LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 NORMAN FOERSTER
 
 ""r-TKp 
 
 7 hJJIi^^v- ) 
 
 10, n -
 
 tD^^e Hibemue literature ^erietf 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM THE PROSE WORKS OF 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SAVAGE JOHNSON, Ph.D. 
 
 Associate Professor of English in the 
 University of Kansas 
 
 BOSTON" NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 ^fjE Clitoer^ibc fte?^ Cambribge
 
 The essays included in this issue of The Riverside Literature Series 
 are reprinted by permission of, and by arrangement with. The 
 Macmillan Company, tlie American publishers of Arnold's writings. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I913, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 R. L. S. 223 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS'
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 P R^ UNIVEHSITY OF CACIFORNLV 
 
 ^^ p j SAISTA BAltBAKA 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This book of selections aims to furnish examples of 
 Arnold's prose in all the fields in which it characteristically 
 employed itself except that of religion. It has seemed bet- 
 ter to omit all such material than to attempt inclusion of 
 a few extracts which could hardly give any adequate no- 
 tion of Arnold's work in this department. Something, 
 however, of his method in religious criticism can be dis- 
 cerned by a perusal of the chapter on Hebraism and Hel- 
 lenism, selected from Culture and Anarchy. Most of 
 Arnold's leading ideas are represented in this volume, but 
 the decision to use entire essays so far as feasible has 
 naturally precluded the possibility of gathering all the im- 
 portant utterances together. The basis of division and 
 grouping of the selections is made sufficiently obvious by 
 the headings. In the division of literary criticism the en- 
 deavor has been to illustrate Arnold's cosmopolitanism by 
 essays of first-rate importance dealing with the four liter- 
 atures with which he was well acquainted. In the notes, 
 conciseness with a reasonable degree of thoroughness has 
 been the principle followed.
 
 2i 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction ..'... vii 
 
 Bibliography xxii 
 
 Selections : 
 
 I. Theories of Literature and Criticism : 
 
 -ir-^oetry and the Classics (1853) 1 
 
 y 2. The Function of Criticism at the Present Time 
 
 y (1864) 20 
 
 / 3. The Study of Poetry (1880) . > 55- 
 
 4, Literature and Science (1882) 87 
 
 II. Literary Criticism : 
 
 1. Heinrich Heine (1863) ."^ 112 
 
 2. Marcus Aurelius (1863) 145 
 
 3. The Contribution of the Celts to English Liter- 
 
 ature (1866) 176 
 
 4. George Sand (1877) 192 
 
 5. Wordsworth (1879) . 218 
 
 III. Social and Political Studies : 
 
 1. Sweetness and Light (1867) 242 
 
 2. Hebraism and Hellenism (18G7) 273 
 
 3. Equality (1878) 289 
 
 Notes 315
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 "The gray hairs on my head are becoming more and 
 more numerous, and I sometimes grow impatient of get- 
 ting old amidst a press of occupations and labor nfo and 
 for which, after all, I was not born. But we Personality 
 are not here to have facilities found us for doing the work 
 we like, but to make them." This sentence, written in a 
 letter to his mother in his fortieth year, admirably ex- 
 presses Arnold's courage, cheerfulness, and devotion in the 
 midst of an exacting round of commonplace duties, and at 
 the same time the energy and determination with which 
 he responded to the imperative need of liberating work of 
 a higher order, that he might keep himself, as he says in 
 another letter, "from feeling starved and shrunk up." 
 The two feelings directed the course of his life to the end, 
 a life characterized no less by allegiance to " the lowliest 
 duties " than by brilliant success in a more attractive field. 
 
 Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham, December 24, 
 1822, the eldest son of Thomas Arnold, the great head 
 master of Rugby. He was educated at Laleham, Winches- 
 ter, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford, In 1845 he was 
 elected a fellow of Oriel, but Arnold desired to be a man 
 of the world, and the security of college cloisters and gar- 
 den walls could not long attract him. Of a deep affection 
 for Oxford his letters and his books speak unmistakably, 
 but little record of his Oxford life remains aside from the 
 well-known lines of Principal Shairp, in which he is spoken 
 
 of as 
 
 So full of power, j-et blithe and debonair, 
 Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay. 
 
 From Oxford he returned to teach classics at Rugby, and 
 in 1847 he was appointed private secretary to Lord Lans- 
 downe, then Lord President of the Council. In 1851, the 
 year of his marriage, he became inspector of schools, and
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 in this service he continued until two years before his 
 death. As an inspector, the letters give us a picture of 
 Arnold toiling over examination papers, and hurrying 
 from place to place, covering great distances, often going 
 without lunch or dinner, or seeking the doubtful solace of 
 a bun, eaten " before the astonished school." His services 
 to the cause of English education were great, both in the 
 direction of personal inspiration to teachers and students, 
 and in thoughtful discussion of national problems. Much 
 time was spent in investigating foreign systems, and his 
 Report iipon Schools and Universities on the Continent 
 was enlightened and suggestive. 
 
 Arnold's first volume of poems appeared in 1849, and 
 by 1853 the larger part of his poetry was published. Four 
 years later he was appointed Professor of Poetry at Ox- 
 ford. Of his prose, the first book to attract wide notice 
 was that containing the lectures On Translating Homer 
 delivered from the chair of Poetry and published in 
 1861-62. Prom this time until the year of his death ap- 
 peared the remarkable series of critical writings which 
 have placed him in the front rank of the men of letters 
 of his century. He continued faithfully to fulfill his duties 
 as school inspector until April, 1886, when he resigned 
 after a service of thirty-five years. He died of heart trouble 
 on April 15, 1888, at Liverpool. 
 
 The testimony to Arnold's personal charm, to his cheer- 
 fulness, his urbanity, his tolerance and charity, is remark- 
 ably uniform. He is described by one who knew him as 
 " the most sociable, the most lovable, the most compan- 
 ionable of men"; by another as *' preeminently a good 
 man, gentle, generous, enduring, laborious." His letters 
 are among the precious writings of our time, not because 
 of the beauty or inimitableness of detail, but because of 
 the completed picture which they make. They do not, 
 like the Carlyle-Emerson correspondence, show a hand 
 that could not set pen to paper without writing pictur- 
 esquely, but they do reveal a character of great sound- 
 ness and sweetness, and one in which the aflections play 
 a surprisingly important part, the love of flowers and 
 books, of family and friends, and of his fellow men.
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 His life was human, kindly and unselfish, and he al- 
 lowed no clash between the pursuit of personal perfec- 
 tion and devotion to the public cause, even when the 
 latter demanded sacrifice of the most cherished projects 
 and adherence to the most irritating drudgery. 
 
 II 
 
 By those who go to literature primarily for a practical 
 wisdom presented in terms applicable to modern life, the 
 work of Arnold will be reckoned highly im- Arnold's 
 portant, if not indispensable. He will be placed Place 
 by them among the great humanizers of the last jj^^fenth- 
 century, and by comparison with his contempo- Century 
 raries will be seen to have furnished a com pie- T®*"^^" 
 mentary contribution of the highest value. Of the other great 
 teachers whose work may most fitly be compared with his, 
 two were preeminently men of feeling. Carlyle was governed 
 by an overmastering moral fervor which gave great weight to 
 his utterances, but which exercised itself in a narrow field 
 and which often distorted and misinterpreted the facts. Rus- 
 kin was governed by his affections, and though an ardent 
 lover of truth and beauty, was often the victim of caprice 
 and extravagance. Emerson and Arnold, on the other 
 hand, were governed primarily by the intellect, but with 
 quite different results. Emerson presents life in its ideality ; 
 he comparatively neglects life in its phenomenal aspect, 
 that is, as it appears to the ordinary man. Arnold, while 
 not without emotional equipment, and inspired by ideal- 
 ism of a high order, introduces a yet larger element of 
 practical reason. Tendens manus ripce ulterioris o,more, 
 he is yet fi.rst of all a man of this world. His chief instru- 
 ment is common sense, and he looks at questions from the 
 point of view of the highly intelligent and cultivated man. 
 His dislike of metaphysics was as deep as Ruskin's, and 
 he was impatient of abstractions of any sort. With as 
 great a desire to further the true progress of his time as 
 Carlyle or Ruskin, he joined a greater calmness and dis- 
 interestedness. " To be less and less personal in one's de- 
 sires and workings " he learned to look upon as after all
 
