ate his statement that all his best literary work was done late
at night, after a day of drudgery. It is well to remember that, while
Carlyle was preaching about labor, Arnold labored daily; that his work was
cheerfully and patiently done; and that after the day's work he hurried
away, like Lamb, to the Elysian fields of literature. He was happily
married, loved his home, and especially loved children, was free from all
bitterness and envy, and, notwithstanding his cold manner, was at heart
sincere, generous, and true. We shall appreciate his work better if we can
see the man himself behind all that he has written.

Arnold's literary work divides itself into three periods, which we may call
the poetical, the critical, and the practical. He had written poetry since
his school days, and his first volume, _The Strayed Reveller and Other
Poems_, appeared anonymously in 1849. Three years later he published
_Empedocles on Etna and other Poems;_ but only a few copies of these
volumes were sold, and presently both were withdrawn from circulation. In
1853-1855 he published his signed _Poems_, and twelve years later appeared
his last volume of poetry. Compared with the early work of Tennyson, these
works met with little favor, and Arnold practically abandoned poetry in
favor of critical writing.

The chief works of his critical period are the lectures _On Translating
Homer_ (1861) and the two volumes of _Essays in Criticism_ (1865-1888),
which made Arnold one of the best known literary men in England. Then, like
Ruskin, he turned to practical questions, and his _Friendship's Garland_
(1871) was intended to satirize and perhaps reform the great middle class
of England, whom he called the Philistines. _Culture and Anarchy_, the most
characteristic work of his practical period, appeared in 1869. These were
followed by four books on religious subjects,--_St. Paul and Protestantism_
(1870), _Literature and Dogma_ (1873), _God and the Bible_ (1875), and
_Last Essays on Church and Religion_ (1877). The _Discourses in America_
(1885) completes the list of his important works. At the height of his fame
and influence he died suddenly, in 1888, and was buried in the churchyard
at Laleham. The spirit of his whole life is well expressed in a few lines
of one of his own early sonnets:

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world