with reference to these modern men and the movement they took
part in, that he made his serious claim to greatness; to rank, that is,
with Tennyson and Browning, as he said, in the literature of his time.
"My poems," he wrote, "represent on the whole the main movement of mind
of the last quarter of a century; and thus they will probably have their
day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of
mind is, and interested in the literary productions that reflect it. It
might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson,
and less intellectual vigor and abundance than Browning; yet because I
have, perhaps, more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have
more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern
development, I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had
theirs." If the main movement had been such as he thought of it, or if
it had been of importance in the long run, there might be a sounder
basis for this hope than now appears to be the case; but there can be no
doubt, let the contemporary movement have been what it may, that
Arnold's mood is one that will not pass out of men's hearts to-day nor
to-morrow.

On the modern side the example of Wordsworth was most formative, and in
fact it is common to describe Arnold as a Wordsworthian: and so, in his
contemplative attitude to nature, and in his habitual recourse to her,
he was; but both nature herself as she appeared to him, and his mood in
her presence, were very different from Wordsworth's conception and
emotion. Arnold finds in nature a refuge from life, an anodyne, an
escape; but Wordsworth, in going into the hills for poetical communion,
passed from a less to a fuller and deeper life, and obtained an
inspiration, and was seeking the goal of all his being. In the method of
approach, too, as well as in the character of the experience, there was
a profound difference between the two poets. Arnold sees with the
outward rather than the inward eye. He is pictorial in a way that
Wordsworth seldom is; he uses detail much more, and gives a group or a
scene with the externality of a painter. The method resembles that of
Tennyson rather than that of Wordsworth, and has more direct analogy
with the Greek manner than with the modern and emotional schools; it is
objective, often minute, and always carefully composed, in the artistic
sense of that term. The description of the river Oxus, for example,
though fai