It is well borne out by the two interesting articles on Gray and Keats which Mr Arnold contributed to the same work. In the former, and here perhaps only, do we find him putting his shoulder to the work of critical advocacy and sympathy with an absolutely whole heart. With Wordsworth, with Byron, with Heine, he was on points more or fewer at grave difference; though he affected to regard Goethe as a _magnus Apollo_ of criticism and creation both, I think in his heart of hearts there must have been some misgivings; and it is impossible that he should not have known his fancy for people like the Guerins to be mere _engouement_. Gray's case was different. The resemblances between subject and critic were extraordinary. Mr Arnold is really an industrious, sociable, and moderately cheerful Gray of the nineteenth century; Gray an indolent, recluse, more melancholy Arnold of the eighteenth. Again, the literary quality of the bard of the _Elegy_ was exactly of the kind which stimulates critics most. From Sainte-Beuve downwards the fraternity has, justly or unjustly, been accused of a tendency to extol writers who are a little problematical, who approach the second class, above the unquestioned masters. And there was the yet further stimulus of redressing wrongs. Gray, though a most scholarly poet, has always pleased the vulgar rather than the critics, and he had the singular fate of being dispraised both by Johnson and by Wordsworth. But in this paper of Mr Arnold's the wheel came full circle. Everything that can possibly be said for Gray--more than some of us would by any means indorse--is here said for him: here he has provided an everlasting critical harbour, into which he may retreat whensoever the popular or the critical breeze turns adverse.