But the greatest of these—­the greatest by far—­is The Scholar-Gipsy.  I have read—­and that not once only, nor only in the works of unlettered and negligible persons—­expressions of irritation at the local Oxonian colour.  This is surely amazing.  One may not be an Athenian, and never have been at Athens, yet be able to enjoy the local colour of the Phaedrus.  One may not be an Italian, and never have been in Italy, yet find the Divina Commedia made not teasing but infinitely vivid and agreeable by Dante’s innumerable references to his country, Florentine and general.  That some keener thrill, some nobler gust, may arise in the reading of the poem to those who have actually watched

  “The line of festal light in Christ Church Hall”

from above Hinksey, who know the Fyfield elm in May, and have “trailed their fingers in the stripling Thames” at Bablockhithe,—­may be granted.  But in the name of Bandusia and of Gargarus, what offence can these things give to any worthy wight who by his ill luck has not seen them with eyes?  The objection is so apt to suggest a suspicion, as illiberal almost as itself, that one had better not dwell on it.

Let us hope that there are after all few to whom it has presented itself—­that most, even if they be not sons by actual matriculation of Oxford, feel that, as of other “Cities of God,” they are citizens of her by spiritual adoption, and by the welcome accorded in all such cities to God’s children.  But if the scholar had been an alumnus of Timbuctoo, and for Cumnor and Godstow had been substituted strange places in _-wa_ and _-ja_, I cannot think that, even to those who are of Oxford, the intrinsic greatness of this noble poem would be much affected, though it might lose a separable charm.  For it has everything—­a sufficient scheme, a definite meaning and purpose, a sustained and adequate command of poetical presentation, and passages and phrases of the most exquisite beauty.  Although it begins as a pastoral, the mere traditional and conventional frippery of that form is by no means so prominent in it as in the later (and, I think, less consummate) companion and sequel Thyrsis.  With hardly an exception, the poet throughout escapes in his phraseology the two main dangers which so constantly beset him—­too great stiffness and too great simplicity.  His “Graian” personification is not overdone; his landscape is exquisite; the stately stanza not merely sweeps, but sways and swings, with as much grace as state.  And therefore the Arnoldian “note”—­the special form of the maladie du siecle which, as we have seen, this poet chooses to celebrate—­acquires for once the full and due poetic expression and music, both symphonic and in such special clangours as the never-to-be-too-often-quoted distich—­

  “Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
  Still clutching the inviolable shade”—­

which marks the highest point of the composition.