In strict chronological order, a third example of these most interesting and stimulating Prefaces should have been mentioned between the "Wordsworth" and the "Byron"--the latter of which, indeed, contains a reference to it. This is the famous Introduction to Mr T.H. Ward's _English Poets_, which, in that work and in the second series of _Essays in Criticism_, where it subsequently appeared, has perhaps had more readers than any other of its author's critical papers. It contains, moreover, that still more famous definition of poetry as "a criticism of life" which has been so often attacked and has sometimes been defended. I own to having been, both at the time and since, one of its most decided and irreconcilable assailants. Nor do I think that Mr Arnold would have much relished the apology made, I think, by Mr Leslie Stephen since his death, that its critics "mistake an epigram for a philosophical definition." In the first place, the epigrammatic quality is not clearly apparent; and in the second place, an epigram would in the particular place have been anything but appropriate, while a philosophical definition is exactly what was wanted. Mr Arnold himself never attempted any such defence. He pleaded, with literal justice, that the phrase "a criticism of life" was only part of his formula, which adds, "under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty." But this does not make the matter much better, while it shows beyond controversy that it _was_ a philosophical definition that he was attempting. It merely takes us round in a circle, telling us that poetry is poetical, that the archdeacon performs archidiaconal functions. And while it is not more illuminative than that famous and useful jest, it has the drawback of being positively delusive, which the jest is not. Unless we are to assign some quite new meaning to "criticism"--and the assignment of new meanings to the terms of an explanation is the worst of all explanatory improprieties--poetry is _not_ a criticism of life. It may be a passionate interpretation of life--that has seemed to some not a bad attempt at the unachievable,--a criticism it cannot be. Prose fiction may be and should be such; drama may be and should be such; but not poetry. And it is especially unfortunate that such poetry as answers best to the term is exactly that poetry which Mr Arnold liked least. Dryden and Pope have much good and true criticism of life: _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ is magnificent criticism of life; but Mr Arnold has told us that Dryden and Pope and Johnson are but "classics of our prose." That there is criticism of life _in_ poetry is true; but then in poetry there is everything.