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ENGLISH   3MEN    OF   LETTERS 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD 


BY 


HERBERT     W.     PAUL 


MACMILLAN    AND  CO.,   LIMITED 

ST.   MARTIN'S  STREET,   LONDON 

1920 


COPYRIGHT 

First  Edition,  July  1902 
Reprinted  Norember  1902, 1907, 1015, 
1920 


PREFATORY    NOTE. 

THE  only  authority  for  the  events  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
life,  besides  Mr.  Richard  Garnett's  excellent  article 
in  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  is  the  collection 
of  his  letters  in  two  volumes,  edited  by  Mr.  George 
Russell  (Macmillan,  1895).  Sir  Joshua  Fitch's  account 
of  Mr.  Arnold's  public  services  as  Inspector  of  Schools 
in  the  seventh  volume  of  Great  Educators  (Heinemann) 
is  admirably  clear,  and  Mr.  Burnett  Smart's  Biblio 
graphy  (The  Dryden  Press,  1892)  cannot  be  over 
praised.  Professor  Saintsbury's  lively  and  learned 
study  in  Messrs.  Blackwood's  Modern  English  Writers 
(1899)  is  rather  unsympathetic  on  the  theological  and 
political  side,  but  full  of  interest  and  suggestion.  I 
have  sometimes  owed  most  to  Mr.  Saintsbury  when 
I  have  been  least  able  to  agree  with  him. 

H.  W.  P. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    I. 
INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY       .... 


CHAPTER   II. 
RUGBY  AND  OXFORD 


CHAPTER    III. 
EARLY  POEMS 16 

CHAPTER   IV. 
WORK  AND  POETRY 30 

CHAPTER   V. 

THE  OXFORD  CHAIR         .        .        .        .  ,        .51 

CHAPTER   VI. 

•'ESSAYS  IN  CRITICISM" 72 

CHAPTER    VII. 
THE  END  OF  THE  PROFESSORSHIP    ,  91 


viii  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER    VIII. 
THE  "NEW  POEMS" 99 

CHAPTER    IX. 
EDUCATION 106 

CHAPTER    X. 
jr/MB._ABXOLD>s  PHILOSOPHY     ....,-_     113 

CHAPTER   XI. 
./  MB.  ABNOLD'S  THEOLOGY        ......    130 

CHAPTER   XII. 
MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS  ....,,.     145 

CHAPTER   XIII. 

THE  AFTERMATH       .        .        .  .        ,        ,        .159 

CHAPTER   XIV. 
CONCLUSION ,  170 

INDEX  ..„..«...    179 


MATTHEW   ABNOLD. 

CHAPTER   I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

THE  fourteen  years  which  have  elapsed  since  Matthew 
Arnold's  death  have  added  greatly  to  the  number  of 
his  readers,  especially  the  readers  of  his  poems.    No  / 
poet  of  modern  times,  perhaps  no  English  poet  of  any 
time,  appeals  so  directly  and   so  exclusively  to  the. 
cultivated  taste  of  the  educated  classes.     To  say  that 
a  classical  education  was  necessary  for  understanding 
him  would  perhaps  be  to  go  too  far.     But  a  capacity, 
nor  appreciating  form  and  style,  the  charm  of  rhythm, 
I  and  the   beauty  of  words,  is  undoubtedly  essential. 
It  may  be  said  of  Mr.  Arnold  with  truth,  and  it  is 
his  chief  praise,  that  the  more  widely  mental  culture 
spreads,  the  higher  his  fame  will  be.      He  was  not, 
|  indeed,  a  profound  thinker.     He  did  not  illuminate, 
*  like  Wordsworth,  with  a  single  flash,  the  abysses  of 
man's  nature,  and  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  human 
soul.      He  was  not,  as  Plato  was,  a  spectator  of  all 
time  and  all  existence.     His  aim  was,  as  he  said  of 
|  Sophocles,  to  see  life  steadily,  and  see  it  whole.     But 
'  he  saw  it  as  a  scholar  and  a  man  of   letters.      He  ** 
interpreted  greater  minds  than  his  own.     He  almost 

A 


2  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

fulfilled  his  ideal.     He  knew,  so  far  at  least  as  the 
Western  world  is  concerned,  the  best  that  had  been 

(said  and  thought  in  all  ages.     Next  to  Milton,  he  was 
the  most  learned  of  English  poets. 

How  far  Matthew  Arnold  will  suffer  from  having 
been  too  much  the  child  of  his  own  age,  it  is  as  yet 
too  soon  to  say.  The  "  Zeit-Geist "  has  its  limitations. 
It  is  the  spirit  of  wisdom,  not  the  spirit  of  a  day,  that 
is  justified  of  all  her  children.  "Thyrsis"  is  a  very 
beautiful  poem,  not  much  less  beautiful  than  "  Adonais," 
though  very  unlike  it.  But  Clough  was  not  Keats. 
Keats  is  near  to  every  one  of  us,  while  Clough  is  already 
far  away.  To  Mr.  Arnold,  however,  Clough  was  not 
merely  a  personal  friend.  He  was  the  embodiment  of 
Oxford  in  the  thirties  and  forties,  of  a  special  type 
now  rare,  if  not  extinct.  Matthew  Arnold's  passionate 
love  of  Oxford  has  inspired  some  of  his  noblest  verse, 
and  some  of  his  most  musical  prose.  All  Oxford  men 
know,  or  used  to  know,  the  exquisite  sentences  about 
the  beautiful  city  with  her  dreaming  towers,  breathing 
the  last  enchantment  of  the  middle  age.  It  was  the 
unreformed  Oxford  which  Matthew  Arnold  knew,  and 
he  represented  the  high-water  mark  of  what  it  could 
do.  The  "grand  old  fortifying  classical  curriculum" 
at  which  he  laughed,  and  in  which  he  believed,  was 
seen  at  its  best  in  the  Oxford  of  those  days.  There 
was  no  "specialising."  There  were  classics,  and  there 
were  mathematics,  and  there  was  the  river,  and  there 
was  Headington  Hill  with  Shotover  beyond  it.  If 
that  did  not  satisfy  a  man,  he  must  have  been  hard  to 
please.  At  any  rate,  he  was  not  entitled  to  take  a 
degree  in  Tamil,  with  a  school  and  examiners  all  to 
himself. 


I.]  INTRODUCTORY.  3 

Education  was  the  business  of   Matthew  Arnold's  ! 
life.     He  understood  it  in  the  broadest  sense.     There  ) 
was  nothing  narrow,  technical,  or  pedantic  about  his 
scholarship  or  his  criticism.     But  in  the  proper  sense  ^ 
of  a  much  abused  term  his  work  is  academic.     It  is/" 
stecpejl  in,  one  might  say  saturated  with,  culture.     It 
was  written  by  a  scholar  for  scholars,  and  only  scholars 
can  fully  appreciate  it.     Matthew  Arnold  fulfilled  the 
precept  of  Horace.     He  turned  over  his  Greek  models 
by  day  and  by  night.     He  brought  everything  to  the 
classical  touchstone.     Whatever  was   not  Greek  was 
barbarian.     "  Except,"  wrote  Sir  Henry  Maine,  in  a 
moment  of  rare  enthusiasm,  "  except  the  blind  forces 
of  nature,  nothing  moves  in  this  world  which  is  not 
Greek  in   its   origin."      Such   was   substantially  Mr. 
Arnold's  creed,  though  as  his  father's  son  he  recognised 
that  Hebraism  entered  with  Hellenism  into  the  struc 
ture  of  the  Christian  Church. 

Yet  both  as  a  poet  and  as  a  critic  Matthew  Arnold 
was  essentially  a  man  of  his  time.  He  was  singularly 
receptive  of  ideas,  even  when  they  were  ephemeral. 
He  loved  to  dabble  in  politics,  but  the  best  parts  of  his 
political  writings  are  the  quotations  from  Burke.  He 
did  more  than  dabble  in  theology.  He  took  the 
doctors  of  the  Tubingen  school  for  apostles,  and 
treated  a  phase  of  Biblical  speculation  as  if  it  were 
permanent  truth.  Ho  had  no  sympathy  with  dry  and 
minute  criticism  of  detail,  like  Bishop  Colenso's.  He 
addicted  himself  to  Ewald  and  to  Renan.  He  threw 
himself  into  the  Liberal  reaction  against  Tractarianism, 
whose  attitude  to  the  Great  First  Cause  has  been  de 
scribed  by  a  satirist  in  the  memorable  line — 
"Philosophy  is  lenient ;  he  may  go." 


4  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Matthew  Arnold's  literary  criticism,  once  regarded 
|"  by  young  enthusiasts  as  a  revelation,  has  long  since 
I  taken  a  secure  place  in  English  letters.  Like  his 
poetry,  unlike  his  theology  and  his  politics,  it  has 
original  and  intrinsic  value.  It  is  penetrating  as  well 
as  brilliant,  conscientious  as  well  as  imaginative. 
Matthew  Arnold  may  be  said  to  have  done  for 
literature  almost  what  Euskin  did  for  art.  He  re 
minded,  or  informed,  the  British  public  that  criticism 
was  a  serious  thing;  that  good  criticism  was  just  as 
important  as  good  authorship;  that  it  was  not  a 
question  of  individual  taste,  but  partly  of  received 
authority,  and  partly  of  trained  judgment.  His  own 
masters,  besides  the  old  Greeks,  were  chiefly  Goethe 
and  Sainte-Beuve.  But  few  critics  have  been  so 
thoroughly  original,  and  still  fewer  have  had  so  large 
a  share  of  the  "dsemonie"  faculty,  the  faculty  which 
awakens  intelligent  enthusiasm  in  others.  Essays  in 
Criticism  is  one  of  the  indispensable  books.  Not  to 
have  read  it  is  to  be  ignorant  of  a  great  intellectual 
event. 

In  his  double  character  of  poet  and  critic,  Matthew 
Arnold  may  be  called  our  English  Goethe.  This  is 
not  to  put  the  two  men  on  a  level ;  for,  of  course,  one 
could  not  without  absurdity  talk  of  Goethe  as  a 
German  Arnold.  Goethe  is  one  of  the  world's  poets, 
Matthew  Arnold  is  little  known  to  those  who  do  not 
speak  the  English  tongue.  But  among  them  his 
reputation  widens,  and  will  widen,  as  knowledge  and 
the  love  of  books  spread  through  all  classes  of  society. 
To  all  who  care  for  things  of  the  mind  his  work  must 
ever  be  dear.  Something  of  his  own  radiant  and  sym 
pathetic  personality  pervades  all  his  writings,  except 


i.]  INTRODUCTORY.  5 

perhaps  when  he  is  dealing  with  Dissenters.  It  would 
have  been  well  if  he  had  applied  the  critical  priming- 
knife  to  the  exuberant  mannerism  which  sometimes 
disfigures  his  style.  The  repetition  of  pet  phrases  is 
a  literary  vice.  But  Matthew  Arnold  is  more  than 
strong  enough  to  live  in  spite  of  his  faults.  His  best 
poetry,  and  his  best  prose,  are  among  the  choicest 
legacies  bequeathed  by  the  nineteenth  century  to  the 
twentieth.  If  they  belong  to  an  age,  they  are  the 
glory  of  it,  for  they  show  what  golden  ore  it  could 
extract,  and  hand  down  to  the  future,  from  the  buried 
accumulations  of  the  past. 


CHAPTER    II. 

RUGBY   AND   OXFORD. 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD  was  born  at  Laleham,  near  Staines, 
in  the  county  of  Middlesex,  on  Christmas  Eve,  1822^ 
Laleham  is  situated  on  the  Thames,  for  which  from 
his  earliest  years  he  had  a  passionate  love.  His 
father,  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby,  the  famous  schoolmaster, 
had  nine  children,  of  whom  Matthew  was  the  eldest 
son.  Mr.  Thomas  Arnold,  however,  did  not  become 
Dr.  Arnold,  or  go  to  Rugby,  till  1828.  In  1822  he 
( was  taking  private  pupils,  and  forming  the  theories  of 
(education  which  he  afterwards  carried  out  in  a  more 
conspicuous  field.  His  wife,  born  Mary  Penrose,  who 
lived  till  1873,  having  survived  her  husband  more  than 
thirty  years,  was  a  woman  of  remarkable  character  and 
intellect,  with  whom  Matthew  kept  up  to  the  day  of 
her  death  a  mentally  sympathetic  as  well  as  personally 
affectionate  correspondence.  When  the  family  re 
moved  to  Rugby,  Matthew  was  five,  but  two  years 
afterwards  he  returned  to  Laleham  as  the  pupil  of  his 
uncle,  the  Reverend  John  Buckland.  The  country 
t  round  Rugby  is,  as  Dr.  Arnold  used  pathetically  to 
[complain,  among  the  dullest  and  ugliest  in  England. 
As  a  contrast  he  took  a  house  at  Fox  How,  near 
Grasmere,  on  the  Rotha,  where  he  spent  most  of  the 
holidays  with  his  wife  and  children.  The  eldest  boy 


CHAP,  ii.]  RU<;BY  AND  OXFORD.  7 

thus  grew  up  under  the  shadow  of  Wordsworth,  whose 
brilliant  and  penetrating  interpreter  he  was  destined 
to  become.  In  August  1836,  being  then  thirteen  and 
a  half,  Matthew  was  sent  to  Winchester,  of  which 
Dr.  Moberly,  an  elegant  scholar,  long  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Salisbury,  had  just  been  appointed  head 
master.  Dr.  Arnold  was  himself  a  Wykehamist,  and 
had  a  high  opinion  of  his  old  school.  But  after  a 
year,  in  August  1837,  Matthew  was  removed  from 
I  Winchester  to  be  under  his  father's  eye  in  the  school- 
I  house  at  Rugby,  where  he  remained  until  he  went  up 
to  Oxford  in  1841. 

Rugby  under  Arnold  has  been  made  familiar  to 
millions  of  readers  by  Tom  Brown's  School  Days.  When 
Arnold  was  a  candidate,  Dr.  Hawkins,  the  Provost  of 
Oriel,  prophesied  that  if  elected  he  would  revolutionise 
the  public  schools.  He  certainly  revolutionised 
|  Rugby.  When  he  came  there,  it  was  little  more  than 
an  ordinary  grammar  school  with  boarders.  When  he 
died,  it  was  one  of  tho  most  famous  and  popular 
schools  in  England.  The  nfonitorial  system  was  not 
/  really  his  invention.  He  introduced  it  from  Win- 
J  Chester.  But  he  invested  it  with  a  moral  significance 
which  had  not  previously  belonged  to  it,  and  he 
leavened  the  whole  school  by  his  own  powerful  person 
ality.  As  his  accomplished  biographer,  Dean  Stanley, 
says,  "Throughout,  whether  in  the  school  itself,  or  in 
its  after  effects,  the  one  image  that  we  have  before  us 
is  not  Rugby,  but  Arnold."  Matthew  Arnold  bore  very 
little  resemblance  to  his  stern  Puritanical  father. 
Dr.  Arnold  was  in  deadly  earnest  about  everything, 
ami  was  wholly  devoid  of  humour.  He  was  always 
declaiming  against  the  childishness  of  boys,  which 


8  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

after  all  is  not  a  bad  thing,  and  better  than  the 
premature  mannislmess  which  the  monitorial  system 
encourages.  But  he  was  in  his  way  a  great  man.  He 
had  extraordinary  force  of  character  and  strength  of 
f  will.  He  had  a  magnetic  influence  upon  boys.  He 
I  was  absolutely  single-minded  and  sincere.  His  piety 
was  deep  and  genuine,  quite  without  suspicion  of  cant 
or  conventionalism.  His  classical  scholarship  was  not 
only  sound  and  thorough,  but  broad,  robust,  and 
philosophical.  As  a  teacher  he  stood  high,  as  a 
preacher  higher.  There  have  been  few  better  writers 
of  English  prose  than  Dr.  Arnold,  and  it  is  perhaps  his 
high  literary  sense  which  was  his  most  distinctive 
bequest  to  his  son.  In  a  letter  to  his  old  pupil 
Vaughan,  afterwards  Master  of  the  Temple,  Dr. 
Arnold  says :  "  There  is  an  actual  pleasure  in  contem 
plating  so  perfect  a  management  of  so  perfect  an 
instrument  as  is  exhibited  in  Plato's  language,  even  if 
the  matter  were  as  worthless  as  the  words  of  Italian 
music;  whereas  the  sense  is  only  less  admirable  in 
many  places  than  the  language."  But  Thucydides  was 
of  course  his  favourite  author ;  and  the  general  reader, 
as  distinguished  from  the  philological  student,  can 
have  at  this  day  no  better  guide  to  the  greatest  of  all 
historians  than  Dr.  Arnold. 

Dr.  Arnold  was,  says  Dean  Stanley,  "the  elder 
brother  and  playfellow  of  his  children."  In  that  fine 
poem  with  the  unfortunate  metre,  "Rugby  Chapel," 
the  son  puts  it  rather  differently  : — 

"  If,  in  the  paths  of  the  world, 
Stones  might  have  wounded  thy  feet, 
Toil  or  dejection  have  tried 
Thy  spirit,  of  that  we  saw 


ii.]  RUGBY  AND  OXFORD.  9 

Nothing  !     To  us  thou  wert  still 
Cheerful,  and  helpful,  and  firm. 
Therefore  to  thee  it  was  given 
Many  to  save  with  thyself ; 
And,  at  the  end  of  thy  day, 
O  faithful  shepherd  !  to  come, 
Bringing  thy  sheep  in  thy  hand."  . 

(The  thought  expressed  in  these  lines,  the  idea  of  a 
good  man  not  content  with  saving  his  own  soul,  but 
devoting  himself  also  to  the  salvation  of  others,  is 
repeated  in  one  of  Matthew  Arnold's  most  touching 
letters  to  his  mother  many  years  after  his  father's 
death.  It  was  a  singularly  delightful  trait  in  a  most 
endearing  character,  that  Mr.  Arnold  always  in  writ 
ing  to  her  dwelt  upon  what  "Papa"  would  have 
thought  of  things  if  he  had  been  alive.  Dr.  Arnold 
died  in  1842;  and  he  was,  thought  his  son,  the  first 
English  clergyman  who  could  speak  as  freely  upon 
religious  subjects  as  if  he  had  been  a  layman.  He  " 
was,  however,  strictly  orthodox  in  all  the  essential 
doctrines  of  the  Christian  faith.  He  was  suspected  of 
I  heresy  on  no  better  grounds  than  his  dislike  of  the 
•  Oxford  Movement,  which  was  strong,  and  his  know 
ledge  of  German,  which  was  thorough.  He  took  the 
Liberal  side  in  the  first  Hampden  controversy,  but 
the  charges  against  Dr.  Hampden  completely  broke 
down.  In  politics  he  was  a  decided,  though  indepen- 

Ident  Whig,  and  he  wrote  a  pamphlet  in  favour  of 
Catholic  Emancipation.  Yet  he  held  as  firmly  as  Mr. 
Gladstone  once  held  the  theory  of  a  Christian  state, 
and  he  consistently  opposed  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  Jews.  In  one  respect  he  was  far  in  advance  of  his 
age.  "Woe,"  he  said,  "to  the  generation  which  inhabits 


10  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

I  England  when  the  coal-fields  are  exhausted,  and  the 
j  National  Debt  has  not  been  paid."  Although  he  died 
four  years  before  the  Repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws,  he  was 
a  staunch  advocate  of  free  exchange.  It  is  impossible 
not  to  trace  the  influence  of  the  father  in  the  politics 
of  the  son. 

We  have  the  authority  of  Matthew  Arnold's  oldest 
and  most  intimate  friend,  Lord  Coleridge,  for  the  fact, 
which  might  perhaps  have  been  surmised,  that  between 
father  and  son  there  was  more  affection  than  sympathy. 
Dr.  Arnold  abhorred  "mere  cleverness,"  and  humour 
appeared  to  him  a  rather  profane  indiscretion.  His 
eldest  son  was  excessively  clever,  and  full  of  a  gaiety 
which  he  never  at  any  time  of  life  made  the  smallest 
attempt  to  subdue.  Lord  Coleridge  hints  that  there 
were  collisions  between  them,  and  one  can  partly 
believe  it.  But  he  adds  that  when  the  doctor  had 
trouble,  as  even  schoolmasters  sometimes  have,  he 
found  comfort  in  the  filial  piety  of  one  whose  genius 
he  did  not  live  to  acknowledge.  The  only  poem  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  which  his  father  saw  was  "  Alaric  at 
Rome,"  recited  in  Rugby  School  on  the  12th  of  June 
1840.  The  motto  from  Childe  Harold,  prefixed  to  this 
composition,  prepares  one  for  its  character,  which  is 
distinctly  Byronic.  It  is  not  much  above  the  ordinary 
level  of  such  things,  and  many  men  have  written  as 
good  verses  when  they  were  boys,  who  never  came 
within  measurable  distance  of  being  poets.  One 
stanza,  however,  deserves  to  be  quoted,  because  the 
first  two  lines  are  the  earliest  example  of  a  figure  the 
writer  often  afterwards  employed  : — 

"  Yes,  there  are  stories  registered  on  high, 
Yes,  there  are  stains  time's  fingers  cannot  blot, 


ii.]  RUGBY  AND  OXFORD.  11 

Deeds  that  shall  live  when  tlu-y  who  did  them,  die  ; 
Things  that  may  cease,  Imt  never  be  forgot : 
Yet  some  there  are,  their  very  lives  would  give 
To  be  rememberM  thus,  and  yet  they  cannot  live." 

The  last  couplet  is  sadly  wooden,  and  shows  that  the 
young  versifier  had  not  got  his  stride.  Macaulay  is 
almost  the  only  man  who  has  successfully  imitated 
without  parodying  Byron. 

»      In  this  same  year,  1840,  Matthew  Arnold  won  an 
[  open  scholarship  at  Balliol,  and  in  1841  he  went  into 
residence.     Oxford  was  then  in  the  full  swing  of  the 
Tractarian  movement.     Newman  had  not  yet  retired 
,  to  Littlemore,  and  was  still  drawing  crowded  congrega- 
[  tions  at  St.   Mary's.     The  fascination  of  that  extra 
ordinary  man  attracted  minds  so  utterly  dissimilar  to 
his  own  as  Mark  Pattison's  and  Anthony  Froude's. 
But  upon  Matthew  Arnold  he  seems  to  have  had  no 
effect  whatever.     Perhaps  the  influence  of  Dr.  Arnold, 

I  who  regarded  Newman  as  something  very  like  Anti 
christ,  was  too  strong.  In  1841,  just  before  the 
Whigs  went  out  of  office,  Lord  Melbourne  appointed 
Dr.  Arnold  Regius  Professor  of  History,  and  in 
December  of  that  year,  to  a  crowded  audience,  largely 
composed  of  old  Rugbeians,  he  delivered  his  inaugural 
lecture.  In  the  following  June  he  died,  and  his 
memory  was  consecrated  by  his  early  death.  Matthew 
Arnold's  own  temperament,  however,  though  not 
irreligious,  was  utterly  unclerical,  and  he  never  con 
templated,  as  most  undergraduates  not  in  easy 
circumstances  at  that  time  did,  the  possibility  of  taking 
orders. 

Except  for    a   few   venerable   landmarks,  and   the 
examination  iu  the  school  of  Litenc  Uunumiores,  there 


12  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

is  little  left  now  of  the  Oxford  which  Matthew  Arnold 
entered  sixty  years  ago.  Before  the  Commission  of 
1850  the  University  was  in  form  what  it  had  been  in 
the  middle  ages.  All  power  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Hebdomadal  Board,  and  the  Hebdomadal  Board  was 
simply  the  Heads  of  Houses.  The  separate  Colleges 
kept  strictly  to  themselves,  there  were  no  combined 
lectures,  and  no  unattached  students.  Every  under- 
>  graduate  subscribed  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles,  so  that 
only  members  of  the  Church  of  England  could  enter 
the  University. 

Such,  at  least,  was  the  theory,  though  of  course  in 
practice  religious  tests  exclude  only  the  conscientious. 
But  a  society  confined  to  one  ecclesiastical  organisation 
gave  itself  up  to  the  vehemence  of  ecclesiastical 
disputes.  Nonconformity  was  not  represented.  Rome 
proved  a  powerful  attraction,  and  young  men,  as 
Pattison  puts  it,  spent  the  time  that  should  have 
been  devoted  to  study  in  discussing  which  was  the 
true  Church.  At  Balliol  there  was  perhaps  more 
intellectual  activity  than  at  any  other  college.  The 
scholarships  and  fellowships,  as  was  rare  in  those  days, 
were  open.  Dr.  Jenkyns,  the  Master,  though  no  great 
scholar  himself,  was  jealous  for  Balliol's  intellectual 
reputation,  and  had  some  at  least  of  the  qualities 
which  in  a  larger  world  are  called  statesmanship. 
Mr.  Jowett,  then  a  young  Fellow,  was  beginning  the 
long  career  which  will  always  be  associated  with  the 
name  of  Balliol.  Of  Dr.  Arnold's  old  pupils  at  Balliol, 
Stanley  had  become  a  Fellow  of  University,  and 
Clough  a  Fellow  of  Oriel.  Among  Matthew  Arnold's 
contemporaries  his  closest  friends  were  John  Duke 
Coleridge,  afterwards  Lord  Chief-Justice  of  England, 


ii.]  RUGBY  AND  OXFORD.  13 

and  John  Campbell  Shairp,  afterwards  Principal  of  the 
United  College,  St.  Andrews.  Shairp's  lines  about 
Matthew  Arnold  are  too  hackneyed  for  quotation. 
They  describe  the  debonair  gaiety  with  which  all  his 
friends  are  familiar,  and  which  he  never  lost.  The 
"home  of  lost  causes,  and  forsaken  beliefs,  and  un 
popular  names,  and  impossible  loyalties,"  was  dearer 
to  Mr.  Arnold  than  Rugby,  or  even  Laleham.  For 
the  country  round  Oxford  he  had  a  passion,  which 
found  full  vent  in  "The  Scholar  Gipsy"  and  in 
"Thyrsis."  For  the  squabbles  about  Tract  Number 
Ninety,  and  "Ideal  Ward's"  Degree,  he  did  not  care 
two  straws.  Max  Miiller  has  described  in  his  Auto 
biography  the  amazement  which  he,  a  young  German, 
fresh  from  Leipzig  and  Berlin,  felt  at  the  spectacle 
of  religious  disputes  having  no  intelligible  connection 
with  religion.  Matthew  Arnold's  view  of  them  was 
much  the  same  as  Max  Miiller 's. 

In  the  year  after  his  father's  death,  1843,  Matthew 
Arnold  won  the  Newdigate  with  a  poem  on  "  Cromwell." 
He  and  Tennyson  are  exceptions  to  the  rule  that  prizes 
for  poetry  do  not  fall  to  poets.  But  "  Cromwell "  is 
even  less  remarkable  than  "  Alaric  at  Rome."  Written, 
as  all  Newdigates  must  be,  in  heroic  rhyme,  it  has  flow 
and  smoothness  of  numbers  without  inspiration,  or 
even  distinction  of  style.  There  is  one  obvious  touch 
of  Wordsworth,  or,  as  some  will  have  it,  of  Words 
worth's  wife — 

"  Yet  all  high  sounds  that  mountain  children  hear 
Flash'd  from  thy  soul  upon  thine  inward  ear." 

But  Wordsworth  had  as  yet  no  reason  to  be  proud  of 
his  pupil.  There  is  more  promise  of  the  future  in  the 


14  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Rugby  poem  than  in  the  Oxford  one,  and  more  of  the 
feeling  for  nature  which  was  afterwards  so  conspicuous. 
Matthew  Arnold's  published  Letters  unfortunately  do 
not  date  back  to  his  Oxford  days,  which  must  have 
been  among  the  fullest  and  the  most  enjoyable  of  his 
full  and  happy  life.  We  know  from  Lord  Coleridge 
that  he  belonged  to  "  The  Decade,"  a  small  debating 
Society,  where,  as  that  great  lover  of  argument  says, 
they  "fought  to  the  stumps  of  their  intellects."  Per 
haps  the  poet  neglected  the  schools.  At  any  rate,  like 
his  friend  Clough  a  few  years  before  him,  he  was  placed 
in  the  second  class  at  the  final  examination  for  Classical 
Honours.  But  this  comparative  failure  was  more  than 
redeemed,  in  his  case  as  in  Clough's,  by  a  Fellowship  at 
Oriel,  of  which  his  father  had  also  been  a  Fellow.  He 
was  elected  in  1845,  when  an  Oriel  Fellowship  was  still 
regarded  as  the  most  brilliant  crown  of  an  Oxford 
career.  Dr.  Hawkins,  the  famous  Provost,  who  brought 
to  the  government  of  a  college  an  ability  greater  than 
has  often  been  employed  in  the  misgovernment  of 
kingdoms,  would  not  allow  a  vacancy  to  be  advertised. 
If  people,  he  said,  wanted  to  know  whether  there  was 
a  vacant  Fellowship  at  Oriel,  they  might  come  and 
ask.  Certainly  the  College  of  Whately  and  New 
man,  of  Clough  and  Church,  of  Matthew  Arnold  and 
his  father,  had  good  reason  to  be  proud  of  its  sons. 
But  it  would  not  have  suited  Matthew  Arnold  to 
become  a  College  Don.  He  was  essentially  a  man  of 
the  world,  loving  society  in  its  widest  sense,  a  scholar 
by  temperament  and  taste,  but  delighting  to  mix  with  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  his  fellow-creatures.  Although, 
like  most  Oxford  men  of  his  generation,  he  had  no 
scientific  bent  or  training,  his  interests  were  too  many 


ii.]  RUGBY  AND  OXFORD.  15 

rather  than  too  few.  Narrowness  was  never  among 
his  faults.  He  was  rather  too  apt  to  think  that  there 
was  no  subject  upon  which  an  educated  man  is  not 
competent  to  form  an  opinion.  Perhaps  the  free  life 
of  unreformed  Oxford,  with  its  lax  discipline,  its  few 
examinations,  its  ample  leisure  for  social  intercourse  of 
the  best  and  highest  kind,  as  of  others  with  which  the 
biographer  of  Matthew  Arnold  has  no  concern,  fostered 
a  tendency  to  diffusiveness,  as  well  as  a  belief  that 
everything  was  open  for  discussion.  As  a  critic 
Matthew  Arnold  was  not  free  from  a  dogmatism  of  his 
own.  But  the  chief  lesson  which  he  took  away  from 
Oxford  was  the  Platonic  maxim,  fttos  di^roja-ros  ov 
/Garros, — "life  without  the  spirit  of  inquiry  is  not 
worth  living." 


CHAPTEE  III. 

EARLY  POEMS. 

AFTER  taking  his  degree,  which  would  have  shocked 
his  father,  and  winning  his  Fellowship,  which  would 
have  delighted  him,  Matthew  Arnold  returned  to 
Rugby,  and  taught  classics  in  the  fifth  form.  Thus 

wm  began  his  long  connection  with  education,  which  only 
ceased  two  years  before  his  death.  Dr.  Arnold's  suc 
cessor  in  the  headmastership  of  Rugby  was  Dr.  Tait, 
a  less  brilliant  scholar,  but  a  man  of  great  dignity  arid 
profound  sagacity,  whose  full  powers  were  not  tested 
until  he  came  to  direct  the  Church  of  England,  and  to 
represent  her  in  the  House  of  Lords,  at  a  period  of 
momentous  interest  and  importance.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  no  other  public  school  in  England 
has  been  governed  within  so  short  a  time  by  three  men 

yso  able,  eminent,  and  influential  as  Dr.  Arnold,  Dr.  Tait, 
and  Dr.  Temple.  Two  of  them  became  Archbishops  of 

*  Canterbury.  The  third  might  have  eclipsed  them 
both  if  he  had  not  been  cut  off  prematurely  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  physical  and  intellectual  vigour.  It  is 
curious  that  not  one  of  them  was  a  Rugby  man.  Many 
years  afterwards,  at  a  dinner  given  within  the  walls  of 
Balliol,  Mr.  Arnold,  with  characteristic  irony  and 
urbanity,  contrasted  Archbishop  Tait  and  himself  as 
types  of  the  Balliol  man  who  had  succeeded  and  the 
IS 


CHAP,  in.]  EARLY  POEMS.  17 

Balliol  man  who  had  failed  in  life.  It  is  probable  that 
these  few  months  at  Rugby  improved  and  confirmed 
the  accuracy  of  Matthew  Arnold's  scholarship,  which 
distinguishes  his  classical  poems,  and  his  "  Lectures  on 
Translating  Homer."  There  is  a  good  deal  more  to  be 
said  for  gerund-grinding  than  Carlyle  would  allow. 

Mr.  Arnold,  however,  was  not  destined  to  remain/ 
long  a  schoolmaster.  He  soon  became  the  citizen  of  a 
larger  world  than  Rugby,  and  few  indeed  have  been 
better  qualified  to  instruct  or  to  adorn  it.  In  1847  he 
was  made  private  secretary  to  Lord  Lansdowne,  then 
President  of  the  Council  in  the  administration  of  Lord 
John  Russell.  Lord  Lansdowne  was  one  of  those 
statesmen  who  play  a  great  part  in  political  history 
without  filling  a  large  space  in  the  newspapers.  Without 
striking  abilities,  and  without  ambition  of  any  kind,  he 
contrived  by  his  personal  tact  and  calm  wisdom  to 
reconcile  the  differences  of  the  Whig  party,  to  keep 
more  brilliant  men  than  himself  out  of  mischief,  and  •' 
to  lead  the  House  of  Lords.  He  had  also  the  pleasant 
and  valuable  gift  of  recognising  early  promise,  together 
with  the  rare  and  enviable  power  of  bringing  young 
men  forward  and  giving  them  their  chance.  It  was 
he  who  brought  Macaulay  into  the  House  of  Commons 
as  Member  for  Calne,  and  to  him  the  country  owes  it 
that  Matthew  Arnold  had  the  opportunity  of  doing  for 
popular  education  what  no  one  else  could  have  done. 
He  was  a  real,  though  a  very  moderate,  Liberal,  and  ' 
Matthew  Arnold's  politics  were  substantially  those  of 
his  patron. 

The  earliest  of  Mr.  Arnold's  Letters,  edited  by 
Mr.  George  Russell,  and  published  by  Messrs.  Mac- 
millan,  is  dated  the  2nd  of  January  1848,  on  his  way  to 

B 


18  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Bowood,  Lord  Lansdowne's  house  in  Wiltshire.  It 
was  apparently  his  first  visit,  for  he  tells  his  mother,  to 
wjiom  the  letter  is  written,  that  he  does  not  expect  to 
"know  a  soul  there."  But  Matthew  Arnold  was  never 
shy ;  and  Lord  Lansdowne,  as  Macaulay  testifies,  was 
the  most  gracious  of  hosts.  Of  the  society  at  Bowood, 
however,  we  have  in  the  letters  no  glimpse.  On  this 
January  day  in  the  year  of  Revolutions  the  writer  had 
come  from  his  old  home  at  Laleham,  and  he  gives  an 

tf?  enthusiastic  description  of  the  country.  "Yesterday," 
he  says,  "  I  was  at  Chertsey,  the  poetic  town  of  our 
childhood,  as  opposed  to  the  practical,  historical 
Staines ;  it  is  across  the  river,  reached  by  no  bridges 
and  roads,  but  by  the  primitive  ferry,  the  meadow 
path,  the  Abbey  river  with  its  wooden  bridge,  and  the 
narrow  lane  by  the  old  wall ;  and,  itself  the  stillest  of 
country  towns  backed  by  St.  Ann's,  leads  nowhere  but 
to.  .the  heaths  and  pines  of  Surrey.  How  unlike  the 
journey  to  Staines,  and  the  great  road  through  the 

'^0  flat,  drained  Middlesex  plain,  with  its  single  standing 
pollarded  elms."  No  English  poet,  not  even  Words- 
>  worth,  had  a  more  passionate  love  of  the  country  than 
Matthew  Arnold.  But,  unlike  Wordsworth,  he  was  an 
omnivorous  reader,  as  familiar  with  German  and  French 
as  with  Latin  and  Greek.  Writing  again  to  his  mother 
on  the  7th  of  May  in  this  same  year  1848,  he  expresses 
a  rather  crude  and  hasty  verdict  on  Heine,  to  whom  he 
afterwards  did  more  justice  both  in  prose  and  verse. 
"  I  have  just  finished,"  he  tells  Mrs.  Arnold,  "  a  German 

Yjbook  I  brought  with  me  here,  a  mixture  of  poems  and 
travelling  journal  by  Heinrich  Heine,  the  most  famous 
of  the  young  German  literary  set.  He  has  a  good 
deal  of  power,  though  more  trick;  however,  he  has 


in.]  KARLY  POEMS.  19 

thoroughly  disgusted  me.  The  Byronism  of  a  German, 
of  a  man  trying  to  be  gloomy,  cynical,  impassioned, 
wtHiueiir,  etc.,  all  //  la  fois,  with  their  honest  bonhom- 
mistic  language  and  total  want  of  experience  of  the 
kind  that  Lord  Byron,  an  English  peer  with  access 
everywhere,  possessed,  is  the  most  ridiculous  thing  in 
the  world."  Happily,  Matthew  Arnold  travelled  soon 
and  far  from  the  state  of  mind  in  which  he  could 
regard  the  Reisebilder  as  "the  most  ridiculous  thing  in 
the  world."  The  author  of  Heine's  Grave  knew  that  to 
speak  of  Heine  as  a  man  who  tried  to  be  gloomy  was 
the  reverse  of  the  truth.  Heine's  model  was  not 
Byron,  but  Sterne,  and  it  was  beneath  Matthew 
Arnold  to  bring  the  privileges  of  the  peerage  into 
literature.  But  there  never  was  a  more  flagrant 
example  than  Byron  in  contradiction  of  the  proverb 
Noblesse  oblige,  and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  Dr.  Arnold 
would  have  highly  disapproved  of  the  Reisebilder. 

On  the  21st  of  July  1849  there  appeared  in  the 
Examiner  the  first  of  Matthew  Arnold's  sonnets.  It 
was  published  anonymously,  and  addressed  "To  the 
Hungarian  Nation."  On  the  29th  of  July  he  told  his 
mother  that  it  was  "not  worth  much,"  and  from  this 
candid  opinion  I,  at  least,  am  not  prepared  to  dissent. 
Such  lines  as 

"  Not  in  American  vulgarity, 
Nor  wordy  German  imbecility," 

would  almost  have  justified  a  repetition  of  the  pro 
phecy  which  Dryden  delivered  to  Swift.  And  yet, 
before  the  year  was  over,  Mr.  Arnold  had  brought  out 
a  volume  which  ought  to  have  established  his  place  in 
English  poetry,  though  for  some  unexplained  reason 


20  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

it  did  not.  The  "Sonnet  to  the  Hungarian  Nation" 
was  not  republished  in  the  lifetime  of  the  author.  It 
may  be  found  in  Alaric  at  Rome  and  Other  Poems, 
edited  by  Mr.  Eichard  Garnett  in  1896. 

The  Strayed  Reveller  and  Other  Poems,  by  "A.,"  appeared 
in  the  author's  twenty-seventh  year.     Few  volumes  of 

\  equal  merit  have  made  so  small  an  impression  upon 
the  public.  Although  every  poem  in  it,  except  one, 
"The  Hays  water  Boat,"  was  afterwards  reprinted  with 
Mr.  Arnold's  sanction,  and  now  forms  a  permanent 
part  of  English  literature,  scarcely  any  notice  was 

***  taken  of  it  at  the  time,  and  it  was  withdrawn  from 
circulation  when  only  a  few  copies  had  been  sold.  It 
is  difficult  to  account  for  this  neglect.  The  age  was 

**  not  altogether  a  prosaic  one.  Wordsworth  was  still 
alive,  and  still  Laureate,  although  it  was  long  since 
he  had  written  anything  that  wore -the  semblance 
of  inspiration.  Tennyson  was  already  famous,  in  spite 
of  envious  detraction  and  ignorant  misunderstanding. 
Browning,  tEough  not  yet  popular,  was  ardently  ad 
mired  as  the  author  of  "Paracelsus  "  by  a  small  circle 
of  the  best  judges.  Rogers  was  enjoying  in  his  old 
age  a  poetical  reputation  which,  though  it  may  have 
been  enhanced  by  his  social  celebrity,  was  yet 
thoroughly  deserved.  Matthew  Arnold,  unlike  them 
%all,  was  as  true  a  poet  as  any  of  them,  and  had 

*  none  of  the  obscurity  which  made  Browning  "  caviare  to 
the  general."  So  far  as  the  poem  which  gave  its  title 
to  the  book  is  concerned,  the  cold  reception  accorded 
to  it  was  natural  enough.  Rhyme  and  blank  verse 
have  their  own  high  and  recognised  positions.  We 
may  agree  with  Milton  in  holding  that  rhyme  is  "no 
necessary  adjunct"  of  "poem  or  good  verse,"  while 


III.] 


EARLY  POEMS. 


yet  humbly  and  reverently  dissenting  from  his  further 
opinion  that  it  was  "  the  invention  of  a  barbarous  age 
to  set  off  wretched  matter  and  lame  metre,"  which 
indeed  the  noble  and  beautiful  melody  of  "  Lycidas " 
and  "Comus"  and  "L' Allegro"  and  "II  Penseroso" 
sufficiently  refutes.  But  except  for  a  few  hexameters, 
such  as  some  of  Kingsley's,  some  of  Longfellow's,  all 
Dr.  Hawtrey's,  and  a  few  of  Clough's,  there  is  hardly 
room  in  English  for  verse  which  is  neither  one  nor 
the  other.  I  say  "hardly,"  remembering  Tennyson's 
"Gleam"  and  Browning's  "One  Word  More."  But 
I  do  not  think  that  any  poem  of  Matthew  Arnold's, 
not  even  "Rugby  Chapel,"  could  be  included  in  the 
same  category  as  these.  The  Strayed  Reveller  opens 
well  with  the  impassioned  address  of  the  youth 
to  Circe— 

"  Faster,  faster, 

0  Circe,  Goddess, 
Let  the  wild,  thronging  train, 

The  bright  procession 

Of  eddying  forms, 

Sweep  through  my  soul." 

But  a  line  which  almost  immediately  follows — 
"  Lean'd  up  against  thg  column  there," 

is  surely  cacophonous  to  the  last  degree.  The  idea  / 
of  the  poem  is  as  fascinating  as  it  is  fantastic.  The 
spells  of  Circe  have  wrought  no  hideous  transforma 
tion  here.  The  youth's  visions  are  the  visions  of  the 
gods,  and  the  appearance  of  Ulysses,  the  "  spare,  dark- 
featur'd,  quick-eyed  stranger,"  recalls  that  wonderful 
line,  which  sums  up  the  spirit  of  all  adventure — 


22  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

But   poets,  from   the  least  to  the   greatest,  have  to 
reckon  with  the  necessity  of  external  form. 

The  " Fragment  of  an  'Antigone'"  is  a  similar  experi 
ment,  and  not  in  my  opinion  more  successful.  Such 
lines  as 

"  August  laws  doth  mightily  vindicate," 
or 

"  A  dead,  ignorant,  thankless  corpse," 

v  require  an  abnormal  ear  to  appreciate  their  harmony. 
Moreover,  this  piece  suffers  by  comparison  with  Mr. 
Browning's  stately  fragment  of  an  Hippolytus  called 
"Artemis  Prologises,"  and  with  Cardinal  Newman's 
verses,  beginning  "  Man  is  permitted  many  things." 
They  have  beauty  of  form,  and  are  cast  in  national 
moulds,  for  one  is  blank  verse,  and  the  other  is 
rhyme. 

But  these  are  spots  on  the  sun.     The  little  book,  so 

^soon  suppressed,  contained  some  of  Mr.  Arnold's  best 
work,  and  should  have  received,  at  least  from  all 
scholars,  an  enthusiastic  welcome.  The  opening  sonnet, 
suggested  by  Goethe's  famous  "  Ohne  Hast  ohne  East," 
is  not  equal  to  the  later  ones  on  Homer,  Epictetus,  and 
Sophocles,  which  may  perhaps  be  called  his  best.  But 

^  it  raises  at  once  the  question  where  Matthew  Arnold's 
sonnets  deserve  to  rank.  No  one,  I  suppose,  would 

*  class  them  with  Keats's  or  with  Wordsworth's.  They 
might  fairly  be  put  on  a  level  with  Eossetti's,  and 
above  Tennyson's,  for  Tennyson  did  not  shine  in  the 
very  difficult  art  of  sonnet-writing.  It  may  be  con 
sidered  a  proof  rather  of  Mr.  Arnold's  courage  than  of 
his  discretion  that  he  should  have  written  a  sonnet  on 
Shakespeare.  Shakespeare's  own  sonnets  are  beacons, 
and,  like  other  beacons,  they  are  warnings.  Of  fine 


in.]  EARLY  POEMS.  23 

writing  on  Shakespeare  we  have  enough,  and  more 
than  enough. 

"  Self-school'd,  self-scann'd,  self-honour'd,  self-secure," 

is  but  fine  writing  after  all.  The  sonnet  "Written  in 
Emerson's  Essays"  is  thoughtful  and  interesting.  But 
the  last  line  is  open  to  an  obvious  criticism — 

"  Dumb  judges,  answer,  truth  or  mockery  ? " 

What  is  the  use  of  asking  dumb  judges  to  answer  ? 
The  lines  "  To  an  Independent  Preacher,  who  preached 
that  we  should  be  in  Harmony  with  Nature,"  Jack 
the  urbanity  which  Mr.  Arnold  always  preached,  and 
usually  practised.  But  contact  with  Dissenters  seems 
to  have  upset  his  moral  equilibrium.  The  finest  of 
these  early  sonnets  is  the  first  of  the  three  addressed 
"To  a  Republican  Friend."  The  friend  was,  I  presume, 
Clough,  to  whom  he  wrote  as  "  Citizen  Clough,  Oriel 
Lyceum,  Oxford,"  assuring  him,  as  Clough  tells  us, 
that  "the  Millennium  was  not  coming  this  bout." 
Clough's  republicanism  was  skin-deep,  and  before  his 
premature  death  he  might  have  said,  with  Southey, 
that  he  was  no  more  ashamed  of  having  been  a  repub 
lican  than  of  having  been  young.  Many  Oxford 
Liberals,  Stanley  included,  were  enthusiastic  demo 
crats  in  1849,  when  France  seemed  to  be  showing  the 
way,  and  no  one  suspected  that  the  Second  Empire 
was  at  hand.  But  few  indeed,  except  John  Duke 
Coleridge,  retained  their  early  faith  to  the  end  of  their 
days.  Matthew  Arnold,  however,  was  from  the  first 
a  moderate  Liberal,  and  a  moderate  Liberal  he  con 
tinued  to  the  last.  The  excellent  qualities  of  judgment 
and  sympathy  were  his,  but  of  political  enthusiasm 
he  was  incapable.  This  beautiful  sonnet  deserves  to 


'24  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

be  quoted  at  length,  not  only  for  its  intrinsic  merits, 
but  also  because  it  is  thoroughly  characteristic  of  his 
thoughts  and  wishes — 

"  God  knows  it,  I  am  with  you.     If  to  prize 
Those  virtues,  priz'd  and  practis'd  by  too  few, 
But  priz'd,  but  lov'd,  but  eminent  in  you, 
Man's  fundamental  life  :  if  to  despise 
The  barren  optimistic  sophistries 
Of  comfortable  moles,  whom  what  they  do 
Teaches  the  limit  of  the  just  and  true — 
And  for  such  doing  have  no  need  of  eyes  : 
m        If  sadness  at  the  long  heart-wasting  show 
Wherein  earth's  great  ones  are  disquieted  : 
If  thoughts,  not  idle,  while  before  me  flow 
The  armies  of  the  homeless  and  unfed  : — 
If  these  are  yours,  if  this  is  what  you  are, 
Then  am  I  yours,  and  what  you  feel,  I  share." 

This  is  not  equal  to  Wordsworth's  incomparable 
sonnet  on  Milton,  which  it  inevitably  suggests,  but 
they  are  very  noble  lines,  and  they  contain  the  essence 
of  Mr.  Arnold's  political  creed. 

