Matthew Arnold, whom in some moods he admired, occasionally got on his nerves. I find this footnote on a page of "Culture and Anarchy": "This is self-satisfied swank." On another page: "Matthew Arnold himself often wanting in sweetness and light." On another: "Admirably put; here I do agree with M. A." He liked Arnold's essay on "The Function of Criticism," although he differed from some of the author's judgments. "The French Revolution took a political, practical character," wrote Arnold; on which my son's comment is: "Surely the French Revolution was only one aspect of a great world-movement of liberation! One side of it is Romanticism; another the Revolution itself; yet another, the Industrial Revolution. No movement has ever a character _sui generis_." On Joubert's remark: "Force and Right are the governors of this world, Force till Right is ready," his comment is: "A regular German theory." Paul's final note on "The Function of Criticism" reads: I consider that Matthew Arnold insists too much on the non-practical element of criticism. After all, it is the lesson of life that the practical man wins in the end. When we are brought face to face with the realities of things--as in a war like the present one--all thought of art and letters simply vanishes. How is it that the mass of the world is always inartistic? How is it that the one people in the world--the Greeks--who built up their State on what Arnold regards as ideal conditions, collapsed in headlong ruin before the inartistic but practical Romans? This comment illustrates one effect of the War on Paul's mind: he was becoming less of an idealist and more of a realist. For Mr. W. H. Hudson's "Introduction to the Study of Literature" he had high esteem. This book he has carefully annotated. Of Mr. Hudson's remarks on the contrast between the style of Milton and that of Dryden, between Hooker and Defoe, he writes: "A comparison of remarkable discernment. The difference between the Miltonic and Drydenic styles, _i.e._, pre-1660 and post-1660, was simply due to the change in ideas caused by the reaction against Puritanism." Agreeing with Hudson that there is much poetry which is prosaic and much prose which is poetical, he cites as examples: "Prose in Poetry: Pope, Dryden, Walt Whitman. Poetry in Prose: Carlyle, Macaulay, Goethe." He did not concur with Hudson's remark that the "full significance of poetry can be appreciated only when it addresses us through the ear," and that "the silent perusal of the printed page will leave one of its principal secrets unsurprised." Paul's comment on this: Too sweeping a statement. Take, for example, poets like Milton and Browning, where every line is fraught with some deep philosophic meaning and must be pondered over for some time before the whole of the greatness of the poetry is realised. In these cases reading aloud is not nearly so good as private, silent study.