These later letters contain so many references to living people that one has to be careful in quoting from them; but as regards himself, there is of course no such need of care.  That self-ruthlessness which always prevented him from scamping work is amazingly illustrated in one of October 1882, which tells how he sat up till five in the morning rewriting a lecture he was to deliver in Liverpool, and got up at eight to start for the place of delivery.  Let us hope that a champagne luncheon there—­“chiefly doctors, but you know I like doctors”—­revived him after the night and the journey.  And two months later he makes pleasant allusion to “that demon Traill,” in reference to a certain admirable parody of Poor Matthias.  He had thought Mr Gladstone “hopelessly prejudiced against” him, and was proportionately surprised when in August 1883 he was offered by that Minister a pension of L250 for service to the poetry and literature of England.  Few Civil List pensions have been so well deserved.  But Mr Arnold, as most men of his quality would have been, was at once struck with the danger of evil constructions being put by the baser sort on the acceptance of an extra allowance from public funds by a man who already had a fair income from them, and a comfortable pension in the ordinary way to look forward to.  Mr John Morley, however, and Lord Lingen, luckily succeeded in quieting his scruples, and only the very basest sort grumbled.  The great advantage, of course, was that it enabled him to retire, as soon as his time was up, without too great loss of income.

A lecturing tour to America was already planned, and October 7, 1883 is the last date from Cobham, “New York” succeeding it without any; for Mr Arnold had the reprehensible and, in official persons, rare habit of very constantly omitting dates, though not places.  The St Nicholas Club, “a delightful, poky, dark, exclusive little old club of the Dutch families,” is the only place in which he finds peace.  For, as one expected, the interviewers made life terrible.  These American letters are interesting reading enough, but naturally tend to be little more than a replica of similar letters from other Englishmen who have done the same thing.  As has been quite frankly admitted here, Mr Arnold never made any effort, and seldom seems to have been independently prompted, to write what are called “amusing” letters:  he merely tells a plain tale of journeys, lectures, meals, persons, scenery, manners and customs, etc.  Chicago seems to have vindicated its character for “character” by hospitably forcing him to eat dinner and supper “on end,” and by describing him in its newspapers as “an elderly bird pecking at grapes on a trellis.”  The whole tour, including a visit to Canada, lasted nearly five months, and brought—­not the profit which some people expected, but—­a good sum, with wrinkles as to more if the experiment were repeated.  And when he came back to England, the lectures were collected and printed.