That the end of Mr Arnold's tenure of the Professorship of Poetry was a most important epoch in his life is sufficiently evident. In the ten years that came to an end then, he had, as two such extremely competent judges as Mr Disraeli and Crabb Robinson in different ways told him,[1] passed from comparative obscurity into something more than comparative prominence. His chair had been for him a real _cathedra_, and his deliverances from it had always assumed, and had at length, to a great extent, achieved, real authority. In criticism it was evident that if he had not revealed positively novel aspects of truth, he had formulated and put on record aspects which were presenting themselves to many, nay, most, of the best critical minds of his day. His criticism had drawn his poetry with it, if not into actual popularity, yet into something like attention. His attempts to obtain some other employment less irksome, less absorbing, and more profitable, had indeed been unsuccessful; but he was rising in his own department, and his work, if still in part uncongenial and decidedly laborious, appears to have been much less severe than in earlier days. Partly this work itself, partly his writings, and partly other causes had opened to him a very large circle of acquaintance, which it was in his own power to extend or contract as he pleased. His domestic life was perfectly happy, if his means were not very great: and his now assured literary position made it easy for him to increase these means, not indeed largely, but to a not despicable extent, by writing. The question was, "What should he write?"