detected fall meaningless on our ears, it is a wholesome lesson in humility to acknowledge our bewilderment. Why should the lines
"What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with quiet citadel,
Is emptied of its folk this pious morn?"
be the expression of a purely Greek form of thought, "as Greek as a thing from Homer or Theocritus;" and
"In such a night
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage,"
be as purely Celtic? Why should
be Greek, and
be Celtic? That harmless nondescript, the general reader, be he ever so anxious for enlightenment, is forced to confess he really does not know; and if his ignorance be of the complacent order, he adds an impatient doubt as to whether Mr. Arnold knew either, just as when he "comes up gasping" from a sudden plunge into Browning, he is prompt to declare his firm conviction that the poet never had the faintest idea what he was writing about.
