e said to include the Newdigate poem
(_Cromwell_) of 1843: they consist of _The Strayed Reveller and other
Poems_, by "A.," 1849; _Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems_, [still]
by "A.," 1852; and _Poems_ by Matthew Arnold, a new edition, 1853--the
third consisting of the contents of the two earlier, with _Empedocles_
and a few minor things omitted, but with very important additions,
including _Sohrab and Rustum, The Church of Brou, Requiescat_, and
_The Scholar-Gipsy_. The contents of all three must be carefully
considered, and the consideration may be prefaced by a few words on
_Cromwell_.

This [Greek: agonisma], like the other, Mr Arnold never included in
any collection of his work; but it was printed at Oxford in the year
of its success, and again at the same place, separately or with other
prize poems, in 1846, 1863, and 1891. It may also be found in the
useful non-copyright edition above referred to. Couched in the
consecrated couplet, but not as of old limited to fifty lines, it is
"good rhymes," as the elder Mr Pope used to say to the younger; but a
prudent taster would perhaps have abstained, even more carefully than
in the case of the _Alaric_, from predicting a real poet in the
author. It is probably better than six Newdigates out of seven at
least, but it has no distinction. The young, but not so very young,
poet--he was as old as Tennyson when he produced his unequal but
wonderful first volume--begins by borrowing Wordsworth's two voices of
the mountain and the sea, shows some impression here and there from
Tennyson's own master-issue, the great collection of 1842, which had
appeared a year before, ventures on an Alexandrine--

"Between the barren mountains and the stormy sea"

--which comes as a pleasant relief, and displays more than once (as he
did afterwards in _Tristram and Iseult_) an uncertain but by no means
infelicitous variety of couplet which he never fully or fairly worked
out, but left for Mr William Morris to employ with success many years
later. Otherwise the thing is good, but negligible. It would have
taken an extremely strong competition, or an extremely incompetent
examiner, to deprive it of the prize; but he must have been a sanguine
man who, in giving the author that prize, expected to receive from him
returns of poetry.

Yet they came. If we did not know that the middle of this century was
one of the nadirs of English[3] criticism, and if we did not know
further that even good c