rather because his wit was so mild and free from caustic—the Puritan part of the nation felt that he too was on the side of the angels. He was so respectable, after all. Herein comes the great difference between him and Heine, who was not respectable at all; and Renan, who always shows a hankering after the life of les gais. But Matthew Arnold was intensely sensitive and scrupulous in this regard, almost to the point of Podsnappery. Therefore the British public would allow him a hearing on the problems of life.
There was no affectation in all this. The Puritan in him came near the self-restraint of his father's Romans, or the artistic balance of life which he respected in the best Greeks. He was too much at ease in Zion to be of the stuff of which prophets are made, yet there was something in him akin to the spirit of the old prophets. Hence it was that he was so influential with the Philistines; he was in a measure of them, though he saw their faults and narrownesses. Half humorously he recognised this in one of his books, and there can be little doubt of its truth and of its influence. Because he was of them, the Philistines, i.e. Nonconformists and Low Churchmen, listened to him, with the result that the Low Church is no more; and Nonconformity is Broad Church.
