We can thus understand the seeming eccentricity, sometimes, of Arnold's choice of subjects, and also the superficial appearance of negation in his criticism. It is only superficial; the essence of the criticism is always sympathy, agreement rather than difference, the recognition of merit in preference to censure for defects. Carlyle had already placed criticism on the basis of sympathy, but it was shown in a different way. Carlyle had a large share of the dramatic faculty, and an intense interest in the individual soul. Arnold's genius was social, but not dramatic. He had no such mastery as Carlyle of the springs of individual character; but he set himself to understand the society in which the man lived, to grasp his idea, to look at things from his point of view, and so to explain what otherwise would be inexplicable. It is the fruitfulness of Arnold's method that has made the reading of the _Essays in Criticism_ an epoch in the lives of many men who have now reached middle life. Equally high praise must be accorded to the temper of this criticism. No writer was ever more uniformly urbane than Arnold. 'The great thing is,' says he, 'to write without a particle of vice or malice;' and he never forgets his own precept. He often gave rise to controversy, and was sometimes the object of vituperation; but, though he could write with cutting irony, the controversy was never on his side embittered, and he never replied in kind to the vituperation. In his criticism Arnold laid little stress on rules, and those he did appeal to were wide and elastic. The one thing he greatly insisted upon was the necessity of unity of impression. No work of art could be called great that did not produce a deep and abiding impression as a whole, and not merely in its parts. In the details of criticism he trusted to no rules, but rather to a taste saturated with 'the best of what has been thought and said.' His sentiment is expressed in the well-known essay on the study of poetry, introductory to _Ward's English Poets_. 'There can be no more useful help,' says he, 'for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry.' He followed in practice his own precept, and determined to finish up with Shakespeare's _King Lear_, before writing this very essay, in order to have a proper taste in his mind while he was at work.