whole volume, one is almost tempted to say that, barring the first _Essays in Criticism_ itself, he had written no better book. Before very long the skill in selecting and editing which had been first applied to Johnson's _Lives_ found extended opportunities. Mr Arnold had much earlier, in the _Essays in Criticism_, expressed a wish that the practice of introducing books by a critical and biographical Essay, which had long been naturalised in France, and had in former times not been unknown in England, should be revived among us. His words had been heard even before he himself took up the practice, and for about the usual time--your thirty years is as a matter of fact your generation--it flourished and prospered, not let us hope to the great detriment of readers, and certainly to the modest advantage of the public man when vexed by want of pence. Nor can it exactly be said to have ceased--though for some years grumbles have been uttered. "Why," says one haughty critic,--"why mar a beautiful edition of So-and-so's works by incorporating with them this or that man's estimate of their value?" "The publishers," says an inspired _communique_, "are beginning to recognise that the public has no need of such things in the case of works of established repute, of which there is nothing new to be said." No doubt both these are genuine utterances: no doubt the haughty critic would have steadily refused to "mar" the book by _his_ estimate if he had been asked to do so; no doubt the particular firm of publishers were not in the least influenced by a desire to save the ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred guineas which this or that man might have demanded for saying nothing new.