Swift
he quoted with admirable effect, but it was Swift the reviler, not Swift
the jester. He says that he made a "wooden Oxford audience laugh aloud
with two pages of Heine's wit"; but the lecture, as we read it, shows
more of mordant sarcasm than of the material for laughter. Scott he knew
by heart, and Carlyle he honestly revered; but he admired the one for
his romance and the other for his philosophy. Thackeray, sad to
remember, he "did not think a great writer," and so Thackeray's humour
disappears, with his pathos and his satire, into the limbo of
common-place. The imaginary spokesman of the _Daily Telegraph_ in
_Friendship's Garland_ reckons as "the great masters of human thought
and human literature, Plato, Shakespeare, Confucius, and Charles
Dickens"; and there, to judge from the great bulk of his writing,
Arnold's acquaintance with Dickens begins and ends.
But it was one of his amiable traits that, whenever he read a book which
pleased him, he immediately began to share his pleasure with his
friends. In the year 1880, he writes to his colleague, Mr.
Pages:
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90