It is one of the heaviest indictments against the criticism of the mid-nineteenth century that this remarkable book—­the most remarkable first book of verse that appeared between Tennyson’s and Browning’s in the early thirties and The Defence of Guenevere in 1858—­seems to have attracted next to no notice at all.  It received neither the ungenerous and purblind, though not wholly unjust, abuse which in the long—­run did so much good to Tennyson himself, nor the absurd and pernicious bleatings of praise which have greeted certain novices of late years.  It seems to have been simply let alone, or else made the subject of quite insignificant comments.

In the same year (1849) Mr Arnold was represented in the Examiner of July 21 by a sonnet to the Hungarian nation, which he never included in any book, and which remained peacefully in the dust-bin till a reference in his Letters quite recently set the ruthless reprinter on its track.  Except for an ending, itself not very good, the thing is quite valueless:  the author himself says to his mother, “it is not worth much.”  And three years passed before he followed up his first volume with a second, which should still more clearly have warned the intelligent critic that here was somebody, though such a critic would not have been guilty of undue hedging if he had professed himself still unable to decide whether a new great poet had arisen or not.

This volume was Empedodes on Etna and other Poems, [still] By A. London:  Fellowes, 1852.  It contained two attempts—­the title-piece and Tristram and Iseult—­much longer and more ambitious than anything that the poet had yet done, and thirty-three smaller poems, of which two—­Destiny and Courage—­were never reprinted.  It was again very unequal—­perhaps more so than the earlier volume, though it went higher and oftener high.  But the author became dissatisfied with it very shortly after its appearance in the month of October, and withdrew it when, as is said, less than fifty copies had been sold.

One may perhaps not impertinently doubt whether the critical reason, v. infra—­in itself a just and penetrating one, as well as admirably expressed—­which, in the Preface of the 1853 collection, the poet gave for its exclusion (save in very small part) from that volume tells the whole truth.  At any rate, I think most good judges quarrel with Empedodes, not because the situation is unmanageable, but because the poet has not managed it.  The contrast, in dramatic trio, of the world-worn and disappointed philosopher, the practical and rather prosaic physician, and the fresh gifts and unspoilt gusto of the youthful poet, is neither impossible nor unpromising.  Perhaps, as a situation, it is a little nearer than Mr Arnold quite knew to that of Paracelsus, and it is handled with less force, if with more clearness, than Browning’s piece.  But one does not know what is more amiss with it than is amiss with most