Eeaders  must  have  been  blind,  indeed,  who  could 
not  see  the  beauty  of  "Mycerinus."  The  strange, 
weird,  tragic  story  of  this  Egyptian  king  is  familiar 
to  all  lovers  of  Herodotus.  In  that  exquisitely  simple 
v  and  pellucid  style  which  none  of  his  successors  have 
equalled  or  approached  the  unconsciously  great  his 
torian  tells  how  Mycerinus  forsook  the  evil  ways  of 
his  cruel  father,  and  governed  his  people  with  a  mild, 
paternal  rule.  The  father  lived  to  a  green  old  age, 
feared  and  hated  by  his  subjects.  Against  the  son  in 
the  prime  of  life  there  went  out  a  decree  from  the 
oracles  of  God  that  after  six  years  he  must  die.  Vainly 
did  Mycerinus  protest  that,  shunning  bad  examples, 


in.]  EARLY  POEMS.  25 

he  had  loved  justice  and  hated  iniquity.  The  stern 
answer  came  that  he  had  misread  the  sentence  of  fate, 
which  had  determined  that  for  a  century  the  Egyptians 
should  be  oppressed.  The  father  was  wiser  in  his 
generation  than  the  child  of  light.  Then  Mycerinus 
felt  that  the  riddle  of  the  painful  earth  was  more  than 
he  could  read ;  that  to  struggle  was  useless  ;  and  that 
all  he  could  do  was  to  make  his  six  years  into  twelve 
by  devoting  every  moment  to  pleasure,  by  turning 
night  into  day.  But  first  he  summoned  the  people, 
and  told  them  the  whole  story.  He  described  briefly 
his  own  youth — 

"  Sclf-govern'd,  at  the  feet  of  Law  ; 

Ennobling  this  dull  pomp,  the  life  of  kings, 

By  contemplation  of  diviner  things." 

He  took  them  into  his  confidence.  He  asked  them, 
as  if  they  could  tell  him,  whether  the  gods  were 
altogether  careless  of  men  and  men's  actions. 

"  Or  is  it  that  some  Power,  too  wise,  too  strong, 
Even  for  yourselves  to  conquer  or  beguile, 
Whirls  earth,  and  heaven,  and  men,  and  gods  along, 
Like  the  broad  rushing  of  the  column'd  Nile  ? 
And  the  great  powers  we  serve,  themselves  may  be 
Slaves  of  a  tyrannous  Necessity  ?  } 

No  such  verse  had  been  written  in  English  since 
Wordsworth's  "  Laodamia,"  and  the  poem  abounds  in 
single  lines  of  haunting  charm,  such  as — 

"  Love,  free  to  range,  and  regal  banquetings," 
"  Sweep  in  the  sounding  stillness  of  the  night," 

which  has  an  echo  of  Theocritus,  with  perfect  couplets, 
as,  for  instance — 

"  And  prayers,  and  gifts,  and  tears,  are  fruitless  all, 
And  the  night  waxes,  and  the  shadows  fall." 


26  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Or,  in  the  concluding  portion  of  the  poem,  which  is 
blank  verse— 

"  While  the  deep-burnish'd  foliage  overhead 
Splinter' d  the  silver  arrows  of  the  moon," 

where  the  Virgilian  note  will  strike  every  scholar. 
"Stand  forth,  true  poet  that  you  are,"  should  have 
been  the  discerning  critic's  invitation  to  the  anonymous 
author  of  "  Mycerinus."  But  it  was  not.  > 

The  contents  of  this  little  volume  varied  much  in 
merit,  as  in  other  respects.  "The  Sick  King  in 
Bokhara"  is  almost  prosaic.  Mr.  Arnold,  who  hated 
Macaulay,  sneered  at  the  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  of 
which  his  father  was  so  fond,  and  selected  for  especial 
ridicule  the  lines  from  "Horatius" — 

"  To  every  man  upon  this  earth 
Death  corneth,  soon  or  late." 

There  is  not  much  to  be  said  for  them,  I  admit.  But 
if  a  poet  is  to  be  judged  by  his  worst  things,  and  not 
by  his  beet,  there  are  lines  from  "  The  Sick  King  in 
Bokhara  "  which  may  be  set  beside  Macaulay's — 

"  Look,  this  is  but  one  single  place, 
Though  it  be  great :  all  the  earth  round, 
If  a  man  bear  to  have  it  so, 
Things  which  might  vex  him  shall  be  found." 

If  this  is  poetry,  what  is  prose  ?  Although  I  may  be 
rash,  I  give  my  opinion  for  what  it  is  worth,  and  it 
is  that  neither  the  story  of  this  invalid  monarch  nor 
Mr.  Arnold's  treatment  of  it  made  the  poem  meet  for 
republication,  or  for  anything  but  repentance. 

"A  Modern  Sappho,"  in  the  style  of  Moore's  Irish 
Melodies,  is  chiefly  memorable  for  the  fine  couplet — 

"  But  deeper  their  voice  grows,  and  nobler  their  bearing. 
Whose  youth  in  the  fires  of  anguish  hath  died." 


in.]  EARLY  POEMS.  27 

"The  New  Sirens  "is  an  especial  favourite  with  Mr.  ^ 
Swinburne,  and  was  republished  a  quarter  of  a  century 
afterwards  at  his  request.  No  poet  has  been  more 
generously  appreciative  of  his  contemporaries,  whether 
older  or  younger  than  himself,  than  Mr.  Swinburne  ; 
and  in  this  case,  at  all  events,  his  insight  was  sure. 
"The  New  Sirens"  is  not  unlike  Mrs.  Browning's 
"  Wine  of  Cyprus,"  but  it  is  less  unequal,  more  ^ 
musical,  more  chastened  and  subdued.  The  poem 
"To  a  Gipsy  Child  by  the  Seashore"  contains  one 
most  beautiful  quatrain  — 

"  Ah  !  not  the  nectarous  poppy  lovers  use, 
Not  daily  labour's  dull,  Lethaean  spring, 
Oblivion  in  lost  angels  can  infuse 
Of  the  soil'd  glory,  and  the  trailing  wing." 

A  critic  of  the  Johnsonian  school,  however,  might 
observe  that  it  is  the  unsoiled  glory  and  the  soaring 
wing  which  the  lost  angels  would  remember.  Remem 
brance  is  of  the  past,  not  the  present.  In  its  delicate 
loveliness  "  The  Forsaken  Merman  "  ranks  high  among  *" 
Mr.  Arnold's  poems.  It  i«  a.  jjjtfOry  Q*  *  tC*p- 


him   f\Tifl 


heTcnlldren  iinrjer^the  impulse  of  a^Christ 
tion  that  she  must  return  and  pray  for  her  .y'4  Her 
name  was  Mr.  Arnold's  favourite  name,  Margaret. 
The  Merman  saw  her  through  the  window  as  she  sat 
in  church  with  her  eyes  on  "the  holy  book."  But  she 
came  back  to  him  no  more.  "Alone  dwell  for  ever 
the  kings  of  the  sea."  "Alone  the  sun  rises,  and  alone 
Spring  the  great  streams,"  says  Mr.  Arnold  in  another 
poem. 

Perhaps  the  most  exquisite,  and  certainly  the  most 
characteristic,  poem  in  the  volume  is  "Resignation." 


28  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

One  cannot  doubt  that  into  these  lines  of  chiselled 
and  classic  perfection  Matthew  Arnold  put  his  mind 
and  soul.  Everything  in  the  book  was  republished, 
except  "  The  Hayswater  Boat,"  which  hardly  deserved 
exclusion.  But  "  Resignation  "  is  part  of  Mr.  Arnold's 
life  and  character.  We  cannot  think  of  him  without 
it.  At  the  very  beginning  we  read  of  "  the  Goth,  bound 
Rome-wards,"  and  we  remember  Alaric.  The  "mist- 
wreath'd  flock"  and  the  "wet  flower'd  grass"  recall 
the  Sicilian  poet  he  loved  so  well.  But  Theocritus  is 
not  the  poet  described  here — 

\     "  Lean'd  on  his  gate,  he  gazes  :  tears 
Are  in  his  eyes,  and  in  his  ears 
The  murmur  of  a  thousand  years  ; 
Before  him  he  sees  Life  unroll, 
A  placid  and  continuous  whole  ; 
That  general  Life,  which  does  not  cease, 
Whose  secret  is  not  joy,  but  peace  ; 
That  Life,  whose  dumb  wish  is  not  miss'd 
If  birth  proceeds,  if  things  subsist ; 
The  Life  of  plants,  and  stones,  and  rain  ; 
The  Life  he  craves  ;  if  not  in  vain 
Fate  gave,  what  Chance  shall  not  controul, 
His  sad  lucidity  of  soul." 

If  Mr.  Arnold  was,  as  he  must  have  been,  sometimes 
^  sad,  he  never  allowed  the  shadow  of  his  gloom  to  rest 
upon  others.  Peace  of  mind  and  lucidity  of  soul  he 
acquired,  if  he  did  not  always  possess  them.  Pro 
bably  they  were  congenital,  like  the  healthier  and 
sounder  parts  of  his  father's  Puritanism.  A  fastidious 
critic,  Tennyson  for  instance,  might  have  objected  to 
the  juxtaposition  of  "gate"  and  "gazes,"  or  of  "wish" 
and  "miss'd."  But  apart  from  small  blemishes  of  this 
kind,  the  lines  are  as  symmetrical  in  form  as  they 


in.]  EARLY  POEMS.  29 

are  full  of  calm  and  yet  intense  feeling.     They  sum    / 
up  Mr.  Arnold's  imaginative  philosophy.      They  are  r 
the  man.    Equal  to  them,  perhaps  in  expression  beyond 
them,  are  those  which  almost  immediately  follow : — 

"  Deeply  the  Poet  feels  ;  but  he 
Breathes,  when  he  will,  immortal  air, 
Where  Orpheus  and  where  Homer  are. 
In  the  day's  life,  whose  iron  round 
Hems  us  all  in,  he  is  not  bound. 
He  escapes  thence,  but  we  abide. 
Not  deep  the  Poet  sees,  but  wide." 

Shakespeare  was  not  the  only  poet  who  saw  deep  as 
well  as  wide.  It  would  be  hard  to  fathom  the  thought 
of  Wordsworth  in  his  sublimest  moments,  and  Orpheus 
was  a  mystic,  if  Homer  was  not.  Sophocles  was 
perhaps  in  Mr.  Arnold's  mind — "  singer  of  sweet 
Colonos,  and  its  child."  He  never  surpassed  the  best  • 
things  in  "Resignation,"  and  for  life's  fitful  fever  the 
English  language,  rich  as  it  is  in  all  manner  of  refresh 
ing  influences,  contains  no  more  healing  balm. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

WORK     AND     POETRY. 

ON  the  14 th  of  April  1851,  Matthew  Arnold  was 
appointed  by  Lord  Lansdowne  to  an  Inspectorship  of 
Schools,  which  he  retained  for  five-and- thirty  years. 
His  friend,  Mr.  Ralph  Lingen,  afterwards  Lord  Lingen, 
who  had  been  his  tutor  at  Oxford,  was  influential 
in  procuring  him  this  post,  though  it  came  to  him 
naturally  enough,  being  in  the  gift  of  his  official  chief. 
Mr.  Lingen  was  Secretary  to  the  Education  Depart 
ment,  then  in  its  infancy,  and  he  wished  to  attract 
young  men  of  promise  from  the  Universities.  He 
never  made  a  better  choice  than  Matthew  Arnold. 
It  is  no  disparagement  of  the  many  able  men  who 
have  been  Inspectors  of  Schools  to  say  that  not  one 
of  them  excelled  Mr.  Arnold  in  fitness  for  the  post. 
He  was  very  fond  of  children,  he  knew  by  instinct 
how  to  deal  with  them,  and  at  the  other  end  of  the 
scale  he  had  a  real  scientific  knowledge  of  what  educa 
tion  in  its  highest  sense  ought  to  be.  With  lofty  ideas 
of  that  kind,  however,  he  had  for  some  years  little 
enough  to  do.  Compulsory  education  was  still  the 
dream  of  advanced  theorists.  The  Parliamentary 
grants  were  only  five  years  old,  and  a  school  which 
chose,  like  Archdeacon  Denison's,  to  dispense  with  a 
grant,  could  dispense  with  inspection  too.  But  the 


CHAP,  iv.]  WORK  AND  POETRY.  31 

bribe  was  pretty  high,  few  national  schools  could 
afford  to  despise  it,  and  Mr.  Arnold  had  plenty  to  do. 
Throughout  his  life,  indeed,  he  worked  hard  for  a 
moderate  salary,  never  complaining,  always  promoting 
the  happiness  of  others,  and  throwing  into  his  daily 
duties  every  power  of  his  mind.  In  one  of  his  early 
letters  to  his  sister,  Mrs.  Forster,  Mr.  Arnold  naively 
observes  that  he  is  much  more  worldly  than  the  rest 
of  his  family.  He  was  fond  of  society,  and  a  delightful 
member  of  it.  Worldly  in  any  other  sense  he  was  not. 
Few  men  have  had  less  ambition,  or  a  stronger  sense 
of  duty.  On  the  10th  of  June,  in  this  same  year,  he 
married  the  lady  who  for  the  rest  of  his  life  was  the  chief 
source  of  his  happiness.  Her  name  was  Frances  Lucy 
Wightman,  and  her  father  was  an  excellent  Judge  of  a 
good  old  school,  much  respected  in  Court,  little  known 
outside.  Mr.  Arnold,  though  neither  a  lawyer  nor  inter 
ested  in  law,  accompanied  Mr.  Justice  "Wightman  on 
circuit  for  many  Assizes  as  Marshal.  Characteristic 
ally  avoiding  the  criminal  side,  he  liked  to  watch  his 
father-in-law  try  causes.  "He  does  it  so  admirably," 
he  tells  his  wife.  " It"  is  said  to  be  a  lost  art. 

One  of  his  first  letters  to  Mrs.  Arnold,  dated  from 
the  Oldham  Road  Lancastrian  School  at  Manchester, 
on  the  15th  of  October  1851,  shows  the  spirit  with 
which  he  entered  upon  his  regular  functions.  "  I  think 
I  shall  get  interested  in  the  schools  after  a  little  time," 
he  writes ;  "their  effects  on  the  children  are  so  immense, 
and  their  future  effects  in  civilising  the  next  genera 
tion  of  the  lower  classes,  who,  as  things  are  going,  will 
have  most  of  the  political  power  of  the  counjbry  in  their 
hands,  may  be  so  important."  But  meanwhile  he  gave 
the  public  another  volume  of  poems. 


32  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  JCHAP. 

In  October  1852  appeared  Empedodes  on  Etna,  and 
other  Poems,  by  "A."  Although  this  volume,  with  its 
predecessor,  contains  most  of  Mr.  Arnold's  best  verse, 
and  although  he  never  afterwards  wrote  anything 
except  "Thyrsis"  and  "Westminster  Abbey,"  which 
added  much  to  his  poetical  reputation,  the  one  book 
fell  as  flat  as  the  other,  and  was  withdrawn  before  fifty 
copies  had  been  sold.  A  greater  reproach  to  the  criti 
cism  of  the  early  Victorian  age  there  could  hardly  be. 
Tennyson  had  succeeded  Wordsworth  as  Poet  Laureate, 
but  he  had  not  yet  become  really  popular,  and 
Browning  was  still  only  the  idol  of  a  clique.  The 
one  man  in  England  fit  to  be  compared  with  either 
Browning  or  Tennyson  gave  the  public  of  his  best,  and 
the  public  neither  praised  nor  blamed.  They  took  no 
notice  at  all.  The  earliest  of  these  most  varied  and 
interesting  poems  in  point  of  time  is  the  "  Memorial 
Verses  "  on  the  death  of  Wordsworth,  which  happened 
in  April  1850.  The  opening  lines  are  familiar — 

"  Goethe  in  Weimar  sleeps,  and  Greece, 
Long  since,  saw  Byron's  struggle  cease. 
But  one  such  death  rernain'd  to  come. 
The  last  poetic  verse  is  dumb. 
What  shall  be  said  o'er  Wordsworth's  tomb  ?" 

To  Tennyson,  Matthew  Arnold  was  always  unjust, V 
and  never  appreciated  his  greatness.  Whether  "tomb"  « 
rhymes  with  "dumb  "  I  shall  not  assume  the  province 

k  of  determining.  Mr.  Arnold  had  not  a  faultless  ear. 
Indeed,  some  of  his  unrhymed  lyrics  lead  one  to  ask 

*  whether  he  had  any  ear  at  all,  and  for  richness  of 
melody  he  cannot  be  mentioned  with  Mr.  Swinburne. 
Goethe  and  Wordsworth  can  hardly  be  compared, 
except  for  purposes  of  contrast.  Wordsworth,  as  is 

i 


iv.]  WORK  AND  POETRY.  33 

well  known,  objected  to  Goethe's  poetry  that  it  was 
"not  inevitable  enough,"  thereby  introducing  a  word 
which  has  since  been  done  to  death  in  the  service  of 
the  lower  criticism.  But  Mr.  Arnold's  classic  eulogy 
of  Goethe  is  fine  in  itself,  being  indeed  little  more  than 
a  paraphrase  of  the  great  Virgilian  hexameters — 

"  Felix  qui  potuit  rerum  cognoscere  causas, 
Atque  metus  oinnes,  et  inexorabile  fatum, 
Subjecit  pedibus,  strepitumque  Acherontis  Averni." 

When  we  read — 

"  Time  may  restore  us  in  his  course 
Goethe's  sage  mind  and  Byron's  force  ; 
But  where  will  Europe's  latter  hour 
Again  find  Wordsworth's  healing  power  ?  " 

we  are  tempted  to  ask  why  another  Wordsworth  is 
less  possible,  if  there  can  be  degrees  of  possibility, 
than  another  Goethe  ?  And  indeed  much  of  the  healing 
power  may  be  found  in  the  best  verse  of  Mr.  Arnold 
himself. 

EzQgedocles  on  Etna  was  a  special  favourite  with 
Robert  Browning,  at  whose  request  it  reappeared  in 
1867.  It  was  then  new  as  a  whole  to  the  general 
public,  for  in  1852  its  author  almost  immediately  with 
drew  it,  and  only  fragments  of  it  were  reprinted  in 
1855.  That  Browning  should  admire  it  was  not 
wonderful,  for  both  the  subject  and  the  treatment  are 
suggestive  of  "Paracelsus,"  though  "Paracelsus"  is  to 
my  thinking  a  far  finer  poem.  Empedocles  was  a 
Sicilian  Greek  of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  whose 
^  philosophical  remains,  such  as  they  are,  show  him  to 
have  been  a  dreamy,  mystical  sceptic.  The  legend 
that  in  despair  of  attaining  truth,  he  flung  himself 
into  the  crater  of  Etna,  is  a  mere  tradition  without 

' 


34  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

historic  value.  The  blank  verse  of  Empedocles  is  not 
equal  to  Mr.  Arnold's  best.  Such  a  line  as — 

"  I  hear,  Gorgias,  their  chief,  speaks  nobly  of  him," 

can  neither  be  defended  nor  scanned.  On  the  other 
hand — 

"  The  Adriatic  breaks  in  a  warm  bay," 

is  a  masterpiece  of  its  kind.  The  unrhymed  lyrics  are, 
to  speak  plainly,  both  here  and  throughout  this  volume, 
detestable — 

"  Great  qualities  are  trodden  down, 

And- littleness  united 

Is  become  invincible." 

This  is  not  poetry.  It  is  scarcely  even  prose.  It  is 
something  for  which  literature  has  no  name.  The 
song  of  Empedocles  to  his  harp,  though  far  below 
"  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,"  contains  some  striking  verses,  as, 
for  instance — 

"  We  would  have  inward  peace, 

Yet  will  not  look  within  : 
We  would  have  misery  cease, 
Yet  will  not  cease  from  sin," 

where  the  curiously  Christian  tone  of  Greek  moral 
philosophy  is  well  brought  out.  But  the  best  parts  of 
the  drama,  if  drama  it  is  to  be  calledj  are  the  songs  of 
Callicles.  There  is  one  passage  clearly  written  under 
the  influence  of  Gray,  with  whom  Mr.  Arnold  has  some 
times,  not  perhaps  to  much  purpose,  been  compared — 

"  And  the  Eagle,  at  the  beck 
Of  the  appeasing  gracious  harmony, 
Droops  all  his  sheeny,  brown,  deep-feather'd  neck, 
Nestling  nearer  to  Jove's  feet : 
While  o'er  his  sovereign  eye 
The  curtains  of  the  blue  films  slowly  meet." 


iv.]  WORK  AND  POETRY.  35 

One  instinctively  recalls  the  beautiful  couplet  in  the 
"  Progress  of  Poesy  " — 

"  Quenched  in  dark  clouds  of  slumber  lie 
The  terrors  of  his  beak,  and  lightnings  of  his  eye." 

The  best  consecutive  passage  of  blank  verse  in  the 
poem  is  undoubtedly  the  following — 

"  And  yet  what  days  were  those,  Pannenides  ! 
When  we  were  young,  when  we  could  number  friends 
In  all  the  Italian  cities  like  ourselves, 
When  with  elated  hearts  we  join'd  your  train, 
Ye  Sun-born  virgins  !  on  the  road  of  Truth. 
Then  we  could  still  enjoy,  then  neither  thought 
Nor  outward  things  were  clos'd  and  dead  to  us, 
But  we  received  the  shock  of  mighty  thoughts 
On  simple  minds  with  a  pure  natural  joy, 
And  if  the  sacred  load  oppress'd  our  brain, 
We  had  the  power  to  feel  the  pressure  eas'd, 
The  brow  unbound,  the  thought  flow  free  again, 
In  the  delightful  commerce  of  the  world." 

This  is  truly  Wordsworthian,  though  Wordsworth 
would  hardly  have  ended  two  lines  out  of  three  with 
the  same  substantive.  But  the  song  of  Callicles  at 
the  end  is  the  gem  of  the  piece.  The  stanzas  are 
familiar — 

"Not  here,  0  Apollo  ! 

Are  haunts  meet  for  thee. 

But,  where  Helicon  breaks  down 

In  cliff  to  the  sea," 

Here  the  third  line  halts  badly.  This,  however,  is 
almost  perfect — 

"  'Tis  Apollo  comes  leading 

His  choir,  The  Nine. 

— The  Leader  is  fairest, 

But  all  are  divine." 


36  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

These,  too,  are  lovely,  though  perhaps  the  word 
"hotness  "  is  exceptionable — 

"  First  hymn  they  the  Father 
Of  all  things  :  and  then 
The  rest  of  Immortals, 
The  action  of  men. 

The  Day  in  its  hotness, 
The  strife  with  the  palm  ; 
The  Night  in  its  silence, 
The  Stars  in  their  calm." 

The  question  why  the  second  of  these  two  stanzas  is 
„/»*       inferior  to  the  first  lies  at  the  root  of  poetry,  and 
involves  the  true  value  of  poetic  style. 

The  other  long  poem  in  this  volume,  "  Tristram  and  j 
Iseult,"  contains   some   of   Mr.   Arnold's  best  lyrics, 
especially  the  noble  stanza  beginning — 

"  Raise  the  light,  my  page,  that  I  may  see  her. — 
Thou  art  come  at  last  then,  haughty  Queen  ! 
Long  I  've  waited,  loDg  I  've  fought  my  fever  : 
Late  thou  comest,  cruel  thou  hast  been." 

And  the  haunting  couplet — 

"  What  voices  are  these  on  the  clear  night  air  ? 
What  lights  in  the  court  ?  what  steps  on  the  stair  ? " 

The  story  of  Tristram  and  the  two  Iseults — the  Iseult 
he  loved  and  the  Iseult  he  married — has  been  also 
versified  by  Mr.  Swinburne,  who  treats  it  with  less 
restraint.  In  Mr.  Arnold's  hands  it  is  not  so  much 
interesting  or  complete  in  itself  as  the  opportunity  for 
stringing  together  some  beauties  of  melody  and  niceties 
of  phrase.  Such  lines  as — 

**  Above  the  din  her  voice  is  in  my  ears — 
I  see  her  form  glide  through  the  crossing  spears," 

can  never  be  forgotten. 


iv.]  WORK  AND  POETRY.  37 

Memorable  also  is  the  blank  verse — 

"She  seems  one  dying  in  a  mask  of  youth." 

But  it  may  be  safely  said  of  this  poem  that  no  one  has 
&ver  read  it,  or  ever  will  read  it  for  the  story,  which  / 
^indeed  is  rather  suggested  than  told.  It  is  a  curious/ 
fact  that  in  the  first  edition  of  "  Tristram  and  Iseult" 
the  place  of  King  Marc's  court  was  made  a  dactyl.  It 
runs — 

"  Where  the  prince  whom  she  must  wed 
Keeps  his  court  in  Tynt£gel." 

It  is,  of  course,  Tyntagel,  and  in  later  editions  the 
second  line  became — 

"Dwells  on  proud  TyntagePs  hill." 

In  every  other  line  where  the  name  occurs  a  similar 
change  was  made. 

Among  the  miscellaneous  poems  published  with 
"Empedocles,"  "On  the  Rhine"  is  chiefly  remarkable 
for  the  pretty  lines — 

"  Eyes  too  expressive  to  be  blue, 
Too  lovely  to  be  grey." 

But  "Parting"  belongs  to  a  much  higher  class.  It 
is  passionate,  as  Mr.  Arnold's  poetry  so  seldom  is,  and** 
it  is  wholly  beautiful,  with  a  rush  and  swing  unusual 
in  the  apostle  of  philosophic  calm,  who  desired,  like 
the  poor  "  Independent  Preacher,"  to  be  at  one  with 
nature — 

"  But  on  the  stairs  what  voice  is  this  I  lx>ar, 
Buoyant  as  morning,  and  as  morning  clear  ? 
Say,  has  some  wet  bird-haunted  English  lawn 
Lent  it  the  music  of  its  trees  at  dawn  ? 
Or  was  it  from  somo  sun-fleck'd  mountain-brook 
That  the  sweet  voice  its  upluud  clearness  took  V 


38  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

This  is  exquisite  melody,  and  the  antistrophe, 
beginning — 

"  But  who  is  this,  by  the  half-opcn'd  door  ? " 

is  quite  as  good.  The  poem  belongs  to  a  collection 
afterwards  called  "  Switzerland,"  of  whom  a  lady  called 
Marguerite  is  the  subject.  She  can  hardly  have 
been  a  creature  of  the  imagination,  but  there  is  no 
trace  of  her  identity.  Another  of  the  series,  called 
"Absence,"  is  familiar  for  the  pathetic  verses — 

"  But  each  day  brings  its  petty  dust 
Our  soon-chok'd  souls  to  fill, 
And  we  forget  because  we  must 
And  not  because  we  will." 

The  lines  especially  addressed  to  Marguerite  end 
with  five  words — 

"  The  unplumb'd,  salt,  estranging  sea," 

.which  can  hardly  be  surpassed  for  curious  felicity  in 
the  English,  if  in  any  language.  "  Self-Dependence  "  is 
a  characteristic  exhortation  to  seek  refuge  from  human 
troubles  in  the  example  of  nature.  We  are  invited  to 
contemplate  the  stars  and  the  sea — 

"  Unaffrighted  by  the  bilence  round  them, 
Undistracted  by  the  sights  they  see, 
These  demand  not  that  the  things  without  them 
Yield  them  love,  amusement,  sympathy." 

The  verses  are  pretty.  But,  as  Gibbon  said  of 
Sulpicius'  letter  to  Cicero,  such  consolations  never 
dried  a  single  tear.  "  The  Buried  Life  "  is  so  perfect, 
so  finished,  and  so  self-contained,  that  it  would  only 
be  spoiled  by  quotation.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  variation  of 
the  old  theme  so  finely  expressed  by  Seneca — 


i v.l  WORK  AND  POETRY.  39 

"  Illi  mors  gnu  is  incubat 
Qui,  notus  nimis  omnibus, 
Ignotus  moritur  sibi." 

"A  Farewell,"  on  the  other  hand,  which  belongs  to 
the  Marguerite  series,  is  much  less  equal,  but  two  of 
its  stanzas  are  conspicuously  excellent — 

"  And  though  we  wear  out  life,  alas  ! 
Distracted  as  a  homeless  wind, 
In  beating  where  we  must  not  pass, 
In  seeking  what  we  shall  not  find  ; 

"  Yet  we  shall  one  day  gain,  life  past, 
Clear  prospect  o'er  our  being's  whole  ; 
Shall  see  ourselves,  and  learn  at  last 
Our  true  affinities  of  soul." 

The  "  StunzasJnjjemory  of  the  Author  of  Obermann" 
are  as  much  about  Goethe  as  about  Senancour ;  and 
Goethe,  though  the  prophet  of  Matthew  Arnold  as 
well  as  of  Carlyle,  belonged  to  the  eighteenth  century 
rather  than  the  nineteenth.  The  unrhymed  lyric 
called  "  Consolation  "  is,  I  confess,  beyond  me — 

"  And  couLtless  beings 
Pass  countless  moods," 

may  be  poetry,  but  it  is  poetry  which  I  cannot  dis-   •* 
tinguish   from   prose;   and   when    "two   young,   fair 
lovers  "  cry,  "  Destiny  prolong  the  present !     Time  ! 
stand  still  here ! "  I  can  only  think  of  the  immortal 
prayer — 

"  Ye  gods,  annihilate  both  space  and  time 
And  make  two  lovers  happy." 

It  is  strange  indeed  to  turn  from  these  craggy  and 


40  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

spasmodic  utterances  to  the  layel^_^ine^jwritten  in 
KensingtonJ>ardens  "- 

"  Calm  Soul  of  all  things  !  make  it  mine 
To  feel,  amid  the  city's  jar, 
That  there  abides  a  peace  of  thine, 
Man  did  not  make,  and  cannot  mar." 

Not  Lucan,  not  Virgil,  only  Wordsworth,  has  more 
j  beautifully  expressed  the  spirit  of  Pantheism. 

"The  Youth  of  Nature  "  and  "  The  Youth  of  Man  " 
are  again  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other.  "  The  Youth 
of  Nature  "  is  not  otherwise  remarkable  than  as  it  ex 
aggerates  the  Conservatism  of  Wordsworth,  who  was 
very  much  of  a  Radical  in  his  early  days,  as  the 
"Prelude,"  not  published  in  his  lifetime,  shows.  "  The 
Youth  of  Man  "  contains  the  line — 

"Perfumes  the  evening  air," 

which  those  may  scan  who  have  the  power,  and  those 
may  like  who  scan.  Written  as  prose,  "And  they 
remember  with  piercing  untold  anguish  the  proud  boast 
ing  of  their  youth,"  is  well  enough.  But  metrically 
^  arranged,  it  belongs  to  no  metre  under  Heaven.  "  And 
the  mists  of  delusion,  and  the  scales  of  habit,  fall  away 
from  their  eyes,"  is  irreproachable  prose,  but  impossible 
poetry.  "  Morality,"  which  follows,  is  a  most  refresh 
ing  contrast,  and  begins  at  once  with  a  fine  stanza — 

<l  We  cannot  kindle  when  we  will 
The  fire  that  in  the  heart  resides  ; 
The  spirit  bloweth  and  is  still, 
In  mystery  our  soul  abides  : 

But  tasks  in  hours  of  insight  will'd 
Can  be  through  hours  of  gloom  fulfill'd." 

*  This  manly  and  dignified  tone,  so  characteristic  of 


iv.]  WORK  AND  POETRY.  41 

Matthew  Arnold,  is  the  source  of  much  of  his  influ 
ence.  "  Progress,"  an  eloquent  expression  of  his  belief 
in  purely  spiritual  religion,  apart  from  all  creeds  and 
dogmas,  was  much  altered  in  later  editions.  Some  of 
the  changes  are  certainly  improvements.  One,  I 
think,  can  hardly  be  so  considered.  In  the  first 
edition  we  read — 

"  Quench  then  the  altar  fires  of  your  old  Gods  ! 
Quench  not  the  fire  within  ! " 

This  became — 

"  Leave  then  the  Cross  as  ye  have  left  carved  gods, 
But  guard  the  fire  within  !  " 

Here  the  antithesis  disappears,  and  so  the  expres 
sion  becomes  weaker.  The  tribute  to  all  religions, 
Christian  and  other,  is  a  very  fine  one — 

"  Which  has  not  taught  weak  wills  how  much  they  can, 
Which  has  not  fall'n  on  the  dry  heart  like  rain  ? 
Which  has  not  cried  to  sunk,  self-weary  man, 
' Thou  must  be  born  again'  ?" 

The  volume  ended  with  an  unrhymed  piece  called 
"The  Future,"  beginning  with  the  line — 

"A  wanderer  is  man  from  his  birth," 

which  to  my  ear  has  two  superfluous  syllables,  and 
ending  with  the  really  beautiful  verse — 

"Murmurs  and  scents  of  the  infinite  Sea." 

But  it  is  not  by  these  metrical  or  unmetrical  experi 
ments  that  Matthew  Arnold  lives. 

Empedodes  on  Etna,  and  other  Poems,  by  "A.," 
was  withdrawn  immediately  after  publication.  It 
was  soon,  however,  followed,  in  1853,  by  a  new 


42  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

volume  of  poems,  with  the  author's  name  on  the  title- 
page,  and  containing  many  pieces  already  published, 
besides  nine  which  were  new.  "  Empedocles  "  itself 
did  not  reappear,  for  reasons  stated  in  the  Preface. 
This  essay  expresses  for  the  first  time  Mr.  Arnold's 
conception  of  poetry,  and^  must  be  regarded  as  an 
epoch  in  his  life.  After  declaring  that  he  had  not 
withdrawn  "Empedocles"  because  the  subject  was  too 
remote  from  the  present  time,  for  that  he  held  to  be 
an  invalid  objection,  he  thus  proceeds  : — 

"What  then  are  the  situations,  from  the  representa 
tion  of  which,  though  accurate,  no  poetical  enjoyment 
can  be  derived  $  They  are  those  in  which  the  suffering 
finds  no  vent  in  action ;  in  which  a  continuous  state 
of  mental  distress  is  prolonged,  unrelieved  by  incident, 
hope,  or  resistance  ;  in  which  there  is  everything  to  be 
endured,  nothing  to  be  done.  In  such  situations 
there  is  inevitably  something  morbid,  in  the  description 
of  them  something  monotonous.  When  they  occur 
in  actual  life,  they  are  painful,  not  tragic ;  the  repre 
sentation  of  them  in  poetry  is  painful  also. 

"  To  this  class  of  situations,  poetically  faulty  as  it 
appears  to  me,  that  of  Empedocles,  as  I  have  en 
deavoured  to  represent  him,  belongs ;  and  I  have  there 
fore  excluded  the  Poem  from  the  present  collection." 

This  important  Preface  was  Mr.  Arnold's  earliest 
publication  in  prose.  It  is  written  in  his  best  and 
purest  style,  free  from  the  mannerisms  and  affectations 
which  did  so  much  in  later  days  to  spoil  the  enjoy 
ment  of  his  readers.  But  unless  Mr.  Arnold  intended 
to  suggest  that  Empedocles  fell  into  the  crater  by 
accident,  which  is  hardly  conceivable,  the  theory  does 
not  quite  fit  the  facts.  Suicide  is  as  much  action  as 


iv.]  WORK  AND  POETRY.  43 

murder,  and  is  as  capable  of  dramatic  treatment.  The 
thinness  of  the  boundary  between  the  sublime  and 
something  quite  different  is  a  topic  more  relevant  to 
voluntary  cremation,  following  a  lengthy  philosophic 
song  upon  a  harp.  When  Mr.  Arnold  goes  on  to  ask 
and  to  ansner  the  question  what  are  the  eternal  objects 
of  poetry,  he  is  at  his  best  :— 

"The  Poet,  then,  has  in  the  first  place  to  select  an\ 
excellent  action ;  and  what  actions  are  the  most 
excellent  1  Those,  certainly,  which  most  powerfully 
appeal  to  the  great  primary  human  affections :  to 
those  elementary  feelings  which  subsist  permanently 
in  the  race,  and  which  are  independent  of  time." 

That  is  full  of  instruction,  for  ever  memorable,  and 
profoundly  true.  If  Mr.  Browning  had  borne  it  in 
mind,  all  his  poetry  would  be,  as  his  best  poetry  is,  a 
permanent  addition  to  the  imaginative  literature  of 
the  world.  In  these  pages,  thoroughly  characteristic 
of  the  writer,  appears  one  phrase  which  became 
familiar  within  a  few  years  to  all  Mr.  Arnold's  readers. 
The  Greeks,  he  says,  are  "the  unapproached  masters 
of  the  grand  style"  Professor  Saints  bury  complains 
that  he  never  defined  what  he  meant  by  the  grand 
style.  But  was  it  necessary  ?  The  words  are  clear 
enough,  and  certainly  intelligible  to  all  classical 
scholars.  The  Greeks,  says  Mr.  Arnold,  kept  style 
in  the  right  degree  of  prominence.  They  suited,  as 
Hamlet  puts  it,  the  word  to  the  action,  the  action  to 
the  word.  I  am  not,  however,  sure  that  he  exhausts 
the  matter  when  he  adds  that  their  range  of  subjects 
was  so  limited,  because  so  few  subjects  are  excellent. 
Another  reason  was  that  a  story  for  dramatic  represen 
tation  before  the  Athenian  people  must  be  one  which  the 


44  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Athenian  people  knew.  They  would  have  resented  as 
a  dangerous  innovation  a  mere  fancy  of  the  dramatist's. 
But  it  must  not  be  too  recent,  and  touch  too  tender 
a  place,  as  Phrynichus  discovered  to  his  cost  when  he 
was  fined  for  his  tragedy  on  the  taking  of  Miletus. 
Most  interesting  is  the  passage  in  which  Mr.  Arnold 
traces  the  influence  upon  modern  English  poetry  of 
Shakespeare's  inexhaustible  eloquence.  This,  he  thinks, 
encouraged  those  who  came  after  Shakespeare,  and 
regarded  him  as  the  greatest  of  all  models,  to  think 
too  much  of  expression  and  too  little  of  composition. 
As  the  chief  example  of  this  error  he  takes  Keats, 
and  especially  "Isabella."  He  does  not  depreciate 
Keats,  or  even  "Isabella."  On  the  contrary,  he  says 
that  "  this  one  short  poem  contains,  perhaps,  a  greater 
number  of  happy  single  expressions  which  one  could 
quote  than  all  the  extant  tragedies  of  Sophocles," 
which  seems  to  me  a  preposterous  overstatement.  But 
he  accuses  him  of  subordinating  the  essential  to  the 
accidental.  That  is  too  large  a  conclusion  to  deduce 
from  a  single  poem.  It  would  not  be  borne  out  by 
the  Sonnets,  by  the  Odes,  or  by  Hyperion.  As  for 
Shakespeare  himself,  it  is  mere  idolatry  to  pretend 
that  all  he  wrote  was  equally  good.  There  is  much 
bombast  in  his  early  work,  and  over-expression  was 
always  his  besetting  sin.  It  seems  a  fault  in  him, 
because  he  was  so  great.  But  his  inferior  contem 
poraries  had  it  in  a  much  greater  degree.  It  was  the 
vice  of  the  age  rather  than  of  the  man.  He  had  at 
his  best  "the  severe  and  scrupulous  self-restraint  of 
the  ancients,"  which  Mr.  Arnold  denies  him.  But  he 
had  it  not  always,  as  they  had,  and  it  is  true, 
therefore,  that  he  is  a  "less  safe  model."  "I  know 


iv.]  \V<  >RK  AND  POETRY.  45 

not  how  it  is,"  says  Mr.  Arnold,  with  insight  and 
felicity — "  I  know  not  how  it  is,  but  their  commerce 
with  the  ancients  appears  to  me  to  produce,  in  those 
who  constantly  practise  it,  a  steadying  and  composing 
effect  upon  their  judgment,  not  of  literary  works  only, 
but  of  men  and  events  in  general.  They  are  like 
persons  who  have  had  a  very  weighty  and  impressive 
experience  :  they  are  more  truly  than  others  under  the 
empire  of  facts,  and  more  independent  of  the  language 
current  among  those  with  whom  they  live."  That  is  J 
admirably  said,  and  it  is  the  last  word. 

One  is  rather  surprised  to  find  the  author  of  this 
luminous  Essay,  in  a  letter  to  his  sister,  dated  the 
14th  of  April  1853,  comparing  Villette  unfavourably 
with  My  Novel.  For  though  Bulwer  was  a  brilliant 
novelist,  and  is  now,  perhaps,  too  much  neglected, 
there  is  more  genius  in  the  pages  of  Villette  than  in  all 
the  books  he  ever  wrote.  But  the  letter  contains  also 
an  announcement  of  much  interest.  "  I  am  occupied," 
he  says,  "  with  a  thing  that  gives  me  more  pleasure 
than  anything  I  have  ever  done  yet,  which  is  a  good 
sign;  but  whether  I  shall  not  ultimately  spoil  it  by 
being  obliged  to  strike  it  off  in  fragments  instead  of 
at  one  heat  I  cannot  quite  say."  He  certainly  did  not 
spoil  it.  For  the  thing  was  "Sohm^  n,pf|  "Rnstnm," 
which  all  admirers  of  Matthew  Arnold  would  put  in 
the  front  rank  of  his  poems.  It  appeared  for  the 
first  time  in  1853;  and  though  Clough  "remained  in  " 
suspense  whether  he  liked  it  or  not,"  no  work  of  its 
author's  has  more  genuine  beauty.  Lord  John  Russell, 
who,  in  his  dry  fashion,  was  a  sound  judge  of  good 
literature,  had  already  pronounced  Mr.  Arnold  to  be 
"the  one  rising  young  poet  of  the  present  day,"  but 


46  MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  [CHAP. 

his  fame  really  began  with  the  publication  of  this  his 
third  volume.  "Sohrab  and  Rustum"  is  a  story  of 
Central  Asia,  or,  as  we  used  to  say,  Asia  Minor,  told 
in  blank  verse,  and  in  the  Homeric  vein.  It  is  called 
"An  Episode,"  and  begins  in  character  with  the  word 
"And."  Far  more  truly  Homeric  than  Clough's  jolting 
hexameters,  it  is  as  good  a  specimen  of  Homer's  manner ' 
as  can  be  found  in  English.  Rustum  is  a  barbarian, 
though  not  an  undignified  barbarian.  But  the  gentle 
and  sympathetic  character  of  Sohrab  is  one  of  the  best, 
and  most  delicate  that  Matthew  Arnold  ever  drew. 
That  he  falls  by  the  hand  of  his  unconscious  father 
is  the  simple  tragedy  of  the  piece.  Very  noble  is  his 
reply  to  the  still  sceptical  Rustum — 

"  Truth  sits  upon  the  lips  of  dying  men, 
And  Falsehood,  while  I  liv'd,  was  far  from  mine." 

And  when  Rustum,  at  last  convinced  that  he  has  slain 
his  son,  prays  that  the  Oxus  may  drown  him,  Sohrab 
replies,  in  the  exquisite  lines — 

"  '  Desire  not  that,  my  father  ;  thou  must  live. 
Foi  some  are  born  to  do  great  deeds,  and  live, 
As  some  are  born  to  be  cbscur'd,  and  die. 
Do  thou  the  deeds  I  die  too  young  to  do, 
And  reap  a  second  glory  in  thine  age.' " 

"The  Church  of  Brou"  is  chiefly  valuable  for  its 
beautiful  conclusion  in  heroic  verse,  beginning — 

"  So  rest,  for  ever  rest,  0  Princely  Pair  ! 
In  your  high  Church,  'mid  the  still  mountain  air." 

The  church,  however,  is  not  in  the  mountains,  but  in 
the  treeless,  waterless  Burgundian  plains.  The  story 
is  not  interesting,  nor  otherwise  well  told.  The 


iv.]  WORK  AND  TOETRY.  47 

lovely  stanzas  called  "Requiescat"  ("  Strew  on  her 
roses,  roses  ")  is  perhaps  as  familiar  as  anything  that 
Matthew  Arnold  wrote.  This  perfect  little  lyric  is 
worthily  rendered  into  Greek  Elegiacs  in  "Arundines 
Cami."  "The  Scholar  Gipsy,"  though  it  specially 
appeals  through  its  topography  and  atmosphere  to 
Oxford  men,  is  dear  also  to  all  lovers  of  poetry.  The 
quaint  and  fantastic  tale,  first  told  by  Glanvil,  of  the 
young  Oxford  student  who  was  forced  by  poverty  to 
leave  Oxford  and  herd  with  the  gipsies,  is  told  again 
by  a  lover  of  the  district,  the  most  beautiful  in  the 
English  midlands.  The  objection  that  the  poem  is 
too  topographical  seems  to  me  irrelevant.  No  one 
quarrels  with  Burns  for  describing  Ayrshire,  and  the 
scenery  of  the  "  Scholar  Gipsy  "  is  as  familiar  as  their 
own  homes  to  thousands  of  educated  Englishmen. 
The  poem  is  not  one  from  which  detached  passages 
can  easily  be  quoted. 

"  Sad  Patience,  too  near  neighbour  to  Despair," 
is  very  close  to  Shelley. 

"  Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clu telling  the  inviolable  shade, 
With  a  free  onward  impulse  brushing  through, 
By  night,  the  silvcr'd  branches  of  the  glade," 

are  lines  which,  for  a  sort  of  magical  charm,  have 
seldom  been  surpassed.  Fine  as  they  are  themselves, 
the  last  two  stanzas  of  the  "Scholar  Gipsy"  are  a 
little  out  of  place. 

"  The  young  light-hearted  Masters  of  the  waves," 

is  a  line  one  would  not  willingly  lose.  But  the 
elaborate  simile  of  the  "grave  Tyrian  trader"  and 


48  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

the  "merry  Grecian  coaster"  is  a  less  fitting  end 
than  the  melancholy  contrast  between  the  scholar's 
blissful  simplicity  and  our  mental  strife.  The  stanzas 
"In  Memory  of  the  late  Edward  Quillinan,  Esq.,"  a 
forgotten  poet,  remembered,  if  at  all,  as  Wordsworth's 
son-in-law,  and  the  translator  of  Camoens,  are  rather  a 
copy  of  verses  than  a  poem. 

In  1855  appeared  Poems  ly  Matthew  Arnold,  second 
series.  Of  these,  two  only,  "Balder  Dead"  and 
"Separation,"  were  new.  By  this  time,  though  his 
popularity  was  not  wide,  his  reputation  was  assured. 
Reviewers  had  begun  to  treat  him  with  respect, 
though  there  was  one  curious  exception.  Writing  on 
the  3rd  of  August  1854  to  Mr.  Wyndham  Slade,  he 
adds  this  postscript :  "  My  love  to  J.  D.  C.,  and  tell 
him  that  the  limited  circulation  of  the  Christian 
Remembrancer,  makes  the  unquestionable  viciousness  of 
his  article  of  little  importance.  I  am  sure  he  will  be 
gratified  to  think  that  it  is  so."  After  Mr.  Arnold's 
death,  Lord  Coleridge,  in  obvious  allusion  tc  this 
incident,  said  that  the  article  in  the  Christian  Re 
membrancer,  of  which  he  afterwards  bitterly  repented, 
did  not  make  the  slightest  difference  in  the  warmth  of 
a  lifelong  friendship.  Mr.  Arnold  was,  indeed,  as 
nearly  incapable  of  resentment  as  a  human  creature 
can  be.  He  was  endowed  with  one  of  those  perfect 
tempers  which  are  of  more  value  than  many  fortunes. 
"Balder  Dead"  is,  like  "Sohrab  and  Rustum," 
Homeric  in  tone,  although  the  subject  is  taken  from 
the  Norse  mythology.  It  has  not  the  human  interest 
of  the  earlier  poem.  Balder,  though  he  died,  was  a 
god,  and  the  whole  machinery  is  supernatural.  A 
Frenchman  would  have  said  that  Mr.  Arnold  had 


iv.]  WORK  AND  POETRY.  49 

accomplished  a  tour  de  force,  and  obtained  a  sucds 
d'estime.  Nevertheless,  "Balder  Dead"  is  full  of 
beauty,  the  verse  is  musical  as  well  as  stately,  and  the 
mourning  of  nature  for  "  Balder,"  believed  to  be  in 
vulnerable,  but  slain  by  a  stratagem,  is  admirably 
described.  Some  passages  in  it  are  purely  Greek,  as, 
for  instance,  this  speech  of  Balder  — 

"  Hennod  the  nimble,  gild  me  not  my  death  ! 
Better  to  live  a  serf,  a  captured  man, 
Who  scatters  rushes  in  a  master's  hall, 
Than  be  a  crown'd  king  here,  and  rule  the  dead." 
cv 


While  the  line  about  "  the  northern  Bear  "- 

"  And  is  alone  not  dipt  in  Ocean's  stream," 

is  exactly  the  beautiful  — 

"  OIT;  d'  apropos  t'ori  Aofrpoii/  cu 


"Balder  Dead"  must  always  be  a  poem  for  the  few. 
But  it  will  have  readers  who  enjoy  it  intensely,  even 
though  they  feel  that  it  lacks  the  peculiar  fascination 
of  "Sohrab  and  Rustum."  "Separation,"  afterwards 
included  in  "Faded  Leaves,"  has  a  tenderness  and  a 
depth  of  feeling  quite  foreign  to  academic  exercises 
like  "Balder  Dead."  It  comes,  like  the  songs  of 
Burns,  straight  from  the  heart,  and  the  last  stanza, 
though  not  faultless  in  form,  is  indescribably 
pathetic  :— 

"  Then,  when  we  meet,  and  thy  look  strays  toward  me, 
Scanning  my  face  and  the  changes  wrought  there  : 
Who,  let  me  say,  is  this  Stranger  regards  me, 
With  the  grey  eyes,  and  the  lovely  brown  hair  ?  " 

The  effect  of  the  word  "Stranger"  could  only  have 

D 


50  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP.  iv. 

been  produced  by  the  art  which  conceals  itself,  and 
appears  as  simplicity. 

