Matthew Arnold was a Victorian poet, critic and cultural guru. Often overshadowed by his more famous contemporaries, Tennyson and Browning, Arnold’s legacy relies as much on his prose, as on his poetry. He was fully aware of his unique ranking in the poetic league table of the time and his special place among some of the most accomplished poets of that century, saying in a letter to his mother; “it might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had theirs”.