The Byron paper contains more disputable statements--indeed the passage about Shelley, if it were quite serious, which may be doubted, would almost disqualify Mr Arnold as a critic of poetry. But it is hardly less interesting, and scarcely at all less valuable. In the first place, it is a very great thing that a man should be able to admire both Byron and Wordsworth. Of a mere Byronite, indeed, Mr Arnold has even less than he has of a Wordsworthian pure and simple. He makes the most damaging admissions; he has to fall back on Goethe for comfort and confirmation; he is greatly disturbed by M. Scherer's rough treatment of his subject. In no essay, I think, does he quote so much from others, does he seem to feel it such a relief to find a backer, a somebody to fight with on a side point, a somebody (for instance Professor Nichol) to correct and gloss and digress upon while complimenting him. Mr Arnold is obviously not at ease in this Zion--which indeed is a Zion of an odd kind. Yet this very uneasiness gives to the _Essay_ a glancing variety, a sort of animation and excitement, which are not common things in critical prelections. Nor, though one may think that Mr Arnold's general estimate of Byron is not even half as sound as his general estimate of Wordsworth, does the former appear to be in even the slightest degree insincere. Much as there must have been in Byron's loose art, his voluble inadequacy--nay, even in his choice of subject--that was repellent to Mr Arnold: much more as there must have been in his unchastened conduct, his flashy affectations, his lack of dignity, morality, _tenue_ of every kind,--yet there were real links between them. Mr Arnold saw in Byron an ally, if not an altogether admirable or trustworthy ally, against the Philistine. He saw in him a link with general European literature, a check and antidote to the merely insular. Byron's undoubtedly "sincere and strong" dislike of the extreme Romantic view of literature was not distasteful to Mr Arnold. Indeed, in his own earlier poems there are not wanting Byronic touches and echoes, not so easy to separate and put the finger on, as to see and hear "confusedly." Lastly, he had, by that sort of reaction which often exhibits itself in men of the study, an obvious admiration for Force--the admiration which makes him in his letters praise France up to 1870 and Germany after that date--and he thought he saw Force in Byron. So that the _Essay_ is written with a stimulating mingle-mangle of attraction and reluctance, of advocacy and admission. It is very far indeed from being one of his best critically. You may, on his own principles, "catch him out" in it a score of times. But it is a good piece of special pleading, an excellent piece of writing, and one of the very best and most consummate literary _causeries_ in English.