On  the  17th  of  February  1856,  Mr.  Arnold  wrote  to 
his  sister  that  he  had  been  elected  at  the  Athenaeum, 
and  looked  forward  with  "rapture"  to  the  use  of  the 
library.  One  of  the  first  books  he  read  in  it  seems  to 
have  been  the  new  volume  of  Ruskin's  Modern  Painters, 
upon  which  he  passed,  on  the  31st  of  March,  this 
singular  judgment:  "Full  of  excellent  aper$us,  as 
usual,  but  the  man  and  character  too  febrile,  irritable, 
and  weak  to  allow  him  to  possess  the  wdo  concate- 
natioque  veri."  How  he  would  have  laughed  at  this 
pedantry  if  it  had  come  from  a  Positivist. 


CHAPTER    V. 

THE   OXFORD   CHAIR. 

ON  the  5th  of  May  1857,  Mr.  Arnold  was  elected  by 
Convocation  to  the  Professorship  of  Poetry  at  Oxford. 
His  unsuccessful  competitor  was  the  Reverend  John 
Ernest  Bode,  author  of  Ballads  from  Herodotus,  and  a 
thoroughly  orthodox  divine.  It  is  a  curious  fact, 
illustrating  the  difference  between  ancient  and 
modern  Oxford,  that  all  Mr.  Arnold's  predecessors  in 
the  chair  were  clergymen.  All  his  successors  have 
been  laymen.  The  Professorship  was  founded  in  1808. 
The  emoluments  were  trifling,  not  more  than  a  hundred 
pounds  a  year.  On  the  other  hand,  the  duties  were 
not  heavy,  while  the  statutory  obligation  to  lecture 
in  Latin,  to  which  Milman  and  Keble  were  subject, 
had  been  removed.  His  inaugural  lecture  was,  how 
ever,  severely  classical  in  tone.  Its  subject  was  "The 
Modern  Element  in  Literature,"  and  in  it  Mr.  Arnold 
dwelt  upon  the  close  intellectual  sympathy  between 
Greece  in  the  days  of  Pericles  and  the  England  of  his 
own  day.  Both  ages,  he  said,  demanded  intellectual 
deliverance,  and  obtained  it  from  literature,  especially 
from  poetry.  Thus,  comparing  the  Periclean  with  the 
Elizabethan  age,  he  showed  how  much  more  modern  a 
historian  was  Thucydides  than  Raleigh.  But  the 
writers  most  akin  to  our  own  were,  he  contended,  the 

61 


52  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Greek  dramatic  poets,  especially  Sophocles  and  Aristo 
phanes.  Latin  poetry,  being  essentially  imitative,  did 
not  interpret  the  time  as  Greek  poetry  did.  This  lecture 
was  not  published  till  February  1869,  when  it  appeared 
in  Macmillaris  Magazine.  It  was  followed  by  others  on 
the  same  subject,  which  have  never  been  published  at 
all.  Athough  Mr.  Arnold  retained  his  Professorship 
for  ten  years,  he  disliked,  as  is  well  known,  the  title  of 
Professor.  It  classed  him,  as  he  plaintively  remarked, 
with  Professor  Pepper  of  the  Polytechnic,  Professor 
Anderson,  "The  Wizard  of  the  North,"  and  other 
great  men  with  whom  he  could  not  aspire  to  rank. 
He  never  as  Professor  resided  in  Oxford.  He  wished 
to  be  considered  a  man  of  letters  and  of  the  world, 
provided  with  an  honourable  and  advantageous  plat 
form  from  which  to  expound  his  ideas. 

The  real  inauguration  of  Mr.  Arnold's  Professorship 
was  his  tragedy  called  "Merope,"  which  appeared  in 
1858  with  an  elaborate  and  justificatory  Preface.  In 
this  Mr.  Arnold  described  England  as  the  stronghold  of 
the  romantic  school,  and  renewed  the  plea  for  classical 
principles  which  he  had  put  forward  in  the  Introduc 
tion  to  his  Collected  Poems.  The  story  of  Merope, 
the  widowed  queen  of  Messenia,  whose  son  ^Epytus 
avenges  upon  Polyphontes  the  murder  of  Cresphontes, 
his  father,  was  well  known  to  antiquity.  Aristotle 
cites  as  specially  dramatic  the  scene  where  Merope  is 
on  the  point  of  killing  ./Epytus,  not  recognising  him 
for  her  son,  but  believing  him  to  be  her  son's  destroyer. 
Euripides  made  it  the  subject  of  a  play,  but  only  a  few 
fragments  have  come  down  to  us.  Maffei,  Voltaire,  and 
Alfieri  successively  dramatised  it,  altering  it  more  or 
less  to  suit  modern  taste.  Mr.  Arnold  adhered  more 


v.]  THE  OXFORD  CHAIR.  53 

strictly  to  the  authority,  such  as  it  is,  of  Hyginus,  but 
omitted,  as  too  revolting,  the  marriage  of  Merope  with 
Polyphontes,  who  slew  her  husband.  He  seems  to 
have  forgotten  that  this  was  an  incident  in  the 
greatest  of  all  plays,  and  that  the  master  of  human 
nature  had  not  shrunk  from  presenting  Gertrude 
as  the  wife  of  Claudius.  This  Preface  contains  an 
attack  upon  French  Alexandrines,  which  is  quite 
unnecessary,  and  a  criticism  of  Voltaire  as  a  play 
wright  which  is  a  little  out  of  place,  though  the  com 
parison  with  Racine  is  good.  But  by  far  the  best  part 
of  it  is  that  which  describes,  with  admirable  brevity 
and  clearness,  the  rise  of  the  Greek  drama.  No  one 
save  Aristotle  has  explained  in  fewer  words,  or  with 
more  picturesque  lucidity,  the  growth  of  the  complete 
play  from  the  chorus  and  the  messenger.  The  chorus 
was  originally  part  of  the  audience  to  whom  the 
narrative  was  addressed,  though  they  were  the  only 
part  of  the  audience  who  ventured  to  interrupt. 
"The  lyrical  element,"  as  Mr.  Arnold  well  says,  "was 
a  relief  and  solace  in  the  stress  and  conflict  of  the 
action,"  like  the  comic  scenes  which,  as  Coleridge 
observed,  Shakespeare  interposed  after  great  tragic 
events.  Mr.  Arnold's  ideas  were  excellent.  It  was 
in  carrying  them  out  that  he  failed.  To  criticise 
"  Merope  "  is  to  dissect  a  corpse.  ^v\dpiov  € 
vcK/>b»',  would  be  a  better  motto  than 
per  evTcAeias,  which  is  the  actual  one.  In  vain  does 
Mr.  Arnold  make  Polyphontes  a  wise  and  strong  king, 
endeavouring  by  years  of  virtuous  rule  to  expiate  the 
crime  into  which  ambition  has  betrayed  him.  He  does 
not  excite  our  interest,  nor  does  Merope,  nor  -<3Epytus,  , 
nor  any  of  them.  The  imitation  is  very  skilful.  1 


54  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

"  Merope"  is  far  more  strictly  Greek  in  tone  and  style 
than  "  Atalanta  in  Calydon,"  which  is  not  really  Greek 
at  all.  But  it  has  not  the  sweep,  the  ring,  the  melody, 
nor  the  sensuous  beauty  of  that  fascinating,  though 
\irregular  drama.  It  is  the  form  without  the  spirit, 
ifhe  body  without  the  soul.  "Merope "  purports  to  be 
a  Greek  play  in  English  dress.  It  is  really  a  prize 
poem  of  inordinate  length.  Mr.  Arnold  himself  hoped 
great  things  from  it.  "I  must  read  'Merope'  to 
you,"  he  says  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Forster  of  the  25th  of 
July  1857.  "I  think  and  hope  it  will  have  what 
Buddha  called  the  character  of  Fixity,  that  true  sign 
of  the  Law."  But  literature  is  not  law,  and  requires 
something  more  than  fixity,  something,  as  Carlyle 
would  say,  quite  other  than  fixity.  "Merope "had  a 
kind  of  success,  and  not  the  kind  which  the  author 
least  valued.  Dr.  Temple,  the  new  Headmaster  of 
Rugby,  an  excellent  judge,  admired  it.  So  did  George 
Henry  Lewes,  so  did  Kingsley,  and  so,  with  some 
reservations  upon  the  choice  of  a  subject,  did  Froude. 
It  even  sold  well.  But  the  general  public  never  took 
to  it,  and  few  competent  critics  would  now,  I  think, 
say  that  they  were  wrong.  There  are  good  lines  here 
and  there,  such  as  the  gnome — 

"  For  tyrants  make  man  good  beyond  himself," 
arid  the  thoroughly  Greek  antithesis — 

"  Thy  crown  condemns  thee,  while  thy  tongue  absolves," 
and  the  characteristic  couplets — 

"  To  hear  another  tumult  in  these  streets, 
To  have  another  murder  in  these  halls." 

"  So  rule,  that  as  thy  father  thou  be  loved  ; 
So  rule,  that  as  thy  foe  thou  be  obey'd." 


v.]  THE  OXFORD  CHAIR.  65 

But  the  unrhymed  choruses  are  harsh  almost  beyond 
belief,  as,  for  instance — 

"  She  led  the  way  of  death. 
And  the  plain  of  Tegea, 
And  the  grave  of  Orestes — 
Where,  in  secret  seclusion 
Of  his  unreveal'd  tomb, 
Sleeps  Agamemnon's  unhappy, 
Matricidal,  world-famed, 
Seven-cubit-statured  son — 
Sent  forth  Echemus,  the  victor,  the  king." 

Perhaps  the  best  of  the  choric  lines  are  the  following, 
which  express  one  of  Mr.  Arnold's  favourite  ideas : — 

"  Yea,  and  not  only  have  we  not  explored 
That  wide  and  various  world,  the  heart  of  others, 
But  even  our  own  heart,  that  narrow  world 
Bounded  in  our  own  breast,  we  hardly  know, 
Of  our  own  actions  dimly  trace  the  causes." 

But  how  heavy  and  lifeless  are  these  verses  compared 
with  the  simple  stanza  in  "  Parting  "- 

"  Far,  far  from  each  other 

Our  spirits  have  grown  ; 
And  what  heart  knows  another  ? 
Ah  !  who  knows  his  own  ? " 

Mr.  Arnold  was  anxious  that  "Merope"  should  be 
shown  to  Robert  Browning,  whose  "Fragment  of  a 
Hippolytus,"  that  is,  "  Artemis  Prologises,"  he  justly 
admired.  But  Mr.  Browning,  as  we  have  seen,  had 
the  good  taste  to  prefer  "Empedocles,"  with  which 
"Merope"  was  republished  in  1885.  Mr.  Arnold 
considered  Mrs.  Browning  as  "hopelessly  confirmed 
in  her  aberration  from  health,  nature,  beauty,  and 
truth."  The  judgment  \vas  severe,  but  at  this  distance 


56  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

of  time  one  can  hardly  say  that  it  was  unsound. 
What  Mr.  Arnold  failed  to  see  was  that  in  these  forced 
ejqaejriments  he  ran  no  small  danger  of  the  same  kind 
himself. 

At  the  beginning  of  1858,  nearly  seven  years  after 
his  marriage,  Mr.  Arnold  took  a  small  house  in  Chester 
Square,  and  for  the  first  timo  acquired  a  settled  home. 
Both  he  and  his  wife  were  fortunately  fond  of 
travelling.  But  his  incessant  movements  as  Inspector 
had  more  than  satisfied  the  taste,  and  they  were  glad 
to  have  a  fixed  abode.  Mr.  Arnold,  however,  still 
continued  his  official  tours,  and  on  the  29th  of  October 
1858  he  heard  John  Bright  speak  at  Birmingham. 
"He  is  an  orator  of  almost  the  highest  rank — voice 
and  manner  excellent ;  perhaps  not  quite  flow  enough 
— not  that  he  halts  or  stammers,  but  I  like  to  have 
sometimes  more  of  a  rush  than  he  ever  gives  you.  He 
is  a  far  better  speaker  than  Gladstone."  That  a  "far 
better  speaker  than  Gladstone"  should  not  be  an 
orator  of  the  highest  rank  is  a  strange  paradox. 
Otherwise  the  description  is  excellent,  and  the  com 
parative  merits  of  the  two  speakers  will  always  divide 
opinion. 

Our  feelings,  says  a  poet  not  unlike  Matthew  Arnold, 
though  inferior  to  him — 

"  Our  feelings  lose  poetic  flow 
Soon  after  twenty-seven  or  so." 

When  Mr.  Arnold  became  Professor  of  Poetry,  he  was 
thirty-four,  and  his  creative  work  as  a  poet  was  almost 
finished.  In  quality  some  of  his  later  poems  are 
exquisite.  But  the  quantity  of  them  is  very  small. 
Perhaps  the  critical  faculty  superseded  the  poetical 


v.]  THE  OXFORD  CHAIR.  57 

one.  He  himself  said  that  the  critic  should  keep  out 
of  the  region  of  immediate  practice.  But  his  first 
published  work  in  prose  was  a  political  pamphlet.  It 
appeared  in  1859  with  the  title  England  and  the  Italian 
Question,  and  a  motto  from  the  Vulgate,  Sed  nondum  est 
finiS) — «  But  the  end  is  not  yet."  This  pamphlet,  never 
republished,  and  now  very  scarce,  is  a  philosophical 
argument  for  the  freedom  and  independence  of  Italy. 
It  contains  some  curiously  bad  prophecies,  such  as  that 
Alsace  must  always  be  French,  and  ,that  Prussia  could 
not  take  the  field  against  either  Austria  or  France.  But 
the  historical  argument  for  Italy  is  strong,  and  well 
put.  Mr.  Arnold  shows  that  Italy  was  independent  of 
a  foreign  yoke  throughout  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries.  His  Liberalism,  however,  was  always 
moderate,  being,  in  fact,  Whiggery ;  and  when  he  comes 
forward  as  the  champion  of  Italian  nationality,  he  is 
careful  to  disclaim  all  sympathy  with  such  inferior 
races  as  the  Hungarians,  the  Irish,  and  the  Poles.  In 
the  true  Whig  spirit,  which  Mr.  Arnold  may  have 
imbibed  from  Lord  Lansdowne,  is  his  eulogy  of  the 
English  aristocracy,  and  the  governing  skill  they  had 
displayed  since  the  Revolution  of  1688. 

When  Mr.  Arnold  praised  the  disinterestedness  of 
France,  he  did  not  foresee  the  annexation  of  Savoy 
and  Nice,  which  followed  next  year,  having  really 
been  arranged  before  the  war  between  the  Emperor 
Napoleon  and  Count  Cavour.  Victor  Emmanuel 
obtained  for  Italy  Lombardy  and  the  central  Italian 
Provinces,  except  Venetia  and  the  Papal  States.  The 
inhabitants  of  Nice  and  Savoy  voted  by  overwhelming 
majorities  for  incorporation  with  France,  but  it  can 
hardly  be  said  with  truth  that  Louis  Napoleon's  policy 


58  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  [CHAP. 

was  disinterested.  The  opportunity  of  observing  public 
opinion  in  France  on  the  war  was  given  to  Mr.  Arnold 
by  his  appointment,  in  January  1859,  as  Foreign  Assis 
tant  Commissioner  on  Education  to  visit  France, 
Holland,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  and  Piedmont.  "I 
cannot  tell  you,"  he  wrote  to  his  sister,  Miss  Arnold, 
"how  much  I  like  the  errand,  and,  above  all,  to  have 
the  French  district."  Holland  he  did  not  appreciate, 
and  he  pronounced  the  Belgians  to  be  the  most  con 
temptible  people  in  Europe.  But  France  he  thoroughly 
enjoyed,  especially  Paris;  where  he  was  always  at 
home.  At  Paris  he  "had  a  long  and  very  interesting 
conversation  with  Lord  Cowley  tete-a-tete  for  about 
three-quarters  of  an  hour  the  other  day.  .  .  .  He 
entirely  shared  my  conviction  as  to  the  French  always 
beating  any  number  of  Germans  who  come  into  the 
field  against  them "  (Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  96).  Such  are 
the  prophetic  powers  of  exalted  diplomatists.  In  this 
same  letter  Mr.  Arnold  refers  to  that  political  classic, 
"Mill  on  Liberty,"  in  language  of  very  chastened 
enthusiasm.  "It  is,"  he  says,  "worth  reading  atten 
tively,  being  one  of  the  few  books  that  inculcate 
tolerance  in  an  unalarming  and  inoffensive  way."  At 
Paris  also  Mr.  Arnold  met  Prosper  Merimee,  and 
dined  with  Sainte-Beuve.  He  was  much  amused  to 
find  himself  described  as  "Monsieur  le  Professeur 
Docteur  Arnold,  Directeur-General  de  toutes  les 
ftcoles  de  la  Grande  Bretagne,"  which  is  certainly  a 
comprehensive  title. 

On  Mr.  Arnold's  return  to  England  he  joined  the 
Queen's  Westminster  Volunteers ;  and  it  is  strange  to 
read  in  a  letter  to  his  sister,  dated  the  21st  of 
November  1859,  a  refutation  of  the  long  since  obsolete 


v.]  THE  OXFORD  CHAIR.  59 

argument  that  it  was  dangerous  to  arm  the  people. 
"The  bad  feature  in  the  proceeding,"  he  says,  "is  the 
hideous  English  toadyism  with  which  lords  and  great 
people  are  invested  with  the  commands  in  the  corps 
they  join,  quite  without  respect  of  any  consideration 
of  their  efficiency.     This  proceeds  from  our  national 
bane — the   immense   vulgar-mindedness,   and,    so  far, 
real  inferiority  of  the  English  middle  classes."     It  is 
important  in  these  years,  before  Mr.  Arnold  took  up 
definitely    the    business    of    a    critic,    to    watch    the 
development    of    his    literary   opinions.      There    was 
always  something  antipathetic  to  him  in  Tennyson. 
"The  fault  I  find  with  Tennyson "  (he  wrote,  on  the, 
17th  of  December  1860,  about  the  Idylls  of  the  King),  "is  j 
that  the  peculiar  charm  and  aroma  of  the  Middle  Age/ 
he  does  not  give  in  them."     That,  I  think,  would  bei 
generally  admitted.     Much  more  disputable  is  what 
follows.      "The    real    truth    is   [always   a    suspicious 
beginning]  that  Tennyson,  with  all  his  temperament! 
and  artistic  skill,  is  deficient  in  intellectual  power.  '\ 
After  all,  he  wrote  In  Memoriam.     Matthew  Arnold, 
despite  his  Sonnet,  did  not  share  the  national  idolatry 
of    Shakespeare.      Compared    with    Homer,    he   was 
imperfection  to  perfection. 

Like  most  of  the  upper  and  middle  classes  at  the 
time,  Mr.  Arnold  completely  misjudged  the  situation 
in  America  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War.  On  the 
28th  of  January  1861  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Forster :  "I 
have  not  much  faith  in  the  nobility  of  nature  of  the 
Northern  Americans.  I  believe  they  would  consent  to 
any  compromise  sooner  than  let  the  Southern  States 
go.  However,  I  believe  the  latter  mean  to  go,  and 
think  they  will  do  better  by  going,  so  the  baseness 


60  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

of  the  North  will  not  be  tempted  too  strongly."     Mrs. 
Forster's  husband  took  a  juster  view. 

In  1861  appeared,  first  as  a  Parliamentary  Blue 
Book,  and  afterwards  as  an  independent  volume, 
Mr.  Arnold's  Popular  Education  in  France,  with  Notices 
of  that  of  Holland  and  Switzerland.  The  Introduction, 
which  alone  has  much  interest  now,  was  republished 
nearly  twenty  years  afterwards  in  Mixed  Essays,  and 
called  "Democracy."  It  is  a  State  paper  of  great 
value  and  importance.  Mr.  Arnold  was  always  a  keen 
critic  of  his  own  countrymen.  He  had  learned  from 
his  father's  eloquent  and  dignified  Lectures  on  Modern 
History,  that  Jo_ jflatter  a  great  nation  like  England 
w^sJoin^iiliJier,  and  that  it  was  part  of  true  patriotism 
to  tell  her  of  her  faults.  In  this  paper,  written  with 
the  admirable  simplicity  that  always  distinguished 
his  style,  and  without  the  mannerisms  that  after 
wards  disfigured  it,  he  argues  that  the  English  dread 
of  interference  by  the  State,  formerly  natural  and 
reasonable,  had  become  irrational  and  obsolete.  An 
aristocratic  executive,  he  contended,  was  inclined  to 
govern  as  little  as  possible,  arid  such  an  executive 
England  had  hitherto  possessed.  But  with  the  spread 
of  democratic  ideas,  which  he  observed  with  the  cold 
but  appreciative  sympathy  of  a  Whig,  and  the  enlarge 
ment  of  the  franchise,  which  he  clearly  foresaw,  there 
would,  he  thought,  be  more  need  and  less  repugnance 
for  the  action  of  the  Government.  He  cites  the  ex 
ample  of  France,  where  the  "  common  people,"  or,  as  we 
should  say,  the  masses,  were  in  his  opinion  superior  to 
our  own.  The  moral  he  drew  was,  of  course,  the  neces 
sity  of  public  teaching,  organised  by  the  State.  No 
other  would  have  been  relevant  to  his  subject.  Yet 


v.J  THE  OXFORD  CHAIR.  61 

it  is  remarkable  that  the  schools  which  he  recommended 
were  not  those  elementary  establishments  set  up  ten 
years  later  by  his  brother-in-law,  but  the  secondary 
schools  of  France.  He  endeavoured  therefore  to  combat 
the  jealousy  of  the  State  which  pervaded  the  middle 
classes,  and  to  prove  that  they  required  its  aid  in  bring 
ing  order  out  of  chaos.  Admitting  that  there  was  too 
much  government  in  France,  he  urged  that  there  was 
too  little  in  England,  and  as  an  Englishman  he  pleaded 
for  more.  High  reason  and  fine  culture  were,  he  said, 
the  great  objects  for  which  the  nation  should  strive. 
He  lamented  the  decline  of  aristocratic  culture,  of 
which  the  fine  flower  in  the  eighteenth  century  was 
Lord  Carteret.  But  culture,  except  so  far  as  it  in 
volves  leisure,  has  nothing  to  do  with  class,  and  Lord 
Carteret  was  a  wholly  exceptional  man.  If  Mr.  Arnold 
had  taken  the  Lord  Derby  of  his  own  day,  and  com 
pared  him  with  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  in  Lord  Carteret's 
time,  or  if  he  had  contrasted  Mr.  Gladstone  with  Sir 
Robert  Walpole,  the  result  would  have  been  very 
different.  But  this  is  by  the  way  Mr.  Arnold's  main 
principle  in  this  excellent  essay  is  perfectly  sound ;  and 
though  popular  education  did  not  develop  itself  in  the 
precise  form  he  expected,  a  deep  debt  of  gratitude  is 
due  to  him  for  the  interest  he  aroused  in  its  progress. 

In  1861  Mr.  Arnold  published  his  three  lectures  "  On 
translating  Homer,"  followed  the  next  year  by  a  fourth 
on  the  same  subject  called  "Last  Words."  These  most 
interesting  and  valuable  discourses  have  been  the 
delight  of  all  scholars  ever  since  they  appeared.  They 
are  among  the  author's  most  characteristic  productions, 
showing  even  for  the  first  time  that  tendency  to  the 
undue  repetition  of  words  and  phrases  which  after- 


62  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

I  wards   became   a   vice   of    his   style.      From   one   of 

Mr.  Arnold's  main  conclusions  I  respectfully,  and  in 

good    company,    dissent.      I   cannot    think    that  the 

j  English  hexameter  is  the  best  metre  for  a  translation 

'  of  Homer.     The  English  hexameter  is  an  exotic,  which 

does   not  flourish  in  our  soil.      Occasional  instances 

to   the   contrary  may  be    quoted   from   Longfellow's 

"Evangeline  "  and  from  Kingsley's  "Andromeda  "- 

"  Chanting  the  hundredth  Psalm,  that  grand  old  Puritan 
anthem," 

which  is  Longfellow's,  and 

"  As  when  an  osprey  aloft,  dock-eyebrowed,  royally  crested," 

which  is  Kingsley's,  are  perfect.  But  such  successes 
cannot  be  maintained.  So  far  as  I  know,  the  one 
example  to  the  contrary  in  the  English  language  is 
Dr.  Hawtrey's  famous  translation  from  the  third  book 
of  the  Iliad,  beginning 

"  Clearly  the  rest  I  behold  of  the  dark-eyed  sons  of  Achaia," 
and  ending 

"  There  in  their  own  dear  land,  their  fatherland,  Lacedaemon." 

Mr.  Arnold's  own  specimens  do  not  rise  much  a*bove 
mediocrity,  and  he  must  have  been  misled  by  personal 
friendship  when  he  compared  dough's  clever  verse- 
making  with  the  simple  dignity  of  Homer.  We 
may  feel  then  that  Mr.  Arnold  was  right  when  he 
declined  the  proposal  to  translate  Homer  himself, 
and  yet  be  supremely  grateful  to  him  for  having 
dealt  in  so  luminous  a  manner  with  the  general  prin 
ciples  of  translation.  He  was  unfortunately  led  by  the 
accidents  of  time  and  place,  or  perhaps  by  the  spirit  of 


v.j  THK  OXFORD  CHAIR.  G3 

mockery,  to  bestow  too  much  notice  upon  a  very  l*.-ul 
translation  of  Homer  made  by  a  very  learned  man. 
Mr.  Francis  Newman  of  Balliol,  brother  of  the  cele 
brated  Cardinal,  though  eccentric  in  many  ways,  never 
did  anything  more  eccentric  than  his  translation  of  the 
Iliad,  which,  but  for  Mr.  Arnold,  would  have  died 
almost  as  soon  as  it  was  born.  Pope,  on  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Arnold  dismisses  with  Bentley's  scornful 
dictum,  for  which  Pope  put  him  in  the  "Dunciad," 
that  it  was  a  pretty  poem,  but  not  Homer.  It  is 
certainly  not  Homer,  for  the  very  good  reason  that 
Pope  knew  little  or  no  Greek.  But  it  is  much  more 
than  a  pretty  poem,  and  it  will  never  cease  to  be  read. 
Such  lines  as — 

"  Let  tyrants  govern  with  an  iron  rod, 
Oppress,  destroy,  and  be  the  scourge  of  God  ; 
Since  he  who  like  a  father  held  his  reign, 
So  soon  forgot,  was  just  and  mild  in  vain," 

are  imperishable,  and  no  one  would  wish  that  they 
should  perish.  Pope's  Iliad  arid  Pope's  Odyssey  are 
great  English  epics.  To  Chapman  also  Mr.  Arnold  is 
less  than  just.  Even  if  Chapman  had  not  inspired 
Keats's  immortal  Sonnet,  the  full  proud  sail  of  his 
great  verse  would  still  be  the  best  English  equivalent 
for  the  majestic  roll  of  the  Greek  hexameter. 

Mr.  Arnold's  test  of  Homeric  translation  is  to  ask 
how  it  affects  those  who  both  know  Greek  and  can 
appreciate  poetry,  such  as  Dr.  Hawtrey  of  Eton,  Dr. 
Thompson  of  Trinity,  and  Mr.  Jowett  of  Balliol.  Mr. 
Arnold  rightly  finds  fault  with  Mr.  Ruskin's  fantastic 
theory,  that  in  referring  to  the  death  of  Castor  and 
Pollux,  Homer  called  the  earth  in  which  they  lay 
"life-giving,"  because  he  wished  to  relieve  the  gloom  of 


64  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

the  picture.  Homer  called  the  earth  life-giving,  there 
as  elsewhere,  because  it  was  a  fixed  epithet  of  the 
earth.  But  Mr.  Arnold  himself  is  almost  as  fantastic 
when  he  compares  Homer  with  Voltaire  because  they 
are  both  lucid.  Certainly  this  comparison  will  not 
help  the  translator  "to  reproduce  on  the  general 
reader,  as  nearly  as  possible,  the  general  effect  of 
Homer."  Mr.  Arnold  believed  as  passionately  as 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  Mr.  Lang  in  the  unity  of  Homer, 
which  Sir  Richard  Jebb  tells  us  is  incredible.  "The 
insurmountable  obstacle  to  believing  the  Iliad  the 
consolidated  work  of  several  poets  is  this :  that  the 
work  of  great  masters  is  unique,  and  the  Iliad  [he  does 
not  here  mention  the  Odyssey]  has  a  great  master's 
genuine  stamp,  and  that  stamp  is  the  grand  style." 
What,  then,  is  the  grand  style?  It  "arises  in  poetry 
when  a  noble  nature,  poetically  gifted,  treats  with 
simplicity  or  with  severity  a  serious  subject."  The 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  are  certainly  not  what  we  our 
selves  mean  by  ballad-poetry,  and  attempts  like  Dr. 
Maginn's  to  translate  them  into  a  series  of  ballads 
have  always  failed.  It  is  a  pity  that  Mr.  Arnold  mixed 
up  this  wholesome  doctrine  with  the  highly  contro 
versial  statement,  from  which  his  own  father  would  have 
been  the  first  to  dissent,  that  Macaulay's  "  pinchbeck  " 
Lays  were  "  one  continual  falsetto."  The  remark,  more 
over,  is  quite  irrelevant,  for  Macaulay  never  dreamed 
of  imitating  Homer.  His  only  published  translation 
from  Homer  is  in  the  metre  of  Pope,  and  as  unlike  the 
Lays  as  possible. 

Homer,  says  Mr.  Arnold,  is  rapid,  plain,  simple,  and 
noble.  The  great  mine  of  diction  for  the  English 
translator  of  Homer,  he  adds,  is  the  English  Bible* 


v.]  THK  OXFORD  CHAIR.  65 

So  far,  so  good.  But  it  is  a  long  way  from  those 
premisses  to  the  conclusion  that  the  hexameter  should 
be  the  form  of  verse  employed.  Mr.  Arnold's  case  is 
here  not  a  strong  one.  "  I  know  all  that  is  said,"  he 
tells  us,  "against  the  use  of  hexameters  in  English 
poetry ;  but  it  comes  only  to  this,  that  among  us  they 
have  not  yet  been  used  on  any  considerable  scale  with 
success.  Solmtur  ambulando  :  this  is  an  objection  which 
can  best  be  met  by  producing  good  English  hexameters." 
That  is  not  quite  all  that  can  be  said  against  the  use 
of  hexameters  in  English.  It  may  also  be  said  that 
they  depend  upon  quantity,  and  that  English  poetry 
depends  upon  accent.  But  taking  Mr.  Arnold  at  his 
word,  I  cannot  think  that  his  own  hexameters  justify 
his  theory.  Here  are  some  of  them — 

"  So  shone  forth,  in  front  of  Troy,  by  the  bed  of  Xanthus, 
Between  that  and  the  ships,  the  Trojan's  numerous  fires. 
In  the  plain  there  were  kindled  a  thousand  fires :  by  each  one 
There  sat  fifty  men,  in  the  ruddy  light  of  the  fire  : 
By  their  chariots  stood  the  steeds,  and  champed  the  white 

barley, 
While  their  masters  sat  by  the  fire  and  waited  for  morning." 

The  last  line  is  the  best,  but  all  are  wooden.  Compare 
Tennyson's  rendering  of  the  same  passage  in  blank 
verse — 

"  So  many  a  fire  between  the  ships  and  stream 
Of  Xanthus  blazed  before  the  towers  of  Troy, 
A  thousand  on  the  plain  ;  and  close  by  each 
Sat  fifty  in  the  blaze  of  burning  fire  ; 
And  eating  hoary  grain  and  pulse  the  steeds, 
Fixt  by  their  cars,  waited  the  golden  dawn." 

These   verses    are    far   more   truly   Homeric   than 
Mr.  Arnold's  limping   hexameters.      It  is   the   more 

E 


C6  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

,  strange  that  Mr.  Arnold  should  have  rejected  the 
claims  of  blank  verse,  because  his  own  "Sohrab  and 
Rustum,"  to  say  nothing  of  "  Balder  Dead,"  is  especially 
I  Homeric.  To  Worsley's  Odyssey,  which  adopts  the 
^Spenserian  stanza,  Mr.  Arnold  pays  in  "Last  Words" 
a  due  tribute  of  high  praise.  In  this  same  lecture 
he  alludes  to  the  death  of  Clough,  which  he  after 
wards  lamented  in  verse  not  unlike  that  consecrated 
by  Moschus  to  the  death  of  Bion. 

Mr.  Arnold's  life,  which  was  not  an  eventful  one,  can 
be  traced  with  sufficient  clearness  from  his  letters. 
He  thought  "Essays  and  Reviews"  a  breach  of  the 
scriptural  rule  against  putting  new  wine  into  old 
bottles,  and  had  needless  fears  for  their  effect  upon 
Dr.  Temple's  position  at  Rugby.  Nothing  has  ever 
been  able  to  keep  Dr.  Temple  back,  or  to  diminish  the 
public  respect  for  his  rugged,  massive  character.  Early 
in  1861  Sainte-Beuve  published  his  volume  on  Chateau 
briand,  with  a  French  translation  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
poem  on  "  Obermann,"  which  naturally  gave  the  author 
much  pleasure.  In  the  same  year  Mr.  Arnold  contri 
buted  to  a  volume  called  Victoria  Regia,  edited  by 
Adelaide  Procter,  the  lovely  poem  entitled  "A  Southern 
Night."  These  exquisite  stanzas  were  written  to  com 
memorate  his  brother  William,  who  died  at  Gibraltar 
on  the  way  back  from  India  in  April  1859.  The  best 
known,  and  perhaps  the  best,  lines  in  it,  are  those  which 
describe  us  world-pervading  English  folk  who  are  ever 
on  the  move — 

"  And  see  all  sights  from  pole  to  pole, 

And  glance  and  nod  and  bustle  by — 
And  never  once  possess  our  soul 
Before  we  die." 


v.|  TT1K  OXFORD  CHAIR.  07 

The  Revised  C<xle  uf  1862,  in  which  Mr.  Arnold 
took  a  keen,  though  not  a  friendly  interest,  was  a 
consequence  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle's  Commission, 
appointed  the  previous  year.  But  it  went  beyond 
the  Report  of  the  Commissioners.  It  was  really  the 
work  of  Mr.  Lowe,  the  V ice-President  of  the  Council, 
and  Mr.  Lingen,  the  Secretary  to  the  Department. 
Mr.  Lowe  was,  perhaps,  the  ablest,  certainly  the 
cleverest,  man  who  ever  held  that  important  office 
Like  Mr.  Lingen,  he  had  highly  distinguished  himself 
at  Oxford,  but  his  views  on  the  education  of  the 
masses  were  strictly  and  exclusively  utilitarian.  He  was 
very  clear-headed ;  he  always  knew  what  he  wanted ; 
and  though  he  rather  liked  flouting  popular  pre 
judices,  he  had  the  knack  of  coining  popular  phrases. 
Taking  up  a  remark  of  the  Commissioners  that  too 
much  time  was  spent  in  the  national  schools  upon  the 
performances  of  prize  pupils,  while  the  work  of  teach 
ing  the  rudiments  to  the  general  mass  was  propor 
tionately  neglected,  he  proposed  a  capitation  grant, 
combined  with  payment  by  results.  Thus,  he  said, 
if  elementary  education  was  not  cheap,  it  would  be 
efficient ;  if  not  efficient,  it  would  be  cheap.  The 
epigram  was  ingenious,  and  the  phrase  "payment  by 
results  "  succeeded  well.  But  Mr.  Lowe  soon  found,  as 
most  ministers  do  find  who  touch  education,  that  he  had 
raised  a  storm.  The  protests  of  "born  educationalists," 
like  Sir  James  Kay-Shuttleworth  and  Mr.  Arnold, 
might  have  been  disregarded.  But  the  Conservative 
Opposition,  who  were  very  strong  in  the  Parliament 
of  1859,  took  the  matter  up.  They  had  the  Church 
of  England  behind  them,  and  the  Revised  Code  was 
itself  revised.  One-third  only  of  the  Government 


68  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

grant  was  given  for  attendance,  the  remaining  two- 
thirds  being  awarded  only  after  examination.  Thus 
Mr.  Arnold,  who  had  from  the  first  attacked  the 
Revised  Code  as  too  mechanical,  achieved  at  least 
half  a  victory.  He  was  rather  afraid  of  losing  his 
place  for  writing  against  his  chiefs.  But  nothing 
happened  to  him,  and  Mr.  Lowe  himself  had  soon 
afterwards  to  resign. 

The  Creweian  Oration  at  Oxford,  which  accompanies 
the  bestowal  of  honorary  degrees,  is  delivered  alter 
nately  by  the  Public  Orator  and  the  Professor  of 
Poetry.  It  fell  to  Mr.  Arnold's  turn  in  1862,  when 
Lord  Palmerston  was  made  a  Doctor  of  Civil  Law.  The 
Prince  Consort  and  Lord  Canning  had  both  died 
within  the  year,  so  that  there  was  no  lack  of  topics 
for  this  annual  exercise  in  elegant  Latinity.  But 
Mr.  Arnold  did  not  confine  himself  to  his  official  work 
and  his  Professorial  duties.  He  made  a  vigorous 
attack  upon  Bishop  Colenso's  book  on  the  Penta 
teuch,  which  gave  great  offence  to  many  of  his  Liberal 
friends.  The  article  was  published  in  Macmillan's 
Magazine  for  January  1863,  with  the  title  "The 
Bishop  and  the  Philosopher."  The  Philosopher  was 
Spinoza,  with  whom  few  Biblical  critics,  and  certainly 
not  Mr.  Arnold  himself,  could  be  favourably  com 
pared.  Bishop  Colenso's  book  has  long  been  forgotten, 
and  he  himself  is  remembered  rather  as  the  fearless 
champion  of  the  Zulus  than  as  the  corrector  of 
figures  in  the  Mosaic  record.  Mr.  Arnold  was, 
perhaps,  needlessly  severe  when  he  described  the 
Bishop  as  eliciting  a  "titter  from  educated  Europe." 
But  it  was  true  that  his  arithmetical  computations 
neither  edified  the  many  nor  informed  the  few.  When 


v.  ]  'ill  I :  O  X  FORD  CHAIll.  69 

Mr.  Disraeli  spoke  of  prelates  whose  study  of  theology 
commenced  after  they  had  grasped  the  crozier,  he  hit 
the  point.  These  absurdities  and  impossibilities  in 
Biblical  arithmetic — Colenso's  "favourite  science,"  as 
Mr.  Arnold  called  it — were  not  new  to  the  learned 
world.  Nor  did  they  affect  the  questions  of  believing 
in  God  and  leading  a  good  life,  which  Spinoza,  a  lay 
saint,  considered  to  be  alone  essential.  In  the  follow 
ing  number  of  Macmillan  Mr.  Arnold  at  once  served 
a  friend,  and  expressed  the  positive  side  of  his  theology, 
by  a  sympathetic  review  of  Stanley's  Lectures  on  the 
Jewish  Church.  On  the  death  of  Thackeray,  which 
occurred  at  the  end  of  this  year,  Mr.  Arnold  pro 
nounced  him  not  to  be  a  great  writer.  This  is  a 
judgment  which,  coming  from  any  one  else,  Mr. 
Arnold  himself  would  have  called  saugrenu.  If 
Thackeray  was  not  a  great  writer,  no  English  novelist 
was  so.  Vanity  Fair,  Esmond,  Barry  Lyndon,  and 
the  first  volume  of  Pendennis  are  scarcely  to  be 
matched  in  English  fiction. 

Although  Mr.  Arnold  was  sent  abroad  to  report  on 
primary  education  only,  he  also  contrived  to  see  some 
of  the  best  secondary  schools  in  France,  and  upon  his 
visits  to  them  he  founded  his  treatise  on  A  French  Eton, 
which  appeared  in  1864.  The  name  was  not  very 
happily  chosen.  Mr.  Arnold  was  easily  convicted  by 
Mr.  Stephen  Hawtrey  of  not  understanding  the  tutorial 
system  at  Eton.  Nobody  understands  the  tutorial 
system  at  Eton  except  Eton  men,  and  they  cannot 
explain  it.  But  for  the  rest  the  book,  besides  being 
most  agreeably  written,  is  both  interesting  and  impor 
tant.  Mr.  Arnold's  French  Eton  is  the  Lyceum  at 
Toulouse,  which  he  rather  minutely  describes.  It  is, 


70  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

or  was,  maintained  partly  by  the  State  and  partly 
by  the  Commune.  It  comprised  both  day-boys  and 
boarders ;  there  were  scholarships  open  to  competition, 
and,  by  way  of  a  conscience  clause,  there  was  a  Pro 
testant  minister  to  conduct  the  religious  teaching  of 
the  Protestant  pupils.  The  subjects  of  tuition,  which 
were  the  same  in  all  the  French  Lyceums,  differed 
chiefly  from  what  was  then  taught  at  Eton  by  in 
cluding  science  and  French  grammar.  Science  is  now 
taught  in  all  the  public  schools  of  England.  English 
Grammar  is  still,  I  believe,  neglected.  Nobody  made 
any  profit  out  of  these  Lyceums,  and  the  terms  were 
therefore  much  lower  than  in  our  public  schools,  ranging 
from  fifty  pounds  a  boarder  to  twenty  pounds  a  day 
boy.  It  is  a  misrepresentation  to  say  that  Mr.  Arnold 
compared  these  French  schools,  and  their  too  sys 
tematic  routine,  with  Eton,  or  Harrow,  or  his  own 
Rugby.  He  contrasted  them  with  the  schools  avail 
able  for  the  less  wealthy  portion  of  the  middle  classes 
in  England,  and,  in  spite  of  the  excellent  work  since 
done  by  the  Endowed  School  Commissioners,  he 
might  make  the  same  contrast  still.  Our  secondary 
education  is  still  the  weak  point  in  our  teaching,  and 
it  was  not  Mr.  Arnold's  fault  that  his  timely  counsels 
were  neglected. 

But  the  most  fascinating  part  of  a  delightful  book 
is  the  account  of  Lacordaire's  private  school  at  Sorreze. 
Here  the  payment  was  astonishingly  small,  varying 
from  five  to  fifteen  pounds  a  year.  Of  Lacordaire 
himself,  whom,  with  all  his  strictness,  his  pupils  did  not 
merely  respect  but  love,  Mr.  Arnold  paints  a  charming 
picture,  as  unlike  his  father  as  his  conscience  would 
let  him.  The  conclusion  he  draws  from  the  whole 


v.]  THE  OXFORD  CHAIR.  71 

matter  is  that  the  law  of  supply  and  demand  will  not 
suffice  for  education  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word. 
What  made  it,  according  to  his  view,  more  efficient  in 
France  than  in  England  was  first  supervision,  and 
secondly  publicity.  To  the  familiar  maxim  that  the 
State  had  better  leave  things  alone  he  opposed  Burke's 
definition  of  the  State  as  beneficence  acting  by  rule. 
From  Burke's  political  philosophy  Mr.  Arnold  drew 
most  of  his  own  lessons  in  politics,  and,  as  an  inspector 
of  schools  appointed  by  the  State,  it  was  natural  that 
he  should  disbelieve  in  the  sufficiency  of  private  enter 
prise.  So  far  as  elementary  education  was  concerned, 
he  had  his  way.  He  lived  to  see  it  made  compulsory, 
though  not  to  see  it  made  free.  The  upper  and  middle 
classes  were  left  to  educate  themselves,  or  to  go 
uneducated,  as  they  pleased. 


CHAPTER    VI. 

ESSA  YS  IN  CRITICISM. 

MR.  ARNOLD  was,  as  we  have  seen,  elected  Professor 
of  Poetry  at  Oxford  in  1857.  The  election  was  for  a 
period  of  five  years,  but  in  accordance  with  custom  he 
was  re-elected  for  a  similar  term  in  1862.  He  had 
more  than  justified  the  choice  of  the  university,  and 
his  literary  reputation  was  firmly  established.  At 
that  time  Mr.  Disraeli  was  Leader  of  the  Conservative 
party  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  at  the  very  height 
of  his  Parliamentary  powers.  No  politician  except 
Lord  Palmerston  had  then  more  influence  in  the 
country,  for  Mr.  Gladstone's  popularity  was  to  come, 
and  Lord  Derby's  never  came.  At  Aston  Clinton,  Sir 
Anthony  De  Eothschild's  house  in  Buckinghamshire, 
where  he  was  in  the  habit  of  staying,  Mr.  Arnold 
met  Mr.  Disraeli  on  the  27th  of  January  1864.  Mr. 
Disraeli  was  always  at  his  best  with  men  of  letters. 
He  sincerely  respected  them,  and  was  proud  to  be 
one  of  their  number.  On  this  occasion  he  was  very 
gracious  to.  Mr.  Arnold.  "You  have  a  great  future 
before  you,"  he  said,  "and  you  deserve  it."  He  then 
went  on  to  add  that  he  had  given  up  literature  because' 
he  was  not  one  of  those  who  could  do  two  things  at 
once,  but  that  he  admired  most  the  men  like  Cicero, 
who  could.  Bishop  Wilberforce  was  another  guest, 

72 


CHAP,  vi.]  ESS  A  YS  IX  CRITICISM.  73 

and  preached  the  next  day  a  sermon  which,  in  Mr. 
Arnold's  opinion,  showed  him  to  have  no  "real  power 
of  mind."  "A  truly  emotional  spirit,"  Mr.  Arnold 
wrote  to  his  mother,  "he  undoubtedly  has,  beneath 
his  outside  of  society-haunting  and  men-pleasing,  and 
each  of  the  two  lives  he  leads  gives  him  the  more  zest 
for  the  other."  It  was  clearly  the  Bishop  from  whom 
Mr.  Arnold  drew  the  type  that  "  make  the  best  of  both 
worlds."  There  are  probably  few  who  would  deny 
that  he  correctly  estimated  "  the  great  lord  bishop  of 
England,"  as  Wilberforce's  satellites  liked  to  call  him, 
and  as  he  liked  to  be  called.  His  appreciation  of 
Tennyson,  on  the  other  hand,  was  utterly  inadequate. 
"  I  do  not,"  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Dykes  Campbell  on  the 
22nd  of  September  1864,  "I  do  not  think  Tennyson 
a  great  and  powerful  spirit  in  any  line,  as  Goethe  was 
in  the  line  of  modern  thought,  Wordsworth  in  that  of 
contemplation,  Byron  even  in  that  of  passion;  and 
unless  a  poet,  especially  a  poet  at  this  time  of  day, 
is  that,  my  interest  in  him  is  only  slight,  and  my 
conviction  that  he  will  not  finally  stand  high  is  firm." 
It  is  strange  that  any  critic  should  attribute  want  of 
sympathy  with  modern  thought  to  the  author  of 
In  Memoriam.  It  is  stranger  still  that  he  should 
consider  Byron  a  greater  poet  than  Tennyson.  But, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  Mr.  Arnold  did  not  appre 
ciate  his  English  contemporaries.  That  reason  was 
certainlyjiot  envy  or  jealousy,  for  of  such  feelings  he 
was  incapable.  As  his  friend  Lord  Coleridge  said, 
they  "withered  in  his  presence."  The  prejudice  did! 
not  apply  to  foreigners.  He  idolised  Sainte-Beuve.j 
Nor  was  it  strictly  confined  to  contemporaries.  He 
w;is  never  just  to  Shelley,  and  not  till  the  close  of  his  £ 


74  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

life  to  Keats.  He  seems  to  have  got  it  into  his  head 
that  Tennyson  was  being  "run"  against  Wordsworth, 
which  is  the  last  thing  that  Tennyson  himself  would 
have  desired.  But  it  is  true  that  forty  years  ago 
Tennyson  suffered  a  good  deal  from  injudicious  ad 
mirers.  His  May  Queen,  and  his  Airy,  Fairy  Lilian 
were  extolled  as  gems  of  the  purest  water.  Rash, 
however,  as  this  indiscriminate  praise  may  have  been, 
it  should  not  have  prevented  Mr.  Arnold  from  admir 
ing  Tithonus. 

