and in diction, closely approximate to polished prose. From an Oxford Professor I should have expected the very opposite spirit to that which Mr Arnold shows. He ought to know and feel that one glory of Greek poetry is its great internal variety. He admits the principle that old words are a source of ennoblement for diction, when he extols the Bible as his standard: for surely he claims no rhetorical inspiration for the translators. Words which have come to us in a sacred connection, no doubt, gain a sacred hue, but they must not be allowed to desecrate other old and excellent words. Mr Arnold informs his Oxford hearers that 'his Bibliolatry is perhaps excessive'. So the public will judge, if he say that wench, whore, pate, pot, gin, damn, busybody, audience, principality, generation, are epical noble words because they are in the Bible, and that lief, ken, in sooth, grim, stalwart, gait, guise, eld, hie, erst, are bad, because they are not there. Nine times out of ten, what are called 'poetical' words, are nothing but antique words, and are made ignoble by Mr Arnold's doctrine. His very arbitrary condemnation of eld, lief, in sooth, gait, gentle friend in one passage of mine as 'bad words', is probably due to his monomaniac fancy that there is nothing quaint and nothing antique in Homer. Excellent and noble as are these words which he rebukes, excellent even for Æschy-
