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 displeased his proud taste: it certainly did not fit in with his stoicism.

Two years after he wrote Empedocles, in 1853, he was in a more healthy state of mind. He wrote about the problems of life and their trouble, but he wrote about them in short lyrics, some of which ended with hope, even presaged joy. Later on, many years later, when his foot was on firmer ground, and some sunlight in his sky, he restored Empedocles to its place in his collected work, at the instance of Robert Browning. When he left it out, his soul was too near the shipwreck of Empedocles to relish its representation. He was tossed to and fro on the deep, close to the rocks, But when he had escaped, it was not unpleasant to see the picture he had made of old of the storm and the labouring ship, and to hang it up as a votive tablet in a shrine of the gods of the sea.

Again, Empedocles accuses, and with all the weakness of his type, the hopeless confusion to which the gods have brought the soul of man; and then, remembering his philosophy, scoffs at himself and all the complainers whom the course of nature and their own thought have enslaved. At last, in a transient excitement, having persuaded himself that he is free,—and before the persuasion fails him, and lest it should—he finishes his worry by the medicine of the volcano. Arnold did not. He fought his way through to no petulant conclusion, to no excited, hurried surrender of the battle, In 1867, when after an interval of fifteen