Arnold was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857, and he was the first in this position to deliver his lectures in English rather than in Latin. He was re-elected in 1862. "On Translating Homer" (1861) and the initial thoughts that Arnold would transform into "Culture and Anarchy" were among the fruits of the Oxford lectures. In 1859, he conducted the first of three trips to the continent at the behest of parliament to study European educational practices. He self-published "The Popular Education of France" (1861), the introduction to which was later published under the title "Democracy" (1879).