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Completely characteristic of Bagehot are the allusions to Thiers, Louis Napoleon, and Carlyle in this review. The flavour of his style and manner emerges clearly in both the following passages, the first of which concludes on a note of Bagehotian realism.

It is said that M. Thiers and other able persons wished Louis Napoleon to withdraw his own address to the French people (it was when he was a candidate for the presidency) and to adopt one prepared by that practised writer in the common language of diplomacy. The prince was silent, after his manner, but took occasion to consult Emile de Girardin; "Soyez vous-même," replied the shrewd editor of the Presse, "c'est ce qu'il y a de mieux." And this should be a maxim in literature. "Be yourself:" it may not be much, but it is all you can be, in acting, or speaking, or writing. . . .

Not only did Bagehot frequently refer to Thiers the year before in his Inquirer letters on Louis Napoleon's coup d'état, but he also wrote at length in Letter VI (February 14, 1852, p. 99) of "The celebrated Emile de Girardin," "the old editor and founder of the Presse," and the "leading

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French journalist" of his day. Bagehot assures his correspondent that in consequence he reads the Presse regularly. Very probably, then, de Girardin's advice about being oneself lies behind what Bagehot wrote in the meantime concerning style, for in his well-known essay on Hartley Coleridge (Prospective Review, VIII [November, 1852], 529) we find this: ". . . we believe that the knack in style is to write like a human being. Some think they must be wise, some elaborate, some concise; Tacitus wrote like a pair of stays; some would startle, as Thomas Carlyle, or a comet, inscribing with his tail. But legibility is given to those who neglect these notions, and are willing to be themselves . . ."

This passage from "Hartley Coleridge" reminds us of another clue to authorship in the review of Empedocles on Etna, its reference to Thomas Carlyle: "It has been said that Mr. Carlyle's book on the French Revolution reads like an affidavit; 'this, I, Thomas Carlyle, came and perceived' . . ." Although "reads like an affidavit" is not so witty as "wrote like a pair of stays," the form of the expression is parallel. Moreover, Bagehot's essays contain numerous references to Carlyle. To mention only those which were published before this review, he is cited in the essays on Festus, Oxford, and Shakespeare, as well as in the one on Hartley Coleridge and in the letters on the coup d'état; indeed, in the first essay his French Revolution is referred to at length.

The humour in this review is consonant with Bagehot's authorship. Of the poems in the volume being appraised, the reviewer writes: "This is what 'A' has thought of the universe; it may not be a compliment to the latter . . ." And of the strange tranquilizing effects which civilization has on men (always potentially violent) the reviewer remarks, "That a grown man should be found to write reviews is in itself a striking fact. Suppose you asked Achilles to do such a thing, do you imagine he would consent?"

The Inquirer's comments on Shelley remind us of Bagehot's lifelong admiration of that poet. The reviewer speaks of the fascination and the power of Shelley's writings, "especially at a certain period of life . . . [though of] defects and shortcomings . . . it is not difficult for a matured taste to find many, both ethical and artistic . . ." This seems to be in brief form what Bagehot later wrote of Shelley more discursively in "Tennyson's Idylls," National Review, IX (October, 1859), 370-371:

. . . nearly all the poetry of Shelley . . . finds its way more easily to the brains of young men, who are at once intellectual and excitable, than to those of men of any other kind . . . In the greatest poets, in Shakespeare and in Homer, there is a great deal besides poetry. There are broad descriptions of character, dramatic scenes, eloquence, argument, a deep knowledge of manly and busy life. These interest readers who are no longer young . . . Shelley and Keats, on the other hand, have presented their poetry to the world in its pure essence . . . they have been content to rely on imaginatively expressed sentiment, and sentiment-exciting imagery; in short, on that which in its more subtle sense we call poetry, exclusively and wholly. In consequence . . . young men, who were not poets, have eagerly read them, have fondly learned them, and long remembered them.

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The Inquirer reviewer describes life in the modern world in ways strongly reminiscent of Bagehot the social psychologist:

The essence of civilization, as we know, is dulness. In an ultimate analysis, it is only an elaborate invention, or series of inventions for abolishing the fierce passions, the unchastened enjoyments, the awakening dangers, the desperate conflicts, to say all in one word, the excitements of a barbarous age, and to substitute for them indoor pleasures, placid feelings, and rational amusements.

