.

Next in importance to the narrative poems are the elegies, "Thyrsis," "The
Scholar-Gipsy," "Memorial Verses," "A Southern Night," "Obermann," "Stanzas
from the Grande Chartreuse," and "Rugby Chapel." All these are worthy of
careful reading, but the best is "Thyrsis," a lament for the poet Clough,
which is sometimes classed with Milton's _Lycidas_ and Shelley's _Adonais_.
Among the minor poems the reader will find the best expression of Arnold's
ideals and methods in "Dover Beach," the love lyrics entitled
"Switzerland," "Requiescat," "Shakespeare," "The Future," "Kensington
Gardens," "Philomela," "Human Life," "Callicles's Song," "Morality," and
"Geist's Grave."--the last being an exquisite tribute to a little dog
which, like all his kind, had repaid our scant crumbs of affection with a
whole life's devotion.

The first place among Arnold's prose works must be given to the _Essays in
Criticism_, which raised the author to the front rank of living critics.
His fundamental idea of criticism appeals to us strongly. The business of
criticism, he says, is neither to find fault nor to display the critic's
own learning or influence; it is to know "the best which has been thought
and said in the world," and by using this knowledge to create a current of
fresh and free thought. If a choice must be made among these essays, which
are all worthy of study, we would suggest "The Study of Poetry,"
"Wordsworth," "Byron," and "Emerson." The last-named essay, which is found
in the _Discourses in America_, is hardly a satisfactory estimate of
Emerson, but its singular charm of manner and its atmosphere of
intellectual culture make it perhaps the most characteristic of Arnold's
prose writings.

Among the works of Arnold's practical period there are two which may be
taken as typical of all the rest. _Literature and Dogma_ (1873) is, in
general, a plea for liberality in religion. Arnold would have us read the
Bible, for instance, as we would read any other great work, and apply to it
the ordinary standards of literary criticism.

_Culture and Anarchy_ (1869) contains most of the terms--culture, sweetness
and light, Barbarian, Philistine, Hebraism, and many others--which are now
associated with Arnold's work and influence. The term "Barbarian" refers to
the aristocratic classes, whom Arnold thought to be essentially crude in
soul, notwithstanding their good clothes and superficial graces.
"Philistine" refers to the middle classes,--narr