al tree there are fewer of these Dead Sea apples,--her husband,
who, though audacious, was not vulgar in his rhymes, may have taught her
better. But to her earlier, more spontaneous, and more characteristic
verse they are a most terrible drawback, such as no other English poet
exhibits or suffers.

No poets at all approaching the first class can be said to have been
born within a decade either way of Tennyson and Browning, though some
extremely interesting writers of verse of about the same date will have
to be noticed in the latter part of this chapter. The next year that
produced a poet almost if not quite great, though one of odd lapses and
limitations, was 1822, the birth-year of Matthew Arnold. When a writer
has produced both prose and verse, or prose of distinctly different
kinds in which one division or kind was very far superior in intrinsic
value and extrinsic importance to the others, it has seemed best here to
notice all his work together. But in the case of Mr. Arnold, as in some
others, this is not possible, the volume, the character, and the
influence of his work in creative verse and critical prose alike
demanding separate treatment for the two sections. He was the eldest son
of Dr. Arnold, the famous head-master of Rugby, and was educated first
at the two schools, Winchester and Rugby itself, with which his father
was connected as scholar and master, and then at Balliol, where he
obtained a scholarship in 1840. He took the Newdigate in 1844, and was
elected a fellow of Oriel in 1845. After some work as private
secretary, he received an inspectorship of schools, and held it until
nearly the time of his death in 1888. He had been Professor of Poetry at
Oxford from 1857-67. He published poetry early, and though his fame at
this time was never very wide, he was known to those interested in
poetry, and especially to Oxford men, for more than twenty years before
he acquired popularity as a critic and began the remarkable series of
prose works which will be noticed in a later chapter. So early as 1849
he had published, under the initial of his surname only, _The Strayed
Reveller, and other Poems_; but his poetical building was not securely
founded until 1853, when there appeared, with a very remarkable preface,
a collection of Poems, which was certainly the best thing that had been
produced by any one younger than the two masters already discussed.
_Merope_, which followed in 1858, was an attempt at an English-G