each other when Sohrab is lying mortally wounded.  It is one of those terrible situations which only the very highest power of poetry can dwell upon successfully.  If the right chord be not touched to the exactest nicety, if the shock of the incident in itself be not melted into pathos, and the nobleness of soul in the two sufferers be not made to rise above the cruel accident which crushes them, we cannot listen to the poet.  The story overwhelms and absorbs us; we desire to be left alone with it and with our own feelings, and his words about it become officious and intrusive.  Homer has furnished Mr. Arnold with his model, and has taught him the great lesson that the language on such occasions cannot be too simple and the style too little ornamented.  Perhaps it may be thought that he has followed Homer’s manner even too closely.  No one who has read “Mycerinus” and the “Forsaken Metman” can doubt that Mr. Arnold can write richly if he pleases.  It is a little startling, therefore, to find the opening of this poem simpler than one would make it, even if telling it in prose to a child.  As in the “Iliad,” the same words are repeated over and over again for the same idea, without variation or attempt at it; and although it may easily be that our taste is spoiled by the high seasoning of the modern style, the result is that it strikes the attention to an extent which would have been better avoided.  A perfect style does not strike at all, and it is a matter in which the reader ought to be considered even more than the abstract right.  We have soon, however, ceased to think of that; the peculiarity which we have mentioned is confined to the beginning, and the success of the treatment is best proved by our forgetfulness, as we read on, of art and artist language and manner, in the overpowering interest of the story as it is drawn out before us.  Extracts will convey a poor idea of a poem in which the parts are so wholly subordinate to the effect of the whole, and yet, in spite of this disadvantage, we can justify at least partially to our readers the opinions which we have generally expressed.

We will take the scene of the recognition, when Sohrab, lying wounded, and as yet ignorant of the name of his adversary, has declared himself Rustum’s son.  The father, at first incredulous and scornful, is led step by step, through the mention of old names and times, towards the anaguorisis, and after the most delicately traced alternations of feeling, all doubt is ended by the mark of the seal on Sohrab’s arm which Rustum had given to his mother.

“How say’st thou? [Sohrab says.] Is that sign the proper
sign
Of Rustum’s son, or of some other man’s? 
He spoke:  but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood
Speechless; and then he uttered one sharp cry,
Oh, boy, thy father!”

This is the first hint to Sohrab who has been his foe.