 X INTRODUCTION 
 
 the great matter. Of the lessons that are impressed upon 
 us by his whole life and work rather than by specific 
 teachings, perhaps the most precious is the inspiration to 
 live our lives thoughtfully, in no haphazard and hand-to- 
 mouth way, and to live always for the idea and the spirit, 
 making all things else subservient. He does not dazzle us 
 with extraordinary power prodigally spent, but he was a 
 good steward of natural gifts, high, though below the 
 highest. His life of forethought and reason may be profit- 
 ably compared with a life spoiled by passion and animalism 
 like that of Byron or of Burns. His counsels are the fruit 
 of this Avell-ordered life and are perfectly in consonance 
 with it. While he was a man of less striking personality 
 and less brilliant literary gift than some of his contempo- 
 raries, and though his appeal was without the moving 
 power that comes from great emotion, we find a compen- 
 sation in his greater balance and sanity. He makes singu- 
 larly few mistakes, and these chiefly of detail. Of all the 
 teachings of the age his ideal of perfection is the wisest 
 and the most permanent. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Arnold's poetry is the poetry of meditation and. not the 
 poetry of passion ; it comes from " the depth and not the 
 _, _ ^ tumult of the soul " : it does not make us more 
 ers and Ms joyful, but it helps us to greater depth of vision, 
 Personal greater detachment, greater power of self-pos- 
 Phiiosopny ggggJQj^ q^j. concern here is chiefly with its re- 
 lation to the prose, and this, too, is a definite and impor- 
 tant relation. In his prose Arnold gives such result of his 
 observation and meditation as he believes may be gathered 
 into the form of counsel, criticism, and warning to his age. 
 In his poetry, which preceded the prose, we find rather 
 the processes through which he reached these conclusions ; 
 we learn what is the nature of his communing upon life, 
 not as it affects society, but as it fronts the individual ; 
 we learn who are the great thinkers of the past who came 
 to his help in the straits of life, and what is the armor 
 which they furnished for his soul in its times of stress.
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 One result of a perusal of the poems is to counteract 
 the impression often produced by the jaunty air assumed 
 in the prose. The real substance of Arnold's thought is 
 characterized by a deep seriousness; no one felt more 
 deeply the spiritual unrest and distraction of his age. 
 More than one poem is an expression of its mental and 
 spiritual sickness, its doubt, ennui, and melancholy. Yet 
 beside such poems as Dover Beach and Stagirius should 
 be placed the lines from Westminster Abbey : — 
 
 For this and that way swings 
 The flux of mortal things, 
 Though moving inly to one far-set goal. 
 
 Out of this entanglement and distraction Arnold turned 
 for help to those writers who seemed most perfectly to 
 have seized upon the eternal verities, to have escaped out 
 of the storm of conflict and to have gained calm and peace- 
 ful seats. Carlyle and Ruskin, Byron and Shelley, were 
 stained with the blood of battle, they raged in the heat of 
 controversy ; Arnold could not accept them as his teachers. 
 But the Greek poets and the ancient Stoic philosophers 
 have nothing of this dust and heat about them, and to 
 them Arnold turns to gather truth and to imitate their 
 spirit. Similarly, two poets of modern times, Goethe and 
 Wordsworth, have won tranquillity. They, too, become 
 his teachers. Arnold's chief guides for life are, then, these: 
 two Greek poets, Sophocles and Homer ; two ancient 
 philosophers, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus ; two mod- 
 ern poets, Goethe and Wordsworth. 
 
 In Homer and Sophocles, Arnold sought what we may 
 call the Greek spirit. What he conceived this spirit to be as 
 expressed in art, we find in the essay on Literature and 
 Science, " fit details strictly combined, in view of a large 
 general result nobly conceived." In Sophocles, Arnold 
 found the same spirit interpreting life with a vision that 
 " saw life steadily and saw it whole," In another Greek 
 idea, that of fate, he is also greatly interested, though his 
 conception of it is modified by the influence of Christian- 
 ity. From the Greek poets, then, Arnold derived a sense 
 of the large part which destiny plays in our lives and the 
 wisdom of conforming our lives to necessity 5 the impor-
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 tance of conceiving of life as directed toward a simple, 
 large, and noble end ; and the desirability of maintaining 
 a balance among the demands that life makes on us, of 
 adapting fit details to the main purpose of life. 
 
 Among modern writers Arnold turned first to Goethe, 
 "Europe's sagest head, Physician of the Iron Age." One 
 of the things that he learned from this source was the 
 value of detachment. In the midst of the turmoil of life, 
 Goethe found refuge in Art. He is the great modern ex- 
 ample of a man who has been able to separate himself 
 from the struggle of life and watch it calmly. 
 
 He who hath watch'd, not shared the strife, 
 Knows how the day hath gone. 
 
 Aloofness, provided it be not selfish, has its own value, 
 and, indeed, isolation must be recognized as a law of our 
 existence. 
 
 Thm, thin the pleasant human noises grow, 
 
 And faint the city gleams; 
 Rare the lone pastoral huts — Marvel not thou!' 
 The solemn peaks but to the stars are known, 
 But to the stars and the cold lunar beams; 
 Alone the sun rises, and alone 
 Spring the great streams. 
 
 From Goethe, also, Arnold derived the gospel of culture 
 and faith in the intellectual life. It is significant that 
 while Carlyle and Arnold may both be looked upon as 
 disciples of Goethe, Carlyle's most characteristic quota- 
 tion from his master is his injunction to us to '* do the 
 task that lies nearest us," while Arnold's is such a maxim 
 as, "To act is easy, to think is hard," 
 
 In some ways Wordsworth was for Arnold a personal- 
 ity even more congenial than Goethe, His range, to be 
 sure, is narrow, but he, too, has attained spiritual peace. 
 His life, secure among its English hills and lakes, was 
 untroubled in its faith, Wordsworth strongly reinforces 
 three things in Arnold, the ability to derive from nature 
 its " healing power " and to share and be glad in " the 
 wonder and bloom of the world " ; truth to the deeper 
 spiritual life and strength to keep his soul 
 
 Fresh, undiverted to the world without, 
 Firm to the mark, not spent on other things;
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 and finally, a satisfaction in the cheerful and serene per- 
 formance of duty, the spirit of "toil unsevered from tran- 
 quillity," sharing in the world's work, yet keeping " free 
 from dust and soil." 
 
 From the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and from the slave 
 Epictetus alike, Arnold learned to look within for " the 
 aids to noble life." Overshadowed on all sides by the 
 " uno'erleaped mountains of necessity," we must learn to 
 resign our passionate hopes "for quiet and a fearless 
 mind," to merge the self in obedience to universal law, 
 and to keep ever before our minds 
 
 The pure eternal course of life, 
 Not human combatings with death. 
 
 No conviction is more frequently reiterated in Arnold's 
 poetry than that of the wisdom of resignation and self-, 
 dependence. 
 
 These great masters, then, strengthened Arnold in those 
 high instincts which needed nourishment in a day of spir- 
 itual unrest. From the Greek poets he learned to look itt 
 life steadily and as a whole, to direct it toward simple and 
 noble ends, and to preserve in it a balance and perfection 
 of parts. From Goethe he derived the lessons of detach- 
 ment and self-culture. From Wordsworth he learned to 
 find peace in nature, to pursue an unworldly purpose, and 
 to be content with humble duties. From the Stoics he 
 learned, especially, self-dependence and resignation. In 
 general, he endeavored to follow an ideal of perfection 
 and to distinguish always between temporary demands 
 and eternal values. 
 
