“In his work as literary critic Arnold has occupied a high place among the foremost prose writers of the time.  His style is in marked contrast to the dithyrambic eloquence of Carlyle, or to Ruskin’s pure and radiant coloring.  It is a quiet style, restrained, clear, discriminating, incisive, with little glow of ardor or passion.  Notwithstanding its scrupulous assumption of urbanity, it is often a merciless style, indescribably irritating to an opponent by its undercurrent of sarcastic humor, and its calm air of assured superiority.  By his insistence on a high standard of technical excellence, and by his admirable presentation of certain principles of literary judgment, Arnold performed a great work for literature.  On the other hand, we miss here, as in his poetry, the human element, the comprehensive sympathy that we recognize in the criticism of Carlyle.  Yet Carlyle could not have written the essay On Translating Homer, with all its scholarly discrimination in style and technique, any more than Arnold could have produced Carlyle’s large-hearted essay on Burns.  Arnold’s varied energy and highly trained intelligence have been felt in many different fields.  He has won a peculiar and honorable place in the poetry of the century; he has excelled as literary critic, he has labored in the cause of education, and finally, in his Culture and Anarchy, he has set forth his scheme of social reform, and in certain later books has made His contribution to contemporary thought.”—­PANCOAST, Introduction to English Literature.

* * * * *

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF ARNOLD’S WORKS

1840.  Alaric at Rome. (Prize poem at Rugby.)
1843.  Cromwell. (Prize poem at Oxford.)
1849.  The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems. 
        Mycerinus. 
        The Strayed Reveller. 
        Fragment of an Antigone. 
        The Sick King in Bokhara. 
        Religious Isolation. 
        To my Friends. 
        A Modern Sappho. 
        The New Sirens. 
        The Voice. 
        To Fausta. 
        Stagyrus. 
        To a Gipsy Child. 
        The Hayswater Boat. 
        The Forsaken Merman. 
        The World and the Quietist. 
        In Utrumque Paratus. 
        Resignation. 
      Sonnets. 
        Quiet Work. 
        To a Friend. 
        Shakespeare. 
        To the Duke of Wellington. 
        Written in Butler’s Sermons. 
        Written in Emerson’s Essays. 
        To an Independent Preacher. 
        To George Cruikshank. 
        To a Republican Friend.

1852.  Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems. 
         Empedocles on Etna. 
         The River. 
         Excuse. 
         Indifference. 
         Too Late. 
         On the Rhine. 
         Longing. 
         The Lake. 
         Parting.