t.

These later letters contain so many references to living people that
one has to be careful in quoting from them; but as regards himself,
there is of course no such need of care. That self-ruthlessness which
always prevented him from scamping work is amazingly illustrated in
one of October 1882, which tells how he sat up till five in the
morning rewriting a lecture he was to deliver in Liverpool, and got up
at eight to start for the place of delivery. Let us hope that a
champagne luncheon there--"chiefly doctors, but you know I like
doctors"--revived him after the night and the journey. And two months
later he makes pleasant allusion to "that demon Traill," in reference
to a certain admirable parody of _Poor Matthias_. He had thought
Mr Gladstone "hopelessly prejudiced against" him, and was
proportionately surprised when in August 1883 he was offered by that
Minister a pension of L250 for service to the poetry and literature of
England. Few Civil List pensions have been so well deserved. But Mr
Arnold, as most men of his quality would have been, was at once struck
with the danger of evil constructions being put by the baser sort on
the acceptance of an extra allowance from public funds by a man who
already had a fair income from them, and a comfortable pension in the
ordinary way to look forward to. Mr John Morley, however, and Lord
Lingen, luckily succeeded in quieting his scruples, and only the very
basest sort grumbled. The great advantage, of course, was that it
enabled him to retire, as soon as his time was up, without too great
loss of income.

A lecturing tour to America was already planned, and October 7, 1883
is the last date from Cobham, "New York" succeeding it without any;
for Mr Arnold had the reprehensible and, in official persons, rare
habit of very constantly omitting dates, though not places. The St
Nicholas Club, "a delightful, poky, dark, exclusive little old club of
the Dutch families," is the only place in which he finds peace. For,
as one expected, the interviewers made life terrible. These American
letters are interesting reading enough, but naturally tend to be
little more than a replica of similar letters from other Englishmen
who have done the same thing. As has been quite frankly admitted here,
Mr Arnold never made any effort, and seldom seems to have been
independently prompted, to write what are called "amusing" letters: he
merely tells a plain tale of journeys, lectures, meals, persons