Such a student would actually have been more likely to class him with two of his contemporaries between whom and himself there were but few points in common, the "humourless" William Morris and the "humourless" Rossetti. For, singularly enough, between him and them there was this one point of resemblance: while all three were richly endowed with humour, while all three were the very lights of the sets in which they moved, the moment they took pen in hand to write poetry they became sad. It would almost seem as if, like Rossetti, Arnold actually held that poetry was not the proper medium for humour. No wonder, then, if the absence of humour in his poetry did much to mislead the student of his work as to the real character of the man. After a year at Winchester, Matthew Arnold entered Rugby school in 1837. He early began to write and print verses. His first publication was a Rugby prize poem, _Alaric at Rome_, in 1840. This was followed in 1843, after he had gone up to Oxford in 1840 as a scholar of Balliol, by his poem _Cromwell_, which won the Newdigate prize. In 1844 he graduated with second-class honours, and in 1845 was elected a fellow of Oriel College, where among his colleagues was A.H. Clough, his friendship with whom is commemorated in that exquisite elegy _Thyrsis_. From 1847 to 1851 he acted as private secretary to Lord Lansdowne; and in the latter year, after acting for a short time as assistant-master at Rugby, he was appointed to an inspectorship of schools, a post which he retained until two years before his death. He married, in June 1851, the daughter of Mr Justice Wightman, Meanwhile, in 1849, appeared _The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, by A_, a volume which gained a considerable esoteric reputation. In 1852 he published another volume under the same initial, _Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems_. _Empedocles_ is as undramatic a poem perhaps as was ever written in dramatic form, but studded with lyrical beauties of a very high order. In 1853 Arnold published a volume of _Poems_ under his own name. This consisted partially of poems selected from the two previous volumes. A second series of poems, which contained, however, only two new ones, was published in 1855. So great was the impression made by these in academic circles, that in 1857 Arnold was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, and he held the chair for ten years. In 1858 he published his classical tragedy, _Merope_. Nine years afterwards his _New Poems_ (1867) were published. While he held the Oxford professorship he published several series of lectures, which gave him a high place as a scholar and critic. The essays[1] _On Translating Homer: Three Lectures given at Oxford_, published in 1861, supplemented in 1862 by _On Translating Homer: Last Words_, a fourth lecture given in reply to F.W. Newman's _Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice_ (1861), and _On the Study of Celtic Literature_, published