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 him, and all the more heavy because he reverenced him so much. Duties were not sufficiently mingled with natural pleasures. He carried to Oxford a somewhat austere solemnity; and the love-poem, with its exalted note of ardour, may have seemed to him unworthy of a serious man. But he was not yet a man, and it is a misfortune to a youth, much more to a blossoming poet, to anticipate the gravity of manhood. Nevertheless, if Arnold had had more of youthful fire, he might have saved his life from these despondencies. And it is that want which makes his poem of Tristram and Iseult so inadequate. The story of Tristram is a story of passion between the sexes. The passion. of the story is faded out in Arnold's poem. Thin, thin as the speech of the wailing ghosts Ulysses saw in Hades are the voices in that poem. Perhaps Arnold felt that the wounds of Tristram, the long lapse of time since the lovers had met, excused, even insisted on the presence of a weakness in the expression of passion. But had he known more of true passion in love, and felt the story and the atmosphere of its time more truly, he would not have made this artistic mistake, which he probably thought was an artistic excellence. The note which is sounded in the poem might suit the temper and situation of Iseult of Brittany. It does not suit those of Tristram and Iseult of Ireland. The poem is cold.

There are other poems which may be called, each with its own difference, love-poems, of which the most