 IV 
 
 In passing from poetry to criticism, Arnold did not feel 
 that he was descending to a lower level. Rather he felt 
 that he was helping to lift criticism to a posi- Theory of 
 tion of equality with more properly creative Criticism 
 work. The most noticeable thing about his de- ment ^g ^ 
 finition of criticism is its lofty ambition. It is Critic 
 " the disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the 
 best that is known and thought in the world," and its
 
 xlv INTRODUCTION 
 
 more ultimate purpose is " to keep man from a self-satis- 
 faction -which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him 
 towards perfection." It is not to be confined to art and 
 literature, but is to include within its scope society, poli- 
 tics, and religion. It is not only to censure that which is 
 blameworthy, but to appreciate and popularize the best. 
 
 For this work great virtues are demanded of the critic. 
 Foremost of these is disinterestedness. *' If I know your 
 sect, I anticipate your argument," says Emerson in the 
 essay on Self-Reliance. Similarly Arnold warns the critic 
 against partisanship. It is better that he refrain from ac- 
 tive participation in politics, social or humanitarian work. 
 Connected with this is another requisite, that of clearness 
 of vision. One of the great disadvantages of partisanship 
 is that it blinds the partisan. But the critical effort is de- 
 ' scribed as "the effort to see the object as in itself it really 
 is." This is best accomplished by approaching truth in as 
 many ways and from as many sides as possible. 
 
 Another precaution for the critic who would retain 
 clearness of vision is the avoidance of abstract systems, 
 which petrify and hinder the necessary flexibility of mind. 
 Coolness of temper is also enjoined and scrupulously prac- 
 ticed. " It is- only by remaining collected . . . that the 
 critic can do the practical man any service " ; and again : 
 " Even in one's ridicule one must preserve a sweetness 
 and good humor " (letter to his mother, October 27, 1863). 
 In addition to these virtues, which in Arnold's opinion 
 comprised the qualities most requisite for salutary criticism, 
 certain others are strikingly illustrated by Arnold's own 
 mind and methods : the endeavor to understand, to sym- 
 pathize with, and to guide intelligently the main ten- 
 dencies of his age, rather than violently to oppose them ; 
 at the same time the courage to present unpleasant anti- 
 dotes to its faults and to keep from fostering a people in 
 its own conceit ; and finally, amidst many discourage- 
 ments, the retention of a high faith in spiritual progress 
 and an unwavering belief that the ideal life is " the nor- 
 mal life as we shall one day see it." 
 
 Criticism, to be effective, requires also an adequate style. 
 In Arnold's discussion of style, much stress is laid on its
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 basis in character, and much upon the transparent quality 
 of true style which allows that basic character to shine 
 through. Such words as " limpidness," "simplicity," 
 " lucidity," are favorites. Clearness and effectiveness are 
 the qualities that he most highly valued. The latter he 
 gained especially through the crystallization of his thought 
 into certain telling phrases, such as " Philistinism," 
 *' sweetness and light," " the grand style," etc. That this 
 habit was attended with dangers, that his readers were 
 likely to get hold of his phrases and think that they had 
 thereby mastered his thought, he realized. Perhaps he 
 hardly realized the danger to the coiner of apothegms 
 himself, that of being content with a half truth when the 
 whole truth cannot be conveniently crowded into narrow 
 compass. Herein lies, I think, the chief source of Arnold's 
 occasional failure to qviite satisfy our sense of adequacy or 
 of justice, as, for instance, in his celebrated handling of 
 the four ways of regarding nature, or the passage in which 
 he describes the sterner self of the working-class as liking 
 " bawling, hustling, and smashing ; the lighter self, beer." 
 
 By emotionalism, however, he does not allow himself to 
 be betrayed, and he does not indulge in rhythmical prose 
 or rhapsody, though occasionally his writing has a truly 
 poetical quality resulting from the quiet but deep feeling 
 which rises in connection with a subject on which the 
 mind has long brooded with affection, as in the tribute to 
 Oxford at the beginning of the Essay on Emerson. Some- 
 times, on the other hand, a certain pedagogic stiffness ap- 
 pears, as if the writer feared that the dullness of compre- 
 hension of his readers would not allow them to grasp even 
 the simplest conceptions without a patient insistence on 
 the literal fact. 
 
 One can by no means pass over Arnold's humor in a 
 discussion of his style, yet humor is certainly a secondary 
 matter with him, in spite of the frequency of its appear- 
 ance. It is not much found in his more intimate and per- 
 sonal writing, his poetry and his familiar letters. In such 
 a book as Friendship's Garland, where it is most in evi- 
 dence, it is plainly a literary weapon deliberately assumed. 
 In fact, Arnold is almost too conscious of the value of
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 humor in the gentle warfare in which he had enlisted. Its 
 most frequent form is that of playful satire ; it is the pro- 
 duct of keen wit and sane mind, and it is always directed 
 toward some serious purpose, rarely, if ever, existing as 
 an end in itself. 
 
 The first volume of JEssai/s in Criticism was published 
 in 1865. That a book of essays on literary subjects, ap- 
 Llterary parently so diverse in character, so lacking in 
 Criticism outer unity, and so little subject to system of 
 any sort, should take so definite a place in the history of 
 criticism and make so single an impression upon the reader 
 proves its possession of a dominant and important idea, 
 impelled by a new and weighty power of personality. What 
 Arnold called his ''sinuous, easy, unpolemical mode of pro- 
 ceeding " tends to disguise the seriousness and unity of pur- 
 pose which lie behind nearly all of these essays, but an 
 uninterrupted perusal of the two volumes of Essays in 
 Criticism and the volume of Mixed Essays discloses what 
 that purpose is. The essays may roughly be divided into 
 two classes, those which deal with single writers and 
 those discussing subjects of more general nature. The pur- 
 pose of both is what Arnold himself has called " the 
 humanization of man in society." In the former he selects 
 some person exemplifying a trait, in the latter he selects 
 some general idea, which he deems of importance for our 
 further humanization, and in easy, unsystematic fashion 
 unfolds and illustrates it for us. But in spite of this un- 
 labored method he takes care somewhere in the essay to 
 seize upon a phrase that shall bring home to us the essence 
 of his theme and to make it salient enough so as not to 
 escape us. How much space shall be devoted to exposition, 
 and how much to illustration, depends largely on the famil- 
 iarity of his subject to his readers. Besides the general pur- 
 pose of humanization, two other considerations guide him : 
 the racial shortcomings of the English people and the 
 needs of his age. The English are less in need of energiz- 
 ing and moralizing than of intellectualizing, refining, and 
 inspiring with the passion for perfection. This need accord-
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 ingly determines the choice in most cases. So Milton pre- 
 sents an example of "sure and flawless perfection of rhythm 
 and diction " ; Joubert is characterized by his intense care 
 of ''perfecting himself"; Falkland is "our martyr of 
 sweetness and light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of 
 temper " ; George Sand is admirable because of her desire 
 to make the ideal life the normal one ; Emerson is " the 
 friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit." 
 
