After leaving the university Arnold first taught the classics at Rugby; then, in 1847, he became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, who appointed the young poet to the position of inspector of schools under the government.  In this position Arnold worked patiently for the next thirty-five years, traveling about the country, examining teachers, and correcting endless examination papers.  For ten years (1857-1867) he was professor of poetry at Oxford, where his famous lectures On Translating Homer were given.  He made numerous reports on English and foreign schools, and was three times sent abroad to study educational methods on the Continent.  From this it will be seen that Arnold led a busy, often a laborious life, and we can appreciate his statement that all his best literary work was done late at night, after a day of drudgery.  It is well to remember that, while Carlyle was preaching about labor, Arnold labored daily; that his work was cheerfully and patiently done; and that after the day’s work he hurried away, like Lamb, to the Elysian fields of literature.  He was happily married, loved his home, and especially loved children, was free from all bitterness and envy, and, notwithstanding his cold manner, was at heart sincere, generous, and true.  We shall appreciate his work better if we can see the man himself behind all that he has written.

Arnold’s literary work divides itself into three periods, which we may call the poetical, the critical, and the practical.  He had written poetry since his school days, and his first volume, The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, appeared anonymously in 1849.  Three years later he published Empedocles on Etna and other Poems; but only a few copies of these volumes were sold, and presently both were withdrawn from circulation.  In 1853-1855 he published his signed Poems, and twelve years later appeared his last volume of poetry.  Compared with the early work of Tennyson, these works met with little favor, and Arnold practically abandoned poetry in favor of critical writing.

The chief works of his critical period are the lectures On Translating Homer (1861) and the two volumes of Essays in Criticism (1865-1888), which made Arnold one of the best known literary men in England.  Then, like Ruskin, he turned to practical questions, and his Friendship’s Garland (1871) was intended to satirize and perhaps reform the great middle class of England, whom he called the Philistines. Culture and Anarchy, the most characteristic work of his practical period, appeared in 1869.  These were followed by four books on religious subjects,—­St. Paul and Protestantism (1870), Literature and Dogma (1873), God and the Bible (1875), and Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877).  The Discourses in America (1885) completes the list of his important works.  At the height of his fame and influence he died suddenly, in 1888, and was buried in the churchyard at Laleham.  The spirit of his whole life is well expressed in a few lines of one of his own early sonnets: