position, and it has transferred itself to a great deal of Arnold's poetry. It makes his language resonant, clear; his thought, his matter, weighty; and it brings into his poetry a moral passion which at times reaches a lofty exaltation. Moreover, its spirit proceeds outward from the poetry, as should be the case with any fine art work, into the lives of a number of men and women who are battling with fate, who do not understand why things are so awry, who find no brightness in life, but whose soul passionately answers the stoic's appeal to keep themselves, in spite of fate, unsubdued in right, clear in their own thought, and unconquered by evil. "I am I," they say, "and everything else is indifferent." It is to that class of men and women that Matthew Arnold speaks with power, and will continue to speak, it may be, for centuries to come.
But this power has the weakness which follows on pride. It thinks itself powerful, and in the thought loses some of its strength. If it belong to an artist, it makes him not only intrude it into his art, but also over-conscious of the artist-elements in his nature. Arnold shared more than was fitting in this weakness, and it lowers the excellence of many of his poems. It helps to place him below the poets who are unconscious, in the rush of their creation, of themselves; who, lost in the glory and grief of what they see, break into song without knowing why or how they sing; whose work is prideless, for they behold face to face the infinities of that they try to express; who leave any work
