It is indeed idle nonsense to speak, as some critics speak, of the “present” as alone having claims upon the poet.  Whatever is great, or good, or pathetic, or terrible, in any age past or present, belongs to him, and is within his proper province; but most especially, if he is wise, he will select his subjects out of those which time has sealed as permanently significant.  It is not easy in our own age to distinguish what has the elements in it of enduring importance; and time is wiser than we.  But why dwell with such apparent exclusiveness on classic antiquity, as if there was no antiquity except the classic, and as if time were divided into the eras of Greece and Rome and the nineteenth century?  The Hellenic poet sang of the Hellenes, why should not the Teutonic poet sing of the Teutons?

“Vixere fortes post Agamemnona.”

And grand as are Achilles and Clytemnestra, they are not grander than their parallels in the German epic Criemhilda and Von Tronje Hagen.  We do not dream of prescribing to Mr. Arnold what subject he should choose.  Let him choose what interests himself if he will interest his readers; and if he choose what is really human, let it come from what age it will, human hearts will answer to it.  And yet it seems as if Teutonic tradition, Teutonic feeling, and Teutonic thought had the first claim on English and German poets.  And those among them will deserve best of the modern world, and will receive the warmest welcome from it, who will follow Shakespeare in modelling into forms of beauty the inheritance which has come down to them of the actions of their own race.  So most faithfully, if least directly, they will be treading in the steps of those great poets of Greece whom they desire to imitate.  Homer and Sophocles did not look beyond their own traditions and their own beliefs; they found in these and these only their exclusive and abundant material.  Have the Gothic annals suddenly become poor, and our own quarries become exhausted and worthless?

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WORDS ABOUT OXFORD

Many long years had passed since I visited Oxford,—­ some twenty-eight or more.  I had friends among the resident members of that venerable domicile of learning.  Pleasant had been the time that I had spent there, of which intervening years had not diminished the remembrance —­perhaps heightened the tone of its colouring.  On many accounts I regarded that beautiful city with affectionate veneration.  There were more than local attractions to render it interesting.  There were the recollections of those who ceased in the interval to be denizens of this world.  These could not but breathe sadness over the noble edifices that recalled men, conversations, and convivialities which, however long departed, shadowed upon the mind its own inevitable destiny.  Again were those venerable buildings before me in their architectural richness.  There were tower, and roof, and gateway, in all their variety of outline,