kill--all these are great things." One would give many
pages of the _Letters_ for that naif admission that "gush" is "a
great thing."

A little later (May 1853), all his spare time is being spent on a
poem, which he thinks by far the best thing he has yet done, to wit,
_Sohrab and Rustum_. And he "never felt so sure of himself or so
really and truly at ease as to criticism." He stays in barracks at the
depot of the 17th Lancers with a brother-in-law, and we regret to find
that "Death or Glory" manners do not please him. The instance is a
cornet spinning his rings on the table after dinner. "College does
civilise a boy," he ejaculates, which is true--always providing that
it is a good college. Yet, with that almost unconscious naturalness
which is particularly noticeable in him, he is much dissatisfied with
Oxford--thinks it (as we all do) terribly fallen off since _his_
days. Perhaps the infusion of Dissenters' sons (it is just at the time
of the first Commission in 1854) may brace its flaccid sinews, though
the middle-class, he confesses, is abominably disagreeable. He sees a
good deal of this poor middle-class in his inspecting tours, and
decides elsewhere about the same time that "of all dull, stagnant,
unedifying _entourages_, that of middle-class Dissent is the
stupidest." It is sad to find that he thinks women utterly unfit for
teachers and lecturers; but Girton and Lady Margaret's may take
comfort, it is "no natural incapacity, but the fault of their
bringing-up." With regard to his second series of _Poems_ (_v.
infra_) he thinks _Balder_ will "consolidate the peculiar sort
of reputation he got by _Sohrab and Rustum_;" and a little later,
in April 1856, we have his own opinion of himself as a poet, whose
charm is "literalness and simplicity." Mr Ruskin is also treated--with
less appreciation than one could wish.

The second series just mentioned was issued in 1855, a second edition
of the first having been called for the year before. It contained,
like its predecessor, such of his earlier work as he chose to
republish and had not yet republished, chiefly from the
_Empedocles_ volume. But _Empedocles_ itself was only
represented by some scraps, mainly grouped as _The Harp-Player on
Etna. Faded Leaves_, grouped with an addition, here appear:
_Stagirius_ is called _Desire_, and the _Stanzas in Memory
of the Author of Obermann_ now become _Obermann_ simply. Only
two absolutely new poems, a longer and a shorter, ap