ther, forbear, for I but meet to-day
The doom that at my birth was written down
In Heaven, and thou art Heaven's unconscious hand.
Surely my heart cried out that it was thou,
When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too,
I know it; but Fate trod those promptings down
Under its iron heel; Fate, Fate engaged
The strife, and hurled me on my father's spear.
But let us speak no more of this: I find
My father: let me feel that I have found.
Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take
My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks,
And wash them with thy tears, and say "My son!"
Quick: quick! for numbered are my sands of life,
And swift; for like the lightning to this field
I came, and like the wind I go away.
Sudden and swift, and like a passing wind:
But it was writ in Heaven that this should be.'
So said he: and his voice released the heart
Of Rustum; and his tears broke forth: he cast
His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud,
And kiss'd him; and awe fell on both the hosts
When they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh, the
horse,
With his head bowing to the ground and mane
Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woe
First to the one, then to the other mov'd
His head, as if enquiring what their grief
Might mean; and from his dark compassionate
eyes
The big warm tears roll'd down and caked the
sand."

As a picture of human life in Homer's manner, we
cannot see why this passage, and indeed the whole poem,
should not be thought as good as any one of the
episodes in the "AEneid." We are not comparing Mr.
Arnold with Virgil: for it is one thing to have written
an epic and another to have written a small fragment;
but as a working up of a single incident it may rank
by the side of Nisus and Euryalus, and deeper chords
of feeling are touched in it than Virgil has ever
touched.

And this leads us to Mr Arnold's preface, and to the
account which he gives us of the object which he
proposes to himself in poetry: and our notice of this
must be brief, as our space is running to its conclusion.
He tells us, in a manner most feelingly instructive,
something of the difficulties which lie round a young
poet of the present day who desires to follow his art to
some genuine purpose; and what he says will remind
readers of Wordsworth of Professor Wilson's beautiful
letter to him on a very similar subject. Unhappily the
question is not one of poetry merely, but of far wider
significance. Not the poet only, but every one of us