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 laborious and sleepless soul of things; that even when all other components of our transient nature are duly and happily resolved into those durable elements, the insoluble and inevitable riddle of mind and thought must vex us to the last as at the first.

Not that such barren knowledge is ignoble or inadequate matter for poetry; only it must assume something of the dramatic form and circumstance which here are scantily supplied. Less scanty is the supply of noble verses such as these:

verses in the highest tone of Wordsworth's, as clear and grave as his best, as close and full and majestic. The good and evil influence of that great poet, perverse theorist, and incomplete man, upon Mr. Arnold's work is so palpable and so strong as to be almost obtrusive in its effects. He is the last worth reckoning whom the "Excursion" is ever likely to misguide. The incalculable power of Wordsworth on certain minds for a certain time could not but be and could not but pass over. Part of this singular power was doubtless owing to the might of will, the solid individual weight of mind, which moulded his work into the form he chose for it; part to the strong assumption and high self-reliance which grew in him so close to self-confidence and presumption; part to the