Translating Homer_, to which in 1862 he added his "Last Words." As much
as anything which he ever wrote, these lectures have a chance of living
and being enjoyed when we are dust. For Homer is immortal, and he who
interprets Homer to Englishmen may hope at least for a longer life than
most of us.

Few are those who can still recall the graceful figure in its silken
gown; the gracious address, the slightly supercilious smile, of the
_Milton jeune et voyageant_,[5] just returned from contact with all that
was best in French culture to instruct and astonish his own university;
few who can still catch the cadence of the opening sentence: "It has
more than once been suggested to me that I should translate Homer"; few
that heard the fine tribute of the aged scholar,[6] who, as the young
lecturer closed a later discourse, murmured to himself, "The Angel
ended."

With his characteristic trick of humorous mock-humility, Arnold wrote to
a friendly reviewer who praised these lectures on translating Homer: "I
am glad any influential person should call attention to the fact that
there was some criticism in the three lectures; most people seem to have
gathered nothing from them except that I abused F.W. Newman, and liked
English hexameters."

Criticisms of criticism are the most melancholy reading in the world,
and therefore no attempt will here be made to examine in detail the
praise which in these lectures he poured upon the supreme exemplar of
pure art, or the delicious ridicule with which he assailed the most
respectable attempts to render Homer into English. For the praise, let
one quotation suffice--"Homer's grandeur is not the mixed and turbid
grandeur of the great poets of the North, of the authors of _Othello_