 The belief that poetry is our best instrument for humani- 
 zation determines Arnold's loyalty to that form of art ; 
 that classical art is superior to modern in clarity, harmony, 
 and wholeness of effect, determines his preference for 
 classic, especially for Greek poetry. He thus represents a 
 reaction against the romantic movement, yet has experi- 
 enced the emotional deepening which that movement 
 brought with it. Accordingly, he finds a shallowness in 
 the pseudo-classicism of Pope and his contemporaries, and 
 turns rather to Sophocles on the one hand and Goethe on 
 the other for his exemplars. He feels " the peculiar charm 
 and aroma of the Middle Age," but retains " a strong sense 
 of the irrationality of that period and of those who take 
 it seriously, and play at restoring it" (letter to Miss 
 Arnold, December 17, 1860) ; and again: "No one has a 
 stronger and more abiding sense than I have of the ' dae- 
 monic' element — as Goethe called it — which underlies 
 and encompasses our life ; but I think, as Goethe thought, 
 that the right thing is while conscious of this element, 
 and of all that there is inexplicable round one, to keep 
 pushing on one's posts into the darkness, and to establish 
 no post that is not perfectly in light and firm " (letter to 
 his mother, March 3, 1865). 
 
 "VI 
 
 Like the work of all clear thinkers, Arnold's writing 
 proceeds from a few governing and controlling criticism 
 principles. It is natural, therefore, that we should °* Society, 
 find in his criticism of society a repetition of the and Reli- 
 ideas already encountered in his literary criti- glon 
 cism. Of these, the chief is that of "culture," the theme
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of his most typical book, Culture and Aiiarchrj, pub- 
 lished in 1869. Indeed, it is interesting to see how closely 
 related his doctrine of culture is to his theory of criticism, 
 already expounded. True criticism, we have seen, consists 
 in an " endeavor to learn and propagate the best that ia 
 known and thought in the world." The shortest definition 
 that Arnold gives of culture is " a study of perfection." 
 But how may one pursue perfection ? Evidently by putting 
 oneself in the way of learning the best that is known and 
 thought, and by making it a part of oneself. The relation 
 of the critic to culture thereupon becomes evident. He is 
 the appointed apostle of culture. He undertakes as his 
 duty in life to seek out and to minister to others the 
 means of self-improvement, discriminating the evil and 
 the specious from the good and the genuine, rendering the 
 former contemptible and the latter attractive. But in a 
 degree all seekers after culture must be critics also. Both 
 pursue the same objects, the best that is thought and 
 known. Both, too, must propagate it ; for culture consists 
 in general expansion, and the last degree of personal per- 
 fection is attained only when shared with one's fellows. 
 The critic and the trxie man of culture are, therefore, at 
 bottom, the same, though Arnold does not specifically 
 point this out. But tlie two ideals united in himself direct 
 all his endeavor. As a man of culture he is intent chiefly 
 upon the acquisition of the means of perfection ; as a cri- 
 tic, upon their elucidation and propagation. 
 
 This sufficiently answers the charge of selfishness that 
 is frequently brought against the gospel of culture. It 
 would never have been brought if its critics had not per- 
 versely shut their eyes to Arnold's express statements that 
 perfection consists in "a general expansion " ; that it *' is 
 not possible while the individual remains isolated " ; that 
 one of its characteristics is ''increased sympathy," as well 
 as " increased sweetness, increased light, increased life." 
 The other common charge of dilettanteism, brought by 
 such opponents as Professor Huxley and ^Ir. Frederic 
 Harrison, deserves hardly more consideration. Arnold has 
 made it sufficiently clear that he does not mean by cul- 
 ture " a smattering of Greek and Latin," but a deepening
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 and strengthening of our whole spiritual nature by all the 
 means at our command. No other ideal of the century is 
 so satisfactory as this of Arnold's. The ideal of social 
 democracy, as commonly followed, tends, as Arnold has 
 pointed out, to exalt the average man, while culture exalts 
 man at his best. The scientific ideal, divorced from a gen- 
 eral cultural aim, appeals " to a limited faculty and not to 
 the whole man." The religious ideal, too exclusively cul- 
 tivated, dwarfs the sense of beauty and is marked by nar- 
 rowness. Culture includes religion as its most valuable 
 component, but goes beyond it. 
 
 The fact that Arnold, in his social as in his literary 
 criticism, laid the chief stress upon the intellectual rather 
 than the moral elements of culture, was due to his con- 
 stant desire to adapt his thought to the condition of his 
 age and nation. The prevailing characteristics of the Eng- 
 lish people he believed to be energy and honesty. These 
 he contrasts with the chief characteristics of the Athenians, 
 openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence. As the 
 best type of culture, that is, of perfected humanity, for 
 the Englishman to emulate, he turns, therefore, to Greece 
 in the time of Sophocles. Greece, to be sure, failed be- 
 cause of the lack of that very Hebraism which England 
 possesses and to which she owes her strength. But if to 
 this strength of moral fiber could be added the openness of 
 mind, flexibility of intelligence, and love of beauty which 
 distinguished the Greeks in their best period, a truly great 
 civilization would result. That this ideal will in the end 
 prevail, he has little doubt. The strain of sadness, mel- 
 ancholy, and depression which appears in Arnold's poetry 
 is rigidly excluded from his prose. Both despondency and 
 violence are forbidden to the believer in culture. " We go 
 the way the human race is going," he says at the close of 
 Cultitre and Anarchy. 
 
 Arnold's incursion into the field of religion has been 
 looked upon by many as a mistake. Religion is with most 
 people a matter of closer interest and is less discussable 
 than literary criticism. Literature and Dogma aroused 
 much antagonism on this account. Moreover, it cannot be 
 denied that Arnold was not well enough equipped in this
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 field to prevent him from making a good many mistakes. 
 But that the upshot of his religious teaching is wholesome 
 and edifying can hardly be denied. Arnold's spirit is a 
 deeply religious one, and his purpose in his religious 
 books was to save what was valuable in religion by sepa- 
 rating it from what was non-essential. He thought of him- 
 self always as a friend, not as an enemy, of religion. The 
 purpose of all his religious writings, of which St. Paul and 
 Protestantism, 1870, and Literature and Dogma, 1873, 
 are the most important, is the same, to show the natural 
 truth of religion and to strengthen its position by freeing 
 it from dependence on dogma and historical evidence, and 
 especially to make clear the essential value of Christian- 
 ity. Conformity with reason, true spirituality, and free- 
 dom from materialistic interpretation were for him the 
 bases of sound faith. That Arnold's religious writing is 
 thoroughly spiritual in its aim and tendency has, I think, 
 never been questioned, and we need only examine some 
 of his leading definitions to become convinced of this. 
 Thus, religion is descri])ed as " that which binds and holds 
 us to the practice of righteousness " ; faith is tlie " power, 
 preeminently, of holding fast to an unseen power of good- 
 ness " ; God is " the power, not ourselves, that makes for 
 righteousness " ; immortality is a union of one's life with 
 an eternal order that never dies. Arnold did not without 
 reluctance enter into religious controversy, but when once 
 entered he did his best to make order and reason prevail 
 there. His attitude is well stated in an early essay not 
 since reprinted : — 
 
 " And you are masters in Israel, and know not these 
 things; and you require a voice from the world of litera- 
 ture to tell them to you ! Those who ask nothing better 
 tlian to remain silent on such topics, Avho have to quit 
 their own sphere to speak of them, who cannot touch them 
 without being reminded, that they survive those who 
 touched them with far different power, you compel, in the 
 mere interest of letters, of intelligence, of general culture, 
 to proclaim truths which it was your function to have 
 made familiar. And when you have thus forced the very 
 stones to cry out, and the dumb to speak, you call them
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 singular because they know these truths, and arrogant be- 
 cause they declare them ! " ^ 
 
 In political discussion as in all other forms of criticism 
 Arnold aimed at disinterestedness. " I am a Liberal," he 
 says in the Introduction to Culture and Anarchy, "yet I 
 am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and self- 
 renouncement," In the last condition he believed that his 
 particular strength lay. "I do not wish to see men of cul- 
 ture entrusted with power." In his coolness and freedom 
 from bitterness is to be found his chief superiority to his 
 more violent contemporaries. This saved him from magnify- 
 ing the faults inseparable from the social movements of his 
 day. In contrast with Carlyle he retains to the end a sym- 
 pathy with the advance of democracy and a belief in the 
 principles of liberty and equality, while not blinded to the 
 weaknesses of Liberalism. Political discussion in the hands 
 of its express partisans is always likely to become violent 
 and one-sided. This violence and one-sidedness Arnold be- 
 lieves it the work of criticism to temper, or as he expresses 
 it, in Culture and Anarchy, " Culture is the eternal oppo- 
 nent of the two things which are the signal marks of Ja- 
 cobinism, — its fierceness and its addiction to an abstract 
 system." 
 
