ed from a poem at
all, or to be demanded from a poet. They will permit the poet to
select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as
it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine
writing, and with a show of isolated thoughts and images; that is,
they permit him to leave their poetic sense ungratified, provided that
he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity."

Arnold has illustrated, with remarkable success, his ideas of that
unity which gratifies the poetical sense, and has approached very
close to his Greek models in numerous instances; most notably so in
his great epic or narrative poem, _Sohrab and Rustum_, which is dealt
with elsewhere in this introduction. Perhaps we could not do better
than to quote for our consideration at this time, a fine synthesis
of Mr. Arthur Galton. He says: "In Matthew Arnold's style and in his
manner, he seems to me to recall the great masters, and this in a
striking and in an abiding way.... To recall them at all is a rare
gift, but to recall them naturally, and with no strained sense nor
jarring note of imitation, is a gift so exceedingly rare that it is
almost enough in itself to place a writer among the great masters; to
proclaim that he is one of them. To recall them at all is a rare gift,
though not a unique gift; a few other modern poets recall them too;
but with these, with every one of them, it is the exception when they
resemble the great masters. They have their own styles, which abide
with them; it is only now and then, by a flash of genius, that they
break through their own styles, and attain the one immortal style.
Just the contrary of this is true of Matthew Arnold. It is his own,
his usual, and his most natural style which recalls the great masters;
and only when he does not write like himself, does he cease to
resemble them.... No man who attains to this great style can fail to
have a distinguished function; and Matthew Arnold, like Milton, will
be 'a leaven and a power,' because he, too, has made the great style
current in English. With his desire for culture and for perfection,
there is no destiny he would prefer to this, for which his nature, his
training, and his sympathies, all prepared him. To convey the message
of those ancients whom he loved so well, in that English tongue which
he was taught by them to use so perfectly;--to serve as an eternal
protest against charlatanism and vulgarity;--is exactly the mission
he