ere are stains Time's fingers cannot blot";

in which kind he was to produce some years later the matchless

"Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade,"

of the _Scholar-Gipsy_. On the whole, the thing is correct but
colourless; even its melancholy is probably mere Byronism, and has
nothing directly to do with the later quality of _Dover Beach_
and _Poor Matthias_.

Of Mr Arnold's undergraduate years we have unluckily but little
authentic record, and, as has been said, not one letter. The most
interesting evidence comes from Principal Shairp's well-known lines in
_Balliol Scholars, 1840-1843_, written, or at least published,
many years later, in 1873:--

"The one wide-welcomed for a father's fame,
Entered with free bold step that seemed to claim
Fame for himself, nor on another lean.

So full of power, yet blithe and debonair,
Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay,
Or half a-dream chaunting with jaunty air
Great words of Goethe, catch of Beranger,
We see the banter sparkle in his prose,
But knew not then the undertone that flows
So calmly sad, through all his stately lay."[2]

Like some other persons of much distinction, and a great many of
little or none, he "missed his first," in December 1844; and though he
obtained, three months later, the consolation prize of a Fellowship
(at Oriel, too), he made no post-graduate stay of any length at the
university. The then very general, though even then not universal,
necessity of taking orders before very long would probably in any case
have sent him wandering; for it is clear from the first that his bent
was hopelessly anti-clerical, and he was not merely too honest, but
much too proud a man, to consent to be put in one of the priests'
offices for a morsel of bread. It may well be doubted--though he felt
and expressed not merely in splendid passages of prose and verse for
public perusal, but in private letters quite towards the close of his
life, that passionate attachment which Oxford more than any other
place of the kind inspires--whether he would have been long at home
there as a resident. For the place has at once a certain republicanism
and a certain tyranny about its idea, which could not wholly suit the
aspiring and restless spirit of the author of _Switzerland_. None
of her sons is important to Oxford--the meanest of them has in his
sonship the same quality as the greatest. Now it was