thing about this in the
_Letters_; but on the great principle of _curae leves_, less,
as we should expect, than about the baby's death.

In February next year Mr Arnold's double repute, as a practical and
official "educationist" and as a man of letters, brought him the offer
of the care of Prince Thomas of Savoy, son of the Duke of Genoa, and
grandson of Victor Emmanuel, who was to attend Harrow School and board
with the Arnolds. The charge, though honourable and, I suppose,
profitable, might not have been entirely to the taste of everybody;
but it seemed to Mr Arnold a new link with the Continent, and he
welcomed it. The same year saw a visit to Knebworth, and a very
interesting and by no means unsound criticism on that important event
in the life of a poet, the issue of the first collected edition of his
poems.[3] This was in two volumes, and is now rather precious. "It
might be fairly urged that I have less poetic sentiment than Tennyson,
and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet because
I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and
have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern
development, I am likely enough to have my turn." One can only query
whether poetry has anything to do with "modern development," and
desiderate the addition to "sentiment" of "art." He seems to imply
that Mr Gladstone personally prevented his appointment to a
commissionership under the Endowed Schools Act. But the year ended
with a complimentary reference from Mr Disraeli at Latimers about
"Sweetness and Light."

In February 1870 the famous Persian cat Atossa (now in the most
comfortable lap of all the gods or goddesses, with Hodge and Bona
Marietta and Hinse of Hinsfeldt) makes her first appearance; and in
June Mr Arnold received the Oxford D.C.L. He set it down to "a young
and original sort of man, Lord Salisbury, being Chancellor"; and Lord
Salisbury himself afterwards told him that "no doubt he ought to have
addressed him as 'vir dulcissime et lucidissime.'" But though he was
much pleased by his reception, he thought Lord Salisbury "dangerous,"
as being unliterary, and only scientific and religious in his tastes.

In December he had an amusing and (as it ended well) not
unsatisfactory experience of the ways of Income Tax Commissioners.
These gentlemen acted on even vaguer principles than those on which
they once assessed a poor dramatic amateur, who had by accident
receive