SINCE  the  death  of  Matthew  Arnold  there  has  been
no  literary  critic  to  whose  appearances  in  print  the
majority  of  educated  people  look  forward  with  such
assurance  of  satisfaction  as  to  those  of  Mr.  Leslie
Stephen.  His  essays  are  always  first-hand  studies,
giving  the  result  of  reading  and  reflection,  and  an
insight  which  "  looks  quite  through  the  deeds  of
men,"  while  they  are  written  in  a  style  as  sinewy  as
the  thought,  with  no  preciosity  of  phrase  and  no  word
to  spare.  If  they  are  sometimes  disappointing,  it  is
because  he  sometimes  elects  to  treat  of  people  who
interest  him  only  on  some  particular  side,  while  the
rest  of  their  character  or  achievement  finds  him  cold
or  hostile.  Such  a  person  evidently  is  Donne,  the
famous  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  whom  Mr.  Stephen  has
lately  discussed  in  a  very  brilliant  article  in  the
National  Review?  taking  occasion  by  Mr.  Gosse's
new  Life  and  Letters.  Donne  was  a  puzzle,  and
therefore  attractive  to  the  psychologist,  but  he  was
also  a  poet  and  a  preacher  ;  and  those  people  who
value  him  in  either  of  these  aspects  are  not  likely

1  December,  1899.
90  RELIGIO   LAICI.
to  rise  from  the  perusal  of  Mr.  Stephen's  paper  in  a
very  contented  frame  of  mind.  It  is,  however,  only
incidentally  about  Donne  that  I  wish  to  speak  in
this  humble  remonstrance ;  the  brief  I  have  taken
up  is  not  on  his  behalf,  but  on  behalf  of  his  biographer
Izaak  Walton.  Still,  as  the  facts  of  his  life  form
the  material  of  Walton's  biography,  in  vindicating
the  one  I  shall  be  vindicating  the  other.
