is such a Gothamite proceeding as it is sometimes held to be.  For in this case the blocks are chopped as well as the homeliest bill-hook could do it; and we know that the razor was none the blunter.  At any rate, the ethical document is one of the highest value, and very fit, indeed, to be recommended to the attention of young gentlemen of genius who think it the business of the State to provide for them, and not to require any dismal drudgery from them in return.

But the importance of Mr Arnold to English history and English literature has, of course, little or nothing to do with his official work.  The faithful performance of that work is important to his character; and the character of the work itself colours very importantly, and, as we have seen, not perhaps always to unmitigated advantage, the nature of his performances as a man of letters.  But it is as a man of letters, as a poet, as a critic, and perhaps most of all as both combined, that he ranks for history and for the world.

A detailed examination of his poetic performance has been attempted in the earlier pages of this little book, as well as some general remarks upon it; but we may well find room here for something more general still.  That the poet is as much above the prose-writer in rank as he is admittedly of an older creation, has always been held; and here, as elsewhere, I am not careful to attempt innovation.  In fact, though it may seem unkind to say so, it may be suspected that nobody has ever tried to elevate the function of the prose-writer above that of the poet, unless he thought he could write great prose and knew he could not write great poetry.  But in another order of estimate than this, Mr Arnold’s poetic work may seem of greater value than his prose, always admirable and sometimes consummate as the latter is, if we take each at its best.

At its best—­and this is how, though he would himself seem to have sometimes felt inclined to dispute the fact, we must reckon a poet.  His is not poetry of the absolutely trustworthy kind.  It is not like that of Shelley or of Keats, who, when their period of mere juvenility is past, simply cannot help writing poetry; nor is it, on the other hand, like that of Wordsworth, who flies and flounders with an incalculable and apparently irresponsible alternation.  It is rather—­though I should rank it far higher, on all but the historic estimate, than Gray’s—­like that of Gray.  The poet has in him a vein, or, if the metaphor be preferred, a spring, of the most real and rarest poetry.  But the vein is constantly broken by faults, and never very thick; the spring is intermittent, and runs at times by drops only.  There is always, as it were, an effort to get it to yield freely, to run clear and constant.  And—­again as in the case of Gray—­the poet subjects himself to a further disability by all manner of artificial restrictions, struggles to comply with this or that system, theories, formulas, tricks.  He will not