This passage reads like a compact version of the famous doctrine that Bagehot had scattered through his letters the year before on the coup d'état, for even there "dulness" is used as a synonym for the more notorious "stupidity" which Bagehot preached as being essential to social order. There Bagehot had argued (Letter III, January 24, 1852, p. 52) that the "something" in national character which secures social order, "the most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent, and on a large scale . . . is much stupidity." He then adds as illustration:

Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibilities, let me take the Roman character — for, with one great exception — I need not say to whom I allude — they are the great political people of history. Now, is not a certain dullness their most visible characteristic? . . . I need not say that in real sound stupidity, the English are unrivalled . . . Or take Sir Robert Peel — our last great statesman, the greatest Member of Parliament that ever lived, an absolutely perfect transacter of public business — the type of the nineteenth century Englishman, as Sir R. Walpole was of the eighteenth. Was there ever such a dull man?

Throughout the letters on the coup d'état, but especially in Letters IV and V, Bagehot had argued that the desire for revolution—for what he calls "excitement"—needs constant curbing if order is to be secured. A like idea is discerned by the Inquirer reviewer in Arnold's poems. He remarks that in them we perceive a mind "whose great feeling is a longing for keen excitement, and at the same time a clear persuasion that such excitement is impossible . . ."

The Inquirer next criticizes Empedocles on Etna for the many faults in its execution and remarks that "it can hardly be reckoned among the best of our author's compositions." However, the reviewer concedes that the poem does contain "some fine lines"; he then quotes the whole of Act II, ll. 235-275, the lines beginning "And yet what days were those, Parmenides!" In "Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in English Poetry," National Review, New Series, I (November, 1864), 36-37, Bagehot states that Empedocles on Etna is "a poem undoubtedly containing defects and even excesses," but then quotes as evidence that Arnold's work nevertheless contains unquestionable poetry exactly the same lines as are found in the Inquirer review.[8]

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Perhaps the strongest piece of internal evidence supporting Bagehot's authorship of this review is the phrase it adopts from philosophy, a phrase of Plato's which was peculiarly memorable to Bagehot. The reviewer speaks of a mind which strives for autonomy and independence, a mind which "has got rid of the lumber of ages—has disdained ancient fables and tedious traditions—has gone out 'itself by itself,' as the old philosophy used to speak—has seen, thus alone, a distinct vision of life, and has related it to us, if not in the best of words, at least in those that are most characteristic of itself." The previous year, in his essay on Hartley Coleridge (Prospective Review, VIII [November, 1852], 533), Bagehot had remarked of the poetry of self-delineation: "The first requisite of this poetry is truth. It is in Plato's phrase the soul 'itself by itself' aspiring to view and take account of the particular notes and marks that distinguish it from all other souls." Five years after the Inquirer review, Bagehot, in "Charles Dickens," National Review, VIII (October, 1858), 461-462, wrote that in the mind which applies itself to theory "the deductive understanding, which masters first principles, and makes deductions from them, the thin ether of the intellect, — the 'mind itself by itself,'—must evidently assume a great prominence." And Bagehot goes on to describe the mind of Plato. But much later, in his English Constitution, Bagehot recalled Plato's phrase in connection with the mind which extracts from itself the essential truths about reality and then posited an old philosopher who fancied that by ardent excogitation "he might by pure deduction evolve the entire Universe. Intense self-examination, and intense reason would, he thought, make out everything. The soul 'itself by itself,' could tell all it wanted if it would be true to its sublimer isolation."[9] The presence of the philosophical phrase, "itself by itself," in this Inquirer review of 1853 makes it nearly certain to my mind that Bagehot was the author. But what clinches the matter, I believe, is a piece of external evidence.

This external clue is a letter printed long ago in Mrs. Barrington's Life of Bagehot, the significance of which has escaped the attention of students of Bagehot probably because they looked in the wrong place for the article Bagehot proposed writing, in the Prospective Review instead of in the Inquirer. From Langport on August 15, 1853, Bagehot wrote to Richard Hutton: "By way of the next step I strongly advise you to write the article on Atheism which you mentioned and to get the review made over to you as soon as may be. I should like to write for you a short article on the new Series of M. Arnold's poems. They are not very much in themselves, but they show character and afford, I think, matter for a short paper and no reading up of any subject will be necessary, which is a great blessing and consideration."[10] Bagehot's mention of a "review" in this letter has no

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doubt led scholars to look into the Prospective Review for the article he proposed. If they had realized that at this time Hutton was also assisting as editor of the Inquirer, and in that capacity was soliciting contributions from his friends, they would in all probability have turned up this review of Arnold's poems. But they would also have discovered in the same issue on pp. 546-547 a leading article entitled "English Atheism" which in my opinion contains strong evidence of Hutton's hand. Bagehot's letter, then, is valuable external evidence for the authorship of the only review he ever produced on the poetry of Matthew Arnold and for one of the earliest articles by his most intimate friend.