But it is as a poet, as Mr Swinburne foretold, that Matthew Arnold lives in literature. It is strange to some of us to note how largely the bulk of his prose work has dropped out of the memory of the younger generation. The diligent collector possesses some forty-five volumes of Mr Arnold's writings; but although there has been a cheap reprint of many of these, it is only by his collected poems that he is widely known to-day. Mr Swinburne, in the essay to which I have referred, tells of the joy with which, as a schoolboy, he came upon a copy of "Empedocles on Etna." He must then have been about fifteen years of age, as "Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems by A" was published in 1852. It contained "Tristram and Iseult," "Stanzas in Memory of the Author of 'Obermann,'" and many now accepted favourites. "The Strayed Reveller" by "A" was a still earlier volume of anonymous verse (1849); and, in 1853, "Poems" by Matthew Arnold made the poet known by name to a small circle. A substantial recognition as a poet did not however fall to Matthew Arnold while he lived. His career is, indeed, a striking example of the fact that our views of contemporary literature require to be revised every decade. Ten years ago everyone was discussing Matthew Arnold's views concerning Isaiah and St Paul, and the Nonconformists, whom he chaffed good-humouredly, have reconstructed many of their beliefs through a study of his works. People were excited by his views on education and by his views on literature, but not by his poetry. To-day his poetry is all of him that remains, and its charm is likely to soothe the more strenuous minds among us for at least another generation, and perhaps for all time. In "Thyrsis," a striking elegy on =Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)=, Arnold struck a note which has only Milton's "Lycidas" and Shelley's "Adonais" to call forth comparisons. Clough was not a Keats, but he was a more considerable personage than Milton's friend, and indeed he has been persistently underrated by many men of letters. Not indeed by all. "We have a foreboding," said Mr Lowell, "that Clough will be thought a hundred years hence, to have been the truest expression in verse of the moral and intellectual tendencies of the period in which he lived." Clough was the son of a cotton merchant of Liverpool, and he was a pupil of Dr Arnold at Rugby. He gained a Balliol scholarship, and went into residence in 1837. The coming years brought doubts and distractions, religious and political, and Clough parted from Oxford. His most famous poem, "The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich," was published in 1848. In 1852 he sailed to Boston in the same ship that carried Thackeray and Lowell. Emerson, who had met him in England, welcomed him there. Travelling through Europe for his health, he died of paralysis in Florence in 1861.[6]