This essay reads T.S. Eliot’s “What Is a Classic?” and Matthew Arnold’s “The Study of Poetry.” Investigating the fundamental affinities between the two authors and texts, it seeks to understand their conceptions of the classic and literary value more generally. Eliot’s address has a heavy dependence upon Arnold, though there are points of difference, especially when it comes to the question of Homer and Virgil. Fundamentally, though, both Arnold and Eliot reach towards a transcendental, even religious, view of the classic. The essay concludes by developing the implications of Eliot’s “last poet” and the silencing qualities of the classic hinted at in his essay. These aspects have not been sufficiently understood, but taking them seriously shows why the current defense of the classic is dubious. If the classic is to have any meaning, it must be a text apart, which, in Eliot’s terms, means that it imposes duties upon the reader. The difficulty of accepting such duties means that the classic must be rejected as a conceptual category.