It was a maxim of Matthew Arnold's that the main effort of the mind of Europe in our time was a critical one. By this he meant something more than merely literary criticism; but he certainly included that. All will agree with him that one of the characteristics of recent times is the desire to understand the meaning and the historical order of the forms of literature. The great development of journalism has done much to foster critical work; for a critical view of individual men or of isolated works can be conveniently expressed within the compass permitted by the periodical form of publication. The quality of this periodical criticism is uneven. Much of it is worthless, but the fact that the best critics of the present century--Lamb, Carlyle, Macaulay, Lockhart, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold--have all written for periodicals, is proof sufficient that the best as well as the worst is to be found there. One of the features of this journalistic criticism is its anonymity, and this doubtless encouraged the ferocity characteristic of the early school of the _Edinburgh_, the _Quarterly_ and _Blackwood_. But the evil seems to have worked its own cure. It would be rash to assert that there is not incompetence and unfairness still; but at least the bludgeon school of criticism has passed away. The cause is twofold: the fixing of an ethical standard, and the discovery, which Matthew Arnold did much both by precept and example to spread, that the rapier is the more deadly weapon. The critics of the early periodicals had no tradition to guide them, and, like settlers in a new country, they ran riot. A good deal of uncertainty necessarily attaches to anonymous writing, and all that is possible here is to notice shortly a few of the more eminent names, avoiding any minute discussion. Some, like Carlyle, Macaulay and Lockhart, have been mentioned elsewhere. It was however under their influence, and under the gradually growing influence of Lamb, Coleridge and Hazlitt, that the criticism of this period grew up. There has also to be taken into account the spread of German thought, which gave to criticism greater breath and a firmer foundation in principle, and conduced likewise to a more careful and patient scholarship. The Germans have not only themselves done a great work in Shakespearian criticism, but they have induced the English to do the same. Still, an exclusive following of the Germans would have led to mischief, and fortunately for English criticism this tendency has been corrected by the opposite influence of the French school. Thanks largely to Matthew Arnold, and to the charm of Ste. Beuve, whom he helped to make known in England, the lucidity, good form and sanity of French criticism have had their effect as well as the laborious learning and sometimes rash theorising of the Germans. [Sidenote: John Payne Collier (1789-1883).] [Sidenote: Mrs. Anna Jameson (1794-1860).] [Sidenote: J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-1889).]