before Christ, with the Plato and Euripides and the private documents of the Petrie papyri. We now know that writing was used familiarly and freely by even the lower classes in the third century B.C., and that stiff and archaic characters in inscriptions are not to be taken to show that writing was little known or practised at the same date. We can gather approximately the forms in which Thucydides and Euripides wrote their works; we know the appearance of the originals of the books of the New Testament. We learn that large uncials were not the only style of writing practised at the time when the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus were written; we can see that these were copies executed in a superior style, and consequently in all probability for some flourishing church or library. Two almost independent streams of palæographical tradition come down side by side— that, namely, of the literary hand and that of the non-literary hand. The two are very distinct, and prove that no conclusion can safely be drawn from the appearance of the set literary hand in any age as to the prevalence or otherwise of writing for everyday purposes. The non-literary documents being often dated, we can trace the complete development of the ordinary hand from about B.C. 270 to about A.D. 640, with the exception of the first century B.C., for which evidence is at present almost entirely wanting. It falls into three great divisions, corresponding to the changes in the administration of the country, the Ptolemaic, the Roman, and the Byzantine. The differences in general appearance between these three is very marked, and there can rarely be any doubt as to the section into which an undated papyrus should be placed, and even of the precise century to which it should be assigned. It is impossible to be equally certain in the case of the literary hand. Examples of this are much rarer, and few of them can be even approximately dated with certainty; hence the assignment of dates to undated literary papyri must generally be taken at present as very conjectural. At the same time, more fixed points are being gradually obtained, and it is clear that palæographers look forward to being able to move with as much certainty in these remote regions as they can already in the centuries which immediately precede the invention of printing.

Est modus in rebus. Otherwise we might proceed to describe at length the details of the palæography of papyri as they are set forth in the introduction to the British Museum Catalogue, or dilate on the settlement of the veterans of Alexander in the Fayyúm, as indicated in the editor's com

mentary on the Petrie papyri; or discuss the system of the camel-tax or the formulæ used in deeds of sale, as they are revealed by the publications of Berlin. But it is necessary to draw the line somewhere, and enough has been said to indicate the character and the importance in more than one department of knowledge of the material which is being poured in upon us from the papyri. Henceforward no conjectural emendator or over-positive critic is safe. The imaginative historian goes in terror of his reputation. His ingenuity can never ensure him against a sudden pelting with the half-bricks of newly-discovered facts. What there is in store for us no man can tell uniess there be any who already have a surprise for us up their sleeves. It may be that, as after the discovery of the first two manuscripts of Hyperides in the middle of the century, a gap of forty years will intervene between the recent great discoveries and their next important successors. But it is more probable, now that the hunt for papyri has fairly begun, that the flow of discoveries will continue-not regularly, indeed, but with less intermission. Some day a happy explorer's spade will break into the library of a man of letters, long since dead and mummified; and then we may get back Sappho and Alcæus, Agathon and Cratinus, Menander and Poseidonius, Ephorus and Theopompus-we say nothing of the possibility of early texts of the books of the New Testament. So may it be, and may we be there to see it.

ART. VI. THE POETRY OF MATTHEW

ARNOLD.

Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. One vol.
(London, 1890.)

THE king is dead: the great peers of the poetic realm had passed away before him, and there is no head found worthy of the consecrating oil. The critical search-parties that went forth throughout all the land have returned, and report that they have failed to meet with a Saul who stands head and shoulders above his brethren. Meanwhile disaffected persons murmur, and hint at the abolition of the monarchy. Kingship is out of date, and we must set up a poetic republic as we have set up a republic of polite letters. To which it is replied by others, that Nature, to whom we have still to look

for our supply of poets, goes about her work in a way that renders futile a revolution with such an end in view. It is said that she produces a poet in the most unlikely spot, in the midst of what appear to be hopelessly uncongenial and blighting circumstances and at periods incalculable even by the acute physical scientist, who knows all about her movements and designs. And when she has produced him she straightway crowns him; and despite any efforts of the critics to discrown him or crown another in his place, she never fails in retaining the robe and sceptre for the man of her own choice. And the moral is, that it is desirable to discover, as early as may be in each case, these favourites of Nature, and to set the laurel upon their temples; for it is best to be on the side of Nature, seeing that here as elsewhere she is invincible.

However these things be, some of the explorers of these recent search-parties are angry because there is no giant in Israel, and the poets of ordinary stature have been mocked, and otherwise severely handled. It is undoubtedly a grievous thing that they are so many, and yet so diminutive and unimpressive withal; and the fact would in the eyes of the desponding be significant of the degeneracy of the age, if that degeneracy were not, alas! firmly established. The minor poet has indeed always been as much the butt of ridicule as the major poet has been the god-when once his divinity is discovered-in whose honour temples are built and incensefires kept continually burning. To attempt poetry, and to attain minor poetry, is the unpardonable sin

'Mediocribus esse poetis

Non homines, non dî, non concessere columnæ.'