 VII 
 
 "Un Milton jeune et voyageant" was George Sand's 
 description of the young Arnold. The eager pursuit of 
 high aims, implied in this description, he carried 
 from youth into manhood and age. The inno- 
 cence, the hopefulness, and the noble curiosity of youth he 
 retained to the end. But these became tempered with the 
 ripe wisdom of maturity, a wisdom needed for the helpful 
 interpretation of a perplexing period. His prose writings 
 are surpassed, in that spontaneous and unaccountable in- 
 spiration which we call genius, by those of certain of his 
 contemporaries, but when we become exhausted by the 
 perversities of ill-controlled passion and find ourselves 
 unable to breathe the rarified air of transcendentalism, we 
 may turn to him for the clarifying and strengthening 
 effect of calm intelligence and pure spirituality. 
 
 1 From Dr. Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, Macmillan'i 
 Magazine, February, 1863, vol. 7, p. 336.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Arnold's Poems. 
 
 1849. The Strayed Reveller, and otTier Poems. 1852. Empe- 
 docles on Etna, and other Poems. 1S53. Poems. 1855. Poems 
 (Second Series). 1S58. Merope. 1867. New Poems. 1869. 
 Poems (First Collected Edition). (A few new poems were 
 added in the later collections of 1877, 1881, 1885, and 1890.) 
 
 Arnold's Prose, 
 
 1859. England and the Italian Question. 1861. Popular 
 Education in France. 1861. Oh Translating Homer. 1862. 
 Last Words on Translating Homer. 1864. A French Eton. 
 1865. Essat/s in Criticism. 1867. On the Study of Celtic 
 Literature. 1868. Schools and Unicersities on the Continent. 
 1869. Culture and Anarchy. 1870. St. Paul and Protestant- 
 ism. 1871. Friendship's Garland. 1873. Literature and 
 Dogma. 1875. God and the Bible. 1877. Last Essays on 
 Church and Religion. 1879. Mixed Essays. 1882. Irish 
 Essays. 1885. Discourses in America. 1888. Essays in Criti- 
 cism (Second Series). 1888. Civilization in the United States. 
 1891. On Home Rule for Ireland. 1910. Essays in Criticism 
 (Third Series). 
 
 For a complete bibliography of Arnold's writings and 
 of .Arnold criticism, see Bibliography of Matthew Arnold, 
 by T. B. Smart, London, 1892. The letters of Matthew 
 Arnold, 1848-88, were edited by G. W. E. Russell in 1896. 
 
 Criticism of Arnold's Prose. 
 
 BiRRELL, Augustine : Res .ludicatce. London, 1892. 
 Brownell, W. C. : Victorian Prose Masters, New York, 
 
 1902. 
 Burroughs, John : Indoor Studies, Boston. 1889. 
 Dawson, W. H. : Matthew Arnold and his Relation to the 
 
 Thought of our Time. New York, 1904. 
 Fitch, Sir Joshua: Thomas and Matthew Arnold and their 
 
 Influence on English Education, New York, 1897. 
 Gates, L. E. : Selections from the Prose Writings of MaXthew 
 
 Arnold, New York, 1898.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY xxiii 
 
 Harrisois', Frederic : Culture ; A Dialogue. In The 
 Choice of Books, London, 1886. 
 
 IIuTTON, R. H. : Modern Guides of English Thought in Mat- 
 ters of Faith, London, 1887. 
 
 Jacobs, Joseph : Literary Studies, London, 1895. 
 
 Paul, Herbert W. : Matthew Arnold. In English Men of 
 Letters Series, London and New York, 1902. 
 
 Robertson, John M. : Modern Humanists, London, 1891. 
 
 Russell, G. W. E. : Matthew Arnold, New York, 1904. 
 
 Saintsbury, George : Corrected Impressions, London, 1895. 
 Matthew Arnold ; In Modern English Writers Series, Lon- 
 don, 1899. 
 
 Shairp, J. C. : Culture and Religion, Edinburgh, 1870. 
 
 Spedding, James : Reviews and Discussions, London, 1879. 
 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie : Studies of a Biographer, vol. 2, Lon- 
 , don, 1898. 
 
 Woodberry, George E. : Makers of Literature, London, 
 1900.
 
 ^s. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM MATTHEW 
 ARNOLD 
 
 I. THEORIES OF LITERATURE AND 
 CRITICISM 
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS i 
 
 In two small volumes of Poems, published anony- 
 mously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the 
 Poems which compose the present volume have already 
 appeared. The rest are now published for the first 
 time. 
 
 I have, in the present collection, omitted the poem ^ 
 from which the volume published in 1852 took its 
 title. I have done so, not because the subject of it was 
 a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand 
 years ago, although many persons would think this a 
 sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, 
 in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I 
 intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings 
 of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, 
 one of the family of Orpheus and Musseus, having 
 survived his fellows, living on into a time when the 
 habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast 
 to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the 
 Sophists 3 to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so 
 situated there are entered much that we are accus- 
 tomed to consider as exclusively modern ; how much, 
 the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to 
 us are sufficient at least to indicate. What those who
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 are familiar only with the great monuments of early 
 Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteris- 
 tics, have disappeared ; the calm, the cheerfulness, the 
 disinterested objectivity have disappeared ; the dia^ 
 logue of the mind with itself has commenced ; modern 
 problems have presented themselves ; we hear already 
 the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet 
 and of Faust. 
 
 The representation of such a man's feelings must be 
 interesting, if consistently drawn. We all naturally 
 take pleasure, says Aristotle,^ in any imitation or rep- 
 resentation whatever : this is the basis of our love of 
 poetry : and we take pleasure in them, he adds, be- 
 cause all knowledge is naturally agreeable to us ; not 
 to the philosopher only, but to mankind at large. 
 Every representation therefore which is consistently 
 drawn may be supposed to be interesting, inasmuch as 
 it gi'atifies this natural interest in knowledge of all 
 kinds. What is not interesting, is that which does not 
 add to our knowledge of any kind ; that which is 
 vaguely conceived and loosely drawn ; a representation 
 which is general, indeterminate, and faint, instead of 
 being particular, precise, and firm. 
 
 Any accurate representation may therefore be ex- 
 pected to be interesting ; but, if the representation be 
 a poetical one, more than this is demanded. It is de- 
 manded, not only that it shall interest, but also that 
 it shall inspirit and rejoice the reader : that it shall 
 convey a charm, and infuse delight. For the Muses, as 
 Hesiod 2 says, were born that they might be " a forget- 
 fulness of evils, and a truce from cares " : and it is 
 not enough that the poet should add to the knowledge 
 of men, it is required of him also that he should add 
 to their happiness. " All art," says Schiller, " is dedi- 
 cated to joy, and there is no higher and no more seri-
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 3 
 
 ous problem, than how to make men happy. The right 
 art is that alone, which creates the highest enjoy- 
 ment." 
 
 A poetical work, therefore, is not yet justified when 
 it has been shown to be an accurate, and therefore 
 interesting representation ; it has to be shown also that 
 it is a representation from which men can derive enjoy- 
 ment. In presence of the most tragic circumstances, 
 represented in a work of art, the feeling of enjoy- 
 ment, as is well known, may still subsist : the repre- 
 sentation of the most utter calamity, of the liveliest 
 anguish, is not sufficient to destroy it : the more tragic 
 the situation, the deeper becomes the enjoyment ; and 
 the situation is more tragic in proportion as it becomes 
 more terrible. 
 
