contains (besides the divinely-beautiful eulogy of Oxford) some of
Arnold's most delightful humour. He never wrote anything better than his
apology to the indignant Mr. Ichabod Wright; his disclaimer of the title
of Professor, "which I share with so many distinguished men--Professor
Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor Frickel"; his attempt to comfort
the old gentleman who was afraid of being murdered, by reminding him
that "il n'y a pas d'homme necessaire"; and in all these cases the
humour subserves and advances a serious criticism of books or of life.

As we have now seen him engaged in the duty of criticising others, it
will not be out of place to cite in this connection, though they belong
to other periods, some criticisms of himself. As far back as 1853, he
had observed, with characteristic lucidity, that the great fault of his
earlier poems was "the absence of charm." "Charm" was indeed the
element in which they were deficient; but, as years advanced, charm was
superadded to thought and feeling. In 1867, he said in a letter to his
friend F.T. Palgrave: "Saint Beuve has written to me with great interest
about the _Obermann poem_, which he is getting translated. Swinburne
fairly took my breath away. I must say the general public praise me in
the dubious style in which old Wordsworth used to praise Bernard Barton,
James Montgomery, and suchlike; and the writers of poetry, on the other
hand--Browning, Swinburne, Lytton--praise me as the general public
praises its favourites. This is a curious reversal of the usual order of
things. Perhaps it is from an exaggerated estimate of my own
unpopularity and obscurity as a poet, but my first impulse is to be
astonished at Swinburne's praising me, and to think it an act of
generosity. Also he picks passages which I myself should have picked,
and which I have not seen other people pick."

In 1869, when the first Collected Edition of his poems was in the press,