ulty of selection, and the effect of their presentation is akin to
that of a gallery of Greek marbles.

His Failure.

Other poets say anything--say everything that is in them. Browning lived
to realise the myth of the Inexhaustible Bottle; Mr. William Morris is
nothing: if not fluent and copious; Mr. Swinburne has a facility that
would seem impossible if it were not a living fact; even the Laureate is
sometimes prodigal of unimportant details, of touches insignificant and
superfluous, of words for words' sake, of cadences that have no reason of
being save themselves. Matthew Arnold alone says only what is worth
saying. In other words, he selects: from his matter whatever is
impertinent is eliminated and only what is vital is permitted to remain.
Sometimes he goes a little astray, and his application of the principle
on which Sophocles and Homer wrought results in failure. But in these
instances it will always be found, I think, that the effect is due not to
the principle nor the poet's application of it but to the poet himself,
who has exceeded his commission, and attempted more than is in him to
accomplish. The case is rare with Arnold, one of whose qualities--and by
no means the least Hellenic of them--was a fine consciousness of his
limitations. But that he failed, and failed considerably, it were idle
to deny. There is _Merope_ to bear witness to the fact; and of _Merope_
what is there to say? Evidently it is an imitation Greek play: an essay,
that is, in a form which ceased long since to have any active life, so
that the attempt to revive it--to create a soul under the ribs of very
musty death--is a blunder alike in sentiment and in art. As evidently
Arnold is no dramatist. Empedocles, the Strayed Reveller, even the
Forsaken Merman, all these are expressions of purely personal feeling--are
so many metamorphoses of Arnold. In _Merope_ there is no such basis of
reality. The poet was never on a level with his argument. He knew
little or nothing of his characters--of Merope or AEpytus or Polyphontes,
of Arcas or Laias or even the Messenger; at every step the ground is seen
shifting under his feet; he is comparatively void of matter, and his
application of the famous principle is labour lost. He is winnowing the
wind; he is washing not gold but water.

His Triumphs.

It is other-guess work with _Empedocles_, the _Dejaneira_ fragment,
_Sohrab and Rustum_, the _Philomela_, his better work in g