Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/121

 part is the secret of his influence. Men see that what he says tallies in the main with what they know,, and at the same time they are half attracted half repelled by the tone in which he says it. If we may so put it, he pretends not to be serious, and by the very pretence convinces one of his seriousness. It is, in fact, this seriousness, the conviction his words convey that his deepest concern is with the things of moral import, that gives such authority to his word among Englishmen. The things of conduct are, after all, what both he and they have most at heart, and they listen to him as he discourses on things of sweetness and light—now, alas! becoming rarer and rarer with him—because they know that in his hands they have intimate bearing on conduct. Hence Mr. Matthew Arnold may say things in a tone which would be censured in another. There is a passage in these discourses about M. Blowitz and the Eternal which, even in Mr. Arnold, is as near want of taste as it is possible to go. But one knows that Mr. Arnold, after all, is not really lacking in reverence, and so the lapse is overlooked. Reflecting on this, one cannot help thinking what a force Mr. Arnold would be if he dropped his cloak of levity. He has given a clever sermon on Gray; text: 'He never spoke out.' One feels that Mr. Arnold has never