^55ay^Lj2^^^a.swLJi£p^ared^in __1_8651     It  is  Mr. 

/  Arnold's  most  important  work  in  prose,  the  central 
book,  so  to  speak,  of  his  life.  Although  it  was  not  £i. 
first  widely_read,  it  made  an  immediate  and  a  pro 
found  impression  upon  competent  judges  of  literature. 
There  had  been  nothing  like  it  since  Hazlitt.  There 
has  been  nothing  like  it  since.  Mr.  Arnold's  judg- 

j  ments  are  sometimes  eccentric,  and  the  place  which  he 
assigns  to  the  two  De  Gu6rins  is  altogether  out  of 
proportion.  But  the  value  of  Essays  in  Criticism  does 
not  depend  upon  this  or  that  isolated  opinion  ex 
pressed  by  its  author.  Mr.  Arnold  did  not  merely 
criticise  books  himself.  He  taught  others  how  to 
criticise  them.  He  laid  down  principles,  if  he  did  not 
always  keep  the  principles  he  laid  down.  Nobody, 
after  reading  Essays  in  Criticism,  has  any  excuse  for 
not  being  a  critic.  Mr.  Euskin  once  lamented  that 
he  had  made  a  great  number  of  entirely  foolish  people 
take  an  interest  in  art,  and  if  there  were  too  few 
critics  in  1865,  there  may  be  too  many  now.  But 
Mr.  Arnold  is  not  altogether  responsible  for  the 
quantity.  He  has  more  to  do  with  the  quality,  and 
the  quality  has  beyond  question  been  improved. 


vi.]  VSSAYS  IN  CRITICISM.  75 


The  famous  Preface  to  Essays  in  CrUin^n  was  in  the 
second  edition,  the  edition  of  18G9,  curtailed,  and, 
perhaps  wisely,  shorn  of  some  ephemeral  allusions. 
It  contains,  as  every  one  knows,  the  exquisite  address 
to  Oxford  :  "  beautiful  city,  so  venerable,  so  lovely,  so 
unravaged  by  the  fierce  intellectual  life  of  our  century, 
so  serene."  The  negative  part  of  this  praise  could 
hardly  be  given  now.  Even  in  18G5  Oxford  was  not 
quite  so  free  from  intellectual  disturbances  as  in  Mr. 
Arnold's  undergraduate  days.  But  the  question  he 
asked  then  may  be  asked  still  :  "  Arid  yet,  steeped 
in  sentiment  as  she  lies,  spreading  her  gardens  to 
the  moonlight,  and  whispering  from  4her  towers  the 
last  enchantments  of  the  Middle  Age,  who  will  deny 
that  Oxford,  by  her  ineffable-  charm,  keeps  ever  calling 
us  nearer  to  the  true  goal  of  all  of  us,  to  the  ideal, 
to  perfection  —  to  beauty,  in  a  word,  which  is  only 
truth  seen  from  another  side,  —  nearer,  perhaps,  than 
all  the  science  of  Tubingen  ?  "  Of  science,  in  the 
narrow  or  physical  sense,  Mr  Arnold  knew  little  or 
nothing,  and  he  had  not  his  father's  love  of  history. 
But  of  the  old  Oxford  education,  literce  humaniwes, 
there  have  been  few  finer  products.  Excellent,  in  a 
lighter  style,  is  his  apology  to  Mr.  Wright,  the  trans 
lator  of  Homer,  for  having  been  too  vivacious.  "  Yes, 
the  world  will  soon  be  the  Philistines'  !  and  then  with 
every  voice,  not  of  thunder,  silenced,  and  the  whole 
earth  filled  and  ennobled  every  morning  by  the 
magnificent  roaring  of  thq  young  lions  of  the  Daily 
Telegraph,  we  shall  all  yawn  in  one  another's  faces 
with  the  dismallest,  the  most  unimpeachable  gravity." 

For  it  is  in  this  volume,  in  his  essay  on  Heine,  that 
Mr.  Arnold  first  uses  the  word  "Philistine,"  borrowed 


76  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

of  course  from  the  German,  and  it  played  afterwards 
so  large  a  part  in  his  philosophy,  that  the  passage 
may  as  well  be  quoted  in  full. 

"Philistinism!  —  we  have  not  the  expression  in 
English.  Perhaps  we  have  not  the  word  because  we 
have  so  much  of  the  thing.  At  Soli  I  imagine  they 
did  not  talk  of  Solecisms ;  and  here,  at  the  very 
head-quarters  of  Goliath,  nobody  talks  of  Philistinism. 
The  French  have  adopted  the  term  tpicier  (grocer),  to 
designate  the  sort  of  being  whom  the  Germans  desig 
nate  by  the  term  Philistine ;  but  the  French  term- 
besides  that  it  casts  a  slur  upon  a  respectable  class, 
composed  of  living  and  susceptible  members,  while  the 
original  Philistines  are  dead  and  buried  long  ago — is 
really,  I  think,  in  itself  much  less  apt  and  expressive 
than  the  German  term.  Efforts  have  been  made  to 
obtain  in  English  some  term  equivalent  to  Philister  or 
tpicier',  Mr.  Carlyle  has  made  several  such  efforts: 
1  respectability  with  its  thousand  gigs,'  he  says;  well, 
the  occupant  of  every  one  of  these  gigs  is,  Mr.  Carlyle 
means,  a  Philistine.  However,  this  word  respectable 
is  far  too  valuable  a  word  to  be  thus  perverted  from 
its  proper  meaning ;  if  the  English  are  ever  to  have  a 
word  for  the  thing  we  are  speaking  of — and  so  pro 
digious  are  the  changes  which  the  modern  spirit  is 
introducing,  that  even  we  English  shall,  perhaps,  one 
day  come  to  want  such  a  word — I  think  we  had  much 
better  take  the  term  Philistine  itself." 

The  Philistines  should,  perhaps,  have  been  intro 
duced  to  our  notice  in  the  first  essay,  which  deals 
with  the  function  of  criticism.  Here,  however,  we 
get  another  of  Mr.  Arnold's  favourite  sentiments,  his 
worship  of  Burke.  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  say  a 


vi. J  ESSAYS  IN  CRITICISM.  77 

word  against  that  great  man — great  in  politics,  great 
in  literature,  passionate  in  patriotism,  fertile  in  ideas. 
But  to  the  proposition  that  he  was  the  greatest  writer 
of  English  prose  I  respectfully  -demur. ;  The  greatest 
writer  of  English  prose  is  Shakespeare.  I  do  not 
think  that  Burke  wrote  as  pure  English  as  his  com 
patriot  Goldsmith,  or  even  as  Swift.  Eloquent, 
massively  eloquent,  as  he  can  be,  he  does  not  in  my 
judgment  rise  to  the  level  of  Bacon,  or  Milton,  or 
Dryden,  or  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  In  this  essay,  per 
haps  the  best  he  ever  wrote,  Mr.  Arnold  quotes  Burke's 
"  return  upon  himself "  in  the  Thoughts  on  French 
Affairs,  as  one  of  the  finest  things  in  English  literature, 
and  yet  characteristically  un-English.  Well,  Burke 
was  not  an  Englishman.  He  was  an  Irishman,  and  he 
sometimes  indulged  in  the  "blind  hysterics  of  the 
Celt."  The  passage  here  quoted  by  Mr.  Arnold  is  a 
very  fine  one,  and  deserves  his  panegyric.  "  If,"  says 
Burke,  "a  great  change  is  to  be  made  in  human 
affairs,  the  minds  of  men  will  be  fitted  to  it;  the 
general  opinions  and  feelings  will  draw  that  way. 
Every  fear,  every  hope  will  forward  it,  and  then  they 
who  persist  in  opposing  this  mighty  current  in  human 
affairs  will  appear  rather  to  resist  the  decrees  of 
Providence  itself  than  the  mere  designs  of  men. 
They  will  not  be  resolute  and  firm,  but  perverse 
and  obstinate."  Mr.  Arnold,  in  citing  these  noble 
words,  written  in  December  1791,  has  fallen  into 
a  strange  historical  error.  He  calls  these  Thoughts 
on  French  Affairs  "some  of  the  last  pages"  Burke 
"ever  wrote."  Burke  died  in  1797.  The  Letter 
to  a  Noble  Lord  and  the  three  Letters  on  a 
Regicide  Peace  were  written  in  1796.  He  was  past 


78  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

returning  upon  himself  then.  Except  where  Ireland 
was  concerned,  the  French  Revolution  had  made  him 
incapable  of  seeing  more  than  one  side  to  a  question. 
The  British  Constitution  had  always  been  his  idol. 
He  forgot,  as  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  says,  that  nothing 
human  is  sacredj 

fThe  first  principle  of  criticism  was,  said  Mr.  Arnold, 
disinterestedness.      This   end   was    to   be  attained   by 
"keeping  aloof  from  practice,"  by  a  free  play  of  the 
f  mind,  and  by  the  avoidance_of  ulterior  consiclejcations, 
i  political,  social,  or  religious.  /  Two  of  these  rules  are 
negativeT^^^ee^T^or  that  matter,  are  the  Ten  Com 
mandments.      The  third  is  vague.      It  is  difficult  to 
believe  that   Mr.  Arnold  would  have   been  a  worse 
critic  if   he   had  written    more  poetry  after   he  was 
thirty-five.      And   he   certainly   did   not  agree   with 
Mark  Pattison  in  holding  that  the  man  who  wanted 
to  persuade  anybody  of  anything  was  not  a  man  of 
-letters.     He  was  a  missionar^airaost  an  apostle,  the 
\  antagonist  of  Philistinism,  the  champion  of  sweetness 
and  light.      His  own  particular  criticisms  were  not 
always,    to    use    his    ow-n    phrase,    "of    the   centre." 
"""JlHis  great  and   distinguishing  merit  as  a  critic  was 
IJthat  he   had  a  theory,  that  he   regarded  his  subject 
[pa  whole,  that  he  could  not  merely  give  reasons  for 
his    opinions,    but    show   that  they   were   something 
/(more  than   opinions,   that   they  were   the  deliberate 
^judgments   of    a    trained   intelligence   working  upon 
a  systematic  order  of  ideas,  f    In  this  very  Essay  he 
\  contrasts   the  disinterestedness  of  French   with   the 
\  partisanship   of   English   criticism,   and    the    passage 
is    important,    on    more    grounds    than    one.      "An 
organ,"  he   says,    "like   the   Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 


vi.)  ESS  A  YS  IN  CRITICISM.  79 

having  for  its  main  function  to  understand  and  utter 
the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world, 
existing,  it  may  be  said,  as  just  an  organ  for  the  free 
play  of  the  mind,  we  have  not;  but  we  have  the 
Edinburgh  Jfcview,  existing  as  an  organ  of  the  Old 
Whigs,  and  for  as  much  play  of  the  mind  as  may  suit 
its  being  that ;  we  have  the  Quarterly  Review,  existing 
as  an  organ  of  the  Tories,  and  for  as  much  play  of 
mind  as  may  suit  its  being  that ;  we  have  the  British 
Quaxierly_Review,  existing  as  an  organ  of  the  political 
Dissenters,  and  for  as  much  play  of  mind  as  may  suit 
its  being  that ;  we  have  the  Times,  existing  as  an 
organ  of  the  common,  satisfied,  well-to-do  Englishman, 
and  for  as  much  play  of  mind  as  may  suit  its  being 
that."  Even  in  the  great  days  of  M.  Buloz,  when  the 
llevuc  des  Deux  Mondes  really  was  the  first  literary 
organ  of  Europe,  it  was  too  aristocratic  and  too 
orthodox  to  deserve  the  praise  of  pure  intellectual 
impartiality.  But  it  was  true  then,  and,  with  quali 
fications,  it  is  true  now,  that  French  magazines  and/ 
newspapers  treat  literature  far  more  seriously  than*- 
our  own.  What  change  there  has  been  since  1865 
on  this  side  of  the  Channel  is  all  for  the  better,  and 
is  due  to  no  man  so  much  as  to  Matthew  Arnold., 
But,  as  I  have  said,  I  quote  this  passage  for  another 
reason.  It  is  the  first  conspicuous  instance  of  a 
fault  which  grew  upon  Mr.  Arnold  until  at  last  it 
almost  destroyed  the  pleasure  of  reading  his  prose. 
I  mean  the  trick  of  repetition.  Repetition  is  not 
always  a  vice.  Delicately  managed  by  great  writers, « 
it  may  be  a  powerful  mode  of  heightening  rhetorical 
effect.  But  the  art  of  using  without  abusing  it  is  a  | 
very  difficult,  and  a  very  delicate  one.  Beautiful 


SO  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  |C«AP. 

examples  of  it  may  be  found  in  the  Collects  of  the 
English  Church.  Take,  for  instance,  the  Collect  for 
St.  John  the  Evangelist's  Day  : — 

"Merciful  Lord,  we  beseech  thee  to  cast  thy  bright 
beams  of  light  upon  thy  Church,  that  it,  being  en 
lightened  by  the  doctrine  of  thy  blessed  Apostle  and 
Evangelist  Saint  John,  may  so  walk  in  the  light  of 
thy  truth,  that  it  may  at  length  attain  to  the  light 
of  everlasting  life;  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 

Here  the  repetition  of  the  word  "light,"  with  the 
still  more  beautiful  repetition  of  the  word  "charity" 
in  the  great  chapter  of  Corinthians,  is  a  real  artistic 
merit.     It  charms,  and  it  tells.     But  the  words  "as 
may  suit  its  being  that "  have  no  attraction  or  distinc 
tion  of  any  kind.    The  first  time  they  occur,  one  passes 
them  over  without  much  notice.    The  fourth  time  they 
become  almost  intolerable.     It  is  amazing  that  a  man 
of  Mr.  Arnold's  fastidious  taste  and  true  scholarship 
should   not   have   instinctively   avoided   so   paltry   a 
device.     But  the  fact  is  that  Mr.  Arnold  had  the  gift 
I  of  seeing  his  own  faults  without  seeing  that  they  were 
]  his  own.     His  Essay  on  the  Literary  Influence  of  Aca- 
1  demies  is  a  most  brilliant  and  entertaining  one,  much 
letter  worth  reading  than  Swift's  on  the  same  sub 
ject.     He  attributes  to  Academies  the  power  of  saving 
xnations  from  the  "note  of  provinciality."     Nowhere  is 
Mr.  Arnold's  peculiar  gift  of  urbane  and  humourous 
persuasiveness    better    displayed    than    in    his    own 
account  of  how  the  French  Academy  was  founded  by 
Richelieu.      He    quotes    a    sentence    from    Bossuet's 
panegyric   of   St.    Paul,    hardly  to   be   surpassed  for 
eloquence  and  grandeur.     He  contrasts  it  with  some 
rather  coarse  specimens  of  Burke  and  Jeremy  Taylor 


vi.]  B88AY8  Itf  ORtMClStf.  81 

at  their  worst.  These,  he  says,  arc  provincial,  I 
Bossuet's  prose  is  prose  of  the  centre.  Very  likely  he 
is  right.  Very  likely  an  academy,  if  it  could  not 
bring  us  all  up  to  the  level  of  Bossuet,  would  have 
kept  great  English  writers  more  within  bounds.  An 
English  Academy  might,  as  Mr.  Arnold  implies,  have 
given  Addison  more  ideas.  Joubert  might  have  had 
fewer  ideas  if  there  had  been  no  French  Academy. 
Although  it  seems  to  me  paradoxical,  I  will  not  deny  it. 
But  then  suddenly  one  lights,  or  rather  stumbles,  upon 
this  sentence.  "  In  short,  where  there  is  no  centre 
like  an  academy,  if  you  have  genius  and  powerful  ideas, 
you  are  apt  not  to  have  the  best  style  going ;  if  you 
have  precision  of  style  and  not  genius,  you  are  apt  not 
to  have  the  best  ideas  going."  Is  that  "prose  of  the 
centre  "  ?  Is  it  not  rather  tricky,  flashy,  provincial  1 

Mr.  Arnold's  affection  for  Maurice  and  Eugenie  de  I 
Gue>in,  that  hapless  brother  and  sister  who  excited 
the  sympathy  of  Sainte-Beuve,  is  almost  too  gentle 
and  touching  for  criticism.  And  his  favourite 
quotation  from  Maurice  de  Guerin's  Centaure  has 
no  doubt  a  singular  charm.  But  when  it  conies 
to  saying  that  the  talent  of  this  young  Frenchman, 
now  almost  forgotten  in  his  own  country,  had  "  more 
of  distinction  and  power  than  the  talent  of  Keats," 
the  English  reader  must  feel  that  if  this  is  to  be 
"central,"  provinciality  has  its  consolations.  But 
indeed,  Mr.  Arnold's  reputation  would  have  stood  | 
higher  if  he  had  left  Keats  alone.  He  cannot  even  quote 
him  correctly.  Keats  did  not  write,  as  in  the  essay 
on  Maurice  de  Gue'rin  Mr.  Arnold  makes  him  write, 

"  moving  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 
Of  cold  ablution  round  Earth's  human  shores." 


82  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

He  wrote  pure  ablution.     What  a  difference !     How 
tame   and    awkward    is    the    one.;     how    supremely 
.  perfect   is    the    other.      Matthew    Arnold's    avowed 
r\ master    in    criticism    was    Sainte-Beuve.     He    could 
I   [hardly   have    had   a   better.      The    doctrine   of  dis 
interestedness  is  undoubtedly  Sainte-Beuve's,  and  may 
1  be  found  at  the  beginning   of   the  essay  on    Made- 
V  moiselle  de  1'Espinasse  : — 

"  Le  critique  ne  doit  point  avoir  de  partialite  et  n'est 
d'aucune  cdterie.  II  n'epouse  les  gens  que  par  un 
temps,  et  ne  fait  que  traverser  les  groupes  divers 
sans  s'y  enchainer  jamais.  II  passe  resolument  d'un 
camp  a  1'autre;  et  de  ce  qu'il  a  rendu  justice  d'un 
cdte  ce  ne  lui  est  jamais  une  raison  de  la  refuser  a  ce 
qui  est  vis-a-vis.  Ainsi,  tour  a  tour,  il  est  a  Eome 
ou  a  Carthage,  tantdt  pour  Argos  et  tantdt  pour  Ilion. " 
— "  The  critic  ought  not  to  be  partial,  and  has  no  set. 
He  takes  up  people  only  for  a  time,  and  does  no  more 
than  pass  through  different  groups  without  ever  chain 
ing  himself  down.  He  passes  firmly  from  one  camp 
to  the  other ;  and  never,  because  he  has  done  justice 
to  one  side,  refuses  the  same  to  the  opposite  party. 
Thus,  turn  by  turn,  he  is  at  Rome  and  at  Carthage, 
sometimes  for  Argos,  arid  sometimes  for  Troy." 

"  Tros  Tyriusque  mihi  nullo  discrimine  agetur." 

But  if  it  was  to  Sainte-Beuve,  and  not  to  George 
Sand,  that  Mr.  Arnold  owed  his  excessive  fondness 
for  the  De  Guerins,  the  benefit  was  a  doubtful  one. 
They  fill,  as  Mr.  Saintsbury  says,  too  large  a  space  in 
a  volume  which  contains  such  subjects  as  Heine, 
Spinoza,  and  Marcus  Aurelius.  Mr.  Arnold,  if  I  may 
\  say  so,  carried  too  far  his  belief,  sound  enough  so  far 


vi.]  ESSA  )  .s'  y.V  CRITICISM.  83 

as  it  goes,  in  the  superiority  of  French  prose  to  French 
verse.  It  is  perhaps  impossible  for  an  Englishman  to 
appreciate  French  Alexandrines,  unless,  like  Gibbon, 
he  be  half  a  Frenchman  himself.  But  it  is  rash  for  a 
foreigner  to  say  that  the  metre  of  Racine  is  inade 
quate,  and  the  verse  of  the  Phcdre  not  a  vehicle  for 
"high  poetry."  And  what  of  this  couplet  from 
Victor  Hugo  1 

"  Et  la  Seine  fuyait  avec  un  triste  bruit, 
Sous  ce  grand  chevalier  du  gouftre  et  de  la  nuit." 

Mr.  Arnold  disliked  Alexandrines  as  he  disliked  the  \ 
"  heroic  "  couplets  of  Pope.  But  then,  these  personal 
distastes  are,  as  he  has  himself  taught  us,  eccentricities,x 
which  criticism  rejects  as  irrelevant.  That  "  Addison 
has  in  his  prose  an  intrinsically  better  vehicle  for  his 
genius  than  Pope  in  his  couplet "  is  not  a  self-evident 
proposition.  It  must  be  proved,  and  Mr.  Arnold  makes 
no  attempt  to  prove  it.  "  Pope,  in  his  Essay  on  Man" 
says  Mr.  Arnold,  is  "  thus  at  a  disadvantage  compared 
with  Lucretius  in  his  poem  on  Nature :  Lucretius  has 
an  adequate  vehicle,  Pope  has  not.  Nay,  though 
Pope's  genius  for  didactic  poetry  was  not  less  than 
that  of  Horace,  while  his  satirical  power  was  certainly 
greater,  still  one's  taste  receives,  I  cannot  but  think, 
a  certain  satisfaction  when  one  reads  the  Epistles  and 
Satires  of  Horace,  which  it  fails  to  receive  when  one 
reads  the  Satires  and  Epistles  of  Pope."  Surely  this 
is  paradoxical,  if  not  perverse.  That  Lucretius  was 
a  far  greater  poet  than  Pope  few  would,  I  suppose, 
deny,  and  his  best  hexameters  are  hardly  equalled  even 
by  Virgil's.  But  few  and  far  between  are  the  poetical 
lines,  such  as 

"  Graecia  barbaria.-  lento  collisa  duello," 


84  MATTHEW  ABNOLB.  [CHAP. 

in  the  Satires  and  Epistles  of  Horace.  Horace  wrote 
them  in  a  professedly  prose  style  (pedestris  sermo)  not 
in  poetic  form,  and  to  an  ordinary  ear  his  numbers 
(I  am  not,  of  course,  referring  to  the  Odes)  are  far  less 
tuneful  than  Pope's.  Strange,  too,  almost  grotesque, 
is  the  judgment  that  Shelley  had  neither  intellectual 
force  enough,  nor  culture  enough,  to  master  the  use 
of  words.  Was  it  not  this  Shelley  who  wrote  the 
"  Adonais,"  and  the  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind"  1  The 
comparison  of  Mademoiselle  de  Guerin  with  Miss 
Emma  Tatham  is  rather  below  Mr.  Arnold.  Poor 
Miss  Tatham  and  her  "union  in  church-fellowship 
with  the  worshippers  at  Hawley  Square  Chapel,  Mar 
gate,"  might  have  been  allowed  to  rest  in  peace.  It  is 
never  worth  while  to  sneer  at  other  people's  religion, 
even  for  the  pleasure  of  contrasting  Margate  with 
Languedoc. 

The  essay  on  Heine,  from  which  I  have  already 
quoted  the  famous  passage  about  the  Philistines,  con 
tains  also  a  definition^ of_poetry  as  "  the  mo&t4>eautiful, 
impressive,  and  widely  effective  mode  of  saying 
things."  Perhaps  this  is  a  description  rather  than  a 
definition,  and  perhaps,  on  Mr.  Arnold's  own  showing, 
it  would  not  apply  to  the  French  language.  But  as 
a  general  truth  it  is  striking,  and  it  is  justified  by  the 
experience  of  mankind.  In  this  same  essay,  how 
ever,  he  broaches  almost,  if  not  quite,  for  the  first 
time  his  theory  of  class,  which  led  him  altogether 
astray.  Caste  is  a  reality.  Class  is  a  fiction.  To 
make  classes  real  it  would  be  necessary  to  prohibit 
intermarriage,  or  rather  it  would  have  been  necessary 
to  do  so  centuries  ago.  Even  then  there  would  still 
be,  as  Sam  Slick  says,  a  great  deal  of  human  nature  in 


vi.]  ESS  A  YS  IN  CRITICISM.  86 

people.  "Aristocracies,"  Mr.  Arnold  tells  us,  -'are,  as 
such,  naturally  impenetrable  by  ideas;  but  their  in 
dividual  members  have  high  courage  and  a  turn  for 
breaking  bounds ;  and  a  man  of  genius,  who  is  the 
born  child  of  the  idea,  happening  to  be  born  in  the 
aristocratic  ranks,  chafes  against  the  obstacles  which 
prevent  him  from  fully  developing  it."  All  this  is 
very  fanciful.  Byron  and  Shelley  were  "  members  of 
the  aristocratic  class."  What  then  1  They  were  Byron 
and  Shelley.  They  were  as  unlike  each  other  as  two 
contemporary  Englishmen  could  well  be.  Byron  was) 
childishly  and  vulgarly  proud  of  his  social  position.] 
Shelley  cared  no  more  for  it  than  he  cared  for  the[ 
binomial  theorem.  The  Scottish  peasantry  are  not 
naturally  impenetrable  to  ideas.  But  Burns  chafed 
against  the  obstacles  which  prevented  him  from  fully 
developing  his  genius,  and  if,  as  somebody  said,  Byron 
was  a  Harrow  boy,  Burns  was  a  plough  boy.  The  per 
centage  of  impenetrability  to  ideas  is  probably  much 
the  same  in  one  class  as  in  another.  Mr.  Arnold 
pronounces  Heine's  weakness  to  have  been,  not  as 
Goethe  said,  deficiency  in  love,  but  "deficiency  in 
self-respect,  in  true  dignity  of  character."  But  this  is 
not  literary  criticism,  arid  to  Heine's  literary  great 
ness  no  man  has  paid  more  sympathetic  homage  than 
Matthew  Arnold. 

The  essay  on  "Pagan  and  Mediaeval  Religious 
Sentiment "  is  best  known  by  the  charming  transla 
tion  from  the  fifteenth  Idyll  of  Theocritus  which  it 
contains.  But  the  essay  has  other,  and  perhaps  higher, 
merits  than  this.  Gorgo  and  Praxinoe  are  indeed  de 
lightfully  natural  characters.  The  Hymn  to  Adonis  is 
a  beautiful  and  highly  finished  piece  of  composition. 


86  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

But  Theocritus  was  pre-eminently  the  poet  of  passion 
and  of  nature.  This  satirical  sketch  of  town  life 
is  one  of  the  least  Theocritean  things  in  him.  It  is, 
however,  admirably  suited  to  Mr.  Arnold's  purpose, 
\  which  was  to  contrast  Paganism  with  Medievalism, 
Theocritus  jpith  St.  Francis.  Side  by  side  with  the 
Hymn  to  Adonis  he  sets  the  Canticle  of  St.  Francis, 
and  thus  he  comments  upon  them. 

"Now,  the  poetry  of  Theocritus's  hymn  is  poetry 
treating  the  world  according  to  the  demand  of  the 
senses ;  the  poetry  of  St.  Francis's  hymn  is  poetry 
treating  the  world  according  to  the  demand  of  the 
heart  and  imagination.  The  first  takes  the  world 
by  its  outward,  sensible  side;  the  second  by  its  in 
ward,  symbolical  side.  The  first  admits  as  much  of 
the  world  as  is  pleasure-giving ;  the  second  admits 
the  whole  world,  rough  and  smooth,  painful  and 
pleasure-giving,  all  alike,  but  all  transfigured  by  the 
power  of  a  spiritual  emotion,  all  brought  under  a  law 
of  supersensual  love,  having  its  seat  in  the  soul." 

That  is  Matthew  Arnold,  as  it  seems  to  me,  at  his 
very  best.  Admirable  also  is  this  : — "I  wish  to  decide 
nothing  as  of  my  own  authority;  the  great  art  of 
criticism  is  to  get  oneself  out  of  the  way  and  to  let 
humanity  decide."  But  at  the  close  of  the  essay  he 
strikes  a  lower  note,  he  almost  touches  slang.  After  a 
fine  translation  of  a  noble  passage  in  Sophocles,  he  says, 
"  Let  St.  Francis — nay,  or  Luther  either — beat  that ! " 
This  is  not  a  dignified  finale  to  a  classical  piece. 

The  essay  on  Joubert  is  one  of  Mr.  Arnold's  most 
charming  and  most  characteristic  studies.  Joubert  is 
not,  perhaps — indeed  Mr.  Arnold  admits  it — a  great 
writer.  But  he  is  a  most  subtle  and  suggestive  one. 


vi.]  ES8A  Y8  IN  CRITICISM.  87 

He  is  also  one  whom  few  English  readers  would  have 
found  out  for  themselves,  and  is  therefore  very  well 
suited  for  the  sort  of  essay  in  which  Matthew  Arnold 
shone.  The  comparison  with  Coleridge,  though  striking  \ 
and  brilliant,  is  not  very  fruitful,  for  it  is  rather  a  con-  ( 
trast  than  a  parallel.  The  translations  from  Joubert's 
Thought*,  exquisitely  felicitous  as  they  are,  seem  to 
me  too  /  paraphrastic,  |too  far  from  the  original.  The 
rich  excellence  of  this  essay  lies  in  its  description  of 
Joubert's  character,  and  of  the  intellectual  atmosphere 
in  which  he  lived.  There  is  a  good  deal  in  Joubert,  | 
whose  life  covered  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth ^ 
•century,  more  like  Newman  than  Coleridge.  This,  for 
instance  :  "  Do  not  bring  into  the  domain  of  reasoning 
that  which  belongs  to  our  innermost  feeling.  State 
truths  of  sentiment,  and  do  not  try  to  prove  them. 
There  is  a  danger  in  such  proofs,  for  in  arguing  it  is 
necessary  to  treat  that  which  is  in  question  as  something 
problematic  :  now  that  which  we  accustom  ourselves  to 
treat  as  problematic,  ends  by  appearing  to  us  as  really 
doubtful.  .  .  .  '  Fear  God '  has  made  many  men  pious ; 
the  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God  have  made  many 
men  atheists."  There  is  a  passage  in  the  Grammar  of 
Assent  which  may  well  have  been  suggested  by  that. 
Joubert  is  not,  and  never  could  be,  a  popular  author,  \ 
and  much  of  his  peculiar  aroma  cannot  be  preserved] 
in  translation.  But  of  religious  sentiment,  as  dis 
tinguished  from  theological  dogma,  there  have  been 
few  such  fascinating  teachers,  and  this  no  doubt  it 
was,  not  merely  the  praise  of  Sainte-Beuve,  which 
recommended  him  to  Matthew  Arnold.  Those  who 
deny  the  possibility  of  undogmatic  Christianity  must, 
among  other  things^  explain  Joubert  away. 


88  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

»       The  two  strictly  philosophical  essays  are  devoted  re- 

\  spectively  to  Spinoza  and  to  Marcus  Aurelius.  For  the 
essay  on  Joubert  is  more  than  half  literary,  while  the 
others  are  literature  pure  and  simple.  Of  Matthew 
Arnold  as  a  philosopher  it  may  be  said  that,  though 
clear,  he  was  not  deep,  and  that  though  gentle,  he  was 
not  dull.  He  abhorred  pedantry  so  much  that  he  shrank 
from  system,  but  he  always  had  a  keen  insight  into  his 
author's  meaning,  and  he  was  a  master  of^  lucid  ex- 

l  position.  His  account  of  Baruch,  or  Benedict,  Spinoza, 
cast  out  of  the  Portuguese  synagogue  at  Amsterdam 
with  a  curse  that  Ernulphus  might  have  envied,  is 
singularly  attractive,  as  indeed  is  the  man  himself. 
Expelled  by  the  Jews,  Spinoza  never  became  a 
Christian.  But  in  his  life  he  was  faultless,  and  no 
man  better  fulfilled  the  injunction  of  the  prophet 
Micah,  "  Do  justice  and  -love  mercy,  and  walk  humbly 
with  thy  God."  Although  he  laboured,  like  so  many 
profoundly  religious  men,  under  the  imputation  of 
atheism,  he  was  really,  as  Goethe  said  of  him,  "  Gott- 
betrunken,"  intoxicated  with  the  divine  nature,  which 
he  felt  around  him  as  well  as  above  him.  The  Bible, 
I  that  is  to  say  the  Old  Testament,  was  his  favourite 
I  book,  and  the  subject  of  his  constant  study.  He  was 
the  first  and  greatest  of  Biblical  critics  in  the  free, 
modern  sense  of  the  term.  Being,  of  course,  a  Hebrew 
scholar,  and  thoroughly  acquainted  with  Oriental 
modes  of  expression,  he  readily  perceived,  even  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  that  many  scriptural  stories 
which  popular  theology  even  now  regards  as  miraculous 
were  not  so  intended  by  those  who  wrote  them.  Mr. 
\  Arnold  does  not  deal  with  Spinoza's  ethics.  They  go 

deeper  than  he  cared  to  penetrate.     But  he  gives  an 


vi.]  ESS  A  YS  IN  CRITICISM.  89 

excellent  summary  of  the  Tradatus  Tfieologico-Politicus, 
a  treatise  on  Church  and  State.  That  grand  old  text, 
"Where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty," 
illustrates  at  once  the  politics  and  the  theology  of 
Spinoza.  When  Mr.  Arnold  wrote,  the  only  English 
translation  of  Spinoza,  who  composed  in  Latin,  was 
almost  incredibly  bad.  Tfyere  is  now  a  remarkably 
good  one  by  the  late  Mr.  Robert  Elwes  of  Corpus 
Christi  College,  -Oxford. 

Of  Marcus  Aurelius  Mr.  Arnold  was  a  devotee.    And  — 
indeed  there  are  few  nobler  figures  in  history  than) 
this  humble  and  pious  man  who,  placed  at  the  head  of 
the  Roman  Empire  when  the  Roman  Empire  was  co 
extensive  with  the  civilised  world,  wrote  his  imperish-, 
able    maxims   of   morality   in    the    intervals    of    his! 
Dacian  campaigns.     It  is  true  that  he  persecuted  the^ 
Christians.     Polycarp  of  Smyrna  suffered  under  him. 
But,  as   Mr.    Arnold   says,   he   did   it   in   ignorance.  >• 
He  died  in   180,  and  never  saw  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  or  the  Gospel  of  St.  John.     In  his  Meditations 
he  never  speaks  of  the  Christians  at  all.     He  knew  * 
nothing  about   the  teaching  of  Christ,  which  would/ 
have   interested   him   so  profoundly.      Like   Tacitus 
a  century  earlier,   he  regarded  the  Christians  as   an  / 
obscure  sect  of  the  Jews,  morose  fanatics,  despisers  of  | 
law  and  reason,  enemies  of  the  human  race.     Constan 
tino  in  the  next  century  discovered  the   truth,  and 
became  a  Christian.      But   Marcus  Aurelius  was  an 
infinitely  better  man  than  Constantine.      In  him  we 
have   Pagan   morality   at   the   highest  point  it  ever 
attained,  as  in  Petronius  we  have  it  at  the  lowest. 
No  comparison  between   Christianity  and   Paganism 
can  be  fair  which  rejects  either  one  of  these  pictures  or 


90  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP.  vi. 

the  other.  The  world,  said  Plato,  would  never  be 
perfect  until  kings  became  philosophers,  or  philo 
sophers  became  kings.  The  world  is  not  likely  ever 
to  be  perfect.  But  Marcus  was  a  true  philosopher 
on  a  throne.  He  was  a  real  Stoic,  yet  with  some 
thing  strangely  like  Christian  humility,  which  the 
Stoics  altogether  lacked.  He  "remains,"  says  Mr. 
.  Arnold,  "  the  especial  friend  and  comforter  of  all 
I  clear-headed  and  scrupulous,  yet  pure-hearted  and 
up  ward- striving  men,  in  those  ages  most  especially 
that  walk  by  sight,  not  by  faith,  and  yet  have  no  open 
vision :  he  cannot  give  such  souls,  perhaps,  all  they 
yearn  for,  but  he  gives  them  much  ;  and  what  he  gives 
them  they  can  receive."  The  Greek  of  Marcus 
^  Aurelius  is  hard  and  crabbed — the  Greek  of  a  Roman. 
Even  scholars  will  be  glad  to  read  him  in  the  accurate, 
if  not  very  elegant,  version  of  Mr.  Long.  He  owed 
\  much,  perhaps  more  than  Mr.  Arnold  allows,  to 
I  Epictetus,  and  he  gratefully  acknowledges  his  debt. 
Epictetii3  was  a  slave.  At  the  opposite  ends  of  the 
long  ladder  which  made  up  Roman  civilisation  before 
Christianity  became  the  faith  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
these  two  great  men  are  inseparably  connected  by 
affinity  of  soul.  "The  idea  of  a  polity,"  wrote  the 
Emperor,  "in  which  there  is  the  same  law  for  all,  a 
polity  administered  with  regard  to  equal  rights  and 
equal  freedom  of  speech,  and  the  idea  of  a  kingly 
government  which  respects  most  of  all  the  freedom  of 
the  governed."  This  ideal  was  very  imperfectly 
realised  in  the  Roman  State.  But  is  it  perfectly 
realised  now  1 


CHAPTER    VII. 

THE  END  OF  THE   PROFESSORSHIP. 

MR.  ARNOLD  held  the  Professorship  of  Poetry  at 
Oxford  for  ten  years,  from  1857  to  1867.  He  was 
twice  elected  for  periods  of  five  years  each.  But  for 
him,  as  for  the  President  of  the  United  States,  a  third 
term  was  impossible.  In  1867  he  retired,  and  was 
succeeded  by  Sir  Francis  Doyle,  author  of  that  noble 
poem  "  The  Return  of  the  Guards,"  that  justly  popular 
poem  "The  Private  of  the  Buffs,"  and  "The  Doncaster 
St.  Leger,"  the  best  description  of  a  horse-race  ever 
written  in  English  verse.  There  were  parts  of 
Mr.  Arnold's  professorial  duties,  such  as  reading  the 
Creweian  Oration  and  examining  for  the  Newdigate, 
which  he  heartily  disliked.  But,  on  the  whole,  the 
position  gave  ^iim  great  pleasure,  and  he  laid  it  down 
with  sincere  regret.  He  was  anxious  that  Mr.  Brown 
ing  should  succeed  him.  Mr.  Browning,  however,  was 
not  an  Oxford  man,  and  though  an  honorary  Master's 
Degree  had  been  conferred  upon  him,  the  objection 
was  held  to  be  fatal. 

The  Chair  of  Poetry  is  not  an  exhausting  burden, 
and  all  the  time  he  held  it  Mr.  Arnold  was  zealously 
fulfilling  his  duty  to  the  Department  of  Education. 
In  1865  he  undertook  another  of  those  Continental 
investigations  which  he  so  thoroughly  enjoyed.  The 

91 


92  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Schools  Inquiry  Commissioners  charged  him  with  the 
agreeable  task — agreeable  at  least  to  him — of  reporting 
upon  the  system  of  teaching  for  the  upper  and  middle 
classes  which  prevailed  in  France,  Italy,  Germany,  and 
Switzerland.  At  the  beginning  of  April  he  left  London 
for  Paris,  where  he  began  his  work.  In  Paris  he  met 
a  citizen  of  the  United  States  who  might  almost  have 
walked  out  of  Martin  Chuzzlewit.  Such  are  scarcely  to 
be  found  now.  "I  have  just  seen,"  he  writes  to  his 
mother  on  the  1st  of  May,  "an  American,  a  great 
admirer  of  mine,  who  says  that  the  three  people  he 
wanted  to  see  in  Europe  were  James  Martineau, 
Herbert  Spencer,  and  myself.  His  talk  was  not  as 
our  talk,  but  he  was  a  good  man."  The  last  touch  is 
characteristically  and  ironically  urbane.  At  this  time, 
seven  years  after  "Merope,"  appeared  "Atalanta 
in  Calydon,"  which  proved  as  popular  as  "Merope" 
was  the  reverse.  It  did  not,  however,  satisfy  Mr. 
Arnold,  and  in  a  critical  letter  to  Professor  Conington, 
dated  the  17th  of  May,  he  thus  speaks  of  it: — "The 
moderns  will  only  have  the  antique  on  the  condition 
of  making  it  more  beautiful  (according  to  their  own 
notions  of  beauty)  than  the  antique — i.e.  something 
wholly  different."  This  is  just  criticism  so  far  as  it 
goes.  "Atalanta"  is  not  Greek.  It  is  far  too  violent 
and  impulsive  to  be  Greek.  But  its  magnificent  verses, 
with  their  rush  and  ring,  their  surge  and  flow,  will 
always  raise  the  spirits  and  charm  the  ear.  Conington, 
a  profoundly  learned  man,  but  a  pedant  if  ever  there  was 
one,  was  also,  it  seems,  a  great  admirer  of  "Merope." 
He  must  have  taken  it  with  him  to  the  grave,  for  it 
died  long  before  its  author.  Mr.  Arnold  did  not 
enjoy  Italy  so  much  as  he  might  have  done  if  he  had 


vi 1. 1          THE  END  OK  THE  PROFESSORSHIP.  93 

known  more  about  architecture  and  painting.  But  he 
was  a  keen  critic  of  national  character,  and  being  at 
Florence  just  after  Florence  had  become,  for  a  short 
time,  the  capital  of  Italy,  he  saw  in  a  moment  the 
weak  point  of  the  modern  Italians.  "They  imitate 
the  French  too  much,"  he  wrote  to  his  mother  on  the 
24th  of  May.  "  It  is  good  for  us  to  attend  to  the 
French,  they  are  so  unlike  us,  but  not  good  for  the 
Italians,  who  are  a  sister  nation."  Luminous  ideas  of 
this  kind  light  up  the  not  very  brilliant  atmosphere  of 
Mr.  Arnold's  correspondence,  most  of  which  he  dashed 
off  at  odd  moments,  without  having  any  special  turn 
for  the  art.  We  could  well  have  spared  his  comparison 
between  the  sham,  gimcrack  cathedral  at  Milan,  which 
contains  half  a  dozen  more  beautiful  churches,  and  the 
great  Duomo  at  Florence,  with  the  cupola  of  Brunel- 
leschi,  unequalled  in  the  world.  But  the  fascination 
of  Italy  overcame  Mr.  Arnold  at  last,  for  on  the  12th 
of  September  he  wrote  from  Dresden  to  Mr.  Slade, 
that  "all  time  passed  in  touring  anywhere  in  Western 
Europe,  except  Italy,  seemed  to  him,  with  his  present 
lights,  time  misspent,"  and  it  does  not  appear  that 
he  ever  changed  this  opinion. 

Mr.  Arnold  was  at  Zurich  in  October  1865,  when 
he  heard  of  Lord  Palmerston's  death.  Palmerston, 
though  an  aristocrat,  as  this  word  is  generally  under 
stood,  had  none  of  the  cosmopolitan  culture  which 
aristocracies  are  supposed  to  affect.  He  was  as  typical 
an  Englishman  as  Bright  or  Cobden,  far  too  typical 
for  Mr.  Arnold's  taste.  But  with  some  allowance  for 
personal  prejudice,  the  following  extract  from  Mr. 
Arnold's  letter  to  his  mother  on  Palmerston's  career 
has  truth  as  well  as  point  in  it.  "  I  do  not  deny  his 


94  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

popular  personal  qualities,  but  as  to  calling  him  a 
great  Minister  like  Pitt,  Walpole,  and  Peel,  and 
talking  of  his  death  as  a  national  calamity,  why, 
taking  his  career  from  1830,  when  his  importance 
really  begins,  to  the  present  time,  he  found  his 
country  the  first  power  in  the  world's  estimation,  and 
he  leaves  it  the  third ;  of  this,  no  person  with  eyes  to 
see  and  ears  to  hear,  and  opportunities  for  using  them, 
can  doubt;  it  may  even  be  doubted  whether,  thanks 
to  Bismarck's  audacity,  resolution,  and  success,  Prussia 
too,  as  well  as  France  and  the  United  States,  does  not 
come  before  England  at  present  in  general  respect." 
This  contemporary  judgment  of  a  calm  observer,  whose 
political  opinions  were  those  of  an  independent  Whig, 
may  be  commended  to  believers  in  the  Palmerstonian 
legend.  Matthew  Arnold  was  the  best  of  sons,  and 
the  allusions  to  his  father  in  his  letters  to  his  mother, 
are  really  a  more  affectionate  form  of  the  feeling  which 
prompted  Frederick  the  Great's  filial  presents  of 
gigantic  grenadiers.  Thus,  on  the  18th  of  November 
1865,  after  reading  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's  excellent 
Life  of  Frederick  Robertson,  he  writes  :  "  It  is  a  mistake 
to  put  him  with  papa,  as  the  Spectator  does:  papa's 
greatness  consists  in  his  bringing  such  a  torrent  of 
freshness  into  English  religion  by  placing  history  and 
politics  in  connection  with  it;  Robertson's  is  a  mere 
religious  biography,  but  as  a  religious  biography  it  is 
deeply  interesting."  Mr.  Arnold  was,  of  course,  be 
fore  all  things  a  man  of  letters,  and  of  physical  science 
he  knew  little  or  nothing.  It  is,  therefore,  an  in 
teresting  proof  of  his  mental  width  that  he  should 
have  strongly  recommended  to  his  sister,  Mrs.  Forster, 
science,  especially  botany,  as  better  suited  to  cultivate 


vii.]          THK  KND  OF  THE  PROFESSORSHIP.  95 

perception  in  a  child  than  grammar  or  mathematics. 
Perhaps  he  felt  the  want  of  scientific  training  himself. 
But  he  was  intensely  practical,  and  did  his  official 
work  far  more  efficiently  than  many  drudges  who  never 
wrote  a  verse.  Just  before  Lord  Russell's  Government 
resigned  in  186G,  he  applied  for  a  Commissionership 
of  Charities.  It  would,  as  he  told  his  mother,  have 
given  him  another  three  hundred  a  year,  and  an 
independent  instead  of  a  subordinate  position.  No 
man  in  England  was  better  qualified  for  it.  His 
views  on  charitable  endowments  were,  as  almost 
every  one  would  now  admit,  thoroughly  wise,  en 
lightened,  and  sound.  But  the  post  was  wanted  for 
a  lawyer,  and  lawyers,  in  this  country,  are  made 
everything  except  judges.  The  appointment  was 
Lord  Russell's,  and  Lord  Russell,  as  we  know,  was 
one  of  Mr.  Arnold's  earliest  admirers.  Mr.  Gladstone, 
however,  had  paramount  influence,  and  it  is  said  that 
he  had  already  discovered  the  theological  heterodoxy 
which  afterwards  became  patent  to  the  vulgar  eye. 
It  is  almost  inconceivable  nowadays  that  such  an 
argument  should  have  weighed  with  a  Minister  filling 
a  purely  secular  place.  Mr.  Arnold's  failure  was  a 
disaster  to  the  public  service,  and  may  almost  be 
called  a  scandal.  He  was  also  unsuccessful  in  the 
following  year,  when  he  applied  for  the  post  of 
Librarian  to  the  House  of  Commons.  His  application 
was  supported  by  Mr.  Disraeli,  the  leader  of  the 
House,  and  by  many  other  distinguished  persons. 
But  Speaker  Denison  had  determined  to  carry  out 
one  of  those  mysterious  rearrangements  in  which  the 
great  functionaries  of  Parliament  delight,  and  this 
particular  plan  involved  the  elevation  of  the  Sub- 


9G  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Librarian,  a  thoroughly  competent  man.  In  this 
case  Mr.  Arnold's  success  would  have  been  a  public 
misfortune,  for  it  would  have  withdrawn  him  from 
work  of  the  greatest  value,  and  laid  him,  for  all 
practical  purposes,  on  the  shelf. 