 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 moi-bid, in the descrij)- 
 tion 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 ap- 
 pears to me, that of Empedocles, as I have endeavored 
 to repi-esent him, belongs; and I have therefore ex- 
 cluded the poem from the present collection. 
 
 And why, it may be asked, have I entered into this 
 explanation respecting a matter so unimportant as the 
 admission or exclusion of the poem in question ? I 
 have done so, because I was anxious to avow that the 
 sole reason for its exclusion was that which has been
 
 4 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 stated above ; and that it has not been excluded in 
 deference to the opinion which many critics of the 
 present day appear to entertain against subjects chosen 
 from distant times and countries : against the choice, 
 in short, of any subjects but modern ones. 
 
 "The poet," it is said,^ and by an intelligent critic, 
 " the poet who would really fix the public attention 
 must leave the exhausted past, and draw his subjects 
 from matters of present import, and therefore both of 
 interest and novelty." 
 
 Now this view I believe to be completely false. It 
 is worth examining, inasmuch as it is a fair sample of 
 a class of critical dicta everywhere current at the 
 present day, having a philosophical form and air, but 
 no real basis in fact ; and which are calculated to 
 vitiate the judgment of readers of poetry, while they 
 exert, so far as they are adopted, a misleading influ- 
 ence on the practice of those who make it. 
 
 What are the eternal objects of poetry, among all 
 nations and at all times ? They are actions ; human 
 actions ; possessing an inherent interest in themselves, 
 and which are to be communicated in an interesting 
 manner by the art of the poet. Vainly will the latter 
 imagine that he has everything in his own power ; that 
 he can make an intrinsically inferior action equally 
 delightful with a more excellent one by his treatment 
 of it : he may indeed compel us to admire his skill, 
 but his work will possess, within itself, an incurable 
 defect. 
 
 The poet, then, has in the first place to select an 
 excellent action ; and what actions are the most excel- 
 lent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal 
 to the great primary human affections : to those ele- 
 mentary feelings which subsist permanently in the 
 race, and which are independent of time. These feel-
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 5 
 
 ings are permanent and the same; that which inter- 
 ests them is permanent and the same also. The mod- 
 ernness or antiquity of an action, therefore, has nothing 
 to do with its fitness for poetical representation ; this 
 depends upon its inherent qualities. To the elemen- 
 tary part of our nature, to our passions, that which is 
 great and passionate is eternally interesting ; and in- 
 teresting solely in proportion to its greatness and to 
 its passion. A great human action of a thousand years 
 ago is more interesting to it than a smaller human 
 action of to-day, even though upon the representation 
 of this last the most consummate skill may have been 
 expended, and though it has the advantage of appeal- 
 ing by its modern language, familiar manners, and 
 contemporary allusions, to all our transient feelings 
 and interests. These, however, have no right to de- 
 mand of a poetical work that it shall satisfy them ; 
 their claims are to be directed elsewhere. Poetical 
 works belong to the domain of our permanent pas- 
 sions : let them interest these, and the voice of all 
 subordinate claims upon them is at once silenced. 
 
 Achilles, Prometheus, Clytemnestra, Dido^ — what 
 modern poem presents personages as interesting, even 
 to us moderns, as these personages of an " exhausted 
 past"? We have the domestic epic dealing with the 
 details of modern life, which pass daily under our eyes ; 
 we have poems representing modern personages in 
 contact with the problems of modern life, moral, intel- 
 lectual, and social ; these works have been produced 
 by poets the most distinguished of their nation and 
 time ; yet I fearlessly assert that Hermann and Doro- 
 thea, Childe Harold^ Jocelyn^ the Excursion^ leave 
 the reader cold in comparison with the effect produced 
 upon him by the latter books of the Iliad, by the 
 Oresteia, or by the episode of Dido. And why is this ?
 
 6 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Simply because in the three last-named cases the action 
 is greater, the personages nobler, the situations more 
 intense : and this is the true basis of the interest in 
 a poetical work, and this alone. 
 
 It may be urged, however, that past actions may 
 be interesting in themselves, but that they are not to 
 be adopted by the modern poet, because it is impos- 
 sible for him to have them clearly present to his own 
 mind, and he cannot therefore feel them deeply, nor 
 represent them forcibly. But this is not necessarily 
 the case. The externals of a past action, indeed, he 
 cannot know with the precision of a contemporary; 
 but his business is with its essentials. The outward 
 man of CEdipus ^ or of Macbeth, the houses in which 
 they lived, the ceremonies of their courts, he cannot 
 accurately figure to himself ; but neither do they 
 essentially concern him. His business is with their 
 inward man ; with their feelings and behavior in cer- 
 tain tragic situations, which engage their passions as 
 men ; these have in them nothing local and casual ; 
 they are as accessible to the modern poet as to a con- 
 temporary. 
 
 The date of an action, then, signifies nothing: the 
 action itself, its selection and construction, this is 
 what is all-important. This the Greeks understood 
 far more clearly than we do. The radical difference 
 between their poetical theory and ours consists, as it 
 appears to me, in this: that, with them, the poetical 
 character of the action in itself, and the conduct of 
 it, was the first consideration ; with us, attention is 
 fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts 
 and images which occur in the treatment of an action. 
 They regarded the whole ; we regard the parts. With 
 them, the action predominated over the expression of 
 it; with us, the expression predominates over the
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 7 
 
 action. Not that they failed in expression, or were 
 inattentive to it ; on the contrary, they are the highest 
 models of expression, the unapproached masters of 
 the grand style : ^ but their expression is so excellent 
 because it is so admirably kept in its right degree of 
 prominence ; because it is so simple and so well sub- 
 ordinated ; because it draws its force directly from 
 the pregnancy of the matter which it conveys. For 
 what reason was the Greek tragic poet confined to so 
 limited a range of subjects? Because there are so 
 few actions which unite in themselves, in the highest 
 degree, the conditions of excellence ; and it was not 
 thought that on any but an excellent subject could an 
 excellent poem be constructed. A few actions, there- 
 fore, eminently adapted for tragedy, maintained almost 
 exclusive possession of the Greek tragic stage. Their 
 significance appeared inexhaustible ; they were as per- 
 manent problems, perpetually offered to the genius of 
 every fresh poet. This too is the reason of what appears 
 to us moderns a certain baldness of expression in Greek 
 tragedy ; of the triviality with which we often reproach 
 the remarks of the chorus, where it takes part in the 
 dialogue : that the action itself, the situation of Orestes, 
 or Merope, or Alcmaeon,^ was to stand the central point 
 of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, principal ; that no 
 accessories were for a moment to distract the specta- 
 tor's attention from this, that the tone of the parts was 
 to be perpetually kept down, in order not to impair 
 the grandiose effect of the whole. The terrible old 
 mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, 
 before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare out- 
 lines upon the spectator's mind ; it stood in his mem- 
 ory, as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of 
 a long and dark vista : then came the poet, embody- 
 ing outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted,
 
 8 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 not a sentiment capriciously thrown in : stroke upon 
 stroke, the drama proceeded : the light deepened upon 
 the group ; more and more it revealed itself to the 
 riveted gaze of the spectator : until at last, when the 
 final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad 
 sunlight, a model of immortal beauty. 
 
