long--run did so much good to Tennyson himself, nor the absurd and
pernicious bleatings of praise which have greeted certain novices of
late years. It seems to have been simply let alone, or else made the
subject of quite insignificant comments.

In the same year (1849) Mr Arnold was represented in the _Examiner_ of
July 21 by a sonnet to the Hungarian nation, which he never included
in any book, and which remained peacefully in the dust-bin till a
reference in his _Letters_ quite recently set the ruthless reprinter
on its track. Except for an ending, itself not very good, the thing is
quite valueless: the author himself says to his mother, "it is not
worth much." And three years passed before he followed up his first
volume with a second, which should still more clearly have warned the
intelligent critic that here was somebody, though such a critic would
not have been guilty of undue hedging if he had professed himself
still unable to decide whether a new great poet had arisen or not.

This volume was _Empedodes on Etna and other Poems_, [still] _By A._
London: Fellowes, 1852. It contained two attempts--the title-piece and
_Tristram and Iseult_--much longer and more ambitious than anything
that the poet had yet done, and thirty-three smaller poems, of which
two--_Destiny_ and _Courage_--were never reprinted. It was again very
unequal--perhaps more so than the earlier volume, though it went
higher and oftener high. But the author became dissatisfied with it
very shortly after its appearance in the month of October, and
withdrew it when, as is said, less than fifty copies had been sold.

One may perhaps not impertinently doubt whether the critical reason,
_v. infra_--in itself a just and penetrating one, as well as admirably
expressed--which, in the Preface of the 1853 collection, the poet gave