Mr.  Arnold's  last  lectures  as  Professor  of  Poetry 
were  devoted  to  the  study  of  Celtic  Literature.  They 
were  four  in  number,  and  were  successively  pub 
lished  after  delivery  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine.  In 
1867,  when  Mr.  Arnold  retired  from  the  Chair,  they 
were  reprinted  in  a  small  volume.  Mr.  George 
Smith,  the  great  publisher,  remarked  that  it  was  not 
exactly  the  sort  of  book  which  Paterfamilias  would 
buy  at  a  bookstall,  and  take  down  to  his  Jemima.  I 
should  be  sorry  to  suggest  that  Mr.  Smith  did  not  get 
further  than  the  title,  to  which  his  remark  would 
apply.  But  no  title  was  ever  more  misleading,  and 
few  books  are  easier  to  read.  This  is  perhaps  the 
most  brilliantly  audacious  of  all  Mr.  Arnold's  per 
formances.  Mr.  Gladstone  wrote  a  book  on  the  Bible 
without  knowing  a  word  of  Hebrew.  Matthew  Arnold 
wrote,  not  indeed  on  Celtic  literature,  but  on  the 
study  of  it,  in  happy  and  contented  ignorance  of 
Gaelic,  Erse,  and  Cymry.  Only  men  of  genius  can 
do  these  things.  Upon  the  real  nature  and  value  of 
Celtic  literature  these  charming  pages  throw  little,  if 
any,  light.  The  most  solid  part  consists  of  notes 
contributed  by  Lord  Strangford,  a  scientific  philolo 
gist,  and  they  are  comically  like  a  tutor's  corrections 
of  his  pupil's  exercise.  Mr.  Arnold  tells  us,  with  en 
gaging  frankness,  how  the  idea  of  these  lectures  arose 
in  his  mind.  He  was  staying  at  Llandudno,  and  got 
tired  of  gazing  on  the  sea,  especially  on  the  Liverpool 


MI.]         THE  END  OF  THE  PROFESSORSHIP.  97 

steamboats.  So  he  looked  inland,  and  studied  the 
local  traditions.  He  even  attended  an  Eisteddfod, 
which  he  describes  without  enthusiasm.  This  national 
institution  was  attacked  at  that  time  by  a  great 
English  newspaper  in  language  of  almost  inconceivable 
brutality,  which  would  be  quite  impossible  now.  Mr. 
Arnold,  a  true  gentleman  in  the  highest  meaning  of  the 
term,  resented  the  insult,  and  the  chief  merit  of  his  book 
is  its  delicately  sympathetic  handling  of  the  Celtic 
character.  Admitting  that  all  Welshmen  ought  to  learn 
English,  he  pleads  for  the  preservation  of  the  Welsh 
language,  and  this  led  him  to  the  "  Science  of  Origins," 
on  which  French  scholars  have  bestowed  so  much  re 
search.  He  reminded  the  English  people  that  they  have 
a  Celtic  as  well  as  a  Norman  element  in  them,  and  that 
to  it  they  owed  much  of  what  was  best  in  their  poetry. 
His  theory  that  rhyme  is  Celtic  has  been  disputed,  and 
certainly  mediae  val  Latin  is  a  more  obvious  source. 
The  Celtic  genius  for  style,  for  "melancholy  and 
natural  magic,"  is  perhaps  hardly  borne  out  by  the 
few  fragments  of  translation  which  Mr.  Arnold  pro 
duces.  But  the  notion  of  England  as  "a  vast  obscure 
Cymric  basis  with  a  vast  visible  Teutonic  super 
structure  "  is  fascinating,  if  unknown  and  unknowable. 
Of  happy  touches  this  little  volume  is  full.  There  we 
have  Luther  and  Bunyan,  whose  connection  with 
Celtic  literature  is  remote,  labelled  as  "  Philistines  of 
genius."  There  we  have  the  Celt  "always  ready  to 
react  against  the  despotism  of  fact."  Touches  of 
human  interest  are  not  wanting.  There  is  Owen 
Jones,  who  slowly  and  laboriously  amassed  a  fortune 
that  he  might  spend  it  all  in  printing  and  publishing 
every  Welsh  manuscript  upon  which  he  could  lay  his 


98  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP.  vn. 

hands.  There  is  Eugene  0 'Curry,  the  learned  and 
indefatigable  student  of  his  native  Erse,  who  edited 
the  Annals  of  the  Four  Masters.  To  him  enters 
Thomas  Moore,  lazily  contemplating  a  History  of 
Ireland,  and  remarks  profoundly  that  these  Annals 
"could  not  hare  been  written  by  fools,  or  for  any 
foolish  purpose."  What  the  Annals  of  the  Four  Masters, 
and  the  My vyrian  Archaeology,  and  Lady  Charlotte  Guest's 
Mabinogion,  are  actually  worth,  we  know  no  more  when 
we  have  finished  the  book  than  we  knew  when  we 
began  it.  But  for  British  prejudice  against  other 
nationalities  it  is  a  wholesome  antidote.  In  this,  as  in 
so  many  other  respects,  Mr.  Arnold  was  in  advance  of 
his  age,  unless,  indeed,  we  prefer  to  say  that  he  led 
his  generation  to  a  culture  less  partial  and  more 
urbane.  The  severest  censor  of  sciolism,  to  which 
perhaps  Mr.  Arnold  was  not  wholly  a  stranger,  may 
well  be  appeased  by  such  a  charming  phrase  as  "bel- 
lettristic  trifler,"  which  this  amateur  of  Celtic  applies 
to  himself. 


CHAPTER    VIIL 

THE  NEW  POEMS 

THE  publication  of  Mr.  Arnold's  New  Poems  in  186£, 
though  directly  suggested  by  Mr.  Browning,  who 
wished  to  see  "Empedocles  on  Etna "  restored  to  its 
original  shape,  was,  as  he  himself  said,  a  labour  of 
love.  He  has  expressed  in  familiar  lines  the  opinion 
that  poetry  which  gave  no  pleasure  to  the  writer  will- 
give  no  pleasure  to  the  world.  This  volume  had  an 
immediate  and  a  permanent  success.  It  bore  for 
motto,  besides  the  sentiment  to  which  reference  has 
already  been  made,  the  pretty  quatrain,  which  age 
cannot  wither — 

"  Though  the  Muse  be  gone  away, 
Though  she  move  not  earth  to-day, 
Souls,  erewhile  who  caught  her  word, 
Ah  !  still  harp  on  what  they  heard." 

With  these  poems  the  poetical  career  of  Matthew 
Arnold  may  be  said  to  close.  To  the  end  of  his  life 
he  wrote  occasional  verses.  But  they  were  few  in 
number,  and  they  neither,  with  the  exception  of 
"Westminster  Abbey,"  added  to  his  fame  nor  de 
tracted  from  it.  His  outward  circumstances  harmon 
ised  with  this  inward  change.  Mr.  Arnold  ceased  to 


100  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

be  Professor  of  Poetry.  He  remained  an  Inspector  of 
Schools.  But  his  poetical  fame  was  established,  and 
no  living  English  poet  except  Tennyson  was  incon- 
testably  his  superior.  The  greatest  poem  in  the 
volume,  some  think  the  greatest  he  ever  wrote,  is 
"Thyrsis,"  a  monody,  or  elegy,  on  his  friend  Arthur 
Clough,  who  had  died,  as  we  have  seen,  at  Florence  in 
1861.  Mr.  Swinburne,  a  warm  admirer  of  Matthew 
Arnold,  has  expressed  a  too  contemptuous  estimate  of 
Clough's  poetical  powers.  His  English  hexameters  and 
pentameters  are  doggerel,  though  the  ideas  which  they 
express  are  often  subtle.  But  some  of  his  shorter  pieces, 
such  as  "Say  not  the  struggle  nought  availeth,"  and 
"As  ships  at  eve  becalmed  they  lay,"  have  retained  their 
hold  upon  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men.  Clough  is  not 
likely  ever  to  become  a  mere  name,  like  the  Reverend 
Mr.  King.  That  "Thyrsis"  is  inferior  to  "Lycidas" 
hardly  requires  stating.  All  English  dirges,  except 
the  dirge  in  "Cymbeline,"  are.  But  in  truth  the 
comparison  is  fruitless,  for  there  is  no  resemblance. 
Mr.  Arnold's  model  was  not  Milton,  but  Theocritus, 
and  "  Thyrsis  "  is  thoroughly  Theocritean  in  sentiment. 
The  opening  stanza  strikes  the  keynote,  and  is,  I 
think,  unsurpassed  throughout  the  poem.  It  is 
penetrated,  like  most  of  the  stanzas  which  succeed  it, 
with  the  spirit  of  the  place,  and  is  redolent  of  the 
beautiful  country  round  Oxford — 

"  How  changed  is  here  each  spot  man  makes  or  fills  ! 

In  the  two  Hinkseys  nothing  keeps  the  same  ; 
The  village  street  its  haunted  mansion  lacks, 
And  from  the  sign  is  gone  Sibylla's  name, 
And  from  the  roof  the  twisted  chimney-stacks ; — 
Are  ye  too  changed,  ye  hills  ? 


viii.]  THE  NEW  POEMS.  101 

See,  'tis  no  foot  of  unfamiliar  men 

To-night  from  Oxford  up  your  pathway  strays  ! 

Here  came  I  often,  often,  in  old  days, 

Thyrsis  and  I ;  we  still  had  Thyrsis  then." 

"Thyrsis"  is  avowedly  a  sequel  to  "The  Scholar 
Gipsy,"  with  which  it  should  always  be  read.  I  do 
not  feel  able  to  decide  between  their  relative  merits. 
Even  Oxford  has  inspired  no  nobler  verse. 

But  though  "Thyrsis"  was  the  principal  of  the  New 
Poems,  and  the  best  example  of  Mr.  Arnold's  matured  D 
powers,  there  are  many  others  at  once  excellent  arid 
characteristic.  "Saint  Brandan"  is  a  picturesque 
embodiment  of  a  strange  mediaeval  legend  touching 
Judas  Iscariot,  who  is  supposed  to  be  released  from 
Hell  for  a  few  hours  every  Christmas  because  he  had 
done  in  his  life  a  single  act  of  charity.  "Calais 
Sands"  and  "Dover  Beach"  strike  a  higher  note. 
"Calais  Sands"  is  cold  compared  with  the  love-poems 
in  "Switzerland."  But  it  is  graceful,  and  charming, 
and  everything  except  real.  "Dover  Beach "  is  very $0 
different,  and  much  deeper.  Profoundly  melancholy 
in  tone,  it  expresses  the  peculiar  turn  of  Mr.  Arnold's 
mind,  at  once  religious  and  sceptical,  philosophical 
and  emotional,  better  than  his  formal  treatises  on 
philosophy  and  religion.  The  second  part  of  it 
deserves  to  be  quoted  at  length,  both  on  this  account 
and  for  its  literary  beauty — 

"  The  Sea  of  Faith 

Was  once,  too,  at  the  full,  and  round  earth's  shore 
Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furl'd  ; 
But  now  I  only  hear 
Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar, 
Retreating  to  the  breath 


102  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Of  the  night-wind  down  the  vast  edges  drear 
And  naked  shingles  of  the  world. 

Ah,  love,  let  us  be  true 

To  one  another  !  for  the  world,  which  seems 

To  lie  before  us  like  a  land  of  dreams, 

So  various^  so  beautiful,  so  new, 

Hath  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light, 

Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain  ; 

And  we  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain 

Swept  with  confused  alarm  of  struggle  and  fight, 

Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night !  " 

"The  Last  Word "  describes  the  plight  of  a  hopeless 
and  exhausted  straggler  against  a  Philistine  world  too 
strong  for  him.  It  is  one  of  Mr.  Arnold's  best  known 
poems,  and  need  not  be  reprinted  here.  The  last 
stanza  contains  a  curious,  and  rather  awkward,  am 
biguity.  Thus  it  runs  : — 

"  Charge  once  more,  then,  and  be  dumb  ! 
Let  the  victors,  when  they  come, 
When  the  forts  of  folly  fall, 
Find  thy  body  by  the  wall." 

The  natural  meaning  of  these  words  would  be  that 
the  person  addressed  had  been  engaged  in  defending 
the  forts  of  folly,  which,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  is 
the  precise  opposite  of  what  Mr.  Arnold  intended. 
"Bacchanalia,  or  The  New  Age,"  is  perhaps  the  most 
fanciful  among  all  Matthew  Arnold's  poems,  and  it  is 
certainly  one  of  the  most  beautiful.  It  must  be  read 
as  a  whole,  for  it  illustrates  the  connection  of  the  past 
with  the  present  in  the  mind  of  a  poet.  But  the 
following  lines  would  be  missed  from  any  estimate  or 
criticism  of  Matthew  Arnold.  The  constant  repetition 


I  HE  A'A'ir  1'UL'MX.  103 

of  ;i  single  epithet  shows  where  Mr.  Arnold's  danger 
lay,  both  in  prose  and  verse.  In  this  case,  however, 
the  arrangement  is  so  skilful  that  the  trick,  for  it  must 
be  called  a  trick,  justifies  itself — 

"  The  epoch  ends,  the  world  is  still. 
The  age  has  talk'd  and  work'd  its  fill— 
The  famous  orators  have  shone, 
The  famous  poets  sung  and  gone. 
The  famous  men  of  war  have  fought, 
The  famous  speculators  thought, 
The  famous  players,  sculptors  wrought, 
The  famous  painters  fill'd  their  wall, 
The  famous  critics  judg'd  it  all. 
The  combatants  are  parted  now, 
Unhung  the  spear,  unbent  the  bow, 
The  puissant  crown'd,  the  weak  laid  low  ! " 

"Rugby  Chapel,"  written  so  far  back  as  1857,  and 
"Heine's  Grave,"  are  Mr.  Arnold's  most  successful/ 
efforts  in  lyrical  metre  without  rhyme.  That  defect  is 
to  my  mind,  or  rather  to  my  ear,  a  fatal  one.  But  if 
ever  Mr.  Arnold  for  a  time  appears  to  surmount  it,  these 
are  the  poems  where  his  apparent  success  is  achieved. 
In  "Rugby  Chapel"  he  praises  his  father  as  one  of 
those  who  were  not  content  with  saving  their  own 
souls,  but  sought  to  bring  others  with  them — 

"  Then,  in  such  hour  of  need 
Of  your  fainting,  dispirited  race, 
Ye,  like  angels,  appear, 
Kadiant  with  ardour  divine. 
Beacons  of  hope,  ye  appear  1 
Languor  is  not  in  your  heart, 
Weakness  is  not  in  your  word, 
Weariness  not  on  your  brow." 

"Heine's  Grave"  is  a  painfully  morbid  poem  on  a 


104  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

supremely  dismal  subject.  It  contains  some  grotesque 
instances  of  metrical  eccentricity.  Such  a  line  as 

"  Paris  drawing-rooms  and  lamps  " 

is  Ifeyond  all  criticism,  out  of  the  pale.  But  the 
famo'us  description  of  England,  or  the  British  Empire, 
is  as  good  as  anything  of  the  kind  can  be : — 

"  Yes,  we  arraign  her  !  but  she, 
The  weary  Titan  !  with  deaf 
Ears,  and  labour ~diinm'd  eyes, 
Regarding  neither  to  right, 
Nor  left,  goes  passively  by, 
Staggering  on  to  her  goal ; 
Bearing  on  shoulders  immense, 
Atlantean,  the  load, 
Well-nigh  not  to  be  borne, 
Of  the  too  vast  orb  of  her  fate." 

If  the  thing  is  to  be  done  at  all,  that  is  how  one 
should  do  it. 

The  "Stanzas  from  the  Grande  Chartreuse,"  though 
included  in  this  volume,  appeared  in  Fraser's  Magazine 
for  April  1855.      They  are  very  stately  and  solemn 
stanzas.      Every  one  knows  the  famous  lines  about 
Byron,  and  the  "pageant  of  his  bleeding-heart."    LessT. 
familiar,  but  I  think  finer,  is  the  author's  ownajbtitude    s 
of  wistful  yearning  reverence  for  the  comfort  of  a 
creed  he  cannot  hold — 

"  Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead, 
The  other  powerless  to  be  born, 
With  nowhere  yet  to  rest  my  head, 
Like  these,  on  earth  I  wait  forlorn. 
Their  faith,  my  tears,  the  world  deride  — 
I  come  to  shed  them  at  your  side. 


VIM  ]  THE  NEW  POEMS.  105 

Oh,  hide  ine  in  your  gloom  profound, 

Ye  solemn  seats  of  holy  pain  ! 

Take  me,  cowl'd  forms,  and  fence  me  round, 

Till  I  possess  my  soul  again  • 

Till  free  my  thoughts  before  me  roll, 

Not  chafed  by  hourly  false  control ! " 

With  these  pathetic  lines  we  may  take  our  leave 
for  the  present  of  Mr.  Arnold  as  a  poet.  He  had 
other  work  to  do,  and  from  duty  he  never  shrank. 
From  this  time  forth  the  poetic  stream  ran  thin, 
though  it  never  quite  ran  out. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

EDUCATION. 
J 

EDUCATION   is  proverbially  a  dull   subject.      But  in 

I  Mr.  Arnold's  case  it  cannot  be  omitted,  and  in  his 
hands  it  was  never  dull.  He  was  an  Inspector  of 
Schools  for^five-and-thirty  years,  resigning  his  post  only 
two  years  before  hisUeath.  The  Department  wisely 
and  properly  treated  him  with  great  indulgence.  He 
always  had  the  most  interesting  work  that  there  was 
to  do.  But  his  life  was  a  laborious  one.  He  was  more 
v  than  willing  to  spend  and  be  spent  for  the  intellec- 

I  tual  improvement  of  his  countrymen.     When  he  was 
first  appointed  an  Inspector  there  existed  a  sort  of 

^agreement  between  Church  and  State.  The  Catholic 
schools  were  inspected  by  Catholics ;  schools  belonging 
to  the  Church  of  England  were  officially  visited  by 
clergymen.  Being  neither  a  clergyman  nor  a  Catholic, 

..Mr.  Arnold  was  assigned  to  Protestant  schools  not 

I 1  connected  with  the  Church  of  England,  or,  in  other 
words,  to  the  schools  of  the  Dissenters.     He  did  not 
get  on  with  Dissenters,  and  his  irritation,  as  we  shall 

^  see,  found  vent  in  his  writings.  After  1870,  when 
compulsory  education  began,  and  denominational  in- 
spection  was  abandoned,  Mr.  Arnold  confined  himself 
to  the  borough  of  Westminster,  where  for  a  long  time 
there  was  only  one  Board  school.  He  was  the  idol  of 

iM 


.  ix.]  EDUCATION.  107 

the  children,  for  he  petted  them  and  treated  them  with 
the  easy  condescension  which  was  his  charm.  Upon 
the  teachers  his  influence  was  still  more  important.^ 
"Indirectly,"  says  Sir  Joshua  Fitch,  "his  fine  taste, 
his  gracious  and  kindly  manner,  his  honest  and 
generous  recognition  of  any  new  form  of  excellence 
which  he  observed,  all  tended  to  raise  the  aims  and 
the  tone  of  the  teachers  with  whom  he  came  in  contact, 
and  to  encourage  in  them  self-respect,  and  respect  for 
their  work."  His  official  reports  were  most  inter — 
esting  and  instructive.  He  had  a  natural  insight  into^ 
the  real  merits  and  defects  of  public  teaching.  He- 
saw  things  as  they  were.  "  The  typical  mental  defect 
of  our  school  children,"  he  said,  "is  their  almost 
incredible  scantiness  of  vocabulary."  This  is  a  national 
deficiency ;  and  no  one  who  has  sat,  for  howsoever 
short  a  time,  in  Parliament,  can  believe  that  it  is 
peculiar  to  children.  Mr.  Arnold  held  no  narrow  or 
rigid  view  of  the  difference  between  primary  and 
secondary  education.  He  thought  that  the  rudi 
ments  of  French  and  Latin  might  well  be  taught  in 
elementary  schools.  He  was  also  an  advocate  for 
teaching  in  them  the  beginnings  of  natural  science,  or 
what  Huxley  used  to  call  "Physiography."  "The 
excuse,"  as  he  put  it  characteristically,  "for  putting 
most  of  these  matters  into  our  programme  is  that 
we  are  all  coming  to  be  agreed  that  an  entire  ignor 
ance  of  the  system  of  nature  is  as  grave  a  defect  in 
our  children's  education  as  not  to  know  that  there 
ever  was  such  a  person  as  Charles  the  First." 

In  1868  appeared  Mr.  Arnold's  Report  upon 
Schools  and  Universities  on  the  Continent.  It 
deals  with  education  in  France,  Italy,  Germany, 


108  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

and  Switzerland.    But  its  practical  interest  is  restricted 
x  to  France  and  Germany.     For  the  Swiss  system  was 
almost  identical  with  the  German,  and  in  Italy  at 
that  time  national  education  was  in  its  infancy. 

French  institutions  and  French  habits  of   thought 
were  always  thoroughly  congenial  to  Mr.  Arnold.    His 

1  lucid,  methodical  mind  was  attracted  by  the  thorough 
ness   of  French   logic,   and   lie   was   more   especially 
fascinated  by  the  orderly  sequence  with  which  the  pupil 
fy  ascended  from  the  primary  school  to  the  university. 
Himself  the  product  of  reformed  Rugby,  and  of  unre- 
formed  Oxford,  a  child  of  the  old  learning  and  the 
/new  spirit,  he  was  appalled  by  the  anomalous  condi 
tion   of   English   universities,   and   by   the   chaos   of 
intermediate  teaching  in  England.     With  the  admir 
able  schools  of  Scotland  he  had  nothing  to  do.     The 
\  secondary  schools  of  France,  all  under  the  Minister 
I  of  Education,  he  described  with   hearty  though  not 
•T  uncritical  praise.     The  University  of  Paris,  the  great 
tfVNseat  of  learning  in  the  Middle  Ages,  moved  him  to 
)  unwonted    enthusiasm.      He    envied    the    Professors 
who  were  only  teachers,  and  declared  that  he  would 
rather  have   their    moderate    salary   with    abundant 
leisure  than  be  a  Master  in  one  of  our  public  schools, 
receiving   twice   their   pay,   but   having   no   time   to 
himself.     The  £cole  Normale,  the  training  college  for 
'  French  teachers,  he  pronounced  to  be  excellent.     No 
one  in  England  was  taught  to  teach,  whereas  in  France 
ithe  State  made  itself  directly  responsible  for  all  kinds 
-»of  education,  and  the  most  stringent  tests  were  applied 
to   teachers.     Then,   again,   the  French   language  in 
France,  unlike  the  English  language  in  England,  was 
>  made   the   subject   of    thorough    and    serious  study. 


ix.]  EDUCATION.  109 

Even  in  learning  the  classics  the  development  of  the 
mother  tongue,  and  its  resources,  was  the  first  con 
sideration  impressed  upon  the  mind.  Examinations, 
Mr.  Arnold  held,  were  better  understood  in  France' — 
than  here.  The  French  did  not  attempt  to  examine 
boys  before  they  were  fifteen,  and  he  held  very 
strongly  the  opinion  that  before  that  age  intellectual^ 
pressure  was  dangerous.  Between  fifteen  and  twenty- 
five  he  thought  that  the  mind  could  hardly  be  over 
worked.  Tested  by  results,  he  showed  that  the 
French  schools  were  far  more  successful  than  our 
own.  When  he  wrote,  there  were  in  the  public  schools 
of  England  fifteen  thousand  boys.  In  the  public 
schools  of  France  there  were  sixty-six  thousand.  It 
may,  however,  be  doubted  whether  the  standard  of- 
comparison  was  a  fair  one.  The  French  lyceums  pro 
vided  for  a  class  which  in  England  was  even  more 
content  than  it  is  now  with  private  or  "  adventure  " 
schools. 

On  one  point,  and  that  certainly  not  the  least 
important,  Mr.  Arnold  had  to  confess  that  Frenchl 
boarding-schools  were  most  unsatisfactory.  He  gave 
the  worst  possible  account  of  the  ushers,  the  nmitres 
deludes.  They  were  drudges,  they  were  not  required 
to  teach,  and  they  were  miserably  underpaid.  Their 
duty  was  to  protect  the  morals  of  the  boys,  but  many 
of  them  were  gravely  suspected  of  doing  exactly  the 
opposite.  No  scientific  perfection  of  teaching  can 
make  up  for  such  an  evil  as  this.  After  all,  there  is 
something  to  be  said  for  the  freedom  and  honour  of 
Eton  and  Harrow,  of  Rugby  and  Winchester.  There  are^ 
cruelty  and  vice  in  all  schools.  But  constant  super 
vision,  and  absolute  distrust,  encourage  more  mischief 


110  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

|  than  they  prevent.  In  French  schools  the  hours  of 
work  are  longer,  and  the  means  of  recreation  scantier, 
than  English  boys  would  endure. 

Mr.  Arnold's  Eeports  on  French,  Swiss,  and  Italian 
Education   were   never   republished.     To   his  Report 
on  the  Education  of  Germany  he  must  himself  have 
attached  more  value,  for  he  brought  it  out  again  in 
1874,  and  a  third  time  in  1882.     Perhaps  he  considered 
the  example  of  a  Teutonic  race  more  likely  to  be  con- 
.  tagious.     The  cheapness  of  German  education  struck 
him  forcibly,  and  though  prices  had  nearly  doubled 
before  the  reappearance  of  his  Report,  he  maintained 
/  that  the  relative  proportion  between  the  two  countries 
was  the  same.     This  could  not  be  said  now,  but  there 
is  still  much  room  for  economy  in  the  public  schools 
and   universities   of    England.      German    schools,   as 
s  Mr.   Arnold  found  them,  were   denominational,  with 
a  conscience  clause,  and  attendance  at  them  was  com 
pulsory  for  all  classes.    In  Prussia,  which  Mr.  Arnold 
«  took  as  typical  of  Germany,  the  Government,  as  in 
I  France,   set  up  an   educational  ladder  which  a  pro- 
i  mising  boy  could  mount  from  the  bottom  rung  to  the 
top.    Adepts  in  education  were  consulted  by  the  State, 
as  they  were  not  in  England.     This  was  a  point  which 
Mr.  Arnold  put  very  strongly,  and  he  urged  it  with 
some  exaggeration.     It  is  not  quite  true  that  expert 
opinion  has  been  rejected  by  the  Education  Depart- 
(ment,  now  the  Board  of  Education.     Mr.  Arnold's  own 
\Reports,  for  instance,  were  very  carefully  considered 
!by  his  official  superiors,  and  of  Education  Commissions 
there  has  been  no  end.    The  difficulties  in  carrying  out 
their  recommendations  have  been  Parliamentary,  and 
the  great  difficulty  of  all  has  been  the  religious  one. 


ix.]  EDUCATION.  Ill 

In  Germany,  as  in  France,  the  mother  tongue  was 
carefully  taught,  and  in  the  Realschule,  intended  to 
prepare  boys  for  business,  English  was  obligatory,  as 
well  as  French.     In  England  the  teaching  of  foreign! 
languages  has  made  much  progress  since  Mr.  Arnold's/ 
day,  but  the  study  of  English  is  confined  to  elementary* 
schools.     The  public,  or  national,  schools  of  Prussia 
are  not  boarding-schools,  and  the  boys  are,  or  were, 
for  the  most  part  taken  in  by  private  families.     The 
German  universities  are  the  only  avenue  to  the  learned_ 
professions,  and,  as  is  well-known,  a  German  professor, 
though  receiving,  according  to  our  standard,  a  small 
salary,  holds  a  position  of  great  dignity.     Admittance 
to  a  German  university  is  obtained  only  by  examination, 
and  the  test  is  a  severe  one.     For  the  teachers  there  is 
a  very  stringent  examination  indeed.     They  have  to 
graduate  in  "  paedagogic  "  before  they  reach  ihefacultas 
docendi.    Mr.  Arnold  was  conscious  that  to  most  English 
men  all  this  would  seem  mere  pedantry.     No  man  was 
less  of  a  pedant  than  he.    But  he  held  that  his  country 
men's  ideas  of  education  were  hopelessly  unscientific, — 
and  he  did  his  best  to  correct  them.     He  believed  in 
the  State  as  an  instrument  of  education,  as  we  have4» 
all  come  to  believe  in  it  now,  and  the  official  position 
of  German  universities  was  congenial  to  him.     At  the 
same   time,  the   German   teachers  were    not,   as   the 
French  were,  liable  to  dismissal  by  the  Government 
Mr.  Arnold  may  fairly  be  said  to  have  fallen  in  love 
with  the  German  system  of  education.     The  French \ 
universities,   he   said,   wanted  liberty;    the   English 
universities  wanted  science ;  the  German  universitiesj 
had  both. 

In  conclusion,  Mr.  Arnold  recommended  that  Greek . 


112  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP.  TX. 

\  and  Latin  should  be  studied  in  England  more  after  the 
I  fashion  of  modern  languages.     The  German  boys  he 
,  found  inferior  to  the  English  in  composition,  where 
English  scholarship  has  always  been  peculiarly  strong. 
But  the  making  of  Latin  verses  is  not,  even  in  this 
country,  so  favourite  a  pursuit  as  it  was  fifty  or  a 
hundred  years  ago,  and  the  scientific  study  of  com 
parative  philology  has  seriously  modified  classical  edu 
cation.     Our  secondary  schools,  to  whose  badness  Mr. 

-  Arnold  traced  an  undue  distinction  between  classes  in 
England,  are  almost  as  bad  as  ever.     But  some  of  his 

-  proposals  have  been  carried   out.     He  was  the  real 
father  of  university  extension,  and  he  recommended 
that  the  University  of  London  should  be  made  a 
teaching  institution,   as   it  was   twelve   years    after 
his  death.     Of  all  educational  reformers  in  the  last 
century,   not  excepting  his  father,  Mr.  Arnold  was 
the  most  enlightened,  the  most  far-sighted,  and  the 
most  fair-minded. 


CHAPTER  X. 
MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY. 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD  always  disclaimed  the  epithet  j 
Philosopher,  just  as  he  repudiated  the  title  of  Pro-/ 
fessor.  But  he  had  a  philosophy  of  his  own,  which 
was  perhaps,  like_Cicexo^s,  rather  Academic  than  Stoic 
or  Epicurean.  He  was  always  much  interested  iii^ 
the  history  of  religion,  and  he  took  great  delight  in 
Deutsch's  famous  essay  on  the  Talmud,  which  appeared 
in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  October  1867.  He  wrote 
about  it  to  Lady  de  Rothschild  on  the  4th  of  November 
in  a  letter  which  well  deserves  to  be  quoted,  because 
it  contains  the  germ  of  a  theory  that  afterwards 
coloured  almost  the  whole  of  his  writings.  What  he 
liked  best  himself,  he  said,  in  the  article,  were  "the 
long  extracts  from  the  Talmud  itself,"  which  gave  him 
"huge  satisfaction."  With  the  Christian  character  of 
later  Judaism  he  was  already  well  acquainted.  "  It  is 
curious,"  he  added,  "that,  though  Indo-European,  the 
English  people  is  so  constituted  and  trained  that  there 
is  a  thousand  times  more  chance  of  bringing  it  to  a 
more  philosophical  conception  of  religion  than  its 
present  conception  of  Christianity  as  something  utterly 
unique,  isolated,  and  self-subsistent,  through  Judaism 
and  its  phenomena,  than  through  Hellenism  and  its 
phenomena."  Mr.  Arnold's  interest  in  such  matters, 

H 

f/3 


114  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

however,  did  not  take  his  mind  off  politics,  upon  which 
he  always  kept  a  very  keen  eye.  His  theory  of  the 
Clerkenwell  explosion,  in  December  1867,  was  at  least 
original.  He  traced  it  to  the  immunity  of  the  Hyde 
/Park  rioters  in  1866.  "You  cannot,"  he  wrote  to  his 
mother  on  the  14th  of  December,  "you  cannot  have  one 
measure  for  Fenian  rioting  and  another  for  English 
rioting,  merely  because  the  design  of  Fenian  rioting  is 
more  subversive  and  desperate.  What  the  State  has 

I  to  do  is  to  put  down  all  rioting  with  a  strong  hand,  or 
it  is  sure  to  drift  into  troubles."  It  is  true,  but  not 
the  whole  truth.  Sir  Robert  Peel  once  said  that 
everybody  told  him  he  ought  to  be  firm,  as  if  he  did  not 
know  that,  and  as  if  the  whole  art  of  statesmanship  con 
sisted  in  firmness.  The  rioters  of  1866  might  say  that 
they  carried  the  Reform  Act  of  1867,  and  the  rioters 
of  1867  might  say  that  they  disestablished  the  Irish 
Church  in  1869.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  rioters  of 
1867  were  dangerous,  and  the  rioters  of  1866  were  not. 
In  the  same  letter,  Mr.  Arnold  mentions  a  tribute 
from  a  teacher  of  which  he  felt  justly  proud.  He 
"was  always  gentle  and  patient  with  the  children." 
No  inspector  of  schools  has  ever  been  more  universally 
beloved,  though  some,  it  must  be  confessed,  have  taken 
their  duties  in  a  more  serious  spirit.  At  the  beginning 
of  1868  he  was  amused  and  pleased  at  an  invitation 
from  the  proprietors  of  the  Daily  Telegraph  to  write 
them  a  notice  of  Blake  the  artist,  and  to  "name  his 
own  price."  "I  sent  a  civil  refusal,"  he  characteristi 
cally  remarks ;  "  but,  you  may  depend  upon  it,  Lord 
Lytton  was  right  in  saying  that  it  is  no  inconsiderable 
advantage  to  you  that  all  the  writing  world  have  a 
kind  of  weakness  for  you  even  at  the  time  they  are 


x.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOl'l IV.  115 

attacking  you/'  Early  this  year,  Mr.  Arnold  moved 
from  London  to  Harrow  for  the  better  education  of  his 
children.  At  Harrow,  on  the  23rd  of  November,  his 
eldest  son,  who  had  always  been  an  invalid,  died,  and 
on  the  next  day  Mr.  George  Russell  found  the  father 
seeking  consolation  from  the  pages  of  his  favourite 
Marcus  Aurelius.  His  feeling  for  religion  was  never  I 
confined  to  Christianity. 

Early  in  1867  Messrs.  Smith  and  Elder — that  is  to 
say,  Mr.  Arnold's  valued  friend  of  a  lifetime,  Mr. 
George  Smith — published  ^Culture  and  Anarchy,  jvrhich  f 
contains  the  writer's  philosophical  system,  so  far  as  hcf 
had  one.  Systematic  thought  he  half  ironically  dis 
claimed.  But  he  meant  even  by  the  title  of  his  book 
to  convey  that  lawlessness  was  the  result  of  not  de 
ferring  to  the  authority  of  cultivated  persons.  /  There 
was  point  in  the  sarcasm  of  the  Nonconformist  critic 
who  spoke  of  Mr.  Arnold's  belief  in  the  well  known 
preference  of  the  Almighty  for  University  men.  It  is, 
however,  undeniably  true  that  whereas  in  France  and 
Germany  people  have  too  little  regard  for  individual 
freedom,  in  England  adepts  are  slighted,  knowledge 
undervalued,  and  the  claim  of  every  man  to  do  as. 
he  pleases  elevt  ted  from  a  legal  doctrine  into  a  moral 
ideal.  There  is  some  truth,  though  also  some  exaggera 
tion,  in  the  following  passage  :  "  While  on  the  Continent 
the  idea  prevails  that  it  is  the  business  of  the  heads 
and  representatives  of  the  nation,  by  virtue  of  their 
superior  means,  power,  and  information,  to  set  an 
example  and  to  provide  suggestions  of  right  reason, 
among  us  the  idea  is  that  the  business  of  the  heads  { 
and  representatives  of  the  nation  is  to  do  nothing  of 
the  kind,  but  applaud  the  natural  taste  for  the  bathos 


116  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

showing  itself  vigorously  in  any  part  of  the  community, 
and  to  encourage  its  works"  (Culture  and  Anarchy, 
second  edition,  p  115).  That  is  what  Mr.  Arnold 
would  himself  have  called  a  heightened  and  telling  way 
of  putting  it.  But  he  was  attacking  a  real  error,  of 
which  practical  politics  afford  numerous  examples.  It 
is  difficult  to  be  personal  without  being  offensive.  If  I 
could  avoid  offence  by  taking  two  instances  from  the 
same  party,  I  should  say  that  Mr.  Chamberlain  repre 
sented  the  theory  assailed  by  Mr.  Arnold  (for  which 
there  is  much  to  be  said),  and  Mr.  Balfour  the  theory 
he  would  have  substituted  for  it. 

jCulture,  says  Mr.  Arnold  in  his  Preface  (page  x.),  is 
"a  pursuit  of  our  total  perfection  by  means  of  getting 
to  know,  on  all  the  matters  which  most  concern  us,  the 
best  which  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world." 
In  this  respect  no  man  ever  practised  what  he  preached 
more  thoroughly  than  Matthew  Arnold.  To  use  a 
phrase  widely  current  of  late,  he  was  "the  fine  flower 
of  Oxford  culture,"  and  there  has  seldom  been  a 
more  delicate,  or  a  more  delightful  specimen.  Yet 
he  belonged,  as  he  often  said,  to  the  middle  class,  whom 
he  called  Philistines,  implying  that  culture  was  what 
they  lacked.  Philistinism  is  a  convenient  and  expres 
sive  term.  But  it  describes  a  frame  of  mind,  not  a  class. 
Mr.  Arnold,  as  I  have  said  before,  used  the  word  "  class  " 
-  'as  if  it  were  synonymous  with  caste,  which  in  English 
society  does  not  exist.  Common  occupations,  common 
professions,  above  all,  intermarriage,  make  it  impossible. 
There  is  nothing,  except  his  title,  to  distinguish  a  lord 
I  from  a  commoner.  The  richest  people  are  not  the  best 
\  educated,  nor  the  worst.  Mr.  Arnold  called  "  the  aristo- 
j  cracy,"  which  he  would  have  been  puzzled  to  define, 


x.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY.  117 

barbarians,  because  they  cared  more  for  field  sports  £J 

than  for  the  improvement  of   their  minds.     Some  of 

them  do,  some  of  them  do  not.    There  is  no  rule.    The 

love  of  sport  pervades  the  working  classes  as  well  as 

the  House  of  Lords.     Mr.  Arnold's  name  for  the  prole-' 

tariate  was  a  confession  of  failure.     He  simply  called 

them   "the  populace,"  which  is  no  more  descriptive 

?        than  Mr. Bright's  "residuum."    The  English  people  dot 

^      ^£t/4iys-in/^cj^s<5fcs,  they  live  as  individuals,  and  in  sets.f 

u*        Tulture  and  ignorance,  simplicity  and  vulgarity,  high-i 
^     and  low  ideals,  are  pretty  equally  divided  among  all ) 

»^»  ^sections  of  the  community,  ll  Mr.  Arnold  refers  (at  page 
xviii.  of  his  Preface)  to  the  "undesirable  provincialism  of 
the  English  Puritans  and  Protestant  Nonconformists," 
If  by  provincialism  (a  rather  "provincial"  word)  is 
meant  narrowness  of  view,  it  might  app7yr^Thir$c"nool 
of  Mr.  Spurgeon,  but  it  certainly  would  not  apply  to 
the  school  of  Dr.  Martineau.  It  would  be  as  reason 
able  to  lump  Dr.  Creighton  with  Dr.  Ryle  because  both 
were  Anglican  Bishops. 

|  In  Culture  and  Anarchy,   Mr.  Arnold  preaches  his  • 
favourite   doctrine   of    "sweetness  and   light."     The 
phrase,   ;is  he  acknowledged,   is  Swift's.     Swift  used 
it  of   the  bees,  because  they  make  honey  and  wax. 
Mr.  Arnold  transferred  it  to  the  operation  of  culture,! 
which  would,  if  it  could,  "make  reason  and  the  will  or- 
God  prevail."    He  contrasted  it  with  the  motto  of  the 
Nonconformist  newspaper:  "The  Dissidence  of  Dissent 
and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion."     It 
is  easy  to  be  sarcastic  upon  this  pugnacious  device, 
and   to   quote   St.    Peter's  "Be   of  one  mind";    but 
without  Protestantism,  which  is  a  form  of  Dissent, 
Mr.  Arnold's  books  would  have  been  condemned 


118  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

suppressed.  The  religious  freedom  in  which  he  so 
lavishly  indulged,  was  secured  for  him  by  the  objects 
of  his  constant  gibes.  Mr.  Arnold's  official  connection 
with  Oxford  had  now  ceased,  but  her  hold  upon  his 
allegiance  was  undiminished,  (  "We  have  not  won  our 
political  battles,"  he  says,  at  page  32,  "we  have  not 
carried  our  main  points,  we  have  not  stopped  our 
adversaries'  advance,  we  have  not  marched  victoriously 
with  the  modern  world;  but  we  have  told  silently 
upon  the  mind  of  the  country,  we  have  prepared 
currents  of  feeling  which  sap  our  adversaries'  position 
when  it  seems  gained,  we  have  kept  up  our  own 
communications  with  the  future."  Who  are  "we"? 
\  Mr.  Arnold  means  Oxford  men,  and  he  refers  to  the 
f  Oxford  Movement.  But  Oxford  would  have  con 
demned  Newman's  most  famous  Tract  if  two  High, 
Church  proctors  had  not  interfered,  and  the  same  Oxford 
actually  degraded  Dr.  Ward  for  writing  a  High  Church 
book.  The  intellectual,  as  distinguished  from  the 
political,  Liberalism  of  Oxford  dates  from  the  admission 
of  Nonconformists.  It  is  only  fair  to  add,  before  leaving 
»  this  part  of  the  subject,  that  |Mr.  Arnold  himself 
acknowledges  his  tripartite  division  of  society  not 
to  be  mutually  exclusive.  "An  English  barbarian 
who  examines  himself,"  he  says,  on  page  96,  "will  in 
general  find  himself  to  be  not  so  entirely  a  barbarian, 
but  that  he  has  in  him  also  something  of  the  Philistine, 
and  even  something  of  the  Populace  as  well.  And  the 
same  with  Englishmen  of  the  other  two  classes."  Just 
so.  But,  then,  what  is  the  value  of  the  classification?* 
One  is  reminded  of  Thurlow's  famous  remark  about 
Kenyon  and  Buller.  A  rule  with  too  many  exceptions 
ceases  to  be  a  rule  at  all. 


X.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY.  119 

"No  man,"  says  Mr.  Arnold,  at  page  163,  "no  man 
who  knows  nothing  else  knows  even  his  Bible."  The 
sentiment  is  familiar ;  and  Mr.  Eudyard  Kipling  has 
performed  a  variation  upon  it  in  his  celebrated,  but 
fallacious,  inquiry,  "  What  can  they  know  of  England 
who  only  England  know  1 "  The  answer  to  Mr.  Kipling * 
is — "  Everything,  if  they  .read  the  newspapflra/^Mr. 
Arnold  was  aiming  at  Mr.  Spurgeon,  but  he  hitBunyan 
without  meaning  it.  (if  stupid  people  would  read  the 
Bible  less,  and  clever  people  would  read  it  more,  the 
world  would  be  much  improved,  f  The  objects  otf 
Mr.  Arnold's  just  scorn  were  not  really  men  who 
confined  themselves  to  the  Bible,  but  those  who  trieoj 
to  serve  God  and  Mammon.  Such,  for  example,  was 
a  late  Chairman  of  the  Great  Western  Railway,  who 
quoted  to  the  workmen  at  Swindon  the  beautiful 
sentence  uttered  to  him  every  morning  by  his  mother 
when  he  went  to  work  on  the  line.  "  Ever  remember, 
my  dear  Dan,"  said  the  good  lady,  "  that  you  should 
look  forward  to  being  some  day  manager  of  that 
concern."  The  words  of  the  Gospel  were  fulfilled  in 
Dan.  He  had  his  reward.  He  did  become  manager 
of  that  not  very  well  managed  concern.  He  was 
outwardly  more  fortunate  than  the  secretary  of  the 
insurance  company  who  committed  suicide  because 
he  "laboured  under  the  apprehension  that  he  would 
come  to  poverty,  and  that  he  was  eternally  lost." 
Against  the  vulgar  degradation  of  religion,  as  un 
christian  as  it  is  gloomy  and  sordid,  implied  in  these 
awful  words,  Matthew  Arnold  set  his  face,  and  so  far 
lie  followed  the  teaching  of  Christ. 

Mr.  Arnold  had  now  a  European  reputation  as  a  man 
of  letters,  and  at  the  beginning  of  1869  the  Italian 


120  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Government  proposed  to  him  that  Prince  Thomas  of 
Savoy,  the  Duke  of  Genoa,  who  a  year  afterwards 
refused  the  crown  of  Spain,  should  live  with  the 
Arnolds  at  Harrow  while  he  attended  the  school. 
The  proposal  would  not  have  been  attractive  to  every 

(one,  but  it  suited  Mr.  Arnold  very  well.  He  was  sociable 
in  his  tastes,  and  cosmopolitan  in  his  sympathies. 
He  had  travelled  a  good  deal  on  the  Continent,  and 
knew  foreign  languages  well.  Mrs.  Arnold  had  no 
objection,  and  she,  after  all,  as  he  remarked  to  his 
mother,  was  the  person  most  concerned.  The  arrange 
ment  answered  perfectly,  and  Mr.  Arnold,  who  loved 
young  people,  became  very  fond  of  the  prince.  The 
boy  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  but  there  seems  to  have 
been  no  apprehension  that  Mr.  Arnold  would  subvert 
his  faith;  and  when  he  left  Harrow  in  1871,  his  host 
received  from  Victor  Emmanuel  "  the  Order  of  Com 
mander  of  the  Crown  of  Italy."  Mr.  Arnold's  failure  in 
getting  a  Commissionership  under  his  brother-in-law's 
Endowed  Schools'  Act  he  attributed,  no  doubt  correctly, 
to  Mr.  Gladstone ;  but  the  disappointment  was  not  very 
keen,  and  when  the  Conservatives  came  into  power 
five  years  afterwards,  they  put  a  summary  end  to 
the  Commission.  On  the  other  hand,  he  thoroughly 
appreciated  the  honorary  degree  conferred  upon  him 
by  his  own  University  at  the  Commemoration  of  1870. 
The  list  was  made  out  by  the  new  Chancellor,  Lord 
Salisbury,  who  had  succeeded  Lord  Derby  the  year 
before,  and  none  of  the  names  chosen  did  more  credit 
to  his  choice  than  Mr.  Arnold's.  He  was  presented  to 
Lord  Salisbury  by  his  friend  Mr.  Bryce,  the  Professor  of 
Civil  Law,  and  received  by  graduates  as  well  as  under 
graduates  with  a  heartiness  which  greatly  pleased  him. 


x.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY.  121 

This  year  1870  may  be  assigned  as  the  date  of| 
Matthew  Arnold's  open  breach  with  the  religious,  or  | 
at  least  the  orthodox,  world.  The  later  stages  of  that 
quarrel,  not  in  all  respects  creditable  to  either  side, 
will  be  traced  in  the  next  chapter,  which  will  be 
devoted  to  Mr.  Arnold's  theology.  St.  Paul  and 
Protestantism,  with  an  Essay  on  Puritanism  in  the 
Church  of  England,  was  reprinted,  like  Culture  and 
Anarchy,  from  the  Cornhill  Magazine.  It  is  rather 
philosophical  than  theological,  and  carries  a  step 
further  the  principles  laid  down  in  Culture  and 
Anarchy.  Its  object  was  twofold.  The  author 
desired  to  contrast,,  Hebraism,  the  philoao^hj_  c)f 
morals,  with  Hellenism,  the  philosophy  of  thought. 
He  sought  also  to  prove  that  Evangelical  Puritanism, 
which  grounded  itself  upon  the  doctrines  of  St.  Paul, 
had  misunderstood  and  perverted  the  teaching  of  the 
apostle.  Of  Evangelical  Puritanism  the  Nonconformists 
were  the  chief  representatives,  and  therefore  they  come 
in  for  a  peculiar  share  of  Mr.  Arnold's  attention ;  but 
he  deals  also  with  the  Evangelical  party  in  the  ChurchV 
of  England,  then  stronger,  at  least  among  the  clergy,' 
than  it  is  now.  Translating,  or  paraphrasing,  the 
Greek  word  'EirtctVccta  by  "sweet  reasonableness,"  he 
urged  that  that  was  the  distinguishing  characteristic  \ 
which  St.  Paul  had  derived  from  the  teaching  of  his  I 
Master.  Setting  this  against  the  spirit  of  contentious 
ness  which,  in  his  opinion,  Dissent  developed,  he 
proceeded  to  argue  in  favour  of  unity,  of  one  Church. 
So  far  his  position  was  thoroughly  agreeable  to  the 
Anglican  Establishment.  But  it  soon  appeared  that 
the  new  and  universal  Church  was  to  be  purged  of  all 
dogma.  God  was  no  longer  to  be,  as  the  Calvinists 


122  MATTHEW  ABNOLD.  [CHAP. 

made  Him,  "a  magnified  and  non-natural  man,"  but 
"  that  stream  of  tendency  by  which  all  things  strive  to 
^fulfil  the  law  of  their  being."  This  is  Pantheism,  pure 
and  simple.  Now  Pantheism,  though  a  profoundly 
religious  creed,  is  not  regarded  with  favour  by  orthodox 
Protestants,  or,  for  that  matter,  by  orthodox  Catholics. 
I  remember  that,  when  I  was  at  Oxford,  a  Bampton 
Lecturer  incurred  much  ridicule  by  this  passionate 
adjuration  from  the  pulpit :  "  I  beseech  you,  brethren," 
said  he,  "by  the  mercies  of  Christ,  that  you  hold  fast 
to  the  integrity  of  your  anthropomorphism."  It  was 
enough  to  make  Dean  Mansel  turn  in  his  grave.  But, 
as  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  in  a  brilliant  though  now 
forgotten  essay,  and  Mr.  Mill,  in  his  examination  of 
Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  reminded  Mr. 
Mansel,  a  Deity  of  whom  no^  jmman  or  natural 
qualities  can  be  predicated  is  a  mere  abstraction, 
and  for  practical  purposes  might  as  well  not  exist. 

