The second series just mentioned was issued in 1855, a second edition of the first having been called for the year before.  It contained, like its predecessor, such of his earlier work as he chose to republish and had not yet republished, chiefly from the Empedocles volume.  But Empedocles itself was only represented by some scraps, mainly grouped as The Harp-Player on Etna.  Faded Leaves, grouped with an addition, here appear:  Stagirius is called Desire, and the Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann now become Obermann simply.  Only two absolutely new poems, a longer and a shorter, appear:  the first is Balder Dead, the second Separation, the added number of Faded Leaves.  This is of no great value. Balder is interesting, though not extremely good.  Its subject is connected with that of Gray’s Descent of Odin, but handled much more fully, and in blank-verse narrative instead of ballad form.  The story, like most of those in Norse mythology, has great capabilities; but it may be questioned whether the Greek-Miltonic chastened style which the poet affects is well calculated to bring them out.  The death of Nanna, and the blind fratricide Hoder, are touchingly done, and Hermod’s ride to Hela’s realm is stately.  But as a whole the thing is rather dim and tame.

Mr Arnold’s election to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford (May 1857) was a really notable event, not merely in his own career, but to some, and no small, extent in the history of English literature during the nineteenth century.  The post is of no great value.  I remember the late Sir Francis Doyle, who was Commissioner of Customs as well as Professor, saying to me once with a humorous melancholy, “Ah!  Eau de Cologne pays much better than Poetry!” But its duties are far from heavy, and can be adjusted pretty much as the holder pleases.  And as a position it is unique.  It is, though not of extreme antiquity, the oldest purely literary Professorship in the British Isles; and it remained, till long after Mr Arnold’s time, the only one of the kind in the two great English Universities.  In consequence partly of the regulation that it can be held for ten years only—­nominally five, with a practically invariable re-election for another five—­there is at least the opportunity, which, since Mr Arnold’s own time, has been generally taken, of maintaining and refreshing the distinction of the occupant of the chair.  Before his time there had been a good many undistinguished professors, but Warton and Keble, in their different ways, must have adorned even a Chair of Poetry even in the University of Oxford.  Above all, the entire (or almost entire) freedom of action left to the Professor should have, and in the case of Keble at least had already had, the most stimulating effect on minds capable of stimulation.  For the Professor of Poetry at Oxford is neither, like some Professors, bound to