramatists; he was dissatisfied with Tennyson and could not endure
Shelley at all. His attack on Francis Newman's translation of the
"Iliad" was so severe that he finally discovered the fact himself.
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