selections from the poetry of Wordsworth, the fruits of some such labour. It showed us just how much material really went to the production of a lasting poetic name. Thirty or forty years hence the Matthew Arnold of the day will present to his public a similar volume of Tennyson, but it will be a slim one. At one fell swoop he, too, will have cut out nine-tenths of that portion of the poet's work on which perchance he most prided himself when alive. Tennyson's direct criticism on his age, on its social phase, on its religious phase, on its intellectual phase, will then appear to his critic as of just the same value as Wordsworth's now appears to us; and that is, candidly, nil. All the conscious efforts of 'an imitative will' to grapple with large issues will then appear as a failure, and a grievous failure only too obviously foredoomed. A hundred facts of milieu will have put this beyond question. Every one will realise then that incoherently melodious bluster is the appointed form of expression for a timid and sensuous nature struggling hard to be courageous and self-secure.
A dozen short but charming extracts from 'In Memoriam' will give us the human elements of a story of youthful friendship ended too soon, a vision of 'love as pure and bright as phosphor.' Another dozen from 'Maud' will show the passion of