 This was what a Greek critic demanded ; this was 
 ^ what a Greek poet endeavored to effect. It signified 
 nothing to what time an action belonged. We do not 
 find that the Persm occupied a particularly high rank 
 among the dramas of -^schylus because it represented 
 a matter of contemporary interest : this was not what 
 a cultivated Athenian required. He required that the 
 permanent elements of his nature should be moved ; 
 and dramas of which the action, though taken from a 
 long-distant mythic time, yet was calculated to accom- 
 plish this in a higher degree than that of the Persm., 
 stood higher in his estimation accordingly. The Greeks 
 felt, no doubt, with their exquisite sagacity of taste, 
 that an action of present times was too near them, too 
 much mixed up with what was accidental and passing, 
 to form a sufficiently grand, detached, and self-subsis- 
 tent object for a tragic poem. Such objects belonged 
 to the domain of the comic poet, and of the lighter 
 kinds of poetry. For the more serious kinds, for 
 jyracjmatlc poetry, to use an excellent expression of 
 Polybius,^ they were more difficult and severe in the 
 range of subjects which they permitted. Their theory 
 and practice alike, the admirable treatise of Aristotle, 
 and the unrivalled works of their poets, exclaim with 
 a thousand tongues — " All depends upon the subject ; 
 choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the 
 feeling of its situations ; this done, everything else will 
 foDow." 
 
 But for all kinds of poetry alike there was one point
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 9 
 
 on which they were rigidly exacting; the adaptability 
 of the subject to the kind of poetry selected, and the 
 careful construction of the poem. 
 
 How different a way of thinking from this is ours ! 
 We can hardly at the present day understand what 
 Menander ^ meant, when he told a man who enquired 
 as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished 
 it, not having yet written a single line, because he had 
 constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern 
 critic would have assured him that the merit of his 
 piece depended on the brilliant things which arose 
 under his pen as he went along. We have poems which 
 seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and 
 passages ; not for the sake of producing any total- 
 impression. We have critics who seem to direct their 
 attention merely to detached expressions, to the lan- 
 guage about the action, not to the action itself. I verily 
 think that the majority of them do not in their hearts 
 believe that there is such a thing as a total-impression 
 to be derived from a poem at all, or to be demanded 
 from a poet ; they think the term a commonplace of 
 metaphysical criticism. They will permit the poet to 
 select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action 
 to go as it will, provided he gratifies them with occa- 
 sional bursts of fine writing, and with a shower of iso- 
 lated thoughts and images. That is, they permit him 
 to leave their poetical sense ungratified, provided that he 
 gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity. Of 
 his neglecting to gratify these, there is little danger; 
 he needs rather to be warned against the danger of 
 attempting to gratify these alone ; he needs rather 
 to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to 
 everything else; so to treat this, as to permit its 
 inherent excellences to develop themselves, without 
 interruption from the intrusion of his personal pecu-
 
 10 MATTHEW ARNOLD' 
 
 liarities: most fortunate when he most entirely suc- 
 ceeds in effacing himself, and in enabling a noble ac- 
 tion to subsist as it did in nature. 
 
 But the modern critic not only permits a false prac- 
 tice : he absolutely prescribes false aims. " A true 
 allegory of the state of one's own mind in a repre- 
 sentative history," the poet is told, " is perhaps the 
 highest thing that one can attempt in the way of 
 poetry." And accordingly he attempts it. An alle- 
 gory of the state of one's own mind, the highest prob- 
 lem of an art which imitates actions ! No assuredly, it 
 is not, it never can be so : no great poetical work has 
 ever been produced with such an aim. Faust itself, in 
 which something of the kind is attempted, wonderful 
 passages as it contains, and in spite of the unsurpassed 
 beauty of the scenes which relate to Margaret, Faust 
 itself, judged as a whole, and judged strictly as a 
 poetical work, is defective : its illustrious author, the 
 greatest poet of modern times, the greatest critic of 
 all times, would have been the first to acknowledge it ; 
 he only defended his work, indeed, by asserting it to 
 be " something incommensurable." 
 
 The confusion of the present times is great, the 
 multitude of voices counselling different things be- 
 wildering, the number of existing works capable of 
 attracting a young writer's attention and of becoming 
 his models, immense : what he wants is a hand to guide 
 him through the confusion, a voice to prescribe to him 
 the aim which he should keep in view, and to explain 
 to him that the value of the literary works which offer 
 themselves to his attention is relative to their power of 
 helping him forward on his road towards this aim. 
 Such a guide the English writer at the present day 
 will nowhere find. Failing this, all that can be looked 
 for, all indeed that can be desired, is, that his atten-
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 11 
 
 tion should be fixed on excellent models ; that he may 
 reproduce, at any rate, something of their excellence, 
 by penetrating himself with their works and by catch- 
 ing their spirit, if he cannot be taught to produce 
 what is excellent independently. - ' - 
 
 Foremost among these models for the English writer 
 stands Shakespeare : a name the greatest perhaps of all 
 poetical names ; a name never to be mentioned without 
 reverence. I will venture, however, to express a doubt 
 whether the influence of his works, excellent and fruit- 
 ful for the readers of poetry, for the great majority, 
 has been an unmixed advantage to the writers of it. 
 Shakespeare indeed chose excellent subjects — the 
 world could afford no better than 3Iacbeth, or Romeo 
 and Juliet, or Othello : he had no theory respecting 
 the necessity of choosing subjects of present import, or 
 the paramount interest attaching to allegories of the 
 state of one's own mind ; like all great poets, he knew 
 well what constituted a poetical action; like them, 
 wherever he found such an action, he took it ; like 
 them, too, he found his best in past times. But to these 
 general characteristics of all great poets he added a 
 special one of his own ; a gift, namely, of happy, abun- 
 dant, and ingenious expression, eminent and unrivalled : 
 so eminent as irresistibly to strike the attention first 
 in him and even to throw into comparative shade his 
 other excellences as a poet. Here has been the mis- 
 chief. These other excellences were his fundamental 
 excellences as a poet ; what distinguishes the artist 
 from the mere amateur, says Goethe, is Architectoiwk 
 in the highest sense ; that power of execution which 
 creates, forms, and constitutes : not the profoundness of 
 single thoughts, not the richness of imagery, not the 
 abundance of illustration. But these attractive acces- 
 sories of a poetical work being more easily seized than
 
 12 INLVTTHEW .\RXOLD 
 
 the spirit of the whole, and these accessories being 
 possessed by Shakespeare in an unequalled degree, a 
 young writer having recourse to Shakespeare as his 
 model runs great risk of being vanquished and ab- 
 sorbed by them, and, in consequence, of reproducing, 
 according to the measure of his power, these, and these 
 alone. Of this prepondering quality of Shakespeare's 
 genius, accordingly, almost the whole of modern Eng- 
 lish poetry has, it appears to me, felt the influence. 
 To the exclusive attention on the part of his imita- 
 tors to this, it is in a great degree owing that of the 
 majority of modern poetical works the details alone are 
 valuable, the composition worthless. In reading them 
 one is pei-^jetually reminded of that terrible sentence 
 on a modern French poet, — il dit tout ce qiiil veut, 
 metis malheiireiisement il na rien a dire.^ 
 
 Let me give an instance of what I mean. I will take 
 it from the works of the very chief among those who 
 seem to have been formed in. the school of Shake- 
 speare ; of one whose exquisite genius and pathetic 
 death render him forever interesting. I will take the 
 poem of laahella, or the Pot of Basil, by Keats. I 
 choose this rather than the Endymion, because the 
 latter work (which a modern critic has classed with the 
 Faery Queen /), although undoubtedly there blows 
 through it the breath of genius, is yet as a whole so 
 utterly incoherent, as not strictly to merit the name 
 of a poem at all. The poem of Isabella, then, is a per- 
 fect treasure-house of graceful and felicitous words and 
 images : almost in every stanza there occurs one of those 
 vivid and picturesque turns of expression, by which 
 the object is made to flash upon the eye of the mind, 
 and which thrill the reader with a sudden delight. 
 This one short poem contains, perhaps, a greater num- 
 ber of happy single expressions which one could quote
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 13 
 
 than all the extant tragedies of Sophocles. But the 
 action, the story ? The action in itself is an excellent 
 one ; but so feebly is it conceived by the poet, so 
 loosely constructed, that the effect produced by it, in 
 and for itself, is absolutely null. Let the reader, after 
 he has finished the poem of Keats, turn to the same 
 story in the Decameron : ^ he will then feel how 
 pregnant and interesting the same action has become 
 in the hands of a great artist, who above all things 
 delineates his object ; who subordinates expression to 
 that which it is designed to express. 
 
