" But there is a keen
eye for subtle absurdity, a glance which unveils affectation and
penetrates bombast, the most delicate sense of incongruity, the
liveliest disrelish for all the moral and intellectual qualities which
constitute the Bore, and a vein of personal raillery as refined as it is
pungent. Sydney Smith spoke of Sir James Mackintosh as "abating and
dissolving pompous gentlemen with the most successful ridicule." The
words not inaptly describe Arnold's method of handling personal and
literary pretentiousness.
His praise as a phrase-maker is in all the Churches of literature. It
was his skill in this respect which elicited the liveliest compliments
from a transcendent performer in the same field. In 1881 he wrote to his
sister: "On Friday night I had a long talk with Lord Beaconsfield. He
ended by declaring that I was the only living Englishman who had become
a classic in his own lifetime. The fact is that what I have done in
establishing a number of current phrases, such as _Philistinism,
Sweetness and Light_, and all that is just the thing to strike him.
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