Arnold may have
thought that he was building an altar to the Unknown God; but he was
really building it to Divus Caesar.
As a critic he was chiefly concerned to preserve criticism itself; to
set a measure to praise and blame and support the classics against the
fashions. It is here that it is specially true of him, if of no writer
else, that the style was the man. The most vital thing he invented was a
new style: founded on the patient unravelling of the tangled Victorian
ideas, as if they were matted hair under a comb. He did not mind how
elaborately long he made a sentence, so long as he made it clear. He
would constantly repeat whole phrases word for word in the same
sentence, rather than risk ambiguity by abbreviation. His genius showed
itself in turning this method of a laborious lucidity into a peculiarly
exasperating form of satire and controversy. Newman's strength was in a
sort of stifled passion, a dangerous patience of polite logic and then:
"Cowards! if I advanced a step you would run away: it is not you I fear.
_Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis._" If Newman seemed suddenly to fly
into a temper, Carlyle seemed never to fly out of one.
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