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?"

It is probably idle ever to wish that a man had done anything
different from that which he has done. Without being a rigid
Determinist, one may be pretty well convinced that the actual conduct
is the joint result of abilities, and of desires, and of opportunity