But he had put it himself in poetry long before--this slow emergence above the tumult and the shouting of the stars that are to shine upon the next generation. Mr. Garnett, in the careful and learned notice of my uncle's life and work in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, says of his poetry that "most of it" is "immortal." This, indeed, is the great, the mystic word that rings in every poet's ear from the beginning. And there is scarcely any true poet who is not certain that sooner or later his work will "put on immortality." Matthew Arnold expressed, I think, his own secret faith, in the beautiful lines of his early poem, "The Bacchanalia--or the New Age": The epoch ends, the world is still. The age has talk'd and work'd its fill-- * * * * * And in the after-silence sweet, Now strife is hush'd, our ears doth meet, Ascending pure, the bell-like fame Of this or that down-trodden name, Delicate spirits, push'd away In the hot press of the noonday. And o'er the plain, where the dead age Did its now silent warfare wage-- O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom, Where many a splendor finds its tomb, Many spent fames and fallen nights-- The one or two immortal lights Rise slowly up into the sky To shine there everlastingly, Like stars over the bounding hill. The epoch ends, the world is still. * * * * * It was on the way home from Laleham, after my uncle's burial there, that Mr. George Smith gave me fresh and astonishing news of _Robert Elsmere's_ success. The circulating libraries were being fretted to death for copies, and the whirlwind of talk was constantly rising. A little later in the same month of April, if I remember right, I was going from Waterloo to Godalming and Borough Farm, when, just as the train was starting, a lady rushed along the platform, waving a book aloft and signaling to another lady who was evidently waiting to see her off. "I've got it--I've got it!" she said, triumphantly. "Get in, ma-am--get in!" said the porter, bundling her into the compartment where I sat alone. Then she hung out of the window, breathlessly talking. "They told me no chance for weeks--not the slightest! Then--just as I was standing at the counter, who should come up but somebody bringing back the first volume. Of course it was promised to somebody else; but as I was _there_, I laid hands on it, and here it is!" The train went off, my companion plunged into her book, and I watched her as she turned the pages of the familiar green volume. We were quite alone. I had half a mind to say something revealing; but on the whole it was more amusing to sit still! And meanwhile letters poured in.