lence of the contrasts. This is one of the reasons, undoubtedly, why his longest poem, "Endymion," containing some rare poetic passages, has not been more widely read and appreciated, its too frequent lapses from the poet's high standard discouraging the general student and reader. Here again, however, we might assume Lowell's more charitable view and insist that the principle in question proves too much that if we apply it severely as a specific principle of poetic criticism, most of our already accepted conclusions must be greatly modified. Thus, it might be argued that "The Faerie Queene" and "Paradise Lost" and "The Excursion" and "Lalla Rookh" and Aurora Leigh" and " Evangeline" evince a similar abrupt descent from higher to lower levels, from the sublime to the indifferent; the only difference being, perchance, that this unheralded descent is oftener made by Keats than by Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Moore, Mrs. Browning, and Longfellow. In any case, however, it is a fault, its character depending on its frequency and suddenness and on the manner in which in every instance the poet recovers himself and rises again to loftier levels of wider outlook and more inspiring influences.

66

It is in his minor poems that his special gifts appear. It is of his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci" that Saintsbury says, "He need to have written nothing but these two to show himself not merely an exquisite poet, but a leader of English poetry for many a year, almost for many a generation to come." It is in referring to his premature death and to his burial at Rome and, especially, to his own prepared epitaph, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," that Saintsbury beautifully adds, "Posterity has agreed with him that it was written in water, but in the water of life." Lovely and benignant in character, unselfishly thoughtful of the interests of others, gifted with the essential spirit of poetry, and of quite too sensitive a fiber to bear the struggle of this rude world, his clear and pure personality is a perpetual blessing to the English nation, and the verse he wrote a beautiful reflection of the strength and sweetness of his life. In the "Letters" of Keats, recently published, this attractive personal side of his career is brought more prominently to view, as is also his work as a writer of miscellaneous English prose.

V

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD

UPON the details of Matthew Arnold's life it is not necessary for us to dwell, nor is it indeed possible to give such details at any length, his published "Letters," edited by Russell, and his various works giving us the only authentic facts and incidents of his life. Born in Rugby, December 22, 1822, the son of the famous educator and author Dr. Thomas Arnold, Head Master of Rugby — and dying in Liverpool, April 13, 1888, he lived to the full maturity of his mental and bodily powers, though not in any accepted sense to the limit of old age. Educated at Rugby, Winchester, and Oxford, and graduated from Oxford with literary distinction, we find him at length, an inspector of British schools, twice sent by the British Government on educational missions to the schools of the Continent in Germany and Holland, and in 1857, when but thirty-five years of age, professor of poetry at Oxford. These few facts may be said to indicate the character and general

215

course of his life, it being emphasized that, from first to last, whatever his specific mission-educational, official, or professional literature was dominant over all and the elevation of Modern English and general letters the final purpose of his effort. Devoted as he was to the cause of popular education at home and on the Continent, it was with primary reference to literary progress that he insisted on specific methods of teaching and training. Devoted also as he was to the study of theology and kindred branches, he was a man of letters first and a theologian afterward, giving us in such works as his "Literature and Dogma," "St. Paul and Protestantism," "God and the Bible," and "Last Essays on the Church and Religion" the reflections and conclusions of an author on the great questions of God and man and life and death and immortality.

The discussion of Arnold's prose we have already given, a sphere of effort to which most of the best of his life was devoted, either as regards the time spent therein or the definite results secured in the line of literary reputation. Whatever the amount and the value of his verse may be, as

1 Studies in Literature and Style. New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son. 1890.

we shall study it, his fame mainly rests on his prose and, in prose itself, in the form of literary criticism. Not that he preferred prose to poetry; not that he regarded it as a higher and more exalting form of literary product; but rather that his appeals to public and scholarly favor were most successfully made through the province of prose, though some of his profoundest convictions and highest ideals sought their most fitting expression in verse. Moreover, as life advanced and his powers matured, prose engaged him more and more fully, the mutual influence of the two, however, being as a rule for the good of each.

The classification of his poems given in his recent edition of 1895, is as follows: (1) "Early Poems," including sonnets and other selections; (2) "Narrative Poems," such as "Sohrab and Rustum"; (3) Sonnets Proper, such as "A Picture at Newstead"; (4) “Lyric Poems," such as "Meeting" and "Parting"; (5) "Elegiac Poems," such as "The Scholar-Gipsy" and "Thyrsis"; (6) "Dramatic Poems," as "Merope "; and (7) "Later Poems," as "Westminster Abbey" and "Kaiser Dead." This sevenfold division of poems in manifest violation of logical and literary unity may properly be reduced to the three orders