pear: the first is
_Balder Dead_, the second _Separation_, the added number of
_Faded Leaves_. This is of no great value. _Balder_ is interesting,
though not extremely good. Its subject is connected with that of
Gray's _Descent of Odin_, but handled much more fully, and in
blank-verse narrative instead of ballad form. The story, like most of
those in Norse mythology, has great capabilities; but it may be
questioned whether the Greek-Miltonic chastened style which the poet
affects is well calculated to bring them out. The death of Nanna, and
the blind fratricide Hoder, are touchingly done, and Hermod's ride to
Hela's realm is stately. But as a whole the thing is rather dim and
tame.

Mr Arnold's election to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford (May
1857) was a really notable event, not merely in his own career, but to
some, and no small, extent in the history of English literature during
the nineteenth century. The post is of no great value. I remember the
late Sir Francis Doyle, who was Commissioner of Customs as well as
Professor, saying to me once with a humorous melancholy, "Ah! Eau de
Cologne pays _much_ better than Poetry!" But its duties are far
from heavy, and can be adjusted pretty much as the holder pleases. And
as a position it is unique. It is, though not of extreme antiquity,
the oldest purely literary Professorship in the British Isles; and it
remained, till long after Mr Arnold's time, the only one of the kind
in the two great English Universities. In consequence partly of the
regulation that it can be held for ten years only--nominally five,
with a practically invariable re-election for another five--there is
at least the opportunity, which, since Mr Arnold's own time, has been
generally taken, of maintaining and refreshing the distinction of the
occupant of the chair. Before his time there had been a good many
undistinguished professors, but Warton and Keble, in their different
ways, must have adorned even a Chair of Poetry even in the University
of Oxford. Above all, the entire (or almost entire) freedom of action
left to the Professor should have, and in the case of Keble at least
had already had, the most stimulating effect on minds capable of
stimulation. For the Professor of Poetry at Oxford is neither, like
some Professors, bound to the chariot-wheels of examinations and
courses of set teaching, nor, like others, has he to feel that his
best, his most original, efforts can have no interest, and h