What,  then,  according  to  Mr.  Arnold,  was  St.  Paul's 
real  doctrine  ?  It  will  be  found  on  page  42  of  the 
second  edition.  "This  man,  whom  Calvin  and 
Luther  and  their  followers  have  shut  up  into,  .the  two 
scholastic  dDctrincs_Ql^Le.ction  and  justification,  would 
have  said,  could  we  hear  him,  just  what  he  said  about 
circumcision  and  uncircumcision  in  his  own  day : 
1*  Election  is  nothing,  and  justification  is  nothing,  but 
|  the  keeping  of  the  commandments  of  God.' "  It  may  be 
so.  What  has  been  said  generally  of  the  Bible  is  true 
especially  of  St.  Paul.  Everybody  goes  to  the  Pauline 
Epistles  for  his  own  doctrines,  and  everybody  finds 
them.  They  are  far  more  difficult  to  understand  than 
Plato  or  Aristotle,  and  yet  preachers  wholly  innocent 
of  hermeneutics  will  expound  them  with  the  most 


x.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY.  123 

touching  confidence.  Mr.  Arnold  had  a  short  way  of 
eliminating  from  St.  Paul  what  he  did  not  like,  such 
as  "  the  harsh  and  unedifying  image  of  the  clay  and 
the  potter."  St.  Paul  "was  led  into  difficulty  by  the 
tendency,  which  we  have  already  noticed  as  marking 
his  real  imperfection  both  as  a  thinker  and  as  a  writer 
— the  tendency  to  Judaise  "  (page  97).  It  is  hardly 
strange  that  St.  Paul  should  have  Judaised.  He  was 
a  Jew,  a  Pharisee,  familiar  not  merely  with  the  law 
and  the  prophets,  but  also  with  the  Rabbinical  tradi 
tions,  long  before  he  heard  of  Christ.  Conversion 
changes,  or  ought  to  change,  a  man's  purpose  and  mode 
°f  Jlfei  ^  does  not  jiflect_the  habits  ofjiisjmind.  St. 
Paul  wished  to  reconcile  Christianity  with  Judaism, 
not  to  supersede  one  by  the  other.  His  "  tendency  to 
Judaise  "  is  part  of  his  system.  Take  it  away,  and  he 
ceases  to  be  St.  Paul. 

In  the  essay  on  Puritanism  and  the  Church  of 
England  Mr.  Arnold  points  out  (page  129),  "that  the 
High  Church  divines  of  the  seventeenth  century  were 
Arminian,  that  the  Church  of  England  was  the 
stronghold  of  Arminianism,  and  that  ^minianism  is 
an  effort  of  man's  practical  good  sense  to  get  rid- of 
what  is  shocking  to  it  in  Calvinism."  And  he  traces 
the  existence  of  Nonconformity  mainly  to  the  fact  that 
the  Church  would  not  "put  the  Calvinistic  doctrines 
more  distinctly  into  her  formularies.'  This  is  more 
than  doubtful  history.  The  persecuting  policy  of  Laud, 
and  the  Act  of  Uniformity  passed  when  that  most 
Christian  king,  Charles  the  Second,  was  restored  to  the 
throne,  w^rfi  the  chief  causes  of  Protestant  Dissent. 
Mr.  Arnold  was  fond  of  Butler,  and  quoted  him  almost 
as  often  as  he  quoted  the  Vulgate.  "  '  The  Bible,1  said 


124  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAI-. 

the  great  bishop,  '  contains  many  truths  as  yet  un 
discovered,'  and  in  so  saying  he  passed  sentence  on 
every  creed  and  council"  (page  151).  That  is  an 
admirable  application  of  a  profound  truth,  whether 
Butler  would  himself  have  made  it  or  not.  For  if  it 
be  true,  as  Cardinal  Newman  says,  that  we  "cannot 

i  halve  the  gospel  of  God's  grace,"  so  neither  can  we 
limit  it.  Securus  judicat  orlris  terrarum.  These  words  of 
St.  Augustine  convinced  Newman  that  the  Church  of 

i  Rome  must  be  in  the  right.     For  that  purpose  Mr. 

I  Arnold,  of  course,  rejects  them.  But  he  adopts  them 
in  support  of  his  own  theory  that  religion  implies 
unity.  For  my  part,  I  think  that  the  Avords  are 
much  nearer  the  truth  if  construed  as  a  classical 
Roman  would  have  construed  them.  When  Horace 
wrote  that  he  was  "quid  Tiridaten  terreat  unice 
securus,"  he  did  not  mean  that  he  had  infallible 
knowledge  of  what  frightened  Tiridates.  He  meant 
that  he  did  not  care,  which  is  only  too  true  of  the 
world  and  theology.  Mr.  Arnold  defends  the  Church 
England  from  the  charge  of  "  not  knowing  her  own 
mind,"  or,  rather,  he  denies  that  it  is  a  charge,  and 
claims  it  is  as  a  merit.  He  pleads  with  eloquence  and 
sincerity  that  doctrinal  differences,  however  funda 
mental,  are  no  ground  for  separation,  and  that  Luther 
,did  not  separate  for  any  such  reason,  but  because  the 
'  Church  of  Rome  was  immoral,  which  was  a  true 
"ground,  and  the  only  true  one.  This  idea  of  a  universal 
Church,  with  departure  from  iniquity  for  its  first  prin 
ciple,  is  a  very  noble  one.  The  invisible  tie  which 
unites  all  good  men  is  in  some  sort  a  fulfilment  of  it. 
Fully  realised  on  earth  it  is  never  likely  to  be.  As 
Mr.  Jowett  so  beautifully  says  of  Plato's  Republic,  the 


X.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY.  125 

moment  we  seem  to  comprehend  it,  it  eludes  our 
grasp,  and  at  length  fades  away  into  the  Heavens. 
Perhaps  Mr.  Arnold  knew  that.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  book  to  prove  that  he  did  not  know  it. 

Mr.  Arnold's  "genial  and  somewhat  esoteric  philo 
sophy,"  if  I  may  borrow  a  phrase  applied  by  Sir  George 
Trevelyan  to  his  uncle,  is  nowhere  more  compendiously 
stated  than  in  Friendship's  Garland,  which  appeared 
in  a  complete  form  at  the  beginning  of  1871.  The 
history  of  this  little  book  is  curious.  The  letters  of 
which  it  consists  were  first  printed  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  when  that  journal  of  many  vicissitudes  was 
edited  by  Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood.  They  extend 
over  a  period  of  four  years,  from  1866  to  1870,  dealing 
chiefly  with  the  victories  of  Prussia  over  Austria,  and 
of  Germany  over  France.  Attributed  to  a  young 
Prussian,  Arminius  von  Thunder-ten-Tronckh,  whose 
name  is  of  course  taken  from  Candide,  they  really 
represent  Mr.  Arnold's  views  upon  the  characteristic 
deficiencies  of  his  countrymen.  It  is  a  remarkable 
fact  that,  though  an  unsparing  critic  of  English  foibles, 
and  also  of  the  qualities  upon  which  Englishmen 
particularly  pride  themselves,  he  never  became 
unpopular.  Such  is  the  power  of  urbanity.  The 
outer  public,  the  widest  circle  of  readers,  knew 
Matthew  Arnold  chiefly  from  quotations  in  news 
papers,  and  the  readers  of  the  old  Pall  Mall  were  of 
the  "  kid  glove  persuasion."  But,  as  he  said  himself, 
the  writing  people  had  a  kindness  for  him ;  and  even 
those  at  whom  his  shafts  of  ridicule  were  directed 
laughed,  unless  they  were  translators  of  Homer,  as 
heartily  as  anybody  else.  I  can  myself  (and  so  can 
Mr.  George  Russell)  testify  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Sala, 


126  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

one  of  Mr.  Arnold's  favourite  butts,  regarded  his 
facetious  tormentor  with  friendly  and  respectful 
admiration.  This  was  very  creditable  to  Mr.  Sala,  but 
it  was  creditable  to  Mr.  Arnold  too.  There  was 
plenty  of  salt  in  his  wit,  and  not  much  pepper. 
Friendship's  Garland  is  by  far  the  most  amusing  book 
he  ever  wrote,  and,  indeed,  for  anything  better  of  its 
kind  we  must  go  to  Voltaire.  Yet  nothing  would 
induce  Mr.  Arnold  to  publish  a  second  edition  of  it, 
and  for  many  years  before  his  death  it  was  out  of 
print.  He  thought  it  ephemeral,  as  parts  of  it  no 
doubt  are,  and  his  fastidious  taste  condemned  it  to 
oblivion.  Fortunately,  the  destinies  of  a  book  are  not 
under  the  permanent  control  of  the  author,  and  in 
1898  Friendship's  Garland  was  brought  out  once  more. 
The  special  phase  of  smug,  complacent  Philistine 
Liberalism,  at  which  it  is  chiefly  aimed,  had  ceased  to 
be  predominant.  But  the  fun  is  immortal,  and  the 
.  (^  criticism  deep  as  well  as  sound.  If  the  book  can  be 
%said  to  have  a  practical  moral,  it  is  that  Englishmen 
should  practise  the  virtue  of  obedience,  and  improve 
the  education  of  the  middle  classes.  But  the  charm 
of  these  pages,  the  most  vivacious  that  even  Mr. 
Arnold  ever  penned,  lies  in  the  inimitable  drollness  of 
the  social  satire,  and  perhaps  I  can  hardly  do  better 
than  quote  at  full  length  the  conversation  between 
Arminius  and  the  author  upon  the  justices  at  petty 
sessions. 

"  '  The  three  magistrates  in  that  inn,'  said  I,  '  are  not  three 
Government  functionaries  all  cut  out  of  one  block  ;  they 
embody  our  whole  national  life  ; — the  land,  religion,  commerce, 
are  all  represented  by  them.  Lord  Lumpington  is  a  peer  of 
old  family  and  great  estate ;  Esau  Hittall  is  a  clergyman  ; 


x.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY.  127 

Mr.  Bottles  is  one  of  our  self-made  niiiMU'-rlass  men.  Their 
politics  are  not  all  of  one  colour,  and  that  colour  the  Govern 
ment's.  Lumpington  is  a  constitutional  Whig  ;  Hittall  is  a 
benighted  old  Tory.  As  for  Mr.  Bottles,  he  is  a  Radical  of 
the  purest  water  ;  quite  one  of  the  Manchester  school.  He 
was  one  of  the  earliest  free-traders,  he  has  always  gone  as 
straight  as  an  arrow  about  Reform  ;  he  is  an  ardent  voluntary 
in  every  possible  line,  opposed  the  Ten  Hours'  Bill,  was  one  of 
the  leaders  of  the  Dissenting  opposition  out  of  Parliament 
which  smashed  up  the  education  clauses  of  Sir  James  Graham's 
Factory  Act ;  and  he  paid  the  whole  expenses  of  a  most 
important  church-rate  contest  out  of  his  own  pocket.  And, 
finally,  he  looks  forward  to  marrying  his  deceased  wife's  sister. 
Table,  as  my  friend  Mr.  Grant  Duff  says,  the  whole  Liberal 
creed,  and  in  not  a  single  point  of  it  will  you  find  Bottles 
tripping.'  'That  is  all  very  well  as  to  their  politics,'  said 
Arminius,  'but  I  want  to  hear  about  their  education  and 
intelligence.'  *  There,  too,  I  can  satisfy  you,'  I  answered. 
'Lumpington  was  at  Eton.  Hittall  was  on  the  foundation  at 
Charterhouse,  placed  there  by  his  uncle,  a  distinguished 
prelate,  who  was  one  of  the  trustees.  You  know  we  English 
have  no  notion  of  your  bureaucratic  tyranny  of  treating  the 
appointments  to  these  great  foundations  as  public  patronage, 
and  vesting  them  in  a  responsible  minister  ;  we  vest  them  in 
independent  magnates,  who  relieve  the  State  of  all  work  and 
responsibility,  and  never  take  a  shilling  of  salary  for  their 
trouble.  Hittall  was  the  last  of  six  nephews  nominated  to  the 
Charterhouse  by  his  uncle,  this  good  prelate,  who  had 
thoroughly  learnt  the  divine  lesson  that  charity  begins  at 
home.'  'But  I  want  to  know  what  his  nephew  learnt/  in 
terrupted  Arminius,  'and  what  Lord  Lumpington  learnt  at 
Eton/  '  They  followed,'  said  I, '  the  grand,  old,  fortifying, 
classical  curriculum.'  'Did  they  know  anything  when  they 
left  ?'  asked  Arminius.  '  I  have  seen  some  longs  and  shorts 
of  Hittall's,'  said  I,  '  about  the  Calydonian  Boar,  which  were 
not  bad.  But  you  surely  don't  need  me  to  tell  you,  Arminius, 
that  it  is  rather  in  training  and  bracing  the  mind  for  future 
acquisition — a  course  of  mental  gymnastics  we  call  it — than 
in  teaching  any  set  thing,  that  the  classical  curriculum  is  so 


128  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

valuable.'  *  Were  the  minds  of  Lord  Lumpington  and  Mr. 
Hittall  much  braced  by  their  mental  gymnastics?'  inquired 
Arminius.  'Well,'  I  answered,  'during  their  three  years  at 
Oxford  they  were  so  much  occupied  with  Bullingdon  and 
hunting,  that  there  was  no  great  opportunity  to  judge.  But 
for  my  part  I  have  always  thought  that  their  both  getting 
their  degree  at  last  with  flying  colours,  after  three  weeks  of  a 
famous  coach  for  fast  men,  four  nights  without  going  to  bed, 
and  an  incredible  consumption  of  wet  towels,  strong  cigars, 
and  brandy  and  water,  was  one  of  the  most  astonishing  feats  of 
mental  gymnastics  I  ever  heard  of.'  *  That  will  do  for  the  land 
and  the  Church/  said  Arminius  ;  'and  now  let  us  hear  about 
commerce.'  '  You  mean  how  was  Bottles  educated  ? '  answered 
I.  '  Here  we  get  into  another  line  altogether,  but  a  very  good 
line  in  its  way,  too.  Mr.  Bottles  was  brought  up  at  the 
Lycurgus  House  Academy,  Peckham.  You  are  not  to  suppose 
from  the  name  of  Lycurgus  that  any  Latin  and  Greek  was 
taught  in  the  establishment ;  the  name  only  indicates  the 
moral  discipline,  and  the  strenuous  earnest  character,  imparted 
there.  As  to  the  instruction,  the  thoughtful  educator  who 
was  principal  of  the  Lycurgus  House  Academy, — Archimedes 
Silverpump,  Ph.D.,  you  must  have  heard  of  him  in  Germany  ? 
— had  modern  views.  "  We  must  be  men  of  our  age,"  he  used 
.to  say.  "  Useful  knowledge,  living  languages,  and  the  forming 
\of  the  mind  through  observation  and  experiment,  these  are  the 
Fundamental  articles  of  my  educational  creed."  Or  as  I  have 
heard  his  pupil  Bottles  put  it  in  his  expansive  moments  after 
ft  inner  :  "  Original  man,  Silverpump  !  fine  mind  !  fine  system. 
None  of  your  antiquated  rubbish — all  practical  work — latest 
discoveries  in  science — mind  constantly  kept  excited — lots  of 
interesting  experiments — lights  of  all  colours — fizz  !  fizz  ! 
bang  !  bang  !  That 's  what  I  call  forming  a  man  !  " '  '  And 
pray,'  cried  Arminius  impatiently,  '  what  sort  of  man  do  you 
suppose  this  infernal  quack  really  formed  in  your  precious 
friend  Mr.  Bottles  ?'  '  Well,'  I  replied,  '  I  hardly  know  how 
to  answer  that  question.  Bottles  has  certainly  made  an 
immense  fortune ;  but  as  to  Silverptinip's  effect  on  his  mind, 
whether  it  was  from  any  fault  in  the  Lycurgus  House  system, 
whether  it  was  that  with  a  sturdy  self-reliance  thoroughly 


x.J  MI!.  ARNOLD'S  PHILOSOPHY.  129 

English,  Bottles,  ever  since  he  quitted  Silverpuinp,  left  his 
mind  wholly  to  itself,  his  daily  newspaper,  and  the  Particular 
Baptist  minister  under  whom  he  sat,  or  from  whatever  cause 

it  was,  certainly  his  mind,  qud  mind '     *  You  need  not  go 

on/  interrupted  Arminius,  'I  know  what  that  man's  mind, 
qnd  mind,  is,  well  enough.' " 

I  do  not  think  that  Matthew  Arnold  ever  surpassed 
this  dialogue.  The  only  criticism  I  should  make  upon 
it  is  that  the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister  Bill  got  upon  his 
nerves,  and  that  he  always  seemed  to  regard  it  as  a 
compulsory  measure.  Public  opinion,  however,  was  to 
some  extent  with  him,  for  it  has  not  yet  become  law. 


CHAPTER    XI. 
MR.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY. 

IF  any  formal  theologian  should  cast  a  roving  eye 
over  this  book,  or  over  this  chapter,  he  will  probably 
deny  that  Mr.  Arnold  had  any  theology  at  all.  For 
just  as  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  "  sought  vainly  in  him  a 
system  of  philosophy  with  principles  coherent,  inter 
dependent,  subordinate,  and  derivative,"  so  Mr. 
Gladstone  observed,  with  less  pedantry,  and  more 
humour,  that  he  combined  a  sincere  devotion  to  the 
/Christian  religion  with  a  faculty  for  presenting  it  in 
such  a  form  as  to  be  recognisable  neither  by  friend  nor 
foe.  This  is  a  more  "damning  sentence,"  to  adopt 
Mr.  Arnold's  own  phrase,  than  Mr.  Harrison's.  It 
is  indeed  the  best  and  tersest  criticism  ever  passed 
upon  Mr.  Arnold's  theological  writings.  I  am  not 
:in  the  least  inclined  to  agree  with  Mr.  Russell,  who 
dismisses  those  writings  in  a  sigh,  or  with  Professor 
Saintsbury,  who  disposes  of  them  with  a  sneer.  I 
do  not  understand  how  a  real  scholar  like  Mr.  Saints- 
bury  can  think,  that  unless  the  Fourth  Gospel  is 
"revelation,"  its  date  is  immaterial,  whether  that  date 
were  the  first  century,  the  fourth  century,  or  the 
fourteenth.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  that 
Mr.  Arnold  set  before  himself  a  perfectly  legitimate, 
and  even  laudable  object,  but  that  with  many  brilliant 

130 


ni\i.  XL]        MR.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY.  131 

qualifications  there  were  fatal  obstacles  to  his  success. 
The  date  of  the  Gospels,  and  the  history  of  their 
composition,  are  not  merely  interesting  in  themselves, 
but  absolutely  essential  to  the  estimate  of  their 
historical  value.  Nobody  says  that  the  first  Decade  of 
Livy  is  "  revelation."  But  its  almost  total  worthless- 
ness  as  history  is  mainly,  though  not  entirely,  due  to 
the  distance  between  the  age  of  Augustus  and  the  age 
of  the  kings. 

Mr.  Arnold's  Biblical  criticism  was  not  substan-  I 
tially  original.  He  availed  himself  of  researches  made 
by  more  learned  men,  such  as  Ewald,  Gesenius,  and 
Kuenen.  His  treatment  of  the  subject  was  his  own, 
and  it  was  not  in  all  respects  fortunate.  St.  Paul 
and  Protestantism  is  not  really  a  theological  book. 
Writing  on  the  20th  of  September  1872  to  his  friend 
M.  Fontanes,  a  French  pastor  of  the  broad  school,  he 
says :  "  En  parlant  de  St.  Paul,  je  n'ai  pas  parle  en 
theologien,  mais  en  homme  de  lettres  mecontent  de 
la  tres  mauvaise  critique  litteraire  qu'on  appliquait 
a  un  grand  esprit;  si  j'avais  parle  en  theologien  on 
ne  m'eut  pas  ecoute."  The  author  of  Literature  and 
Dogma  was  certainly  heard,  and  heard  with  attention, 
though  not  always  with  approval.  Before,  however, 
dealing  with  that  work,  I  must  mention  some  pre 
liminary  matters.  In  the  same  letter  from  which 
I  have  just  quoted,  written  throughout  in  French, 
Mr.  Arnold  refers  to  a  little  work  on  Isaiah  just  pub 
lished,  which  was  succeeding  "  well  enough."  The  suc 
cess  was  not  permanent,  nor  was  it  of  the  kind  which 
Mr.  Arnold  especially  desired.  The  Great  Prophecy 
of  Israel's  Restoration  was  intended  for  use  in  ele 
mentary  schools.  Sir  Joshua  Fitch  informs  us  that 


132  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

it  has  never  been  used  in  a  single  school.  It  has  long 
been  out  of  print,  and  is  now  exceedingly  scarce.  It 
contains  the  last  twenty-seven  chapters  of  Isaiah,  with 
a  long  explanatory  preface,  rather  copious  notes, 
find  a  few  changes  in  the  English  of  the  Authorised 
Version.  Mr.  Arnold's  purpose  was  to  help  English 
school-children  in  reading  these  wonderful  chapters 
"without  being  frequently  stopped  by  passages  of 
which  the  meaning  is  almost  or  quite  unintelligible." 
The  little  book  appeared  before  the  Revised  Version 
of  the  Old  Testament  was  finished,  but  it  cannot  be 
said  to  have  been  superseded  by  that  translation,  for 
one  is  almost  as  dead  as  the  other.  The  Authorised 
Version  of  the  Bible  has  defects  as  well  as  beauties, 
among  which  the  reckless  and  indiscriminate  use  of 
pronouns  is  perhaps  the  most  prominent.  But  it  has 
a  hold  upon  the  English  people  which  nothing  can 
shake,  and  Dr.  Newman  felt  its  loss  more  acutely 
than  anything  else  when  he  left  the  Church  of  Eng 
land.  "  Who  hath  believed  our  report  1 "  may  be  an 
obvious  mistranslation.  But  there  is  no  more  chance 
of  getting  rid  of  it  than  of  expunging  "I  know  that 
my  Redeemer  liveth"  on  similar  grounds  from  the 
Book  of  Job.  Still  it  is  a  good  thing  to  read  these 
chapters  as  a  whole,  and  they  have  no  connection 
whatsoever  with  the  rest  of  Isaiah. 

In  February  1872  Matthew  Arnold's  second  son 
died  at  Harrow,  aged  eighteen,  and  was  buried  with 
his  two, brothers  at  Laleham.  The  following  year  he 
removed  from  Harrow,  which  had  too  many  sad  associa 
tions  for  Mrs.  Arnold,  and  settled  at  Pain's  Hill, 
Cobham,  Surrey,  which  was  his  home  for  the  remainder 
of  his  life. 


XL]  Mil.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY.  133 

The   publication   of  Literature  and  Dogma  in   1873 
marks    a    distinct    and    definite    epoch    of    Matthew 
Arnold's  life.     With  this  book  he  severed  himself  from\ 
orthodox  Christianity,  and  even  from  Unitarianism  as  I 
commonly  understood.      He  had,   indeed,   a   curious 
dislike  of  Unitarians,  whom  he  called  Socinians,  which 
he  may  have  inherited  from  his  father.     Yet  his  own 
creed,  if  creed  it  can  be  called,  would  have  horrified 
Dr.  Arnold  far  more  than  theirs.     For  he  rejected  not  i 
merely  miracles,  but  the  personality  of  God.     Nor,  it  \ 
must  l)e  admitted,  did  he  always  express  himself  in  ; 
reverent  language,  and  with  a  due  regard  for  the  feel-  I 
ings  of  others.    He  gave  intense  pain  to  a  distinguished 
philanthropist,  whose  own  beliefs  were  of  the  straitest, 
by  comparing  him  with  the  Persons  of  the  Trinity,  and 
though  he  afterwards  withdrew  this  unseemly  jest, 
singularly  devoid  of  humour  as  it  was,  the  bad  impres 
sion  it  created  remained,  because  it  was  the  index  to 
a  frame  of  mind.     The  reference  to  "  the  Bishops  of 
Winchester  and  Gloucester"  was   more   pardonable, 
because  it  was  founded  on  a  phrase  or  phrases  used 
by  themselves.     But  it  was  in  bad  taste,  and  the  need- 
iless  repetition  of  it  is  most  wearisome.     Repetition  is/ 
Ithe  besetting  sin  of  Mr.  Arnold's  later  prose.     It  was 
ever  the  fault  of  our  English  nation,  said  the  man  who 
knew  the  English  nation  best,  that  when  they  have 
a  good  thing  they  make  it  too  common.     Mr.  Arnold 
happened  early  in  life  to  stamp  one  or  two  happy 
expressions  upon  English  literature.     He  was  thereby 
encouraged  to  say  a  thing  over  and  over  again  merely 
because  he  thought  it  particularly  good  himself.     That 
is  bad  literature,  and  even  bad  journalism,  though  it 
is,  alas,  very  common.     Another  tiresome  trick  which 


134  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHA*. 

grew  upon  Mr.  Arnold  with  advancing  years,  was  the 
use  of  the  first  person  plural  for  the  first  person 
singular.  "  We  "  in  a  leading  article  may  be  defended 
because  an  article  sometimes  expresses  the  writer's 
opinion  as  well  as  the  editor's.  "  We  "  in  a  book  is  mere 
affectation,  unless  there  are  more  authors  than  one. 

These,  however,  are  superficial  criticisms,  though 
necessary  to  be  made.  The  book  is  one  of  great  power 
and  beauty,  saturated  with  religious  sentiment,  and 
inculcating  the  loftiest  standard  of  morals.  It  is,  per 
haps,  an  instance  of  Nemesis  that  for  once  Mr.  Arnold's 
humour  fails  him.  The  University  of  Cambridge  pro 
vided  him  with  an  admirable  opportunity  by  setting 
as  a  subject  for  a  prize  poem  the  words  of  Lucretius, 
Hominum  divumque  voluptas,  alma  Venus.  But  he  did  not 
rise  to  it.  The  attempt  is  a  failure.  The  object  of  the 
book,  on  the  other  hand,  is  wholly  serious,  and  wholly 
laudable.  It  is  to  free  Christianity  from  excrescences 
which,  in  Mr.  Arnold's  opinion,  had  corrupted  the  essence 
and  marred  the  utility  of  Christ's  teaching.  The  quota 
tions  on  the  title-page  indicate  its  scope.  They  are  from 
the  Vulgate,  from  Senancour,  the  author  of  Obermann, 
and  from  Bishop  Butler.  Butler  argues,  in  his  weighty 
and  dignified  manner,  that  fresh  discoveries  may  be 
made  in  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible,  just  as  they 
are  made  in  the  field  of  natural  science.  Butler  was 
not  quite  so  orthodox  as  Mr.  Gladstone  would  have 
us  suppose. 

No  candid  mind  could,  I  think,  find  any  fault  with 
the  aim  of  Mr.  Arnold's  theological  writings.  Goethe 
told  Eckermann  that  he  thought  his  books  had  given 
men  a  new  and  enlarged  sense  of  freedom.  That  was 
Mr.  Arnold's  desire,  and  it  is  surely  a  laudable  one. 


XL]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY.  135 

The  discussion  of  his  methods  is  a  delicate  task.     I 
know  the  heat  of  the  fires  which  are  banked  beneath 
those   treacherous   ashes.      Mr.    Arnold   had    become 
•  alarmed  by  the  attitude  of  the  working  classes  towards 
jthe  Christian  faith.      He   did  not   know  very  much 
about  the  working  classes,  but  some  highly  cultivated 
artisans  read  his  works,  and  corresponded  with  him. 
From  them  he  gathered  that  the  cream  of  their  order, 
the  intellectual  aristocracy  of  labour,  were  rejecting 
all  religion  because  they  could  not  believe  in  miracles, 
or  in  the  verbal  inspiration  of  the  Bible.     He  thought 
it  a  grievous  thing  that  people  should  squabble  over 
such  a  question  as  disestablishment,  while  the  very 
existence  of  religion  itself  was  at  stake.     He  therefore 
proceeded  to  set  forth  his  own  ideas  of  what  reason 
able  men  might  hold,  and  pious  men  might  abandon. 
Popular  theology  rested  on  a  mistaken  conception  of  \ 
the  Bible  as  a  scientific  work,  whereas  the  Bible  was  1 
literary,  not  scientific,  and   could  not  be  broken  up  \ 
into  propositions,  like  a  manual   of  logic.     Religion  i 
was  concerned  with  conduct,  and  conduct  hejjuaintly  / 
defined  as_three-fourths  of  human  lifeT     Nothing  was' 
so  easy  to  understand  as  conduct,  though  nothing  was 
harder  than  always  to  do  right.     The  truth  of  religion 
was  not  to  be  proved  by  morals,  nor  by  metaphysics, 
but  by  personal  and  practical  experiment.     "He  that  - 
doeth  my  will  shall  know  of  the  doctrine."    This  view- 
was  not  original.     Among  Mr.  Arnold's  own  contem 
poraries,  Dr.    Martineau,  a  member  of   the  despised 
sect,  was  never  tired  of  urging  it.     The  definition  of 
religion  as  "  morality  touched  by  emotion "  is  happy, 
and  the  most  orthodox  Christian  might  accept  it,  so  far 
as  it  goes. 


136  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

But  Mr.  Arnold  called  upon  us  to  reject  a  good 
deal  in  the  hope  of  saving  the  rest.  The  proposition 
that  "the  God  of  the  Universe  is  a  Person"  he  set 
aside  as  unprofitable  and  mischievous.  God  was  the 
Eternal,  and  the  Eternal  was  the  enduring  power,  not 
ourselves,  which  makes  for  righteousness.  Therefore 
Mr.  Arnold,  in  quoting  the  Bible,  substituted  "the 
Eternal"  for  "the  Lord,"  which  he  regarded,  Heaven 
knows  why,  as  meaning  "  a  magnified  and  non-natural 
man."  The  effect  upon  the  ordinary  reader,  who 
knows  the  Authorised  Version  almost^bjjbeart^is  like 
suddenly  swallowing  a  fish-bone.  Mr.  Arnold  seems  to 
have  been  pleased  with  "  the  Eternal "  from  the  mouths 
of  boys  and  girls  in  the  Jewish  schools  he  inspected. 
But  he  forgot  that,  to  say  nothing  of  other  considera 
tions,  in  stately  and  rhythmical  English  three  syllables 
are  very  different  from  one.  "Der  Aberglaube  ist  die 
Poesie  des  Lebens,"  said  Goethe ; — "Extra  belief  is  the 
Poetry  of  Life."  Mr.  Arnold,  who  cites  this  passage 
with  approval,  nevertheless  proposes  to  get  rid  of 
the  poetry  by  the  rationalism  of  faith.  He  points  out 
that  a  belief  in  the  nearness  of  the  Second  Advent 
was  universal  among  early  Christians,  including  the 
Apostles,  and  that  some  of  the  words  attributed  to 
Christ  can  hardly  be  construed  in  any  other  sense. 
He  shows  that  St.  Paul  interpreted  Hebrew  prophecy 
in  a  manner  which  will  not  bear  examination,  that 
Christ  was  far  above  His  reporters,  who  may  possibly 
have  misunderstood  Him,  and  that  the  Zeit-Geist,  the 
Time-Spirit,  has  made  belief  in  miracles  impossible. 
"The  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you "  was  the  essence 
of  the  true  gospel.  The  method  and  secret  of  Jesus 
were  repentance  and  peace.  He  "restored  the  intui- 


XL]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY.  137 

tion"  which  belonged  to  Israel,  though  what  this 
intuition  is  does  not  very  clearly  appear.  "God  is 
a  spirit "  means  "God  is  an  influence,"  the  influence 
which  preserves  us  against  faults  of  temper,  and  faults 
of  sensuality.  The  supposed  variance  between  St.  Paul 
and  St.  James  is  a  mistake  (here  Mr.  Arnold  becomes 
unexpectedly  orthodox).  Works  without  faith  are  as 
futile  as  faith  without  works.  "  Neither  circumcision 
availeth  anything,  nor  uncircumcision,  but  the  keeping 
of  the  Commandments  of  God." 

To  all  which  it  may  of  course  be  said,  that  Mr. 
Arnold  could  not  pick  and  choose.  Christ's  teaching 
must  be  taken  as  a  whole,  or  as  we  have  it.  If  He 
did  not  say,  "  Go  ye  and  teach  all  nations,"  how  do  we 
know  that  He  said,  "I  am  the  resurrection  and  the 
life  "  ?  If  He  did  not  say,  "  Destroy  this  temple,  and  I 
will  build  it  again  in  three  days,"  how  do  we  know 
that  He  said,  "  Blessed  are  the  meek  "  ?  Once  begin 
to  tamper  with  the  record,  and  you  saw  the  branch  on 
which  you  are  sitting  between  yourself  and  the  tree. 
According  to  this  emphatic  and  uncritical  but  not 
illogical  creed,  the  whole  of  the  New  Testament  must 
stand  or  fall  together.  The  resurrection  cannot  in 
deed  be  put  on  the  same  footing  as  the  crucifixion, 
because  the  crucifixion  is  in  Tacitus.  The  miracle  of  the 
Gadarene  swine  cannot  be  bracketed  with  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount,  because  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  must 
have  been  composed  by  some  one,  though  the  swine 
never  existed  at  all,  or  never  left  their  pastures.  But 
unless  we  believe  that  Christ  said  exactly  what  is 
attributed  to  Him  in  the  gospels  at  the  precise  time 
and  in  the  precise  place  there  given,  we  must  regard 
Him  as  a  purely  mythical  personage.  Mr.  Arnold 


1S3  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

would  have  replied  that  Christ  did  not  speak  Greek, 
the  most  metaphysical,  but  Aramaic,  the  plainest  of 
languages ;  that  ideas  have  therefore  been  imputed 
to  Him  which  He  never  intended ;  that  the  authority 
of  the  sayings  reported  to  have  been  uttered  after 
His  death  cannot  be  as  high  as  if  that  event  had 
not  occurred ;  that  both  the  date  and  the  authorship  of 
the  Fourth  Gospel  are  obscure ;  and  that  it  is  a  function 
of  true  criticism  to  reject  particular  expressions  incon 
sistent  with  ascertained  character  or  style.  He  might 
have  materially  strengthened  his  position  (I  do  not  say 
that  he  would  have  established  it)  by  a  comparison  of 
Christianity  and  Buddhism  as  they  originally  were  with 
what  they  afterwards  became. 

Some  of  Mr.  Arnold's  judgments  are  remarkably 
penetrating  and  shrewd.  Such,  for  instance,  is  the 
description  of  Frederick  Maurice,  "that  pure  and 
devout  spirit,  of  whom,  however,  the  truth  must  at 
last  be  said,  that  in  theology  he  passed  his  life  beating 
the  bush  with  deep  emotion,  and  never  starting  the 
hare."  So,  too,  of  the  three  creeds.  It  may  be  irre 
verent,  but  it  is  exceedingly  clever  from  Mr.  Arnold's 
point  of  view,  to  call  them  popular  science,  learned 
science,  and  learned  science  with  a  strong  dash  of 
temper.  To  Mr.  Arnold  all  creeds  were  anathema. 
He  could  not  away  with  them.  The  Apostles'  was  as 
bad  as  the  Nicene,  and  the  Nicene  no  better  than  the 
Athanasian.  Yet  that  he  never  lost  his  hold  upon 
vital  religion  is  surely  clear  from  the  fine  passage  on 
the  102nd  page  of  the  first  edition,  where  he  says  that 
though  religion  makes  for  men's  happiness,  it  does  not 
rest  upon  that  as  a  motive,  but  "  finds  a  far  surer 
ground  in  personal  devotion  to  Christ,  who  brought  the 


XL]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY.  139 

doctrine  to  His  disciples  and  made  a  passage  for  it  into 
their  hearts;  in  believing  that  Christ  is  come  from 
God,  following  Christ,  loving  Christ.  And  in  the 
happiness  which  this  believing  in  Him,  following 
Him,  and  loving  Him  gives,  it  finds  the  mightiest  of 
sanctions."  Literature  and  Dogma  never  rises  to  the 
level  of  Ecce  Homo  either  in  substance  or  in  style.  It 
is  less  high,  less  deep,  less  penetrating,  less  sympathetic. 
But  its  moral  and  intellectual  honesty  is  stamped  upon 
every  page. 

The  storm  which  raged  round  Literature  and  Dogma 
found  an  echo  even  in  the  family  circle.  He  had  to 
defend  himself  to  his  sister  Fanny,  and  he  did  so  in 
words  as  unquestionably  dignified  as  they  are  obviously 
sincere.  "  There  is  a  levity,"  he  says  (Letters,  vol.  ii. 
page  120),  " which  is  altogether  evil;  but  to  treat 
miracles  and  the  common  anthropomorphic  ideas  of  God 
as  what  one  may  lose  and  yet  keep  one's  hope,  courage, 
and  joy,  as  what  are  not  really  matters  of  life  and 
death  in  the  keeping  or  losing  of  them,  this  is  desirable 
and  necessary,  if  one  holds,  as  I  do,  that  the  common 
anthropomorphic  idea  of  God  and  the  reliance  on 
miracles  must  and  will  inevitably  pass  away."  That 
is  an  accurate  summary  of  Mr.  Arnold's  position,  which 
was  further  developed  in  God  and  the  Bible  (1875). 
This  work,  reprinted  from  the  Contemporary  fievieiu,  is 
a  sequel  to  Literature  and  Dogma,  and  a  reply  to  its 
critics.  There  is  no  levity  in  God  and  the  Bible,  nor  is 
it  entirely  destructive.  For  while  the  first  part  aims 
at  separating  Christianity  from  the  God  of  Miracles 
and  the  God  of  Metaphysics,  the  second  part  is  directed 
against  those  German  Rationalists  who  regard  the 
Fourth  Gospel  as  an  elaborate  fiction  in  the  style 


140  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

of  Plato.  "Religion,"  says  Lord  Salisbury  in  his 
incisive  way,  "can  no  more  be  separated  from  dogma 
than  light  from  the  sun."  And  on  this  point  Mr. 
Gladstone  would  have  completely  agreed  with  him. 
But  even  the  rare  concurrence  of  two  political  opposites 
cannot  alter  the  fact  that  in  all  ages  of  the  world's 
history  dogma  has  been  a  matter  of  indifference,  or 
even  of  active  dislike,  to  profoundly  religious  minds. 
To  them  Mr.  Arnold  appealed  without  the  fervent 
piety  of  Archbishop  Leighton,  but  at  the  same  time 
with  an  earnest,  almost  passionate,  desire  to  save 
spirituality  from  the  onward  rush  of  materialism.  Of 
the  Euhemeristic  method,  which  makes  merely  quanti 
tative  concession,  he  speaks  with  scorn.  "It  is  as  if 
we  were  startled  by  the  extravagance  of  supposing 
Cinderella's  fairy  godmother  to  have  actually  changed 
the  pumpkin  into  a  coach  and  six,  but  should  suggest 
that  she  really  did  change  it  into  a  one-horse  cab." 
But  in  his  metaphysical  chapter  he  involves  himself 
in  speculations  almost  as  fanciful.  He  advises  his 
disciples,  the  readers  who  ran  Literature  and  Dogma 
through  so  many  editions  in  so  short  a  time,  not  to  use 
the  word  "being,"  or  any  of  its  tenses,  when  they 
speak  about  God.  For  the  Greek  verb  dpi,  it  seems, 
is  derived  from  a  Sanskrit  root  which  signifies  the  act 
of  breathing,  and  is  purely  phsenomenal  in  the  proper 
sense  of  that  much  abused  term.  But  this  is  like 
the  discovery,  true  or  fancied,  that  the  word  God 
means  "shining."  Qui  hceret  in  liter  a  hceret  in  cortice. 
Etymology  only  proves  itself.  Mr.  Arnold  makes 
great  play  with  the  criticism  that  Literature  and  Dogma 
was  wanting  in  "vigour  and  rigour."  But  he  cer 
tainly  disposes  of  Descartes's  Coyito,  ergo  sum  in  a 


xi.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY.  141 

rigorous  and  vigorous  fashion  enough.  Self-conscious 
ness  is  more  than  breathing,  and  no  mere  philologist 
can  explain  it  away.  Mr.  Arnold  is  on  much  firmer 
ground  when  he  deals  with  the  historic  materials  for 
the  life  of  Christ.  "  The  record,"  he  says,  "  when  we 
first  get  it,  has  passed  through  at  least  half  a  century 
or  more  of  oral  tradition,  and  through  more  than  one 
written  account."  Mr.  Arnold's  view,  and  since  his  time 
the  learned  Professor  Harnack's  view,  of  the  Fourth! 
Gospel  is  that  St.  John  was  the  original  source  from! 
which  the  sayings  attributed  to  Christ  in  it  come,  but| 
that  he  did  not  write  the  Gospel,  that  he  was  not 
responsible  for  the  form  of  it,  and  that  spurious 
sayings,  or  logiat  of  Christ  were  mixed  up  with  those 
which  are  genuine.  "We  might,"  says  Mr.  Arnold, 
"go  through  the  Fourth  Gospel  chapter  by  chapter, 
and  endeavour  to  assign  to  each  and  all  of  the  logia  in 
it  their  right  character — to  determine  what  in  them  is 
probably  Jesus,  and  what  is  the  combining,  repeating, 
and  expanding  Greek  editor.  But  this  would  be 
foreign  to  our  object."  Vigorous  and  rigorous  enough. 
But  nobody,  notjrven  Prof ^essor  ffarnack,  can  know  as 
much  as  that.  This  Greek  editor  is  an  imaginary 
personage.  He  may  have  existed,  or  he  may  not. 
Mr.  Arnold's  service  to  Biblical  criticism  lies  not  in 
inventing  him,  but  in  showing  how  much  more  the 
interpretation  of  the  Bible  is  a  literary  than  a  meta 
physical  task. 

Last  Essays  on  Church  and  Religion  (1877)  do  what 
their  name  implies.  They  close  the  chapter  of  Mr. 
Arnold's  theology,  and  may  fitly  close  this  chapter  of 
mine.  They  are  chiefly  interesting  for  a  thoughtful 
and  appropriate  study  of  Bishop  Butler,  originally 


142  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

delivered  in  the  form  of  two  lectures  to  the  Philoso 
phical  Institution  at  Edinburgh.  The  effect  of  these 
essays  upon  my  mind  is  not  precisely  what  Mr.  Arnold 
intended  it  to  be.  "  Bishop  Butler  and  the  Zeit-Geist " 
he  called  them.  The  Zeit-Geist  in  Mr.  Arnold's  hands, 
like  the  "  Etre  Supreme  "  in  Robespierre's,  began  to  be 
a  bore.  The  picture  of  the  great  Bishop,  or  rather  of 
the  great  man  who  happened  to  be  a  Bishop,  drawn 
with  Mr.  Arnold's  winning  and  prepossessing  grace, 
allures  and  at  the  same  time  awes  the  beholder.  It 
helps  me  at  least  to  understand  the  supremacy  of 
Butler  at  Oxford  in  Mr.  Arnold's  time,  and  in  Mr. 
Gladstone's.  True  it  is  that  Butler  did  not  grapple, 
did  not  pretend  to  grapple,  with  the  root  of  the 
question.  He  assumed  not  merely  the  existence  of 
God,  but  the  existence  of  a  future  life.  He  laid  him 
self  open  to  the  logically  unanswerable  reply  of  Hume, 
that  more  cannot  be  put  into  the  conclusion  than  is 
contained  in  the  premisses,  and  that  therefore  a  world 
constructed  by  analogy  cannot  be  better  than  this, 
though  it  may  be  as  good.  It  is  possible  that  Butler 
has  made  other  people  atheists  besides  James  Mill. 
Mr.  Arnold  says,  truly  enough,  that  the  Analogy 
was  aimed  at  the  mob  of  freethinkers  and  loose  livers 
who  frequented  Queen  Caroline's  routs,  to  whom 
Shaftesbury's  Characteristics  were  the  last  word  of 
philosophy.  But  if  we  put  aside  all  that,  what  a 
wonderful  figure  remains.  "  To  me,"  says  Mr.  Goldwin 
Smith,  "an  episcopal  philosopher  is  a  philosopher  and 
nothing  more ;  a  dead  bishop  is  a  dead  man."  Granted. 
But  what  a  man,  and  what  a  philosopher,  is  Butler. 
He  walked  through  the  gay  throng  at  St.  James's,  he 
preached  to  the  fashionable  congregation  at  the  Rolls' 


XL]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  THEOLOGY.  143 

Chapel  like  a  being  from  another  world.  He  paid 
them  no  compliments.  He  offered  them  no  congratu 
lations.  He  told  them  the  realities  of  things.  "  Things 
are  what  they  are,  and  the  consequences  of  them  will 
be  what  they  will  be ;  why  then  should  we  desire  to 
be  deceived  ? "  Like  Pascal,  he  was  profoundly  im 
pressed  with  the  littleness  of  human  nature,  and  the 
vanity  of  all  earthly  concerns.  He  exposed  with  pitiless 
accuracy  the  springs  and  motives  of  men's  conduct. 
Without  a  trace  of  humour,  he  made  frivolity  ridicu 
lous.  He  almost  worshipped  reason.  Reason,  he  said, 
was  the  only  faculty  by  which  we  could  judge  the 
claims  even  of  Revelation  itself.  Yet  this  cold, 
passionless  critic  was  full  of  benevolence,  abounding 
in  charity  to  the  poor,  and  so  devoted  to  works  of 
mystical  piety  that  he  earned,  or  at  least  acquired,  the 
reputation  of  a  Papist.  But  this  is  not  a  life  of 
Bishop  Butler. 

In  the  preface  to  this  volume  Mr.  Arnold  is  more 
than  usually  explicit  about  his  own  creed.  "  I  believe," 
he  says,  "  that  Christianity  will  survive  because  of  its 
natural  truth.  Those  who  fancied  that  they  had  done 
with  it,  those  who  had  thrown  it  aside  because  what 
was  presented  to  them  under  its  name  was  so  un- 
receivable,  will  have  to  return  to  it  again,  and  to  learn 
it  better."  He  pleads  eloquently  for  some  "great 
soul "  to  arise,  and  purge  the  ore  of  Christianity  from 
the  dross.  "But,"  as  he  adds  somewhat  bitterly,  "to 
rule  over  the  moment  and  the  credulous  has  more 
attraction  than  to  work  for  the  future  and  the  sane." 
It  is,  however,  sometimes  rather  difficult  to  know  what 
he  would  be  at.  For  in  his  address  to  the  London 
clergy  at  Sion  College  he  gravely  argues  that  the  State 


144  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP.  xi. 


adopt  "some  form  of  religion  or  other — that 
'  which  seems  best  suited  to  the  majority."  The  London 
clergy  showed  him  no  little  kindness,  and  politely 
made  as  though  they  agreed  with  him.  But  they 
must  have  been  a  little  staggered  by  this  Parliamentary 
view  of  the  faith.  It  reminds  one  of  the  American 
who  said,  in  the  course  of  a  discussion  upon  eternal 
punishment,  "  Well,  all  I  can  say  is,  that  our  people 
would  never  stand  it." 

/£  A  higher  conception  of  the  Established  Church  may 
be  found  on  page  37  of  these  Essays,  where  he  says 
that  it  "is  to  be  considered  as  a  national  Christian 
society  for  the  promotion  of  goodness,  to  which  a  man 
cannot  but  wish  well,  and  in  which  he  might  rejoice  to 
minister."  Mr.  Arnold  did  not  write  for  those  who 
were  satisfied  with  the  popular  theology.  He  wrote 
for  those  who  were  not.  His  object  was  not  to  disturb 
any  one's  faith,  but  to  convince  those  who  could  not 
believe  in  the  performance  of  miracles,  or  the  fulfilment 

-?c  of  prophecies,  that  they  need  not  therefore  become 
materialists.  He  could  quote  many  texts  on  his  side, 
as  for  instance,  "Except  I  do  signs  and  wonders  ye 
will  not  believe,"  and  "  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  within 

*  you."  The  occasional  flippancy  of  Literature  and 
\  Dogma,  however  deplorable,  is  a  small  thing  compared 
Ji  with  the  warfare  against^  ignorance  anji-grQSsne_ss 

J J  which  Mr.  ArnoMTiieveFceased^ to  wage. 


