Even those who are by no means greedy of details as to the biography of authors, may without inconsistency regret that Matthew Arnold's _Letters_ do not begin till he was just five-and-twenty. And then they are not copious, telling us in particular next to nothing about his literary work (which is, later, their constant subject) till he was past thirty. We could spare schoolboy letters, which, though often interesting, are pretty identical, save when written by little prigs. But the letters of an undergraduate--especially when the person is Matthew Arnold, and the University the Oxford of the years 1841-45--ought to be not a little symptomatic, not a little illuminative. We might have learnt…
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