not, or hardly knew them, were familiar with their
author's prose work, or at least knew him as one whom others knew.

The volume itself was well calculated to take advantage, to at least a
moderate extent, of this conjunction of circumstance. At no time was
the appeal of Mr Arnold's poetry of the most impetuous or peremptory
order. And it might be contended that this collection contains nothing
quite up to the very best things of the earlier poems, to the
_Shakespeare_ sonnet, to _The Scholar-Gipsy_, to the _Isolation_
stanzas. But with the majority of its readers it was sure rather to
send them to these earlier things than to remind them thereof, and its
own attractions were abundant, various, and strong.

In the poet himself there was perhaps a slight consciousness of "the
silver age." The prefatory _Stanzas_, a title changed in the
collected works to _Persistency of Poetry_, sound this note--

"Though the Muse be gone away,
Though she move not earth to-day,
Souls, erewhile who caught her word,
Ah! still harp on what they heard."

A confession perhaps a little dangerous, when the Muses were speaking
in no uncertain tones not merely to juniors like Mr Morris and Mr
Swinburne but to seniors like Tennyson and Browning. But the actual
contents were more than reassuring. Of _Empedocles_ it is not
necessary to speak again: _Thyrsis_ could not but charm. The
famous line,

"And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,"

sets the key dangerously high; but it is kept by the magnificent
address to the cuckoo,

"Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?"

and the flower-piece that follows; by that other single masterpiece,

"The coronals of that forgotten time;"

by the more solemn splendour of the stanza beginning

"And long the way appears which seemed so short;"

by the Signal tree; and by the allegoric close with the reassertion of
the Scholar. All these things stand by themselves, hold their sure and
reserved place, even in the rush and crowd of the poetry of the
sixties, the richest, perhaps, since the time from 1805 to 1822.

_Saint Brandan_, which follows, has pathos if not great power,
and connects itself agreeably with those Celtic and mediaeval studies
which had just attracted and occupied Mr Arnold. The sonnets which
form the next division might be variously judged. None of them equals
the _Shakespeare_; and one may legitimately hold the opinion that
the sonnet was not specially