CHAPTER    XII. 
MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS. 

IN  politics  Matthew  Arnold  was  a  Liberal  Conservative 
which,  as  Lord  John  Russell  remarked,  says  in  seven 
syllables  what  Whig  says  in  one.  His  patron,  Lord 
Lansdowne,  was  a  Whig  of  the  purest  water,  equally 
afraid  of  moving  and  of  standing  still.  Mr.  Arnold 
himself  was  never  a  candidate  for  Parliament.  Even  if 
he  had  been  disposed  to  take  part  in  the  "  Thyestean 
banquet  of  clap-trap,"  his  position  as  a  member  of  the 
Civil  Service  would  have  prevented  him.  But  his 
practical  interest  in  politics,  always  keen,  increased 
with  age,  and  during  the  year  before  his  death  he  con 
tributed  to  the  Nineteenth  Century  a  series  of  articles 
on  the  Session  of  1887.  When  he  left  off  dabbling  in 
theology,  politics  absorbed  him  more  and  more.  They 
promised  quicker  returns.  "Perhaps,"  he  wrote  to 
Mr.  Grant  Duff,  on  the  22nd  of  August  1879,  "  perhaps 
we  shall  end  our  days  in  the  tail  of  a  rising  current  of 
popular  religion,  both  ritual  and  dogmatic."  With 
that  feeling,  which  I  suspect  was  stronger  than  the 
expression  of  it,  Mr.  Arnold  turned  to  more  mundane 
matters.  No  one  knew  better  how  to  deliver  himself, 
as  Shakespeare  says,  like  a  man  of  this  world.  His 
long  experience  of  official  work  had  made  him 
thoroughly  practical.  He  had  received  from  nature  a 


146  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

keen  eye  for  the  central  point  of  a  case,  and  a  power 
of  lucid  exposition  which  is  the  most  formidable  of  all 
arguments.  Of  working  men,  as  I  have  said,  he  knew 
\very  little,  though  many  of  them  read  and  appreciated 
'his  books.  But  with  the  upper  and  middle  classes  of 
society,  their  principles  and  prejudices,  their  faults  and 
failings,  he  was  thoroughly  well  acquainted.  Nothing 
in  his  life  is  more  honourable  to  him  than  the  persistent 
efforts  which  he  made,  for  more  than  twenty  years,  to 
1  get  a  decent  system  of  secondary  education  established 
in  this  country.  Only  now,  when  he  has  been  dead 
nearly  fourteen  years,  is  this  question  being  really 
taken  up  in  a  practical  spirit  by  a  responsible  Govern 
ment.  On  the  other  hand,  he  seldom  mentions 
political  dissenters,  whose  importance  he  recognised, 
except  in  terms  of  caricature ;  and  of  the  great  driving 
force  which,  apart  from  his  more  conspicuous  accom 
plishments,  Mr.  Gladstone  wielded,  he  had  a  most 
imperfect  idea  He  took  the  superficial  view  of  Whig 
coteries  that  the  author  of  the  Irish  Land  Acts,  and 
the  greatest  financier  of  the  age,  was  a  rhetorical 
sophist,  a  man  of  words  and  phrases,  not  of  business 
and  its  execution.  This  view  finds  frequent  utterance 
in  the  second  volume  of  the  published  Letters.  The 
piety  or  prudence  of  Mr.  George  Russell  has  in  most 
instances  suppressed  the  name  of  his  former  chief; 
but  a  schoolboy  far  less  intelligent  than  Macaulay's 
would  find  no  difficulty  in  filling  the  blank. 

Mr.  Arnold's  first  incursion  into  practical  politics 
was  not  a  fortunate  one.  He  was  a  strong,  almost  a 
fanatical,  opponent  of  the  Burials  Bill.  He  did  not 
take  the  line,  logically  unassailable,  that  an  Established 
Church  comprises  the  whole  nation,  that  all  its  rites, 


xii.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS.  147 

including  the  Burial  Service,  are  national,  and  that 
as  Dissenters  were  entitled  to  burial  in  national 
cemeteries  with  national  rites,  they  had  no  grievance. 
If  he  had  been  a  true  Erastian,  that  is  what  he  would 
have  safd.  But  he  chose  to  argue  that  the  permission 
of  other  services  would  produce  scandal,  would  be,  as 
he  repeated  about  fifty  times,  like  the  substitution  for 
a  reading  from  Milton  of  a  reading  from  Eliza  Cook. 
The  twenty-three  years  that  have  elapsed  since  the 
Burials  Bill  received  the  Royal  assent  have  completely 
falsified  this  gloomy  prediction.  No  statute  has 
worked  more  smoothly.  Even  the  foolish  clergymen 
who  discovered  to  their  delight  that  it  did  not  compel 
them  to  let  the  bell  be  tolled  for  a  schismatic  have 
long  since  ceased  to  excite  any  interest.  That  the  Act 
is  inconsistent  with  the  principle  of  an  Established 
Church  seems  to  me  clear.  But  the  people  of  England, 
though  just,  are  not  logical,  and  the  removal  of  this 
grievance,  which  was  really  part  of  a  much  larger  one, 
made  the  larger  one  more  difficult  to  redress.  Like 
many  freethinkers,  Mr.  Arnold  had  a  horror  of  dis 
establishment.  He  was  opposed  to  it  even  in  Ireland, 
where  the  nature  of  things  might  be  said  to  demand 
it.  The  last  fifteen  years  have  vindicated  his  belief 
that  in  England  public  opinion  was  against  it,  and 
that  the  political  power  of  Nonconformity  was  on  the 
decline. 

Mr.  Arnold's  volume  of  Mixed  Essays — an  unhappy 
title,  suggesting  biscuits — contains  two  or  three  which 
may  be  classed  as  political,  and  which  are  therefore  fit 
to  be  treated  here.  "Equality"  is  an  elaborate 
argument,  which  never  took  any  hold  upon  the 
English  people,  against  freedom  of  bequest.  Mr.!' 


148  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Arnold  had  the  support  of  Mill,  but  he  had  riot  the 
support  of  the  public.  He  saw  clearly  enough  that 
the  Real  Estates  Intestacy  Bill,  with  which  Liberals 
used  to  play,  would  have  had  no  practical  result,  for  a 
man  who  wanted  to  defeat  it  had  only  to  make  a  will. 
There  is  much  to  be  said  for  his  case.  The  earth,  as 
Turgot  put  it,  belongs  to  the  living,  and  not  to  the 
dead.  It  is  no  infringement  of  human  liberty  to 
prevent  a  man  from  fettering  those  who  come  after 
him.  But  this  is  a  subject  on  which  the  most  eloquent 
I  and  the  most  profound  philosophers  would  contend  in 
|  vain  with  the_customs  and  instincts  of  the  English 
-  people.  They  did  not  mind  Lord  Cairns's  Settled 
Land  Act,  which  enables  the  owner  of  a  life  interest  in 
land  to  sell  it  if  he  invests  the  money  for  the  benefit 
of  the  reversioner.  They  would  perhaps  tolerate  the 
complete  abolition  of  all  limited  ownership  in  land.  But 
of  the  compulsory  division  of  property  after  death, which 
prevails  on  the  Continent,  they  will  not  hear.  Mr.  Arnold 
tells  an  amusing  story  of  an  American  who  was  asked 
what  could  be  done  in  the  United  States,  with  its  freedom 
of  bequest,  if  a  great  landed  estate  were  strictly  entailed. 
The  American  replied,  with  more  humour  than  candour, 
I  that  the  will  could  be  set  aside  on  the  ground  of 
I  insanity.  Such  is  the  difference  of  sentiment  between 
I  the  old  country  and  the  new.  In  this  case  Mr.  Arnold 
rode  his  hobby  too  hard.  The  feudal  origin  of  our 
land  laws  is  indisputable,  and  their  practical  incon 
veniences  are  numerous.  Yet  it  is  not  freedom  of 
bequest,  it  is  influences  far  more  subtle  and  profound, 
which  have  "the  natural  and  necessary  effect  under 
present  circumstances  of  materialising  our  upper  class, 
vulgarising  our  middle  class,  and  brutalising  our  lower 


xii.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS.  140 

class."  But,  indeed,  vulgarity  is  confined  to  no  class. 
It  is,  and  always  must  be,  a  property  of  the  individual. 
"  I  do  not,"  Mr.  Arnold  wrote  (Mixed  Essays,  2nd  Ed.  | 
p.  108),  "  I  do  not  profess  to  be  a  politician,  but  simply  I 
one  of  a  disinterested  class  of  observers,  who,  with  no  1 
organised  and  embodied  set  of  supporters  to  please,  set  1 
themselves  to  observe  honestly  and  to  report  faithfully  | 
the  state  and  prospects  of  our  civilisation. "  This  passage, 
which  fairly  and  modestly  describes  himself,  is  taken 
from  his  admirable  essay  on  "Irish  Catholicism  and 
British  Liberalism,"  in  which  Mr.  Bright  entirely  con 
curred.  Unlike  freedom  of  bequest,  this  subject  is  full  of 
vivid  interest  and  high  import  at  the  present  time.  An 
Irish  Catholic  University,  for  which  Mr.  Arnold  pleads, 
is  the  subject  of  the  best  and  most  thoughtful  speeches 
Mr.  Balfour  has  ever  delivered.  It  is  a  point  upon 
which  he  and  Mr.  Morley  quite  agree.  A  Eoyal  Com 
mission  was  appointed  to  consider  it  last  year,  and 
though  no  Government  will  take  it  up,  it  has  enlisted 
the  sympathies  of  eminent  men  on  both  sides  of 
politics.  The  question  is  beset  with  difficulties,  and 
cannot  be  settled  oifhaud  by  any  formula.  One  of 
these  difficulties  is  how  a  Catholic  University  should 
be  defined.  For  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  is  a  Catholic 
University  in  the  sense  that  it  admits  Catholics,  if  only 
they  would  go  there.  And  for  a  Catholic  University 
endowed  with  public  money  but  inaccessible  to  Pro 
testants  nobody  asks.  Mr.  Arnold  answers  the 
question  in  a  sentence.  "  I  call  Strasburg  a  Protestant 
and  Bonn  a  Catholic  University  in  this  sense  :  that 
religion  and  the  matters  mixed  up  with  religion  are 
taught  in  the  one  by  Protestants  and  in  the  other  by 
Catholics.''  In  this  essay  Mr.  Arnold  intimates  his 


150  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

opinion  that  "  the  prevailing  form  for  the  Christianity 
of  the  future  will  be  the  form  of  Catholicism ;  but  a 
Catholicism  purged,  opening  itself  to  the  light  and 
air,  having  the  consciousness  of  its  own  poetry,  freed 
from  its  sacerdotal  despotism,  and  freed  from  its 
pseudo-scientific  apparatus  of  superannuated  dogma." 
It  hardly  seems  probable.  But  the  curtains  of  the  future 
hang.  The  Professors  in  Mr.  Arnold's  University 
would  be  "  nominated  and  removed  not  by  the  bishops, 
but  by  a  responsible  minister  of  State  acting  for  the 
Irish  nation  itself."  A  minister  of  what  State  1  This 
simple  question,  which  Mr.  Arnold  does  not  answer, 
raises  the  whole  issue  of  Home  Rule.  Mr.  Arnold  was 
very  anxious  that  a  religious  census  should  be  taken 
in  England,  as  it  is  in  Ireland.  In  Ireland  everybody 
is  either  a  Catholic  or  a  Protestant,  and  nobody 
attempts  to  conceal  which  he  is,  bad  as  his  Protestant 
ism  or  his  Catholicism  may  be.  In  England  such  a 
census  would  be  fallacious,  because  persons  holding 
Matthew  Arnold's  religious  opinions  would  describe 
themselves  on  the  census-paper  as  Churchmen. 

In  three  essays,  besides  his  official  Reports,  Mr. 
Arnold  pleaded  earnestly  for  the  establishment  in  the 
United  Kingdom  of  secondary  or  intermediate  schools. 
One  of  them  is  in  Mixed  Essays,  the  other  is  in  Irish 
Essays,  of  which  I  shall  have  more  to  say  in  connection 
with  Ireland.  One  of  them  is  called  "An  Unregarded 
Irish  Grievance."  The  other  two  have  the  quaint 
titles  taken  from  the  Vulgate,  of  which  Matthew 
Arnold  was  almost  as  fond  as  Bacon,  "  Porro  unum  est 
necessarium," — "But  one  Thing  is  Needful";  and 
"Ecce  Convertimur  ad  Gentes," — "Lo,  we  turn  to  the 
Gentiles."  This  last  was  a  lecture  delivered  to  the 


xn.l  MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS.  151 

AVorking  Men's  College  at  Ipswich,  and  the  Gentiles 
were  the  working  classes,  whose  interest  in  the  subject 
Mr.  Arnold  wished  to  arouse.  All  these  essays  deserve 
the  most  careful  study.  They  were  written  by  a 
master  of  his  subject,  they  are  as  full  of  knowledge  as 
of  zeal,  they  are  eminently  practical,  and  they  have 
the  most  direct  bearing  upon  the  politics  of  the  day. 
The  course  of  events  has  in  this  matter  fully  justified 
Mr.  Arnold,  who  was  wiser  than  the  statesmen,  and 
ahead  of  his  time.  In  his  address  at  Ipswich  he  took 
another  dip  into  the  future  which  also  showed  his 
prescience.  "No  one  in  England,"  he  said,  " seems 
to  imagine  that  municipal  government  is  applicable 
except  in  towns."  And  he  went  on  to  suggest  the 
policy,  since  carried  out  by  both  political  parties,  in 
the  form  of  County  and  District  and  Parish  Councils. 

In  the  preface  to  Irish  Essays,  dated  1882,  Mr. 
Arnold  says  that  "  practical  politicians  and  men  of  the 
world  are  apt  rather  to  resent  the  incursion  of  a  man 
of  letters  into  the  field  of  politics."  They  only  resent 
it  when  he  does  not  take  their  side.  Both  Unionists 
and  Home  Rulers  were  always  boasting  of  their 
literary  supporters  in  the  great  controversy  of  1886. 
But  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  wise  men  of  the 
study  do  not  always  see  further  ahead  than  the  mere 
politicians  of  the  market-place.  Writing,  in  French, 
to  M.  Fontanes  on  the  22nd  of  September  1882,  Mr. 
Arnold  says,  "The  English  army  will  leave  Egypt." 
The  process  of  departure  has  been  slow.  fet*J"  #XAdTW^p 

Whatever  Mr.  Arnold  wrote  about  Ireland  is  worth 
serious  attention.      He  took  for   his   master  Burke,  ] 
perhaps    the    greatest    intellect    of    the    eighteenth] 
century,  certainly  the  greatest  intellect  concerned  with' 


152  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Irish  affairs.  For  Burke,  though  an  expatriated  Irish 
man,  never  lost  his  love  of  Ireland,  and  understood 
her  thoroughly.  Himself  a  Protestant,  his  wife  was  a 
Catholic,  as  his  mother  had  been,  and  though  he  had 
plenty  of  bigotry  in  politics,  from  religious  bigotry  he 
was  free.  The  great  change  produced  upon  him  by 
events  in  France  did  not  affect  his  Irish  policy,  and  to  the 
day  of  his  death  he  supported  Catholic  Emancipation. 
Whether,  if  he  had  lived  three  years  longer,  he  would 
have  been  in  favour  of  a  Union,  we  cannot  certainly 
tell.  That  he  would  not  have  voted  for  it  without 
emancipation  we  may  be  sure.  Mr.  Arnold,  I  think, 
failed  to  appreciate  the  greatness  of  the  reform 
effected  by  the  Land  Act  of  1881.  But  his  acute 
analysis  of  its  influence  upon  Irish  opinion  is  quite  in 
Burke's  manner.  Ministers,  he  says,  declared  their 
belief  that  there  were  very  few  extortionate  landlords 
in  Ireland.  But  the  Act  has  led  to  a  general  reduc 
tion  of  rents.  Therefore  the  Irish  people  will  say, 
"  We  owe  you  no  thanks ;  you  have  done  us  justice 
without  meaning  it.  You  could  not  help  it,  our  case 
was  so  strong."  "Burke,"  says  Mr.  Arnold,  truly  and 
finely,  "  Burke  is,  it  seems  to  me,  the  greatest  of 
English  statesmen  in  this  sense  at  any  rate  :  that  he  is 
the  only  one  who  traces  the  reason  of  things  in  politics, 
and  enables  us  to  trace  it  too."  Mr.  Arnold  aimed  at 
following  that  good  example,  and  when  he  failed,  it 
was  because  he  had  not,  like  Burke,  the  political 
training  which  no  amount  of  cleverness  can  altogether 
supply.  In  one  of  the  two  essays  on  "The  Incom- 
patibles  "  he  says,  acutely  enough,  "  Our  aristocratic 
class  does  not  firmly  protest  against  the  unfair  treat 
ment  of  Irish  Catholicism,  because  it  is  nervous  about 


xii.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS.  153 

the  land.  Our  middle  class  does  riot  firmly  insist 
on  breaking  with  the  old  evil  system  of  Irish  land 
lordism,  because  it  is  nervous  about  Popery."  In  the 
other  he  says  that  the  English  are  "just,  but  not 
amiable,"  which,  if  not  strictly  and  literally  true,  is  at 
least  worth  thinking  about.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  was  not  practical  politics,  nor  yet  common  sense,  to 
suggest  that  instead  of  giving  Irish  tenants  fair  rent, 
free  sale,  and  fixity  of  tenure,  Irish  landlords  should 
be  bought  out  if,  in  the  opinions  of  Lord  Coleridge 
and  Mr.  Samuel  Morley,  they  deserved  to  be.  Mr. 
Arnold's  essay  on  Copyright  is  chiefly  remarkable  for 
its  advocacy  of  international  copyright  with  the  United 
States  on  terms  since  obtained,  and  its  repudiation  of 
Lord  Farrer's  theory,  supported  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  that 
authors  could  rely  upon  royalties.  But  "  The  Future  of 
Liberalism  "  contains  what  seems  to  me  a  fundamental 
misconception  on  Mr.  Arnold's  part,  and  a  fruitful 
parent  of  error.  "In  general,"  he  says,  "the  mind  of 
the  country  is,  as  I  have  already  said,  profoundly 
Liberal."  Mr.  Arnold  was  apt  to  think,  with  the 
bellman  in  the  Hunting  of  the  Snark,  that  what  he 
told  you  three  times  was  true.  England  is  not  pro 
foundly  Liberal,  and  never  was.  She  is  profoundly 
Conservative,  and  always  has  been.  There  was  an  out 
burst  of  Liberalism  in  the  early  Thirties,  caused  partly 
by  the  Revolution  of  1830  in  France,  and  partly  by  the 
intolerable  absurdities  of  our  representative  system. 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  the  power  of  rousing  extraordinary 
enthusiasm  on  behalf  of  particular  policies  at  particular 
times.  But  these  are  the  exceptions  to  the  rule,  which 
is  patient  acquiescence  in  things  as  they  are.  That 
is  why  most  of  the  wisest  Englishmen  have  been 


154  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

Liberals.     There  is  no  risk  of  too  rapid  progress  in 
England.     The  danger  is  the  other  way. 

It  must,  I  think,  be  reckoned  one  of  the  few  mis 
fortunes  in  a  most  happy  life  that  Matthew  Arnold 
should  have  been  tempted  to  visit  America  as  a  public 
lecturer.  No  doubt  the  temptation  was  great.  Mr. 
Arnold's  means  were  moderate,  and  he  had  to  provide 
for  his  family  as  well  as  for  himself.  His  own  tastes 
were  of  the  simplest,  and  he  was  the  most  contented 
of  men.  But  a  large  sum  of  money  was  a  consideration 
to  him,  while  both  he  and  his  wife  had  always  been 
fond  of  travelling.  So  in  the  autumn  of  1883  they 
went.  Of  course  they  were  most  warmly  greeted,  and 
most  hospitably  entertained.  But  the  lecturing  was 
not  a  success.  Major  Pond,  in  his  Eccentricities  of 
Genius,  says,  "Matthew  Arnold  came  to  this  country 
and  gave  one  hundred  lectures.  Nobody  ever  heard  any 
of  them,  not  even  those  sitting  in  the  front  row."  He 
adds  that  General  Grant,  who  attended  the  first  lecture 
in  Chickering  Hall,  New  York,  was  overheard  to  say 
after  a  few  minutes,  "Well,  wife,  we  have  paid  to  see 
the  British  lion ;  we  cannot  hear  him  roar,  so  we  had 
better  go  home."  This  explains  a  passage  in  Mr. 
Arnold's  letter  to  his  sister  Fanny,  dated  the  8th 
of  November  1883,  in  which  the  General  is  repre 
sented  as  calling  at  the  office  of  the  Tribune  "to  thank 
them  for  their  good  report  of  the  main  points  of  my 
lecture,  as  he  had  thought  the  line  taken  so  very 
important,  but  had  heard  imperfectly."  Although  he 
had  been  a  Professor  at  Oxford,  Mr.  Arnold  was  not 
accustomed  to  address  crowded  audiences  in  large 
halls,  and  he  did  not  understand  the  management  of 
his  voice.  He  took  lessons  in  elocution  at  Boston, 


xii.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS.  155 

but  at  the  age  of  sixty  it  was  late  to  learn,  and  the 
thing  was  not  in  his  line.  He  took  it,  as  he  took 
everything,  with  invincible  cheerfulness  and  good- 
humour.  But  it  has  a  rather  grotesque  effect  to  read 
in  a  letter  to  his  younger  daughter,  written  from  the 
Union  Club,  Chicago,  on  the  21st  of  January  1884, 
"  We  have  had  a  week  of  good  houses  (I  consider  myself 
now  as  an  actor,  for  my  managers  take  me  about  with 
theatrical  tickets,  at  reduced  rates,  over  the  railways, 
and  the  tickets  have  Matthew  Arnold  troupe  printed  on 
them)."  Lord  Coleridge  and  Sir  Henry  Irving,  who 
were  both  there  at  the  same  time  with  him,  were  both 
in  their  respective  places,  but  one  feels  that  Matthew 
Arnold  was  out  of  place.  He  enjoyed  himself  of 
course, — he  always  did.  I  remember  the  delight  with 
which  he  told  me  of  his  invitation  from  Mr.  Phineas 
Barnum,  "the  greatest  showman  on  earth."  "You, 
Mr.  Arnold,"  wrote  the  great  man,  "are  a  celebrity,  I 
am  a  notoriety;  we  ought  to  be  acquainted."  "I 
couldn't  go,"  remarked  Mr.  Arnold,  "but  it  was  very 
nice  of  him."  Matthew  Arnold  told  Mr.  George 
Russell  that  Discourses  in  America^  published  by  j 
Macmillan  in  1885,  was  the  book  of  all  others  by  j 
which  he  should  most  wish  to  be  remembered.  It 
consists  of  three  lectures,  but  the  only  one  which 
can  be  called  political  is  the  first,  on  "Numbers,  or 
the  Majority  and  the  Remnant."  The  argument  of  this 
essay  is  as  follows.  The  majority  are  always  wrong ; 
the  remnant  are  always  right.  Isaiah  represented  the 
remnant  of  Israel;  Plato  represented  the  remnant  of 
Athens.  In  both  cases  the  State  was  so  small  that 
the  remnant  were  not  numerous  enough  to  do  any 
good.  In  the  United  States  the  population  is  so  large 


156  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

that  the  remnant  must  be  sufficient,  and  the  United 
States  are  therefore  safe.  I  cannot  suppose  that  this 
was  anything  but  elaborate  irony  on  Mr.  Arnold's 
part,  or  that  his  more  intelligent  hearers  were  un 
conscious  of  the  fact.  But  there  were  many  digressions. 
It  is  here  that  he  rebukes  his  old  friends  the  French 
for  their  worship  of  "the  great  goddess  Lubricity," 
called  by  the  Greeks  Aselgeia,  and  describes  Victor 
Hugo  in  one  of  his  least  felicitous  phrases  as  "the 
average  sensual  man  impassioned  and  grandiloquent." 
The  greatest  of  French  dramatists  since  Moliere  is 
singularly  free  from  the  fault  which  Mr.  Arnold  here 
reprehends. 

This  was  not  Mr.  Arnold's  last  visit  to  the  United 
States,  where  his  elder  daughter  married  and  settled. 
He  went  there  again  in  1886,  and  arrived  at  the 
singular  conclusion  that  all  the  best  opinion  of 
America,  the  opinion  of  the  "remnant,"  was  hostile 
to  the  Irish  policy  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  Truly  the 
eye  sees  what  it  brings  with  it  the  power  of  seeing. 
This  is  not  the  place  in  which  to  discuss  whether 
Home  Rule  for  Ireland  would  be  a  good  thing  or  a 
bad.  That  the  majority  of  intelligent  and  cultivated 
Americans  thought  it  in  1886,  as  they  think  it  now,  to 
be  a  good  thing,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever. 
Although  he  had  American  friends,  whom  he  valued 
and  appreciated,  Mr.  Arnold  did  not  altogether  like 
America.  In  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  April  1888, 
the  year  and  month  of  his  death,  may  be  seen  his 
final  judgment  on  the  subject.  He  had  written 
the  year  before  for  his  nephew,  Mr.  Edward  Arnold, 
then  editor  of  Murray's  Magazine,  two  articles  on 
the  rather  dull  Memoirs  of  General  Grant,  whom, 


xii.]  MR.  ARNOLD'S  POLITICS.  157 

in  one  of  his  freaks  of  waywardness,  ho  pronounced 
superior  to  Lincoln.  Lincoln,  it  seems,  the  author  of 
the  speech  at  Gettysburg  and  the  Second  Inaugural, 
had  no  "distinction."  Happy  the  nation  where  such 
classic  eloquence  is  not  distinguished.  Mr.  Arnold's 
last  word  on  American  life  is  the  word  "  uninteresting." 
"The  mere  nomenclature  of  the  country  acts  upon  a 
cultivated  person  like  the  incessant  pricking  of  pins." 
The  "funny  man"  is  a  "national  misfortune."  So 
he  is  here.  And,  after  all,  Mark  Twain  is  better 
than  Ally  Sloper.  Mr.  Arnold's  criticism  of  what 
was  unsound  in  American  institutions  and  manners 
would  have  been  more  effective  if  he  had  had,  like 
Mr.  Bryce,  more  sympathy  with  what  was  sound 
in  them. 

Any  survey  of  Matthew  Arnold's  politics  would  be 
incomplete  without  a  reference  to  his  opinions  on 
Home  Rule.  To  Mr.  Gladstone's  Home  Rule  Bill  of 
1886  he  was  decidedly  opposed.  Both  before  and  after 
the  General  Election  of  that  year  he  wrote  to  the 
Times  a  strong  protest  against  the  policy  embodied  in 
it.  These  letters,  except  for  the  personal  animosity 
to  Mr.  Gladstone  which  the  second  displays,  are 
wholly  admirable  in  tone  and  temper.  In  them 
Mr.  Arnold  admits  to  the  full  the  grievances  of  Ireland 
against  England,  and  calls  for  their  redress.  Only  he 
would  redress  them,  not  by  a  "  separate  Parliament,' 
but  by  a  "rational  and  equitable  system  of  govern 
ment."  Lord  Salisbury's  policy  of  coercion  suited  him 
as  little  as  Mr.  Gladstone's  policy  of  repeal.  He 
proposed  that  the  local  government  of  Ireland  should 
be  thoroughly  overhauled  and  made  truly  popular, 
even  before  such  a  system  was  introduced  into  the 


158  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP,  xit 

rest  of  the  United  Kingdom.  These  letters  show 
the  Whig  spirit  at  its  best,  and  are  thoroughly 
characteristic  of  Mr.  Arnold.  He  followed  them  up 
the  next  year  with  three  articles  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  called  respectively  "  The  Zenith  of  Con 
servatism,"  "Up  to  Easter,"  and  "From  Easter  to 
August."  In  these,  while  giving  a  general  support 
to  the  Government  of  Lord  Salisbury,  he  showed 
himself  to  be  a  very  bad  Unionist  from  the  strictly 
orthodox  point  of  view;  for  he  proposed  that  there 
should  be  not  a  single  Irish  Parliament,  but  two  Irish 
Parliaments,  of  which  one  should  legislate  for  the 
North  and  the  other  for  the  South.  The  fact  is,  it 
was  not  Home  Kule,  but  Gladstone's  Home  Rule,  that 
Matthew  Arnold  disliked.  Indeed,  one  might  almost 
say  that  it  was  not  Home  Rule,  but  Gladstone. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

THE  AFTERMATH. 

DURING  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  Matthew 
Arnold  wrote  very  little  poetry ;  but  the  little  he  did 
write  was  very  good  There  are  lines  in  "  Westminster 
Abbey "  which  he  never  surpassed,  and  a  few  which, 
in  my  opinion,  he  never  equalled.  This  beautiful 
poem  was  composed  in  memory  of  Dean  Stanley,  and 
it  could  have  had  no  worthier  subject.  For  Stanley, 
Mr.  Arnold's  lifelong  friend,  was  not  merely  the 
courtly  ecclesiastic,  the  scholarly  divine;  he  was  the 
chivalrous  defender  of  all  causes  and  of  all  persons, 
however  unpopular  for  the  moment,  that  stood  for 
freedom,  charity,  and  truth.  If  the  spirit  of  Dean 
Stanley  had  always  dominated  the  Establishment,  the 
Liberation  Society  would  never  have  been  formed. 
The  chapter  in  Mrs.  Besant's  Autobiography  describing 
Dr.  Stanley  is  a  noble  picture  of  what  a  Christian 
minister  should  be.  He  delighted  in  all  the  traditions 
of  his  Abbey,  and  Mr.  Arnold  happily  chose  to  connect 
with  him  the  beautiful  legend  which  tells  of  its  mystic 
consecration  by  St.  Peter  himself.  In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  these  sonorous  stanzas  recall  Milton's  great  Ode 
on  the  Nativity,  they  are  not  disappointing ;  they  have 
the  note  of  the  grand  style — 

159 


160  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  [CHAP, 

"  Kough  was  the  winter  eve  ; 
Their  craft  the  fishers  leave, 
And  down  over  the  Thames  the  darkness  drew. 
One  still  lags  last,  and  turns,  and  eyes  the  Pile 
Huge  in  the  gloom,  across  in  Thorney  Isle, 
King  Sebert's  work,  the  wondrous  Minster  new. 

— 'Tia  Lambeth  now,  where  then 
They  moor'd  their  boats  among  the  bulrush  stems  ; 

And  that  new  Minster  in  tho  matted  fen 
The  world-famed  Abbey  by  the  westering  Thames.'* 

These  verses  deserve  to  be  called  Miltonic,  even  if 
they  have  not  the  inimitable  touch  of  the  master. 

But  it  is  the  later  lines  about  Demophoon,  "the 
charm'd  babe  of  the  Eleusinian  king,"  which  I  should 
be  disposed  to  select  as  the  high-water  mark  ol 
Matthew  Arnold's  poetry.  They  haunt  the  memory 
with  that  ineffaceable  charm  which  belongs  only  to  the 
highest  order  of  poetical  expression — 

"  The  Boy  his  nurse  forgot, 

And  bore  a  mortal  lot. 

Long  since,  his  name  is  heard  on  earth  no  more. 
In  some  chance  battle  on  Cithaeron's  side 
The  nursling  of  the  Mighty  Mother  died, 
And  went  where  all  his  fathers  went  before." 

Here  one  might  well  take  leave  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
poems,  and  pass  to  those  literary  essays  which  he  wrote 
in  the  full  maturity  of  his  knowledge  and  his  power. 
For,  happy  in  so  many  things,  he  was  happiest  of  all 
in  this,  that  no  bodily  sense,  and  no  mental  faculty, 
ever  suffered  in  him  the  smallest  abatement.  But  I 
cannot  omit  all  mention  of  the  pretty,  facile  lyrics 
in  which  he  paid  tribute  to  his  beloved  dogs  and 
birds.  I  reier,  of  course,  to  " Geist's  Grave,"  to  "Poor 


xiii.]  THE  AFTERiMATH.  161 

Matthias,"  and  to  "  Kaiser  Dead."  Geist  was  a  Dachs 
hund,  Kaiser  a  mixture  of  Dachshund  and  collie. 
Matthias  was  a  canary.  "  Geist's  Grave,"  is  by  far  tho 
best  of  the  three,  and  contains  at  least  two  excellent 
stanzas — 

"  That  loving  heart,  that  patient  soul, 
Had  they  indeed  no  longer  span, 
To  run  their  course,  and  reach  their  goal, 
And  read  their  homily  to  man  ? 

That  liquid,  melancholy  eye, 
From  whose  pathetic,  soul-fed  springs 
Seem'd  surging  the  Virgilian  cry, 
The  sense  of  tears  in  mortal  things." 

The  literary  criticism  produced  by  Mr.  Arnold  in  the 
last  ten  years  of  his  life  possesses  the  highest  interest 
and  value.  It  ranges  over  a  great  variety  of  topics, 
it  represents  the  writer's  profoundest  mind,  it  comes 
next  after  his  poetry  in  a  comparative  estimate  of  what 
he  left  to  the  world.  In  dealing  with  politics,  or 
with  theology,  Mr.  Arnold  never  moved  with  the  same 
ease  as  in  the  realm  of  pure  literature,  which  was 
his  own.  He  loved  to  take  a  book,  like  Mr.  Stopford 
Brooke's  excellent  Primer  of  English  Literature,  and 
in  criticising  it  to  express  his  own  opinions.  He  pro 
tested,  quite  justly,  and  by  no  means  unnecessarily, 
against  the  foolish  idolatry  which  admires  without 
discrimination  everything  in  a  volume  labelled 
"  Shakespeare."  For  it  is  certain  that  if  Shakespeare 
wrote  all  the  plays  and  all  the  scenes  attributed  to 
him,  he  wrote  some  very  poor  stuff.  But  when  Mr. 
Arnold  says  of  him,  not  in  substance  for  the  first  or 
last  time,  "He  is  the  richest,  the  most  wonderful,  the 
most  powerful,  the  most  delightful  of  poets ;  he  is  not 

L 


162  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

altogether,  nor  even  eminently,  an  artist "  (Mixed 
Essays,  2nd  Ed.  p.  194),  he  provokes  antagonism. 
There  is  more  in  the  sonnets  than  art  could  have  put 
there.  But  poems  more  consummately  artistic  never 
came  from  a  human  brain  and  heart.  It  is,  however, 
a  fascinating  essay,  this  on  Mr.  Brooke's  Primer,  and 
so  is  another  in  the  same  volume  on  Falkland,  the 
famous  Lord  Falkland  immortalised  by  Clarendon. 
Yet  Falkland  is  perhaps  not  most  judiciously  praised 
(and  highly  does  Mr.  Arnold  praise  him)  by  comparing 
him  with  Bolingbroke,  whose  levity  and  insincerity 
are  not  redeemed  by  the  false  glitter  of  his  mere 
tricious  style.  Mr.  Arnold  is  severe  on  Burke  for 
asking  "  Who  now  reads  Bolingbroke  1 "  But  on  this 
point  the  popular  verdict  is  with  Burke,  and  I  am 
not  prepared  to  say  that  it  is  wrong.  Mr.  Disraeli 
did  his  best  for  Bolingbroke's  public  character,  and 
for  the  principles  of  "The  Patriot  King."  But, 
as  Dr.  Pusey  said  of  Lord  Westbury  and  eternal 
punishment,  he  had  a  personal  interest  in  the  ques 
tion.  In  "A  French  Critic  on  Milton"  and  "A 
French  Critic  on  Goethe,"  Mr.  Arnold  took  up  the 
cudgels  for  the  highly  intelligent  and  respectable 
M.  Scherer.  M.  Scherer,  however,  was  dull,  he  was 
prosy,  and  even  Matthew  Arnold  could  not  make 
him  anything  else.  When  this  senator  of  France, 
and  director  of  the  Temps  newspaper,  tells  us  that 
Paradise  Lost  is  "a  false  poem,  a  grotesque  poem,  a 
tiresome  poem,"  we  can  only  smile  compassionately, 
and  wonder  what  resemblance  to  Sainte-Beuve  Mr. 
Arnold  could  find  in  M.  Scherer.  M.  Scherer  certainly 
seems  to  have  misled  Mr.  Arnold  on  one  point  of  some 
importance  connected  with  Goethe.  Goethe  did 


THE  AFTERMATH.  183 

indeed  tell  an  Italian  that  "he  thought  the  Inferno 
abominable,  the  Purgatorio  dubious,  and  the  Paradiso 
tiresome."  But  that  was  not  Goethe's  serious  opinion. 
He  made  the  remark  as  the  surest  way  to  get  rid  of 
an  intolerable  bore.  Sic  me  servavit  Apollo.  Even 
Dante  need  not  object  to  fulfilling  the  same  functions 
as  the  god  of  light.  How  thoroughly  Matthew  Arnold 
himself  appreciated  Goethe,  how  much  he  learned  from 
him,  we  all  know.  His  final  judgment  (Mixed  Essays, 
2nd  Ed.  p.  311)  is  contained  in  two  short  sentences. 
"It  is  by  no  means  as  the  greatest  of  poets  that  he 
deserves  the  pride  and  praise  of  his  German  country 
men.  It  is  as  the  clearest,  the  largest,  the  most 
helpful  thinker  of  modern  times."  No  essay  in  this 
volume  is  more  charming  than  the  memorial  tribute  to 
George  Sand.  George  Sand  is,  I  believe,  out  of 
fashion  in  France.  She  is  certainly  not  half  so  much 
read  in  England  as  she  was  twenty  years  ago.  So  far 
as  her  best  and  simplest  books  are  concerned,  this  is 
a  great  loss.  For,  as  Mr.  Arnold  so  happily  quotes 
from  her,  she  gives  better  than  almost  any  one  else 
"  le  sentiment  de  la  vie  idfale,  qui  n'est  autre  gue  la  vie 
normale  telle  que  nous  sommes  appelds  a  la  connaitre" — "  the 
sentiment  of  the  ideal  life,  which  is  none  other  than 
the  normal  life  as  we  are  destined  to  know  it."  George 
Sand  never  brought  the  ideal  down  to  the  level  of 
the  real. 

Oddly  bound  up  with  Irish  Essays  are  a  lecture 
to  Eton  boys  on  the  value  of  the  classics,  and  an 
ingenious  disquisition  on  the  French  Play  in  London. 
At  Eton,  where  Mr.  Arnold  believed,  or  pretended  to 
believe,  that  a  scientific  training  was  the  vogue,  he 
tracked  Greek  life  through  many  of  its  phases  by 


164  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 


means  of  the  words  eviyHXTrcAos  and  cvrpa^Xia,  to 
"which  perhaps  the  nearest  English  equivalents  are 
"versatile"  and  "versatility."  How  evr/xxTreAos,  a 
handy  man,  came  to  mean  /?a>/xoAoxos,  a  lick-spittle,  is 
a  long  story,  and  it  is  curious  that,  as  Mr.  Arnold  points 
out,  Pindar,  in  whose  Odes  it  first  occurs,  uses  it  in  a 
bad  sense,  like  St.  Paul,  who  applies  it  to  the  jesting 
which  is  not  convenient.  In  Plato,  however,  it  some 
times  has  an  unfavourable  meaning  too,  and  this  Mr. 
Arnold  omits  to  observe.  But  the  value  of  his  lecture 
lies  in  its  fruitful  and  suggestive  comparison  of  Greek 
life  with  English.  No  man  knew  the  classics  better 
than  Mr.  Arnold.  No  man  made  a  better  use  of  his 
knowledge.  The  essay  on  the  French  Play  is  interest 
ing  in  many  ways,  not  least  for  the  personal  reminiscence 
with  which  he  introduces  the  subject.  "I  remember," 
he  says,  "how  in  my  youth,  after  a  first  sight  of  the 
divine  Rachel  at  the  Edinburgh  Theatre  in  the  part  of 
Hermione,  I  followed  her  to  Paris,  and  for  two  months 
never  missed  one  of  her  representations  "  (Irish  Essays, 
Pop.  Ed.  p.  151.)  Of  course  after  that  Mr.  Arnold 
could  not  be  expected  to  go  into  raptures  over 
Mademoiselle  Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  he  does  not. 
"Something  is  wanting,  or,  at  least,  not  present  in 
sufficient  force.  ...  It  was  here  that  Rachel  was  so 
great  ;  she  began,  one  says  to  oneself  as  one  recalls  her 
image  and  dwells  upon  it,  —  she  began  almost  where 
Mademoiselle  Sarah  Bernhardt  ends"  (page  153). 
But  Mr.  Arnold  never  saw  Sarah  Bernhardt  in  Hamlet. 
Again  in  this  essay  Mr.  Arnold  attacks  Victor  Hugo, 
and  attacks  him  where,  if  he  sins,  he  sins  in  excellent 
company.  "  M.  Victor  Hugo's  brilliant  gift  for  versifica 
tion  is  exercised  within  the  limits  of  a  form  inadequate 


xiii.]  THE  AFTERMATH.  165 

for  true  tragic  poetry,  and  by  its  very  presence  excluding 
it "  (page  164).  That  is  very  dogmatic  criticism  indeed: 
Mr.  Arnold  disliked  the  French  Alexandrine,  even  as 
handled  by  such  a  master  as  Racine,  and  therefore 
he  pronounced  it  inadequate  for  true  tragedy.  He 
would  not  have  cared  much  for  a  criticism  of  Homer 
by  a  man  who  disliked  hexameters,  and  thought 
them  inadequate  for  epic  poetry.  At  page  166  he 
makes  the  acute  remark  that  "we  have  no  modern 
drama,  because  our  vast  society  is  not  at  present  homo 
geneous  enough."  Nevertheless  he  pleads  for  a  national 
theatre.  We  shall  have  a  national  drama  first.  Mr. 
Arnold  was  an  old  playgoer,  and  wrote  some  lively 
dramatic  notices  for  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  that  name. 
But  the  enormous  number  of  Englishmen  who  do  not 
care  for  the  play,  and  never  go  to  it,  would  hardly 
like  to  be  taxed  for  theatrical  purposes. 

The  second  series  of  Essays  in  Criticism  appeared 
after  Mr.  Arnold's  death,  with  a  Prefatory  Note  by 
Lord  Coleridge.  But  they  were  collected  by  himself, 
and  are  what  he  deliberately  judged  to  be  worthy  of 
republication.  They  are  nine  in  number,  but  the  last 
three  do  not,  I  think,  add  much  to  the  value  of  the 
collection.  The  first  six,  on  the  other  hand,  are  equal,  if 
not  superior,  to  any  other  critical  work  of  Mr.  Arnold's. 
"The  Study  of  Poetry,"  with  which  the  volume  opens, 
was  originally  written  for  Mr.  Humphry  Ward's  Selec 
tions  from  Hie  English  Poets.  It  contains  Mr.  Arnold's 
final  and  deliberate  judgment  upon  the  true  nature  of 
poetry.  After  quoting  Aristotle's  "  profound  observa 
tion  "  that  poetry  is  both  a  more  philosophical  thing, 
and  a  more  serious  thing,  than  history,  he  says  (page 
121)  that  "  the  substance  and  matter  of  the  best  poetry 


166  MATTHEW  AB.NOLD.  [CHAP. 

acquire  their  special  character  from  possessing,  in  an 
eminent  degree,  truth  and  seriousness."  But  "the 
superior  character  of  truth  and  seriousness,  in  the 
matter  and  substance  of  the  best  poetry,  is  inseparable 
from  the  superiority  of  diction  and  movement  marking 
its  style  and  manner."  Little  can  be  added  to  this, 
and  certainly  nothing  can  be  subtracted  from  it. 
Next  to  it,  the  most  interesting  part  of  the  essay  is 
the  free  and  candid  estimate  of  Burns.  This  is  the 
more  welcome  because,  while  he  was  writing  the  paper, 
in  November  1880,  he  told  his  sister  (Letters,  vol.  ii.  p. 
184)  that  Burns  was  "a  beast  with  splendid  gleams." 
What  would  Mr.  Arnold  have  thought  of  the  Philistine 
who  described  Catullus  as  a  beast  with  splendid 
gleams  ?  And  yet  Catullus,  who  was  far  grosser  than 
Burns,  is  the  poet  whom,  as  the  late  Professor  Sellar 
showed,  Burns  most  resembles.  In  his  beautiful 
address  on  Milton,  delivered  at  St.  Margaret's  Church, 
Westminster,  a  few  weeks  before  his  death,  Mr.  Arnold 
said,  with  truth,  force,  and  insight  (page  66),  "In  our 
race  are  thousands  of  readers,  presently  there  will  be 
millions,  who  know  not  a  word  of  Greek  and  Latin, 
and  will  never  learn  those  languages.  If  this  host  of 
readers  are  ever  to  gain  any  sense  of  the  power  and 
charm  of  the  great  poets  of  antiquity,  their  way  to  gain 
it  is  not  through  translations  of  the  ancients,  but  through 
the  original  poetry  of  Milton,  who  has  the  like  power 
and  charm,  because  he  has  the  like  great  style."  Only 
a  born  man  of  letters  could  have  written  that.  But  when 
Mr.  Arnold  quotes  from  Gray's  friend,  James  Brown,  the 
Master  of  Pembroke  Hall,  Cambridge,  the  words,  "He 
never  spoke  out,"  and  says  that  "in  these  four  words 
is  contained  the  whole  history  of  Gray,  both  as  a  man 


XIIL]  THE  AFTERMATH.  167 

and  as  a  poet,"  he  becomes  fantastic.  What  Brown 
means,  is  that  Gray  was  not  communicative  about 
the  state  of  his  own  health.  He  was  a  copious  letter- 
writer,  and  his  letters  are  among  the  best  in  the 
language.  If  the  amount  of  his  poetry  is  compara 
tively  small,  it  had  a  range  wide  enough  to  include 
the  "Progress  of  Poesy,"  the  "Elegy  in  a  Country 
Churchyard,"  and  the  political  satires.  To  Keats,  Mr. 
Arnold  became  juster  as  he  grew  older,  and  in  this  his 
final  estimate  he  couples  him,  not  with  Maurice  de 
GueYin,  but  with  Shakespeare.  This  reminds  one  of 
Lord  Young's  comment  on  the  remark  that  Barnes, 
the  Dorset  poet,  might  be  put  on  the  same  shelf  with 
Burns.  "It  would  have  to  be  a  long  shelf,"  said  the 
witty  Judge.  But  it  is  true  that  "no  one  else  in 
English  poetry,  save  Shakespeare,  has  in  expression 
quite  the  fascinating  felicity  of  Keats,  his  perfection 
of  loveliness"  (page  119).  The  essay  on  Wordsworth 
is  so  good,  that  to  praise  it  is  better  than  to  criticise 
it,  and  to  read  it  is  better  than  either.  But  such  a 
statement  as  that  "the  Excursion  and  the  Prelude,  his 
poems  of  greatest  bulk,  are  by  no  means  Wordsworth's 
best  work"  (page  135)  requires  a  justification  which 
Mr.  Arnold  does  not  give  it.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
find  in  any  of  Wordsworth's  shorter  pieces  better 
verses  than  the  lines  on  the  Simplon  Pass,  or  the 
passage  beginning  "Fabric  it  seemed  of  diamond  and 
of  gold."  While,  however,  I  cannot  help  thinking  that 
Mr.  Arnold  exaggerates  the  prosiness  of  Wordsworth's 
prosaic  passages,  and  dwells  too  much  upon  that  familiar 
theme,  he  more  than  compensates  for  any  trifling 
blemishes  by  such  a  noble  sentence  as  this :  "  His 
expression  may  often  be  called  bald,  as,  for  instance, 


168  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

in  the  poem  of  Resolution  and  Independence ;  but  it  is 
bald  as  the  bare  mountain  tops  are  bald,  with  a  bald 
ness  which  is  full  of  grandeur."  Mr.  Arnold  is  readier 
to  do  Byron  justice  than  most  Wordsworthians  are. 
It  was  Tennyson  that  Wordsworth  prevented  him  from 
appreciating,  not  Byron.  Byron's  poetry  seems,  so  far 
as  one  can  judge,  to  be  out  of  date  now.  It  is  his 
letters  rather  than  his  poems  which  people  read.  But 
his  "  sincerity  and  strength,"  to  use  the  phrase  which 
Mr.  Arnold  quotes  from  Mr.  Swinburne,  must  always 
be  acknowledged. 

