unable to give any real reason for the faith that was in him; true, he
sometimes might have known more than he did know about his subject.
But in all these points he saved himself: in his wilfulness, by the
grace and charm that sometimes attend caprice; in his want of reason,
by his genuineness of faith itself; in his occasional lack of the
fullest knowledge, by the admirable use--not merely display--which he
made of what knowledge he had. There may be hardly a page of the two
books of his lectures in which it is not possible to find some
opportunity for disagreement--sometimes pretty grave disagreement; but
I am sure that no two more valuable books, in their kind and subject,
to their country and time, have been ever issued from the press.

The _New Poems_ make a volume of unusual importance in the
history of poetical careers. Mr Arnold lived more than twenty years
after the date of their publication; but his poetical production
during that time filled no more than a few pages. At this date he was
a man of forty-five--an age at which the poetical impulse has been
supposed to run low, but perhaps with no sufficient reason. Poets of
such very different types as Dryden and Tennyson have produced work
equal to their best, if not actually their best, at that age and
later. Mr Browning had, a few years before, produced what are perhaps
his actually greatest volumes, _Men and Women_ and _Dramatis
Personae_, the one at forty-three, the other at fifty-two.
According to Mr Arnold's own conception of poetry-making, as depending
upon the subject and upon the just and artist-like exposition of that
subject, no age should be too late.

Certainly this age was not too late with him. The contents all
answered strictly enough to their title, except that _Empedocles on
Etna_ and some half-dozen of its companions were, at Mr Browning's