Thus feeling, gazing, might I grow
    Composed, refresh’d, ennobled, clear;
    Then willing let my spirit go
    To work or wait elsewhere or here!

This solemn love and reverence for the continuous life of the physical universe may remind us that Arnold’s teaching about humanity, subtle and searching as it is, has done less to endear him to many of his disciples, than his feeling for Nature.  His is the kind of Nature-worship which takes nothing at second-hand.  He paid “the Mighty Mother” the only homage which is worthy of her acceptance, a minute and dutiful study of her moods and methods.  He placed himself as a reverent learner at her feet before he presumed to go forth to the world as an exponent of her teaching.  It is this exactness of observation which makes his touches of local colouring so vivid and so true.  This gives its winning charm to his landscape-painting, whether the scene is laid in Kensington Gardens, or the Alps, or the valley of the Thames.  This fills The Scholar-Gipsy, and Thyrsis, and Obermann, and The Forsaken Merman with flawless gems of natural description, and felicities of phrase which haunt the grateful memory.

In brief, it seems to me that he was not a great poet, for he lacked the gifts which sway the multitude, and compel the attention of mankind.  But he was a true poet, rich in those qualities which make the loved and trusted teacher of a chosen few—­as he himself would have said, of “the Remnant.”  Often in point of beauty and effectiveness, always in his purity and elevation, he is worthy to be associated with the noblest names of all.  Alone among his contemporaries, we can venture to say of him that he was not only of the school, but of the lineage, of Wordsworth.  His own judgment on his place among the modern poets was thus given in a letter of 1869:  “My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions which reflect it.  It might be fairly urged that I have less poetic sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning.  Yet because I have more perhaps of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had theirs.”

When we come to consider him as a prose-writer, cautions and qualifications are much less necessary.  Whatever may be thought of the substance of his writings, it surely must be admitted that he was a great master of style.  And his style was altogether his own.  In the last year of his life he said to the present writer:  “People think I can teach them style.  What stuff it all is!  Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can.  That is the only secret of style.”