The  remaining  essays  in  this  volume  deal  with 
Professor  Dowden's  Life  of  Shelley,  with  the  earlier 
writings  of  Count  Tolstoi,  and  with  the  Diary  of  Amid. 
Mr.  Arnold  was  profoundly  disgusted  with  the  details 
of  Shelley's  private  life,  with  "Godwin's  house  of 
sordid  horror,"  with  Byron's  "  brutal  selfishness,"  and 
so  on.  "  What  a  set !  what  a  world ! "  he  exclaims 
naturally  enough.  To  compare  them  with  the  Oriel 
Common  Room  shows  perhaps  a  lack  in  the  sense  of 
proportion.  They  are  more  like  the  strange  company 
who  accompanied  Candide  on  his  rambles.  But  after 
Professor  Dowden's  strange  apologetics,  Mr.  Arnold's 
rational  morals  and  inbred  sense  of  refinement  are 
salutary  and  refreshing.  To  say  of  Shelley  as  a  poet 
that  he  is  "a  beautiful  and  ineffectual  angel,  beating 
in  the  void  his  luminous  wings  in  vain,"  is  impressive, 
and  I  suppose  it  means  something.  But  it  does  not 
account  for  the  "Skylark,"  or  "When  the  Lamp  is 
shattered,"  or  the  mighty  "  Ode  to  the  West  Wind." 
Mr.  Arnold's  analysis  of  Anna  Karenina  is  appreciative 
enough,  and  he  would  have  thoroughly  enjoyed 
Resurrection  if  he  had  lived  to  read  it.  But  his 


xni.]  THE  AFTERMATH.  169 

recommendation  that  Count  Tolstoi  should  leave 
religion  and  stick  to  literature,  comes  strangely  from 
the  author  of  Literature  and  Dogma.  No  living  writer 
has  inculcated  the  teaching  of  Christ  with  more 
eloquence  than  Count  Tolstoi.  Of  Amiel,  it  is  no 
doubt  true  that  he  shines  more  in  literary  criticism 
than  in  mystic  speculation.  He  could  hardly  shine 
less.  But  what  had  Matthew  Arnold  to  do  with 
Amiel  1 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

CONCLUSION. 

So  early  as  October  1882,  Mr.  Arnold,  in  an  amusing 
letter  to  Mr.  Morley,  spoke  of  resignation.  "  I  an 
nounced  yesterday  at  the  office  my  intention  of 
retiring  at  Easter  or  Whitsuntide.  Gladstone  will 
never  promote  the  author  of  Literature  and  Dogma  if 
he  can  help  it,  and  meanwhile  my  life  is  drawing  to 
an  end,  and  I  have  no  wish  to  execute  the  Dance  of 
Death  in  an  elementary  school "  (Letters,  ii.  207).  He 
did  not,  however,  actually  resign  till  the  30th  of  April 
1886,  when  he  had  been  an  Inspector  for  thirty-five 
years.  Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  promote  the  author  of 
Literature  and  Dogma.  But  he  offered  him  a  pension 
of  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  "as  a  public  recogni 
tion  of  service  to  the  poetry  and  literature  of  England." 
After  some  quite  unnecessary  hesitation,  Mr.  Arnold 
accepted  the  offer.  Few  men,  to  say  nothing  of  poetry 
and  literature,  ever  served  the  public  more  faithfully 
for  a  remuneration  which  at  no  time  equalled  the 
salary  of  a  police  magistrate  or  a  County  Court  judge. 
If  he  did  not  work  so  hard  as  some  of  his  colleagues 
at  the  routine  and  drudgery  of  inspection,  his  reports 
are  the  most  luminous,  the  most  interesting,  and  the 
most  suggestive  that  have  ever  been  issued  from  the 
Education  Department.  A  collection  of  these  Reports 

170 


CHAP,  xiv.]  CONCLUSION.  171 

from  1852  to  1882  was  published  by  Messrs.  Macmillari 
in  1889,  with  an  introduction  from  the  pen  of  the  late 
Lord  Sandford,  so  long  Secretary  to  the  Education 
Office. 

In  the  autumn  of  1885,  Mr.  Arnold  was  sent  to 
inquire  into  the  working  of  elementary  education  in 
Germany,  France,  and  Switzerland.  He  was  especially 
directed  to  report  upon  the  payment  of  fees  by  the 
parent,  by  the  municipality,  and  by  the  State.  This 
Report  is  not  quite  so  good  a  piece  of  composition  as 
its  predecessors,  and  there  are  signs  that  it  was  written 
in  a  hurry.  His  own  recommendations  are  charac 
teristic.  He  thought  that  the  balance  of  argument 
was  against  free  education.  But  he  held  that  it 
had  better  be  given  because  the  want  of  it  put  a 
powerful  weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  agitator.  This 
is  thoroughly  and  essentially  Whig.  He  concluded  by 
urging  once  more  that  secondary  education  should  be 
organised,  as  it  seems  likely  at  last  to  be.  Free 
education  was  adoped  three  years  after  his  death. 

This  Report  was  Mr.  Arnold's  last  bit  of  official 
work.  After  his  resignation  he  used  his  freedom  to 
write  more  on  politics,  and  his  pen  was  never  idle. 
His  general  health  was  good,  though  he  had  been 
warned  of  hereditary  weakness  in  the  heart  which 
made  any  sudden  or  violent  exertion  dangerous. 
While  at  Liverpool  with  his  wife  on  Sunday  the  15th 
of  April  1888,  he  ran  to  catch  a  tramcar,  and  died  in 
a  moment.  He  had  gone  to  meet  his  elder  daughter 
on  her  way  home  from  the  United  States,  and  in 
the  delighted  expectation  of  seeing  her  he  passed 
away.  Few  knew  anything  of  his  malady,  and  no 
one  looked  less  like  an  invalid.  He  was  sixty-five  at 


172  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

the  time  of  his  death,  but  he  might  easily  have  passed 
for  a  much  younger  man.  His  eye  was  not  dim,  nor 
his  natural  force  abated.  Always  full  of  gaiety  and 
good-humour,  he  had  the  high  spirits  of  a  boy,  and 
the  serene  contentment  of  a  philosopher.  Keenly  as 
he  appreciated  the  enjoyments  of  life,  being  fastidious 
in  taste  and  something  of  an  epicure,  his  wants  were 
few  and  soon  satisfied.  He  was  the  most  sociable, 
the  most  lovable,  the  most  companionable  of  men. 
Perhaps  the  function  in  which  he  shone  least  was  that 
of  a  public  speaker.  I  only  heard  him  once,  but  the 
occasion  was  sufficiently  remarkable  to  be  worth  notice. 
It  was  the  Jubilee  of  the  Oxford  Union  in  1873. 
Matthew  Arnold  had  never,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  any 
thing  to  do  with  the  Union.  But  almost  every  Oxford 
man  in  the  front  rank  of  public  life,  except  Mr. 
Gladstone,  attended  the  dinner,  including  Lord 
Chancellor  Selborne,  who  presided,  Archbishop  Tait, 
Cardinal  Manning,  Lord  Salisbury,  and  Sir  John 
Duke  Coleridge.  Mr.  Arnold  was  to  respond  for 
Literature,  which  had  been  proposed  by  that  accom 
plished  orator,  Dr.  Liddon.  But  whether  he  was 
unwell,  or  whether  he  disliked  Liddon's  urbane  irony, 
he  replied  in  a  single  sentence  rather  too  sarcastic  for 
the  occasion,  and  not  worth  reproducing  at  this  dis 
tance  of  time. 

It  is  impossible  to  read  through  Mr.  Arnold's  books 
and  letters  without  feeling  that  he  was  a  good  man  in 
the  best  sense  of  that  term.  His  character  was  a 
singularly  engaging  one,  and  it  rested  upon  solid 
virtues  which  are  less  common  than  amiability. 
A  better  son,  husband,  father  there  could  not  be. 
His  moral  standard  was  much  the  same  as  Dr.  Arnold's, 


xiv.]  CONCLUSION.  173 

and  how  high  that  was  everybody  knows.  In  re 
ligious  matters  he  departed  very  widely  from  the 
school  of  thought  in  which  he  had  been  reared.  That 
he  was  himself  a  sincerely  religious  man,  and  deeply 
interested  in  religious  questions,  it  is  impossible  to 
doubt.  But  his  religion  was  so  peculiar  that  it  can 
scarcely  have  much  permanent  influence  upon  man 
kind.  Christianity  without  miracles,  and  without 
dogmatic  theology,  is  not  only  practicable,  but  has 
sufficed  for  some  of  the  best  Christians  that  ever  lived. 
It  is  probably  the  religion  of  most  educated  laymen  in 
the  Church  of  England  to-day.  But  Christianity  with-  i 
out  a  personal  God,  without  anything  more  definite  I 
than  a  tendency  not  ourselves  which  makes  for  right-  * 
eousness,  seems  to  have  neither  past  nor  future.  It  is, 
in  the  language  of  the  book  which,  with  all  his  learning, 
Mr.  Arnold  knew  best,  salt  which  has  lost  his  savour. 
Mr.  Arnold's  unfortunate  habit  of  quoting  the  Bible  in 
a  translation  of  his  own  deprived  the  passages  so 
rendered  of  their  hold  upon  the  English  mind.  His 
contributions  to  pure  literature,  on  the  other  hand, 
seem  secure  of  a  permanent  place  in  the  shelves  and  the 
minds  of  Englishmen.  Mr.  Arnold,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  his  critical  limitations.  He  excluded  too  much. 
But  judging  his  critical  work,  as  talent  should  be 
judged,  at  its  best,  one  can  hardly  overpraise  it.  It  is 
original,  penetrating,  lucid,  sympathetic,  and  just.  Of 
all  modern  poets,  except  Goethe,  he  was  the  best  critic. 
Of  all  modern  critics,  with  the  same  exception,  he  was 
the  best  poet.  No  one,  not  even  Mr.  Lecky,  more  I 
abounds  in  telling-  and  appropriate  quotations.  As  ' 
a  poet  he  ranks  only  below  the  greatest  of  all. 
Though  he  felt  the  influence  of  Wordsworth,  he  was 


174  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

no  imitator.  He  was  a  voice,  not  an  echo.  A  popular 
poet,  as  Byron  was,  as  Tennyson  is,  he  never  was, 
and  is  never  likely  to  be.  He  may  almost  be  said  to 
have  written  for  University  men,  and,  as  we  may  say 
nowadays,  for.  University  women.  As  a  critic  he  was 
incapable  of  obscurity  or  of  inaccuracy.  His  scholar 
ship  was  as  sound  as  it  was  brilliant.  He  had  the 
instinct  of  the  journalist,  and  was  never  at  a  loss  for 
an  appropriate  heading. 

Matthew  Arnold's  appearance  was  both  impressive 
and  agreeable.  He  was  tall,  of  commanding  presence, 
with  black  hair,  which  never  became  grey,  and  blue 
eyes.  He  was  shortsighted,  and  his  eye-glass  gave  him 
a  false  air  of  superciliousness,  accentuated  by  the  clever 
caricaturist  of  Vanity  Fair.  In  reality  he  was  the  most 
genial  and  amiable  of  men.  But  he  had  a  good  deal  of 
manner,  which  those  who  did  not  know  him  mistook  for 
assumption.  It  was  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  a  mixture 
of  old-fashioned  courtesy  and  comic  exaggeration.  Mr. 
Arnold  was  always  willing  to  tell  a  story,  or  to  join 
in  a  laugh,  against  himself.  Roughness  or  rudeness  he 
could  not  bear.  He  was  essentially  a  polished  man  of 
the  world.  He  never  gave  himself  airs,  or  seemed 
conscious  of  any  superiority  to  those  about  him.  Con 
siderate  politeness  to  young  and  old,  rich  and  poor, 
obscure  and  eminent,  was  the  practice  of  his  life.  His 
standard  was  the  standard  of  a  Christian  gentleman,  his 
models  in  that  respect  were  such  men  as  Newman  and 
Church.  He  enjoyed  not  only,  with  the  exception  of 
his  hereditary  complaint,  good  health  and  good  spirits, 
but  one  of  those  happy  temperaments  which  diffuse  and 
radiate  satisfaction.  No  one  could  be  cross  or  bored 
when  Matthew  Arnold  was  in  the  room.  He  was 


xiv.]  CONCLUSION.  175 

always  amusing,  and  always  seemed  to  look  at  the 
bright  side  of  things.  Naturally  sociable,  and  in  a 
modest  way  convivial,  he  took  pleasure  both  in  the 
exercise  and  in  the  acceptance  of  hospitality.  He 
knew  good  wine  from  bad,  and  was  not  ashamed  to 
admit  the  knowledge.  His  talk  was  witty,  pointed, 
and  often  irresistibly  droll.  Although  public  speaking 
did  not  suit  him,  he  had  a  very  flexible  voice,  admir 
ably  fitted  for  the  dramatic  rendering  of  a  story,  6r 
for  the  purposes  of  satirical  criticism.  He  could  be 
very  dogmatic  in  conversation,  but  never  aggressive 
or  overbearing.  For  a  poet  he  was  surprisingly  prac 
tical,  taking  a  lively  interest  in  people's  incomes,  the 
rent  of  their  houses,  the  produce  of  their  gardens,  and 
the  size  of  their  families.  He  had  none  of  Words 
worth's  contempt  for  gossip,  and  his  father's  strenuous 
earnestness  had  not  descended  to  him.  "Habitually 
indulging  a  strong  propensity  to  mockery/'  as  Macaulay 
says  of  Halifax,  he  was  never  ill-natured,  and  never 
willingly  gave  pain.  He  would  make  fun  of  the  people 
he  loved  best,  but  he  always  did  it  good-humouredly. 
His  theoretical  belief  in  the  principle  of  authority  had 
little  influence  upon  his  practice.  Mr.  Arthur  Benson, 
in  his  portly  biography  of  his  father,  tells  us  how 
the  author  of  Literature  and  Dogma,  on  being  con 
fronted  with  some  paternal  dictum,  replied  with  his 
confidential  smile,  "Dear  Dr.  Arnold  was  not  in 
fallible."  Mr.  Arnold's  smile  was  like  a  touch  of 
nature,  it  made  the  whole  world  kin. 

It  is  not  unnatural  to  compare  or  contrast  Matthew 
Arnold  with  his  two  great  contemporaries,  Tennyson 
and  Browning.  Tennyson  was  born  thirteen  years, 
Browning  eleven  years,  before  him.  Browning  survived 


176  MATTHEW  ARNOLD.  [CHAP. 

him  by  a  year,  Tennyson  by  four  years.  Tennyson 
stands  almost  alone  in  literature  as  a  poet,  and 
nothing  but  a  poet,  throughout  his  long  life.  All  his 
scholarship,  all  his  knowledge,  all  the  speculative 
power  of  his  wonderful  mind,  went  into  poetry,  and 
into  poetry  alone.  Browning,  though  he  had  no 
profession,  was  as  constantly  in  the  world  as  Tennyson 
was  constantly  out  of  it.  He  lived  two  lives,  the 
imaginative  and  the  actual,  with  equal  zest.  Matthew 
Arnold  was  as  sociable  as  Browning,  and  as  genuine 
a  poet.  But  he  had  to  work  for  his  living,  and  either 
the  Education  Department  or  the  critical  faculty 
almost  dried  up  the  poetic  vein.  It  was  not  that 
the  quality  of  his  verse  deteriorated,  as  the  quality 
of  Browning's  did,  and  as  the  quality  of  Tennyson's 
did  not.  What  little  poetry  he  wrote  at  the  end  of 
his  life  was  good,  and  in  the  case  of  /'Westminster 
Abbey,"  very  good.  But  he.  ceased  as  a  poet  to  be 
productive.  The  energies  of  his  mind  were  drawn 
into  politics,  into  theology,  into  literary  criticism. 
There  was  much  in  him  of  his  father's  missionary  zeal. 
He  longed  to  make  the  world  better,  though  by  other 
means  and  in  other  directions  than  Dr.  Arnold's.  His 
spiritual  father  was  Wordsworth,  from  whose  grave 
his  own  poetry  may  be  said  to  have  sprung.  Words 
worth  lived  to  be  much  older  than  Mr.  Arnold,  and, 
though  his  prose  is  exquisite,  there  is  not  much  of  it. 
In  him,  too,  great  poet  as  he  was,  the  imagination 
dwindled  and  decayed.  After  middle  age  he  produced 
little  that  lives.  Tennyson  remained  to  the  end  as 
magical,  as  imaginative,  as  musical,  as  he  had  ever 
been.  We  cannot  estimate  Matthew  Arnold's  great 
ness  if  we  separate  his  poetry  from  his  criticism.  His 


xiv.]  CONCLUSION.  177 

theological  and  political  writings  prove  his  versatility 
without  adding  much  to  his  permanent  reputation. 
It  is  as  the  poet  and  critic,  the  man  who  practised 
what  he  preached,  that  he  survives.  Ke  was  an 
incarnate  contradiction  of  the  false  epigram  that  the  | 
critics  are  those  who  have  failed  in  literature  and  art. 

The  great  fault  of  his  prose,  especially  of  his  later 
prose,  is  repetition.  He  had,  like  Mr.  Brooke  in 
Middlemarch,  a  marked  tendency  to  say  what  he  had 
said  before.  His  defect  as  a  poet  was  the  imperfection 
of  his  ear  for  rhythm.  But,  as  Johnson  said  of 
Goldsmith,  "enough  of  his  failings;  he  was  a  very 
great  man."  Such  poetry  as  Mycerinus,  such  prose  as 
the  Preface  of  the  Essays  in  Criticism,  are  enough  to 
make  a  man  a  classic,  and  to  preserve  his  memory 
from  decay. 


THE  END 


INDEX. 


"Absence,  "38. 

Act  of  Uniformity,  123. 

Addison,  81,  83. 

"Adonais,"2,  84. 

"Airy,  Fairy  Lilian  "  (Tennyson's), 
74. 

"  Alaric  at  Rome,"  quotation  from, 
10-11,  14. 

Alaric  at  Rome  and  Oilier  Poems, 
20. 

Alexandrines,  French,  53,  83,  165. 

American  Civil  War,  59. 

Analogy  of  Religion  (Butler's), 
142. 

Anderson,  Professor,  52. 

"Andromeda"  (Kingsley's),  62. 

Anna  Karenina  (Tolstoi's),  168. 

Annals  of  the  Four  Masters,  98. 

Apostles'  Creed,  138. 

Aristophanes,  52. 

Aristotle,  52,  53,  122,  165. 

Arminianism,  Church  of  England 
stronghold  of,  123. 

ArminiusvonThxinder-teu-Tronckh, 
125,  126-129. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  his  birth  at 
Laleham,  6 ;  his  father,  6-10  ;  his 
mother,  6 ;  goes  with  family  to 
Rugby,  6 ;  sent  to  Winchester, 
7  ;  return*to  Rugby,  7  ;  education 
at  Rugby,  7-11 ;  enters  Ralliol 
College,  Oxford,  11 ;  Newdigate 
Prize,  13;  Fellowship  at  Oriel, 
14;  Classical  Master  at  Rugby, 


16;  Private  Secretary  to  Lord 
Lansdowne,  17 ;  The  Strayed 
Reveller  and  Other  Poems,  20 ; 
appointed  an  Inspector  of  Schools, 
30 ;  marriage,  31 ;  Empedocles  on 
Etna,  and  other  Poems,  32 ;  "  Soh- 
rab  and  Rustum,"  45;  Poems, 
second  series,  48  ;  elected  Pro 
fessor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford,  51  ; 
takes  a  house  in  Chester  Square, 
56;  visit  to  the  Continent,  58; 
4 'On  translating  Homer,"  61;  A 
French  Eton,  69 ;  Essays  in 
Criticism,  74 ;  begins  work  in 
Paris,  92 ;  Lectuves  on  Celtic 
Literature,  96  ;  Xew  Poems,  99  ; 
ceased  to  be  Professor  of  Poetry, 
96  ;  death  of  his  eldest  son,  115  ; 
Culture  and  Anarchy,  115  ,r  St. 
Paul  and  Protestantism,  121 ; 
Friendship's  Oarland,  125  ;  death 
of  his  second  son,  132 ;  settles  at 
Pain's  Hill,  Cobham,  Surrey,  132; 
Literature  and  Dogma,  133 ;  God 
and  the  Bible,  139 ;  Mixed  Essays, 
147  ;  Irish  Essays,  151 ;  visit  to 
America,  154;  Discourses  in 
America,  155;  Essays  in  Criti 
cism,  second  series,  165;  resigns 
Inspectorship  of  Schools,  170; 
pension,  170  ;  death,  171. 
— His  literary  rank,  1-5 ;  his  politics, 
3,  23,  57,  60,  61 ;  93,  94, 114, 145, 
158,  161,  171;  his  philosophy, 
113-129;  his  theology,  130-144, 
179 


180 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


161,  173  ;  views  on  education,  67- 
71, 91, 92, 106-112, 114 ;  character, 
172, 173;  personal  characteristics, 
174,  175. 

"Arnold,  Poems  by  Matthew" 
(second  series),  48-50. 

Arnold,  Edward,  156. 

Arnold,  Miss  Fanny  (sister),  58, 
139,  154,  166. 

Arnold,  Mrs.  Frances  Lucy  Wight- 
man  (wife),  31, 120, 132, 154, 171. 

Arnold,  Mrs.  Mary  Penrose 
( Matthew  Arnold's  mother),  6,  9, 
18,  19,  73,  92,  93,  94,  120. 

Arnold,  Dr.  Thomas,  3,  6-10,  11, 
14,  16,  19,  28,  94,  103,  112,  133, 
172, 173,  175,  176. 

Arnold,  William  (brother),  66. 

' '  Artemis  Prologises  "  (Browning's), 
22,  55. 

"  Arundines  Cami,"  47. 

Aston  Clinton,  72. 

"  Atalanta  in  Calydon,"  54,  92. 

Athanasian  Creed,  138. 

Athenseu^i  Club,  50. 

Autobiography  (Mrs.  Besaut's),  159. 


B 

"Bacchanalia,  or  The  New  Age," 

102  ;  quotation  from,  103. 
Bacon,  77,  150. 
"Balder  Dead,"  48,  49,  66. 
Balfour,  Mr.  A.  J.,  116,  149. 
Ballads  from  Herodotus  (Rev.  J.  E. 

Bode's),  51. 

Balliol  College,  Oxford,  11-13,  16. 
Barnes,  William,  167. 
Barry  Lyndon  (Thackeray's),  69. 
Belgium.    Arnold's     visit    to,     as 

Foreign  Assistant  Commissioner 

on  Education,  58. 
Benson,  Mr  Arthur,  175. 
Bentley,  63. 
Bernhardt,  Sarah,  164. 


Biblical  Criticism,  3,  68,   88,  131, 

132, 137,  138,  141. 
"Bishop    and     the     Philosopher, 

The,"  68. 
Bismarck,  94. 
Blake,  William,  114. 
Bode,  Rev.  John  Ernest,  51. 
Bolingbroke,  162. 
Bonn  University,  149. 
Bossuet,  80,  81. 
Bowood,  Wiltshire,  18. 
Bright,  Mr.  John,  56,  93, 117,  149. 
British  Quarterly  Review,  79. 
Brooke,  Mr.  Stopford,  94,  161. 
Browning,  Mrs.,  27,  55. 
Browning,  Robert,  20,  22,  32,  33, 

43,  55,  91,  99,  175,  176. 
Brunelleschi,  93. 
Bryce,  Mr.,  157. 
Buckland,  Rev.  John,  6. 
Buloz,  M.,  79. 
Bunyan,  97,  119. 
Burials  Bill,  146,  147. 
"Buried  Life,  The,"  38,  39. 
Burke,  3, 71, 76-78, 80, 151, 152, 162. 
Burns,  47,  49,  85,  166. 
Butler,  Bishop,  123,  124,  134,  141- 

143. 
Byron,  Lord,  10,  11,  19,  32,  33,  73, 

85,  168, 174. 


C 

Cairns,  Lord,  148. 

"Calais  Sands, "101. 

"  Callicles,"  songs  of,  34-36. 

Calvin,  121-123. 

Cambridge,  University  of,  134. 

Camoens,  48. 

Campbell,  Mr.  Dykes,  £3. 

Candide,  125,  168. 

Canning,  Lord,  98. 

Canticle  of  St.  Francis,  86. 

Carlyle,  17,  39,  54,  76. 

Caroline,  Queen,  142. 


INDEX. 


181 


Carteret,  Lord,  61. 

Catholic  Emancipation,  9,  152. 

Catholics,  106,  1'20,  122,  149, 150. 

Catullus,  166, 

Cavour,  57. 

Celtic  Literature,  96-98. 

Centaure  (Maurice  de  Guerin),  81. 

Chamberlain,  Mr.,  116. 

Chapman,  63. 

Characteristics  (Shaftesbury),  142. 

Charles  II.,  123. 

Chateaubriand,  66. 

Chertsey,  18. 

Childe  Harold,  10. 

Christian  Remembrancer,  48. 

"Church  of  Brou,  The,"  46. 

Church,  Dean,  14,  174. 

Church  of  England,  12,  16,  67,  106, 

121,  123, 124,  132,  147,  173. 
Church   of    England,     Essay   on 

Puritanism  in,  121,  123-125. 
' '  Church  and  Religion,  Last  Essays 

on,"  141-143. 
Church  of  Rome,  124. 
Cicero,  113. 
Clarendon,  162.*' 
Clerkenwell  Explosion,  114. 
Clough,  Arthur  Hugh,  2,  12,  14, 

21,  23,  45,  46,  62,  66,  100. 
Cobden,  93. 

Code,  The  Revised  (1862),  67,  68. 
Colenso,  Bishop,  3,  68,  69. 
Colendge,  Lord,  10,  12,  14,  23,  48, 

73, 153,  155,  165, 172. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  53,  87. 
Collects  of  the  English  Church,  80. 
Conington,  Professor,  92. 
"Consolation,"  39. 
Constantine,  89. 
Contemporary  Review,  139. 
Cook,  Eliza,  147. 
"Copyright,"  Essay,  153. 
Corn  Laws,  10. 
CornhUl  Magazine,  96,  121. 
Cowley,  Lord,  58. 


Creweian  Oration,  68,  91. 
"Cromwell"  (poem),  13. 
Culture  and  Anarchy,  115-119, 121. 
«Cymbeline,"100. 


Daily  Telegraph,  75, 114. 

Dante,  163. 

De  Guerin,  Mademoiselle,  84. 

De  Guerin,  Maurice,  81,  167. 

De  Guerins,  74,  81,  82. 

De  Rothschild,  Sir  Anthony,  72. 

De  Rothschild,  Lady,  113. 

"  Decade,  The  "  (Debating  Society), 

14. 

Deceased  Wife's  Sister  Bill,  129. 
"Democracy,"  Essay,  60. 
Denison,  Archdeacon,  30. 
Denison,  Speaker,  95. 
Derby,  Lord,  61,  72. 
Descartes,  140. 
Deutsch,  113. 
Diary  of  A  mid,  168. 
Discourses  in  America,  1^5,  156. 
Disestablishment,  135,  147. 
Disraeli,  Mr.    (Lord  Beaconsfield), 

69,  72,  95,  162. 
Dissenters,  5,  23,  79,  106,  117, 118, 

121,  123,  146,  147. 
"Dover   Beach,"  quotation    from, 

1QLJLQ2, 

DoW^  Professor,  168. 
Doyle,  Sir  Francis,  91. 
Dresden,  93. 
Dryden,  19,  77. 
Dublin,  Trinity  College,  149. 
"Dunciad"  (Pope's),  63. 
Duomo,  Florence,  93. 

E 

Ecce  Homo,  139. 
Eccentricities    of    Genius    (Major 

Pond's),  154. 
Eckermann,  134. 
Ecole  Normale,  108. 


M  2 


182 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


Edinburgh  Review,  79. 

Edinburgh    Philosophical    Institu- 

tion,  142. 

Edinburgh  Theatre,  164. 
Education    Department,    30,    106, 

110,  170,  171,  176. 
Egypt,  151. 
Eisteddfod,  97. 
"Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard " 

(Gray's),  167. 
Elizabethan  Age,  151. 
Elwes,  Mr.  Robert,  89. 
Empedocles   on    Etna,    and    other 

Poems,  32-41. 
Empedocles  on  Etna,  33-36,  42,  55, 

99. 

Endowed  Schools  Act,  120. 
Endowed  School  Commissioners,  70. 
England  and  the  Italian  Question, 

57. 
English  Poets,  Selections  from  the 

(Ward's),  165. 
Epictetus,  22,  90. 
"Equality,"  Rssay,  147,  148. 
Erse,  96,  98. 

Esmond  (Thackeray's),  69. 
Essay  on  Man  (Pope's),  83. 
Essays  and  Reviews,  66. 
Essays  in  Criticism,  4,  72-90,  177. 
Essays  in  Criticism,  second  series, 

165-169. 

Eton,  69,  70,  109,  163. 
"Eton,  A  French,"  69. 
Euripides,  52. 
Evangelicals,  121. 
"Evangeline"  (Longfellow's),  62. 
Ewald,  3, 131. 
Examiner,  The,  19. 
Excursion  (Wordsworth's),  167. 


"Faded  Leaves,"  49, 
Falkland,  Lord,  162. 
"Farewell,  A,"  39. 
Fenians,  114. 


Fitch,  Sir  Joshua,  107,  131,  132. 

Florence,  93,  100. 

Fontanes,  M.,  131,  151. 

Forster,  W.  F.,  60,  61,  120. 

Forster,  Mrs.  (Arnold's  sister),  31, 
45,  50,  54,  59,  94. 

Fourth  Gospel,  180,  138,  139,  141. 

Fox  How,  6. 

"Fragment  of  an  '  Antigone,' "  22. 

France,  Arnold's  visit  to,  as  Foreign 
Assistant  Commissioner  on  Educa 
tion,  58  ;  inquiry  into  working  of 
elementary  education  in,  171. 

France,  Popular  Education  in,  60. 

Fraser's  Magazine,  104. 

Frederick  the  Great,  94. 

French  Academy,  80,  81. 

French  Criticism,  78,  79. 

French  Education,  69-71,  107-110, 
111. 

French  Language,  107,  103,  111. 

"  French  Play  in  London,"  essay, 
163,  164. 

French  people,  58,  93,  156. 

French  scholars,  97. 

Free  Education,  171. 

Friendship's  Garland,  125-129. ' 

"From  Easter  to  August,"  Essay, 
158. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  11,  54. 

G 

Gadarene  swine,  137. 

Gaelic,  96. 

Garnett,  Richard,  20. 

"Geist's  Grave,  "100,  161. 

Genoa,  Duke  of,  1 20. 

German  Education,  108,  110-112. 

German  Rationalists,  139. 

Germany,  Arnold's  visit  to,  as 
Foreign  Assistant  Commissioner 
on  Education,  92 :  inquiry  into 
working  of  elementary  education 
in,  171. 

Gesenius,  131. 


INDEX. 


183 


Gibbon,  38,  83. 

Gladstone,  Mr.,  9,  f>(i,  61,  64,  72, 

95,  96,  120,  130,  134,  140,  142, 

146,  153,  156-158,  170,  172. 
"  Gleam  "  (Tennyson's),  21. 
Gloucester,  Bishop  of,  133. 
God  and  the  Bible,  139-141. 
Godwin,  168. 
Goethe,  4,  32,  33,  39,  73,  85,  83, 

134,  136,  162, 163, 173. 
"  Goethe,  A  French  Critic  on,"  162. 
Goldsmith,  77, 177. 
"Gorgo,"85. 
Gospels,  The,  131,  138. 
Grammar  of  Assent( Newman's),  87. 
"  Grande  Chartreuse,  Stanzas  from 

the,"  104,  105. 

Grant,  General,  154,  156,  157. 
Grant,  Duff,  Mr.,  145. 
Gray,  34,  166,  167. 
Greece,  32,  51. 
Greek  drama,  43,  44,  52,  53. 
Greek  language,  111,  138,  166. 
Greek  life,  163,  164. 
Greenwood,  Frederick,  125. 
Guest,  Lady  Charlotte,  98. 

H 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  122. 

Hampden,  Dr.,  9. 

Harnack,  Professor,  141. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  130. 

Harrow,  70,  8t>,  109, 115,  120,  132. 

Hawkins,  Dr.,  7,  14. 

Hawtrey,  Dr.,  21,  62,  63. 

Hawtrey,  Mr.  Stephen,  69. 

"  Hayswater  Boat,  The,"  20,  28. 

Hazlitt,  74. 

Headington  Hill,  2. 

Hebraism,  3,  121. 

Heine,  18,  19,  75,  82,  84,  85. 

"Heine's  grave,"  19,  103,  104. 

Hellenism,  3,  113,  121. 

Hermione,  164. 

Herodotus,  24. 


Holland,  Arnold's  visit  to,  as  Foreign 
Assistant  Commissioner  on  Edu 
cation,  58. 

Home  Rule,  150,  151,  156-158. 

Homer,  17,  22,  29,  46,  48,  59,  61- 
66,  75,  125,  165. 

"Homer,  Last  Words  on  translat 
ing,"  61.  66. 

Horace,  8,  83,  84,  124. 

Hugo,  Victor,  83,  156,  164,  165. 

Hungarians,  57. 

Huxley,  Professor,  107. 

Hyde  Park  Rioters,  114. 

"Hymn  to  Adonis,"  85,  86. 

I 

Idylls  of  the  King  (Tennyson's),  59. 
"II  Pensercso"  (Milton's),  21. 
Iliad  (Homer's),  62-64. 
In  Memoriam  (Tennyson's),  59,  73 
"In  Memory  of  the  late  Edward 

Quillinan,  Esq., "48. 
"  Incompatible^     The"      (Essay), 

152,  153. 

Inferno  (D?nte's),  163. 
"  Introduction  to  Collected  Poems," 

42-45,  52. 
Ipswich,  151. 

Irish  Catholic  University,  148-150. 
"Irish    Catholicism    and    British 

Liberalism,"  Essay,  149. 
Irish  Church,  114,  147. 
Irish  Essays,  150,  151-153,  163. 
Irish  Land  Acts,  146,  152. 
Irish  Melodies  (Moore's),  26. 
Irish  question,   149,   150,  151-153, 

157,  158. 

Irving,  Sir  Henry,  155. 
"Isabella "(Keats),  44. 
Israel's  Restoration,  The  Great 

Prophecy  of,  131, 132. 
Italian  Government,  119,  120. 
Italy,  57,  92,  93,  107. 


Jebb,  Sir  Richard,  64. 


184 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


Jenkyns,  Dr.,  12. 
Jones,  Owen,  97,  98. 
Joubert,  81,  86,  87. 
Jowett,  Dr.,  12,  63,  124, 125. 
Judaism,  113,  123. 

K 

"Kaiser  Dead, "161. 
Kay-Shuttleworth,  Sir  James,  67. 
Keats,  2,  22,  44,  63,  74,  81,  82,  167. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  21,  54,  62. 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  119. 
Kuenen,  131. 

L 

Lacordaire,  70. 
Laleham,  6,  13,  18,  132. 
Lang,  Andrew,  64. 
Lansdowne,  Lord,  17,   18,  30,   57, 

145. 

"Laodamia"  (Wordsworth's),  25. 
"Last  Word,  Tie,"  102. 
Latin,  107,  112,  166. 
Laud,  Archbishop,  123. 
Lays  of  Ancient  JRome(Macaulay's), 

26,  64. 

"  L' Allegro  "  (Milton's),  21. 
Lecky,  Mr.,  173. 
Lectures    on    the    Jewish    Church 

(Stanley's),  69. 
Lectures  on  Modern  History  (Dr. 

Arnold's),  60. 
Lectures  on  translating  Homer,  17, 

61-66. 

Leighton,  Archbishop,  140. 
Letter  to  aNobleLord(Bwc'ke'$),77. 
Letters   (Matthew    Arnold's),    139, 

146,  166,  170. 
Letters     on     a     Regicide     Peace 

(Burke's),  77. 
Lewes,  George  Henry,  54. 
Liddon,  Dr.,  172. 
Life  of  Frederick  Robertson  (Stop- 

iord  Brooke's),  94. 
Life  of  Shelley  (Dowden's),  168. 
Lincoln,  President,  157. 


"Lines  written  in  Kensington- 
Gardens,"  40. 

Lingen,  Lord,  30,  67. 

"Literature,  The  Modern  Element 
in,"  51,  52. 

Literature  and  Dogma,  131,  133- 
139, 140,  144,  169,  170,  175. 

Literature,  Primer  of  English 
(Stopford  Brooke's),  161,  162. 

Livy,  131, 

London,  University  of,  112. 

Long,  Mr.,  90. 

Longfellow,  21,  62. 

Lowe,  Mr.  Robert,  67,  68. 

Lucan,  40. 

Lucretius,  83,  134. 

Luther,  80,  97,  122,  124. 

"Lycidas,"21, 100. 

Lytton,  Lord,  45,  114. 

M 
Mdbinogion        (Lady       Charlotte 

Guest's),  98. 
Macaulay,  Lord,  11,  17,  18,  26,  64, 

125,  146,  175. 

Macmittaris  Magazine,  52,  68,  69. 
Maine,  Sir  Henry,  3. 
Manning,  Cardinal,  172. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  82,  89,  90,  115. 
"Marguerite,  "38. 
Martineau,  Dr.  James,  92,  117,  135. 
Maurice,  Frederick,  138. 
"  May  Queen  "  (Tennyson's),  74. 
Meditations  (Marcus  Aurelius'),  89. 
Melbourne,  Lord,  11. 
"  Memorial  Verses,"  32. 
Merimee,  Prosper,  58. 
"  Merman,  The  Forsaken,"  27. 
"Merope,"  52-55,  92. 
Milan,  93. 
Mill,  James,  142. 
Mill,  J.  S.,58,  122,  148. 
"Mill  on  Liberty, "58. 
Milton,  2,  20,  21,  24,  77,  100,  147, 

JK9,  ]60,  162,  166. 


INDEX. 


is;, 


"  Milton,  A  French  Critic  on,"  162. 

Mixed  Essays,  147-151, 161-163. 

Moberly,  Dr.,  7. 

Modern  Painters  (Ruskiu's),  50. 

Moltfre,  156. 

Moore,  Thomas,  26,  98. 

"Morality, "40,  41. 

Morley,  Mr.  John,  149, 170. 

Morley,  Mr.  Samuel,  153. 

Miiller,  Max,  13. 

Murray's  Magazine,  156,  157. 

My  Novel,  45. 

"Mycerinus,"  24-26,  177. 

Myvyrian  Archaeology ',  98. 


N 

Napoleon,  Emperor  Louis,  57,  58. 
New  Poems,  99-105. 
"New  Sirens,  The, "27. 
New  York,  154. 
Newcastle,  Duke  of,  61,  67. 
Newdigate  Prize,  13,  91. 
Newman,  Francis,  63. 
Newman,  John  Henry,  11,  22,  63, 

87, 118, 124,  132, 174. 
Nicene  Creed,  138. 
Nineteenth  Century,  145,  156,  158. 
Nonconformist ,  newspaper,  117. 
Nonconformists.    See  Dissenters. 
"Numbers,  or  the  Majority  and  the 

Remnant,"  Essay  on,  155,  156. 


Obermann,  39,  66,  134. 

"  Obermann,  Stanzas  in  Memory  of 

the  Author  of,"  39. 
O'Curry,  Eugene,  98. 
"Ode  to  the  West  Wind"  (Shelley's), 

84. 

Odyssey,  63,  64. 
"  On  the  Rhine,"  quotation  from, 

37. 
"One  Word  More"   (Browning's), 

21. 


Oriel  College,  Oxford,  12,  14,  168. 

Orpheus,  29. 

Oxford,  2,  7,  11-15,  30,  47,  67,  68, 

72,  75,  100,  101,   108,  116,  118, 

122,  142,  154,  172. 
Oxford  Movement.     See  Tract- 

arianism. 

Oxford  Union,  172. 
Oxford,  University  College,  12. 


Pall  Mall  Gazette,  125,  165. 

Palmerston,  Lord,  68,  72,  93,  94. 

Pantheism,  40,  122. 

Paracelsus  (Browning's),  20,  33. 

Paradiso  (Dante's),  163. 

Paradise  Lost,  162. 

Paris,  University  of,  108. 

Parliament,  145. 

"Parting, "37,  38,55. 

Pascal,  143. 

Pattison,  Mark,  11,  12,  78. 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  94,  114. 

Pendennis  (Thackeray's),  69. 

Pentateuch,  68. 

Pericles,  51. 

Petronius,  39. 

PMdre  (Racine's),  83. 

"Philistines,"  75,  76,  78,  84,  116, 

118. 

Phrynichus,  44. 
Piedmont,  58. 
Pindar,  164. 
Pitt,  94. 
Plato,  1,  8,  90,  122,  125,  140,  155, 

164. 
"Poesy,  Progress  of "  (Gray's),  35, 

167. 

Poles,  57. 
Polycarp,  89. 
Pond,  Major,  154. 
"  Poor  Matthias,"  161. 
Pope,  63,  64,  83,  84. 
"  Praxinoe,"  85. 


186 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


"Prelude"    (Wordsworth's),      40, 

167. 

Prince  Consort,  68. 
Procter,  Adelaide,  66. 
"  Progress,"  41. 
Protestants,  122,  149,  1,50. 
Prussia,  57,  94,  110,  111,  125. 
Purgatorio,  163. 
Pusey,  Dr.,  162. 


Q 

Quarterly  Review,  79, 113. 


R 

"Rabbi  Ben  Ezra, "34. 

Rachel  (actress),  164. 

Racine,  53,  83,  165. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  51. 

Real  Estates  Intestacy  Bill,  148. 

Reform  Act  of  1867,  114. 

Reisebilder  (Heine's),  19. 

Renan,  3. 

Report  upon  Schools  and   Univer 
sities  on  the  Continent,  107, 108. 

Republic  (Plato's),  124,  125. 

"  Requiescat,"  47. 

"  Resignation,"  27-29. 

"Resolution    and    Independence" 
(Wordsworth's),  168. 

Resurrection  (Tolstoi's),  168. 

Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  78,  79. 

Robertson,  Rev.  Frederick,  94. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  40. 

Roman  Empire,  89,  90. 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  22. 

Rugby,  6-11,  13,  16, 17,  66,  70,  108, 

109. 

'Rugby  Chapel,"  quotation  from, 
8-9,  21,  103. 

Ruskin,  John,  4,  50,  63,  74. 

Russell,  Lord  John,  17,  45,  95, 145. 

Russell,  Mr.  George,  17,  115,  125, 
ISO,  146,  155. 


S 

St.  Augustine,  124. 

Sainte-Beuve,  4,  58,  66,  73,  81,  82, 
87,  162. 

"Saint  Brandan,"  101. 

St.  Francis,  86. 

St.  James,  137. 

St.  Margaret's  Church,  West 
minster,  166. 

Si.  Paul  and  Protestantism,  121- 
123,  131. 

St.  Paul,  121-123,  136, 137,  164. 

St.  Peter,  159. 

Saintsbury,  Professor,  43,  82,  130. 

Sala,  George  Augustus,  125, 126. 

Salisbury,  Lord,  140,  157,  158,  172. 

Sand,  George,  82,  163. 

Sandford,  Lord,  171. 

Scherer,  M.,  162. 

"Scholar  Gypsy,  The,"  13,  47,  48, 
101. 

Schools  Inquiry  Commissioners,  92. 

Science  of  Origins,  97. 

Scotland,  Schools  of,  108. 

Second  Empire,  23. 

Secondary  Education,  146, 150, 151. 

Selborne,  Lord  Chancellor,  172. 

"Self-Dependence,"  38. 

Sellar,  Professor,  166. 

Senancour,  39,  134. 

Seneca,  38,  39. 

"Separation,  "48-50. 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  137. 

Settled  Land  Act,  148. 

Shairp,  John  Campbell,  13. 

Shakespeare,  22,  23,  29,  44,  53,  59, 
77,  145,  161,  162,  167. 

Shelley,  47,  73,  84,  85,  168. 

Shotover,  2. 

"  Sick  King  in  Bokhara,  The,"  26. 

Sion  College,  143. 

"  Skylark  "  (Shelley's),  168. 

Smith,  Mr.  George,  96,  115. 

Smith,  Goldwin,  78,  122. 142. 


INDEX. 


187 


Smith  and  Klcler,  115. 

"Sohrab  and  Rustum,"  45-48,  49, 
66. 

Sophocles,  1,  22,  29,  '44,  52,  86. 

Sorreze,  70. 

Southey,  23. 

Spain,  120. 

Spectator,  94. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  92. 

Spinoza,  68,  69,  82,  88,  89. 

Staiues,  6,  18. 

Stanley,   Dean,   7,   8,   12,   23,   69, 
159. 

Sterne,  19. 

Strangford,  Lord,  96. 

Strasburg  University,  149. 

Strayed  Reveller  and  other  Poems, 
The,  420-29. 

"Study  of  Poetry,  The,"  165-167. 

Sulpidus,  38. 

Swift,  Dean,  19,  77,  118. 

Swinburne,   Mr.,  27,  32,  36,  100, 
168. 

Switzerland,   Arnold's  visit  to,  as 
Foreign  Commissioner  on  Educa 
tion,  58 ;  inquiry  into  working 
of  elementary  education  in,  171. 
'Switzerland,"  poem,  38,  101. 


Tacitus,  89,  137. 

Tait,  Dr.,  16,  172. 

Talmud,  113. 

Tatham,  Miss  Emma,  84. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  80. 

Temple,  Dr.,  16,  54,  66. 

Temps  ( newspaper },  162. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  13,  20,  22, 

28,  32,  59,  65,  73,  74,  100,  168, 

174-176. 
Thackeray,  69. 

Theocritus,  25,  28, 85,  86,  100. 
Thompson,  Dr.,  63. 
Thucydides,  8,  51. 


"Thyrsis,"  2,  13;  quotation  from, 

100-101. 

Times,  The,  79.  x 
"  Tithonus  "  (Tennyson's),  74. 
"  To  an  Independent  Preacher,"  23, 

87. 
"  To  a  Gipsy  Child  by  the  Seashore, " 

27. 

"To  a  Republican  Friend,"  23,  24. 
"To     the      Hungarian      Nation," 

quotation  from,  19. 
Tolstoi,  168,  169. 
Tom,  Brown's  School  Days,  7. 
Toulouse  Lyceum,  69,  70. 
Tract  xc.,  118. 
Tractarianism,  3,  9,  11,  13. 
Tractatus       Theologico  -  Politicus 

(Spinoza's),  89. 
Trevelyan,  Sir  George,  125. 
Tribune,  New  York,  154. 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  149. 
"  Tristram  and  Iseult,"  36,  37. 
Tubingen  School,  The,  3. 
Turgot,  148. 

U 
Union  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland, 

152. 
Unitarians,  Arnold's  curious  dislike 

of,  133. 
United  States,  92,  94,  148, 153,  154, 

157, 171. 

Universities,  English,  108, 110,  111. 
Universities,  French,  111. 
Universities,  German,  111. 


Vanity  Fair  (Thackei-ay's),  69. 
Vanity  Fair,  newspaper,  174. 
Vaughan,  Master  of  the  Temple,  8. 
Victor  Emmanuel,  57,  120. 
Victoria  Regia,  66. 
Villette,  45. 
Virgil,  40,  83. 

Voltaire,  52,  53;    compared  with 
Homer,  64,  126. 


188 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


W 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  61,  94. 
Ward,  Dr.,  118. 
Ward,  Mr.  Humphry,  165. 
Warton,  Dr.,  166,  167. 
Westbury,  Lord,  162. 
"Westminster  Abbey,"  32,  99, 159 

quotation  from,  160,  176. 
Whately,  Archbishop,  14. 
"When    the    Lamp  is  shattered' 

(Shelley's),  168. 
Wightman,  Mr.  Justice,  31. 
Wilberforce,  Bishop,  72, 73. 
Winchester,  7,  109. 
Winchester,  Bishop  of.  133. 


"Wine  of  Cyprus"  (Mrs.  Brown 
ing's),  27. 

"  Wizard  of  the  North,"  The,  52. 

Wordsworth,  1,  7,  13,  18,  20,  22, 
24,  25,  29,  32,  33,  35,  40,  48,  73, 
74,167,168,173,175,176. 

Wright,  Mr.,  75. 


Young,  Lord,  167. 
"Youth  of  Man,  The,  "40. 
"  Youth  of  Nature,  The,"  40. 


"Zenith 
158. 


of    Conservatism,    The," 


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