ey are.

We cannot but think it unfortunate that this poem,
with several others of the highest merit, have been
omitted in the last edition, while others find a place
there, for which comparatively we care little. Uniformity
of excellence has been sacrificed to uniformity
of character, a subsidiary matter which in itself is of
slight importance, and which the public would never
quarrel for if they were treated with an ever pleasing
variety. As it is, we have still to search three volumes
for the best specimens of Mr. Arnold's powers, and
opportunities are still left for illmatured critics to make
extracts of an apparently inferior kind. There is a
remedy for this, however, in the future, and the necessary
sifting will no doubt get itself duly accomplished at
last. In the meantime, before noticing the late edition,
we have a few words to say about Empedocles, the
ground of objection to which we cannot think Mr. Arnold
adequately understands, although he has omitted it in
his present edition, and has given us his reasons for
doing so. Empedocles, as we all know, was a Sicilian
philosopher, who, out of discontent with life, or from
other cause, flung himself into the crater of Mount
AEtna. A discontent of this kind, Mr. Arnold tells
us, unrelieved by incident, hope, or resistance, is not
a fit subject for poetry. The object of poetry is to
please, and the spectacle of a man too weak to bear his
trials, and breaking under them, cannot be anything but
painful. The correctness of the portrait he defends;
and the fault, as he thinks, is not in the treatment, but
in the subject itself. Now it is true that as a rule poetry
is better employed in exhibiting the conquest over
temptations than the fall under them, and some escape
of this kind for the feelings must be provided in
tragedies, by the introduction of some powerful cause,
either of temptation acting on the will or of an external
force controlling the action, in order to explain and
reconcile us to the catastrophe. A mere picture of
imbecility is revolting simply; we cannot conceive ourselves
acting in the same way under the same circumstances,
and we can therefore feel neither sympathy with
the actor nor interest in his fate. But we must be
careful how we narrow our theories in such matters.
In Werther we have an instance of the same trial, with
the same issue as Mr. Arnold has described in Empedocles,
and to say that Werther was a mistake, is to
circumscribe th