But, once more, a poet is to be judged first by his best things, and secondly by a certain _aura_ or atmosphere, by a nameless, intangible, but sensible quality, which, now nearer and fuller, now farther and fainter, is over his work throughout. In both respects Mr Arnold passes the test. The things mentioned above and others, even many others, are the right things. They do not need the help of that rotten reed, the subject, to warrant and support them; we know that they are in accordance with the great masters, but we do not care whether they are or not. They sound the poetic note; they give the poetic flash and iridescence; they cause the poetic intoxication. Even in things not by any means of the best as wholes, you may follow that gleam safely. The exquisite revulsion of the undertone in _Bacchanalia_-- "Ah! so the silence was, So was the hush;" the honey-dropping trochees of the _New Sirens_; the description of the poet in _Resignation_; the outburst-- "What voices are these on the clear night air?" of _Tristram and Iseult_; the melancholy meditation of _A Summer Night_ and _Dover Beach_, with the plangent note so cunningly yet so easily accommodated to the general tone and motive of the piece,--these and a hundred other things fulfil all the requirements of the true poetic criticism, which only marks, and only asks for, the _differentia_ of poetry. And this poetic moment--this (if one may use the words, about another matter, of one who wrote no poetry, yet had more than all but three or four poets), this "exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow" which poetry and poetry alone confers upon the fit readers of it--is never far off or absent for long together in Mr Arnold's verse. His command of it is indeed uncertain. But all over his work, from _The Strayed Reveller_ to _Westminster Abbey_, it may happen at any minute, and it does happen at many minutes. This is what makes a poet: not the most judicious selection of subject, not the most studious contemplation and, as far as he manages it, representation of the grand style and the great masters. And this is what Mr Arnold has.