His letters in his _Life_ give some plausibility to the story: his heart was not in the work, and the drudgery was distasteful. But he wrote admirable Reports in the Blue Books: there is a volume of these collected Reports before me, and I think no one reading them would detect any lack of experience in the writer. He did what we were strictly forbidden to do, and what lesser lights were afraid to do; he freely criticised the Code, and freely suggested improvements. And throughout there ran the three threads of humour, irony, and hard common-sense. Is it possible that my London friend slightly embellished his account? When managers got bad reports, they were dreadfully untruthful. Mr. M. Arnold’s other mission in the world of education was to supply the Office with amusement. The most detestable of our obligations was to compile a weekly diary, forwarded to Whitehall every Saturday, showing the daily employment, and the daily expenditure on travelling expenses--which the Treasury repaid. “Vex not thou the poet’s mind” said his great contemporary; and it may be that such minds require special consideration, when striving to deal with prosaic details. “Who knows what ‘things unknown’ I might have ‘bodied Forth,’ if not checked by that absurd Too-too?” sang Calverley, when his neighbour played on the “crumpled horn.” And in the office the Too-too was represented by a clerk, whose mission in life was to return these diaries to negligent Inspectors with pertinent or impertinent queries. “Why not travel by train instead of taking a cab?” “Why go round by C. to get to B.?” and so on. When in my latest days forty-five of these hateful diaries came to me weekly, I began to see the standpoint of the clerk: but in 1875 the Senior Inspectors had no such offensive duties: “they themselves were custodianed.” Arnold’s district consisted of Westminster and Edmonton, a ridiculous grouping. His official address was “The Athenæum,” and he lived, I believe, at Esher. By the Treasury rules, if his work at Edmonton required his attendance for two or more consecutive days, he was bound after the first day to spend the night there, or to refrain from charging his train and cab fares home again. Being a poet, of course he returned home, and charged his fare every day. “The knight of the Blue Pencil,” as he called his enemy, sharpened his blue pencil, and wrote--“Mr. M. Arnold, H.M.I. Why not stay at Edmonton?” And the great man plaintively replied: “How can you expect me to stay at Edmonton, when John Gilpin[26] couldn’t?” The account was passed.