the rushing, blundering, mad,
Cloud-enveloped, obscure,
Unapplauded, unsung
Race of Calamity, mine!"

Surely this is but the baldest prose. At intervals, however, Arnold
was nobly lyrical, and strangely, too, at times, in those same uneven
measures in which are found his most signal failures--the unrhymed
Pindaric. _Philomela_ written in this style is one of the most
exquisite bits of verse in the language. As one critic has put it,
"It ought to be written in silver and bound in gold." In urbanity of
phrase and in depth of genuine pathos it is unsurpassed and shows
Arnold at his best. _Rugby Chapel, The Youth of Nature, The Youth of
Man_, and _A Dream_ are good examples of his longer efforts in this
verse form. In the more common lyric measures, Arnold was, at times,
equally successful. Saintsbury, commenting on _Requiescat_, says that
the poet has "here achieved the triple union of simplicity, pathos,
and (in the best sense) elegance"; and adds that there is not a
false note in the poem. He also speaks enthusiastically of the
"honey-dropping trochees" of the _New Sirens_, and of the "chiselled
and classic perfection" of the lines of _Resignation_. Herbert W.
Paul, writing of _Mycerinus_, declares that no such verse has been
written in England since Wordsworth's _Laodamia_; and continues,
"The poem abounds in single lines of haunting charm." Among his more
successful longer lyrics are _The Sick King in Bokhara, Switzerland,
Faded Leaves_, and _Tristram and Iseult_, and _Epilogue to Lessing's
Laocooen_, included in this volume.

=Arnold as a Dramatist=.--The drama is imitated human action, and is
intended to exhibit a picture of human life by means of dialogue,
acting, and stage accessories. In nature, it partakes of both lyric
and epic, thus uniting sentiment and action with narration. Characters
live and act before us, and speak in our presence, the interest being
kept up by constantly shifting situations tending toward some striking
result. As a dramatist, Arnold achieved no great success. Again the
fundamental qualities of his mind stood in the way. An author so
subjective, so absorbed in self-scrutiny and introspection as he,
is seldom able to project himself into the minds of others to any
considerable extent. His dramas are brilliant with beautiful phrases,
his pictures of landscapes and of nature in her various aspects
approach perfection; but in the main, he fails to handle his plots in
a dramatic man