[1] Mr Disraeli's words (in 1864) have been referred to above (p. 100). They were actually: "At that time [when they had met at Lord Houghton's some seven or eight years earlier] ... you yourself were little known. Now you are well known. You have made a reputation, but you will go further yet. You have a great future before you, and you deserve it." Crabb Robinson was a much older acquaintance, and is credited, I believe, with the remark far earlier, that "he shouldn't _dare_ to be intimate" with so clever a young man as Matthew Arnold. Very shortly before his death in February 1867, he had met Mr Arnold in the Athenaeum, and asked "which of all my books I should myself name as the one that had got me my great reputation. I said I had not a great reputation, upon which he answered: 'Then it is some other Matthew Arnold who writes the books.'" The passage, which contains an odd prophecy of the speaker's own death, and an interesting indication that Mr Arnold rightly considered the _Essays_ to be "the book that got him his reputation," will be found in _Letters_, i. 351. [2] Of the remaining contents, the _Prefaces_ of 1853-5 are invaluable, at least the first is, but this has been already noticed. Of _The French Play in London_, I am, perhaps, no good judge, as I take little interest in the acted drama. It is much occupied with the inferiority of French poetry, and especially of the poetry of Hugo; the inferiority of English civilisation, especially of the middle class. There are good things in it, but they are better said elsewhere. The rest needs no notice. [3] A note on the contents of this and the subsequent collected editions may not be unwelcome; for, as was always the case with him, he varied them not a little. This first collection was advertised as comprehending "the First and Second Series of the Author's Poems and the New Poems," but as a matter of fact half-a-dozen pieces--including things as interesting as _A Dream_ and _Stagirius_--are omitted, though the fine _In Utrumque Paratus_ reappears for the first time as a consolation. As reprinted in 1877, this collection dropped _The Church of Brou_ except the third part, and recovered not only _Stagirius_ and others but _The New Sirens_, besides giving, for the first time in book-form, _Haworth Churchyard_, printed twenty-two years before in _Fraser_. A further reprint in 1881 restored the whole _Church of Brou_ and _A Dream_, and gave two or three small additions, especially _Geist's Grave_. The _three-volume_ edition of 1885 also republished _Merope_ for the first time, and added _Westminster Abbey_ and _Poor Matthias_. The _one_-volume edition of 1890 reproduced all this, adding _Horatian Echo_ and _Kaiser Dead_; it is complete save for the two prize poems, and six or seven smaller pieces.