treatment they were swayed by the spirit of the time; and they were reinforced by some new writers who took a similar view of the functions of poetry. The greatest of these new writers is Matthew Arnold, and his thought is so eminently representative of the generation that it may be well to consider him even before his seniors. It was as a poet that Arnold began his literary career. He won prizes for poetry at Rugby and at Oxford, and in 1849 he published his first volume, _The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems_. _Empedocles on Etna_, also accompanied by other poems, followed in 1852, and another volume of poems the year after. A few additions to the pieces thus published were gradually made, and in 1867 appeared the _New Poems_. From that date Arnold wrote poetry sparingly. His career was therefore comparatively short, and the bulk of his verse is not great. He was frozen into silence by 'that dull indifference to his gifts and services which stirred the fruitless indignation of his friends.' But in poetry quality counts for more than quantity. Small in bulk as is his contribution, Gray has nevertheless a secure place among the immortals. Arnold's contribution is much larger than Gray's, and it has the same purity and beauty of finish. Arnold was born just at the proper time to feel the forces of change working around him, and the sense of change is from the first deeply impressed upon his poetry. It is this, combined with his critical attitude of mind, that makes him specially the voice of the doubts and difficulties of his generation. The critical aspect of Arnold's verse has been already noted. It is critical of human existence as well as of other poetry. In _Obermann Once More_, in _Thyrsis_, in _The Scholar Gipsy_, in _Mycerinus_, in _Resignation_, in the lines _To a Gipsy Child_, and in numerous other pieces we see the workings of this critical spirit. We see too that he is most of all weighed down with the profound sense of change. He finds himself in a world where all things have to be made new, and where the power that promised to renew them remains unseen. This is the case with religion, for the conviction of the decay of Christianity in the dogmatic sense is as plainly visible in Arnold's verse as in his prose. It is the case also with politics and the social system. The French Revolution had shaken these, and had left to the next generation the task of rebuilding them. Its tremendous magnitude awes Arnold. He has none of that confident optimism which in Browning springs from breadth of intellect; still less does he share that which, in the panegyrists of material progress, is begotten of narrowness. He thinks the conditions of the time unfavourable to spiritual growth. It does not afford that 'shelter to grow ripe,' and that 'leisure to grow wise,' which even Goethe found in his youth, exposed though he was in maturer years to 'the blasts of a tremendous time.'