urp the place of the
vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so
scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear men boast of
getting through their work somehow or other, that they may devote
themselves to _parerga_ which they like, and which they are
pleased to consider more dignified, more important, nearer the chief
end of man. And from the extremely common assumption that other
people, whether they confess this or not, act upon it, one may at
least not uncharitably suppose that a much larger number would so act
if they dared, or had the opportunity. This was not Mr Arnold's
conception of the relations of the hired labourer and the labour which
gains him his hire. Not only does he seem to have performed his actual
inspecting duties with that exact punctiliousness which in such cases
is much better than zeal, but he did not grudge the expenditure of his
art on the requirements, and not the strict requirements only, of his
craft. The unfitness of poets for business has been often enough
proved to be a mere fond thing vainly invented; but it was never
better disproved than in this particular instance.

Of the manner in which he had discharged these duties, some idea may
be formed from the volume of _Reports_ which was edited, the year
after his death, by Sir Francis Sandford. It would really be difficult
to imagine a better display of that "sweet reasonableness," the
frequency of which phrase on a man's lips does not invariably imply
the presence of the corresponding thing in his conduct. It would be
impossible for the most plodding inspector, who never dared commit a
sonnet or an essay, to deal with his subject in a way showing better
acquaintance with it, more interest in it, or more business-like
abstinence from fads, and flights, and flings. Faint and far-off
suggestions of the biographer of Arminius may, indeed, by a very
sensitive reader, be discovered in the slightly eccentric suggestion
that the Latin of the Vulgate (of which Mr Arnold himself was justly
fond) should be taught in primary schools, and in the rather perverse
coupling of "Scott and Mrs Hemans." But these are absolutely the only
approaches to naughtiness in the whole volume. It is a real misfortune
that the nature of the subject should make readers of the book
unlikely to be ever numerous; for it supplies a side of its author's
character nowhere else (except in glimpses) provided by his extant
work. It may even be doubte