Between _A French Eton_ and the second collection of Oxford Lectures came, in 1865, the famous _Essays in Criticism_, the first full and varied, and perhaps always the best, expression and illustration of the author's critical attitude, the detailed manifesto and exemplar of the new critical method, and so one of the epoch-making books of the later nineteenth century in English. It consisted, in the first edition, of a _Preface_ (afterwards somewhat altered and toned down) and of nine essays (afterwards to be made ten by the addition of _A Persian Passion-Play_). The two first of these were general, on _The Function of Criticism at the Present Time_ and _The Literary Influence of Academies_, while the other seven dealt respectively with the two Guerins, Heine, _Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment_, Joubert, Spinoza, and Marcus Aurelius. I am afraid it must be taken as only too strong a confirmation of Mr Arnold's own belief as to the indifference of the English people to criticism that no second edition of this book was called for till four years were past, no third for ten, and no fourth for nearly twenty. Yet, to any one whom the gods have made in the very slightest degree critical, it is one of the most fascinating (if sometimes also one of the most provoking) of books; and the fascination and provocation should surely have been felt even by others. As always with the author, there is nothing easier than to pick holes in it: in fact, on his own principles, one is simply bound to pick holes. He evidently enjoyed himself very much in the _Preface:_ but it may be doubted whether the severe Goddess of Taste can have altogether smiled on his enjoyment. He is superciliously bland to the unlucky and no doubt rather unwise Mr Wright (_v. supra_): he tells the _Guardian_ in a periphrasis that it is dull, and "Presbyter Anglicanus" that he is born of Hyrcanian tigers, and the editor of the _Saturday Review_ that he is a late and embarrassed convert to the Philistines. He introduces not merely Mr Spurgeon, a Philistine of some substance and memory, but hapless forgotten shadows like "Mr Clay," "Mr Diffanger," "Inspector Tanner," "Professor Pepper" to the contempt of the world. And then, when we are beginning to find all this laughter rather "thorn-crackling" and a little forced, the thing ends with the famous and magnificent _epiphonema_ (as they would have said in the old days) to Oxford, which must for ever conciliate all sons of hers and all gracious outsiders to its author, just as it turns generation after generation of her enemies sick with an agonised grin.