It would also, no doubt, be possible to pick other holes in the paper. The depreciation of the "historic estimate," instead of a simple hint to correct it by the intrinsic, is certainly one. Another is a distinct arbitrariness in the commendation or discommendation of the examples selected. No one in his senses would put the _Chanson de Roland_ on a level with the _Iliad_ as a whole; but some among those people who happen to possess an equal acquaintance with Greek and Old French will demur to Mr Arnold's assignment of an ineffably superior poetical quality to one of the two passages he quotes over the other. So yet again with the denial of "high seriousness" to Chaucer. One feels disposed to enter and argue out a whole handful of not quite contradictory pleas, such as "He _has_ high seriousness" (_vide_ the "Temple of Mars," the beginning of the _Parliament of Fowls_, and many other places): "Why should he have high seriousness?" (a most effective demurrer); and "What _is_ high seriousness, except a fond thing vainly invented for the nonce?" But, as has so constantly to be said in reference to Mr Arnold, these things do not matter. He must have his catchwords: and so "criticism of life" and "high seriousness" are introduced at their and his peril. He must have his maintenance of the great classics, and so he exposes what I fear may be called no very extensive or accurate acquaintance with Old French. He must impress on us that conduct is three-fourths of life, and so he makes what even those who stop short of _latreia_ in regard to Burns may well think mistakes about that poet likewise. But all the spirit, all the tendency, of the _Introduction_ is what it ought to be, and the plea for the "real" estimate is as wholly right in principle as it is partly wrong in application.