tedious, and in their dialogue manage to be provokingly unnatural or
insipid. They also lack in individuality and independence in speech
and action. Many of his situations, likewise, are at fault. For
instance, one can scarcely conceive of such characters as Ulysses and
Circe playing the subordinate roles assigned to them in _The Strayed
Reveller_. A true dramatist would hardly have committed so flagrant a
blunder. _Merope_ is written in imitation of the Greek tragedians. It
has dignity of subject, nobility of sentiment, and a classic brevity
of style; but it is frigid and artificial, and fails in the most
essential function of drama--to stir the reader's emotions.
_Empedocles on Etna_, a half-autobiographical drama, is in some
respects a striking poem. It is replete with brilliant passages, and
contains some of Arnold's best lyric verses and most beautiful nature
pictures; but the dialogue is colorless, the rhymes poor, the plot,
such as it contains, but indifferently handled, and even Empedocles,
the principal character, is frequently tedious and unnatural. Arnold's
dramas show that his forte was not in character-drawing nor in
dialogue.

=Arnold as a Writer of Epic and Elegy=.--Epic poetry narrates in grand
style the achievements of heroes--the poet telling the story as if
present. It is simple in construction and uniform in meter, yet it
admits of the dialogue and the episode, and though not enforcing a
moral it may hold one in solution. Elegiac poetry is plaintive in
tone and expresses sorrow or lamentation. Both epic and elegy are
inevitably serious in mood, and slow and stately in action. In these
two forms of verse Arnold was at his best. Stockton pronounced _Sohrab
and Rustum_ the noblest poem in the English language. Another critic
has said that "it is the nearest analogue in English to the rapidity
of action, plainness of thought, plainness of diction, and nobleness