18 MARCH 1905, Page 15

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1

Sin,—The following lines from Matthew Arnold's " Horatian Echo,"* written in 1847, have so significant an echo in every line for the twentieth-century Englishman, that they seem worth reproducing.—I am, Sir, &c., Bastfield, Caversham, Beading.

" Omit, omit, my simple friend, Still to enquire how parties tend, Or what we fix with foreign powers. If France and we are really friends, And what the Russian Czar intends,

Is no concern of ours.

Us not the daily quickening race Of the invading [se., alien] populace Shall draw to swell that shouldering herd. Mourn will we not your closing hour, Ye imbeciles in present power,

Doomed, pompous and absurd!"

• Macmillan's edition of the " Collected Poems," p. 47,