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, at least the first is, but this has been already noticed. Of _The French Play in London_, I am, perhaps, no good judge, as I take little interest in the acted drama. It is much occupied with the inferiority of French poetry, and especially of the poetry of Hugo; the inferiority of English civilisation, especially of the middle class. There are good things in it, but they are better said elsewhere. The rest needs no notice. [3] A note on the contents of this and the subsequent collected editions may not be unwelcome; for, as was always the case with him, he varied them not a little. This first collection was advertised as comprehending "the First and Second Series of the Author's Poems and the New Poems," but as a matter of fact half-a-dozen pieces--including things as interesting as _A Dream_ and _Stagirius_--are omitted, though the fine _In Utrumque Paratus_ reappears for the first time as a consolation. As reprinted in 1877, this collection dropped _The Church of Brou_ except the third part, and recovered not only _Stagirius_ and others but _The New Sirens_, besides giving, for the first time in book-form, _Haworth Churchyard_, printed twenty-two years before in _Fraser_. A further reprint in 1881 restored the whole _Church of Brou_ and _A Dream_, and gave two or three small additions, especially _Geist's Grave_. The _three-volume_ edition of 1885 also republished _Merope_ for the first time, and added _Westminster Abbey_ and _Poor Matthias_. The _one_-volume edition of 1890 reproduced all this, adding _Horatian Echo_ and _Kaiser Dead_; it is complete save for the two prize poems, and six or seven smaller pieces. [4] "I do not like the course for the History School at all; nothing but read, read, read, endless histories in English, many of them by quite second-rate men; nothing to form the mind as reading really great authors forms it, or even to exercise it as learning a new language, or mathematics, or one of the natural sciences exercises it." CHAPTER V. THE LAST DECADE. It would be unhistorical to assert, and unphilosophical to assume, that in the change or reversion noted at the end of the last chapter, Mr Arnold had any consciousness of relinquishment, still more to hint any definite sense of failure on his part. He would probably have said (if any one had been impertinent enough to ask, and he had condescended to reply) that he had said his say, had shot his bolt, and might leave them to p
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