So far we have spoken with reserve, for we have simply stated the feelings with which we regarded this little volume on first reading it; but the reserve is no longer necessary, and the misgivings which we experienced have not been justified.  At the close of last year another volume was published, again of miscellaneous poems, which went beyond the most sanguine hopes of A.’s warmest admirers.  As before with “The Strayed Revellers,” so again with “Empedocles on AEtna,” (Empedocles on AEtna, and other Poems.  By A. London:  1852) the piece de resistance was not the happiest selection.  But of the remaining pieces, and of all those which he has more recently added, it is difficult to speak in too warm praise.  In the unknown A., we are now to recognize a son of the late Master of Rugby, Dr. Arnold.  Like a good knight, we suppose he thought it better to win his spurs before appearing in public with so honoured a name; but the associations which belong to it will suffer no alloy from him who now wears it.  Not only is the advance in art remarkable, in greater clearness of effect, and in the mechanical handling of words, but far more in simplicity and healthfulness of moral feeling.  There is no more obscurity, and no mysticism; and we see everywhere the working of a mind bent earnestly on cultivating whatever is highest and worthiest in itself; of a person who is endeavouring, without affectation, to follow the best things, to see clearly what is good, and right, and true, and to fasten his heart upon these.  There is usually a period in the growth of poets in which, like coarser people, they mistake the voluptuous for the beautiful; but in Mr. Arnold there is no trace of any such tendency; pure, without effort, he feels no enjoyment and sees no beauty in the atmosphere of the common passions; and in nobleness of purpose, in a certain loftiness of mind singularly tempered with modesty, he continually reminds us of his father.  There is an absence, perhaps, of colour; it is natural that it should be so in the earlier poems of a writer who proposes aims such as these to himself; his poetry is addressed to the intellectual, and not to the animal emotions; and to persons. of animal taste, the flavour will no doubt be oversimple; but it is true poetry—­a true representation of true human feeling.  It may not be immediately popular, but it will win its way in the long run, and has elements of endurance in it which enable it to wait without anxiety for recognition.

Among the best of the new poems is “Tristram and Iseult.”  It is unlucky that so many of the subjects should be so unfamiliar to English readers, but it is their own fault if they do not know the “Mort d’Arthur.”  We must not calculate, however, on too much knowledge in such unpractical matters; and as the story is too long to tell in this place, we take an extract which will not require any.  It is a picture of sleeping children as beautiful as Sir Francis Chantrey’s.