There would be small cause, however, to make a present quarrel with the minor poets, were it not that among them. are the high-priests of culture, and there is a suspicion abroad that the evangel of culture, in which we trusted, shows signs of hardening into an unexpansive dogma-into some creed like that ofart for art's sake,' and that its apostles, in the very intensity of their zeal against Philistinism, have themselves become short of sight and dull of hearing. Poetry without a gospel is nothing accounted of in our days. We have long been in the mood for oracles and prophetic declarations. Nature's word is a 'word to the wise,' and the poets who, like Nature, have no gospel save that same word to the wise, are found insufficient for us. For the literature that strengthens, or even gladdens, many of us have been out of tune, and have given ear to the poets of culture. Their bower serves as

a retreat from the ugly and wearying facts of life, and this although their consolations are oftentimes without hope. Nevertheless it is a pleasantly situated bower. The air is delicate; the moan of doves, and song of nightingales, and ripple and gush of rivulet and waterfall, are on the breeze, and the poet himself makes sweet division for us on his lute—it is the most exquisite of artistic performances. But while we recline at ease in the gardens of Boccaccio, the plague still continues to rage in the city. This new Alexandrian school will not serve the needs of humanity. It will not do to divorce poetry from the people, to allow it to become the possession of an aristocratic class. In Elizabethan times, and at other famous poetic epochs, the poet was a man among men, and did not need to retire into lifelong seclusion apart from his fellows to pay court to his muse. Poetry is the democratic art; it will not do to leave it in the hands of a haughtily exclusive guild of artificers. reason it must not be left in their hands. from being of Tyrtean strain, not only fail to rouse to war, but they even console in defeat; and such music is not conducive to the health of the soul.

And for another
Their songs, far

There have been many forces at work in the present century whose resultant has powerfully shaken the natural optimism which supports the human race. Many who have tried bravely to accommodate themselves to the new economics have failed of absolute satisfaction with them. The pessimistic tide has run strongly in our days. We are still in a mood of discontent, oppressed by a sense of the futility of life. To encourage this sense is easy-to reconcile us, make us friends again with life, this is a pressing need. We need

'One common wave of thought and joy,
Lifting mankind again ;'

and we want in poctry the rhythms of a courageous and harmonious life.' We want in it likewise not a beauty which may be discovered by a certain acute and honourable minority,' but which shall illuminate the dull tracts of our daily journeying with an unimagined light, so that we may cross the threshold of the coming century with a buoyant, not a listless step.

To whom are we to look for these rhythms, for this beauty? For the ideal City of the Future, Plato's suggestion has not yet lost its force. An intolerance of a certain order of poets is to be apprehended. We who are not poets may yet have reason to congratulate ourselves that we have declined to

walk without due caution in their narrow footsteps, for we anticipate that there will come evil days for the musicians in a minor key who now find favour among us :

'We are not sure of sorrow,

And joy was never sure,
To-day will die to-morrow;

Time stoops to no man's lure :
And love grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful

Sighs, and with eyes forgetful

Weeps that no loves endure.'1

When a poet who writes in this strain presents himself at the august court of the twentieth century, it may hap that he will be treated as Plato recommended:

'When one of these makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and worshipful being; but we must also inform him that there is no place for such as he in our state--the law will not allow them. And so, when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our soul's health the rougher and severer poet, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers.''

But the future will be sufficient for itself. Meantime, it is out of place, perhaps, to rail at the poetry of culture until some other and better wares are offered us. In literature, as in life, the gifts of fortune are to be received with thankfulness, be they small or great. And if we get little but fine. jewel-work from his successors, from Arnold, the first poet of culture, the 'prophet of culture,' as he has been ironically styled, we have been the recipients of a truly great gift; and to him our gratitude will be as lasting as it is pure-to him who was the chief poet of the autumnal season of this century, the time of the falling of the leaf and the withering of the flower of faith.

With the publication of The Princess, Alfred Tennyson became the acknowledged representative of his age in poetry. But it is the Tennyson of the early poems, not the Tennyson of the Idylls of the King, that represents the prevailing tone, the prevailing opinions, of his time. In his later years, Tennyson did not give himself openly and freely to the predominant current of ideas; he held back, and finally his 1 A. C. Swinburne, Poems and Ballads. 2 Plato, The Republic, bk. 3.