Excerpt from Studies in European Literature: Being the Taylorian Lectures 1889-1899 Nearly a generation has passed since a distinguished son of Oxford, Mr. Matthew Arnold, declared that the chief need of our time - and especially the need of our own country - was a truer and more enlightened criticism. He did not speak merely of literature; he meant that we needed a fresh current of ideas about life in its various provinces. But he included the province of literature, the importance of which, and especially of poetry, no man estimated more highly than did Mr. Arnold. And as the essential prelude to a better criticism, he made his gallant, and far from unsuccessful, effort to disturb our national self-com placency, to make us feel that Philistia is not a land which is very far off; he made the experiment, which he regarded as in the best sense patriotic, to rearrange for our uses the tune of Rule Britannia in a minor key. His contribution to our self-knowledge was a valuable one, if wisely used. The elegant lamentations of the prophet over his people in captivity to the Philistines were more than elegant, they were inspired by a fine ideal of intellectual freedom, and were animated by a courageous h0pe that the ideal might be, in part at least.

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