tudy of life in any
age, so that our scope be broad enough.

It is indeed idle nonsense to speak, as some critics
speak, of the "present" as alone having claims upon
the poet. Whatever is great, or good, or pathetic, or
terrible, in any age past or present, belongs to him, and
is within his proper province; but most especially, if he
is wise, he will select his subjects out of those which
time has sealed as permanently significant. It is not
easy in our own age to distinguish what has the
elements in it of enduring importance; and time is
wiser than we. But why dwell with such apparent
exclusiveness on classic antiquity, as if there was
no antiquity except the classic, and as if time were
divided into the eras of Greece and Rome and the
nineteenth century? The Hellenic poet sang of the
Hellenes, why should not the Teutonic poet sing of
the Teutons?

"Vixere fortes post Agamemnona."

And grand as are Achilles and Clytemnestra, they are
not grander than their parallels in the German epic
Criemhilda and Von Tronje Hagen. We do not
dream of prescribing to Mr. Arnold what subject he
should choose. Let him choose what interests himself
if he will interest his readers; and if he choose what is
really human, let it come from what age it will, human
hearts will answer to it. And yet it seems as if Teutonic
tradition, Teutonic feeling, and Teutonic thought had
the first claim on English and German poets. And
those among them will deserve best of the modern
world, and will receive the warmest welcome from it,
who will follow Shakespeare in modelling into forms of
beauty the inheritance which has come down to them
of the actions of their own race. So most faithfully,
if least directly, they will be treading in the steps
of those great poets of Greece whom they desire to
imitate. Homer and Sophocles did not look beyond
their own traditions and their own beliefs; they
found in these and these only their exclusive and
abundant material. Have the Gothic annals suddenly
become poor, and our own quarries become exhausted
and worthless?

____

WORDS ABOUT OXFORD

Many long years had passed since I visited Oxford,--
some twenty-eight or more. I had friends among the
resident members of that venerable domicile of learning.
Pleasant had been the time that I had spent there, of
which intervening years had not diminished the remembrance
--perhaps heightened the tone of its colouring.
On many accounts I regarded that beauti