ABSTRACT
In the case of Mr. Matthew Arnold one experiences an additional repugnance to the undertaking we have conscientiously imposed on ourselves [‘Criticism-or what is so termed’] because he himself evidently sees and feels-what is there that he does not see and feel?—the force of all the objections we have to make to contemporaneous verse (his own included), and likewise the uncritical temper in which it is usually mentioned. The sardonic lines we just now quoted show how strongly he disapproves the improper mentioning in the same breath of the giants of old with the pigmies of to-day; and those which he prefixes to the second volume of his Poems are of themselves enough to demonstrate in what estimation he holds the poetry, either actual or possible, of such an age as that in which it is his lot to live:
Though the Muse be gone away, Though she move not earth to-day, Souls, erewhile who caught her word, Ah! still harp on what they heard.
