, at least the first is, but this has been already noticed.
Of _The French Play in London_, I am, perhaps, no good judge, as I
take little interest in the acted drama. It is much occupied with the
inferiority of French poetry, and especially of the poetry of Hugo;
the inferiority of English civilisation, especially of the middle
class. There are good things in it, but they are better said
elsewhere. The rest needs no notice.

[3] A note on the contents of this and the subsequent collected
editions may not be unwelcome; for, as was always the case with him,
he varied them not a little. This first collection was advertised as
comprehending "the First and Second Series of the Author's Poems and
the New Poems," but as a matter of fact half-a-dozen pieces--including
things as interesting as _A Dream_ and _Stagirius_--are omitted,
though the fine _In Utrumque Paratus_ reappears for the first time as
a consolation. As reprinted in 1877, this collection dropped _The
Church of Brou_ except the third part, and recovered not only
_Stagirius_ and others but _The New Sirens_, besides giving, for the
first time in book-form, _Haworth Churchyard_, printed twenty-two
years before in _Fraser_. A further reprint in 1881 restored the whole
_Church of Brou_ and _A Dream_, and gave two or three small additions,
especially _Geist's Grave_. The _three-volume_ edition of 1885 also
republished _Merope_ for the first time, and added _Westminster Abbey_
and _Poor Matthias_. The _one_-volume edition of 1890 reproduced all
this, adding _Horatian Echo_ and _Kaiser Dead_; it is complete save
for the two prize poems, and six or seven smaller pieces.

[4] "I do not like the course for the History School at all; nothing
but read, read, read, endless histories in English, many of them by
quite second-rate men; nothing to form the mind as reading really
great authors forms it, or even to exercise it as learning a new
language, or mathematics, or one of the natural sciences exercises
it."

CHAPTER V.

THE LAST DECADE.

It would be unhistorical to assert, and unphilosophical to assume,
that in the change or reversion noted at the end of the last chapter,
Mr Arnold had any consciousness of relinquishment, still more to hint
any definite sense of failure on his part. He would probably have said
(if any one had been impertinent enough to ask, and he had
condescended to reply) that he had said his say, had shot his bolt,
and might leave them to p