self-immolation.

We turn from Empedocles, which perhaps it is scarcely
fair to have criticised, to the first poem in the latest
edition, "Sohrab and Rustum," (Poems. By Matthew Arnold.
A New Edition, London: 1853.) a poem which alone would have
settled the position which Mr. Arnold has a right to claim
as a poet, and which is remarkable for
its success in every point in which Empedocles appears
deficient. The story comes down out of remote Persian
antiquity; it is as old, perhaps it is older, than the tale
of Troy; and, like all old stories which have survived
the changes of so long a time, is in itself of singular
interest. Rustum, the Hercules of the East, fell in
with and loved a beautiful Tartar woman. He left her,
and she saw him no more; but in time a child was
born, who grew up with the princes of his mother's
tribe, and became in early youth distinguished in all
manly graces and noblenesses. Learning that he was the
son of the great Rustum, his object is to find his father,
and induce him, by some gallant action, to acknowledge
and receive him. War breaks out between the Tartars
and the Persians. The two armies come down upon
the Oxus, and Sohrab having heard that Rustum had
remained behind in the mountains, and was not present,
challenges the Persian chief. Rustum, unknown to
Sohrab, had in the meantime joined the army, and
against a warrior of Sohrab's reputation, no one could
be trusted to maintain the Persian cause except the old
hero. So by a sad perversity of fate, and led to it by