though not likely, that he would be ejected for the part he took.  And his first five years’ tenure of the Oxford Chair ends with the delivery of the Creweian oration, as to the composition of which he consoles himself (having heard both from the Vice-Chancellor and others that there was to be “a great row”) by reflecting that “it doesn’t much matter what he writes, as he shall not be heard.”  I do not know whether the prediction was justified; but if so, the same fate had, according to tradition, befallen his Newdigate some twenty years earlier.  In neither case can the “row” have had any personal reference.  Though his lectures were never largely attended by undergraduates, he was always popular in Oxford.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] The mystery is partly explained, in a fashion of no little biographical importance, by the statement in Mr Arnold’s first general report for the year 1852, that his district included Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Salop, Hereford, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Rutland and Northants, Gloucester, Monmouth, all South Wales, most of North Wales, and some schools in the East and West Ridings.  This apparently impossible range had its monstrosity reduced by the limitation of his inspectorship to Nonconformist schools of other denominations than the Roman Catholic, especially Wesleyan and the then powerful “British” schools.  As the schools multiplied the district was reduced, and at last he had Westminster only; but the exclusion of Anglican and Roman Catholic schools remained till 1870.  And it is impossible not to connect the somewhat exaggerated place which the Dissenters hold in his social and political theories (as well as perhaps some of his views about the “Philistine”) with these associations of his.  We must never forget that for nearly twenty years Mr Arnold worked in the shadow, not of Barchester Towers, but of Salem Chapel.

[2] “I have papers sent me to look over which will give me to the 20th of January in London without moving, then for a week to Huntingdonshire schools, then for another to London, ...and then Birmingham for a month.”

[3] There are persons who would spell this moral; but I am not writing French, and in English the practice of good writers from Chesterfield downwards is my authority.

[4] The letters are full of pleasant child-worship, the best passage of all being perhaps the dialogue between Tom and “Budge,” at vol. i. p. 56, with the five-year-old cynicism of the elder’s reply, “Oh this is false Budge, this is all false!” to his infant brother’s protestations of affection.

CHAPTER III.

A FRENCH ETON—­ESSAYS IN CRITICISM—­CELTIC LITERATURE—­NEW POEMS—­LIFE FROM 1862 TO 1867.