 I have said that the imitators of Shakespeare, fixing 
 their attention on his wonderful gift of expression, 
 have directed their imitation to this, neglecting his 
 other excellences. These excellences, the fundamental 
 excellences of poetical art, Shakespeare no doubt pos- 
 sessed them — possessed many of them in a splendid 
 degree ; but it may perhaps be doubted whether even 
 he himself did not sometimes give scope to his faculty 
 of expression to the prejudice of a higher poetical duty. 
 For we must never forget that Shakespeare is the 
 great poet he is from his skill in discerning and firmly 
 conceiving an excellent action, from his power of 
 intensely feeling a situation, of intimately associating 
 himself with a character ; not from his gift of expres- 
 sion, which rather even leads him astray, degenerating 
 sometimes into a fondness for curiosity of expression, 
 into an irritability of fancy, which seems to make it 
 impossible for him to say a thing plainly, even when 
 the press of the action demands the very directest 
 language, or its level character the very simplest. Mr. 
 Hallam,^ than whom it is impossible to find a saner 
 and more judicious critic, has had the courage (for at 
 the present day it needs courage) to remark, how 
 extremely and faultily difficult Shakespeare's language
 
 14 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 often is. It Is so : you may find main scenes in some 
 of his greatest tragedies, King Lear, for instance, 
 where the language is so artificial, so curiously tor- 
 tured, and so difficult, that every speech has to be read 
 two or three times before its meaning can be compre- 
 hended. This over-curiou»ness of expression is indeed 
 but the excessive employment of a wonderful gift — 
 of the power of sayiug a thing in a happier way than 
 any other man ; nevertheless, it is carried so far that 
 one understands what M. Guizot^ meant when he said 
 that Shakespeare appears in his language to have tried 
 all styles except that of simplicity. He has not the 
 severe and scrupulous self-restraint of the ancients, 
 partly, no doubt, because he had a far less cultivated 
 and exacting audience. He has indeed a far wider 
 range than they had, a far richer fertility of thought ; 
 in this respect he rises above them. In his strong con- 
 ception of his subject, in the genuine way in which he 
 is penetrated with it, he resembles them, and is unlike 
 the moderns. But in the accurate limitation of it, the 
 conscientious rejection of superfluities, the simple and 
 rigorous development of it from the first line of his 
 work to the last, he falls below them, and comes nearer 
 to the modems. In his chief works, besides what he 
 has of his own, he has the elementary soundness of 
 the ancients ; he has their important action and their 
 large and broad manner ; but he has not their purity 
 of method. He is therefore a less safe model ; for what 
 he has of his own is personal, and inseparable from 
 his own rich nature ; it may be imitated and exagger- 
 ated, it cannot be learned or applied as an art. He is 
 above all suggestive ; more valuable, therefore, to 
 young writers as men than as artists. But clearness 
 of arrangement, rigor of development, simplicity of 
 style — these may to a certain extent be learned : and
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 15 
 
 these may, I am convinced, be learned best from the 
 ancients, who, although infinitely less suggestive than 
 Shakespeare, are thus, to the artist, more instructive. 
 What then, it will be asked, are the ancients to be 
 our sole models ? the ancients with their comparatively 
 narrow range of experience, and their widely different 
 circumstances ? Not, certainly, that which is narrow 
 in the ancients, nor that in which we can no longer 
 sympathize. An action like the action of the Antig- 
 one of Sophocles, which turns upon the conflict between 
 the heroine's duty to her brother's corpse and that 
 to the laws of her country, is no longer one in which 
 it is possible that we should feel a deep interest. I 
 am speaking too, it will be remembered, not of the 
 best sources of intellectual stimulus for the general 
 reader, but of the best models of instruction for the 
 individual writer. This last may certainly learn of the 
 ancients, better than anywhere else, three things which 
 it is vitally important for him to know : — the all- 
 importance of the choice of a subject ; the necessity of 
 accurate construction ; and the subordinate character 
 of expression. He will learn from them how unspeak- 
 ably superior is the effect of the one moral impression 
 left by a great action treated as a whole, to the effect 
 produced by the most striking single thought or by 
 the happiest image. As he penetrates into the spirit 
 of the great classical works, as he becomes gradually 
 aware of their intense significance, their noble sim- 
 plicity, and their calm pathos, he will be convinced 
 that it is this effect, unity and profoundness of moral 
 impression, at which the ancient poets aimed ; that it 
 is this which constitutes the grandeur of their works, 
 and which makes them immortal. He will desire to 
 direct his own efforts towards producing the same 
 effect. Above all, he will deliver himself from the
 
 16 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 jargon of modern criticism, and escape the danger 
 of producing poetical works conceived in the spirit of 
 the passing time, and which partake of its transito- 
 riness. 
 
 The present age makes great claims upon us : we 
 owe it service, it will not be satisfied without our 
 admiration. 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 per- 
 sons 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. They wish 
 neither to applaud nor to revile their age : they wish 
 to know what it is, what it can give them, and whether 
 this is what they want. What they want, they know 
 very well ; they want to educe and cultivate what is 
 best and noblest in themselves : they know, too, that 
 this is no easy task — -x^aXeTrov as Pittacus ^ said, X^X- 
 eirov iadXov e/x/jbevat — and they ask themselves sincerely 
 whether their age and its literature can assist them 
 in the attempt. If they are endeavoring to practise 
 any art, they remember the plain and simple proceed- 
 ings of the old artists, who attained their grand 
 results by penetrating themselves with some noble and 
 significant action, not by inflating themselves with a 
 belief in the preeminent importance and greatness of 
 their own times. They do not talk of their mission, 
 nor of interpreting their age, nor of the coming poet ; 
 all this, they know, is the mere delirium of vanity ; 
 their business is not to praise their age, but to afford 
 to the men who live in it the highest pleasure which 
 they are capable of feeling. If asked to afford this by
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 17 
 
 means of subjects drawn from the age itself, they ask 
 what special fitness the present age has for supplying 
 them. They are told that it is an era of progress, 
 an age commissioned to carry out the great ideas of 
 industrial development and social amelioration. They 
 reply that with all this they can do nothing ; that the 
 elements they need for the exercise of their art are 
 great actions, calculated powerfully and delightfully to 
 affect what is permanent in the human soul ; that so 
 far as the present age can supply such actions, they 
 will gladly make use of them ; but that an age want- 
 ing in moral grandeur can with difficulty supply such, 
 and an age of spiritual discomfort with difficulty be 
 powerfully and delightfully affected by them. 
 
 A host of voices will indignantly rejoin that the 
 present age is inferior to the past neither in moral 
 grandeur nor in spiritual health. He who possesses the 
 discipline I speak of will content himself with remem- 
 bering the judgments passed upon the present age, in 
 this respect, by the men of strongest head and widest 
 culture whom it has produced ; by Goethe and by Nie- 
 buhr.i It will be sufficient for him that he knows the 
 opinions held by these two great men respecting the 
 present age and its literature ; and that he feels assured 
 in his own mind that their aims and demands upon life 
 were such as he would wish, at any rate, his own to 
 be; and their judgment as to what is impeding and 
 disabling such as he may safely follow. He will not, 
 however, maintain a hostile attitude towards the false 
 pretensions of his age ; he will content himself with not 
 being overwhelmed by them. He will esteem himself 
 fortunate if he can succeed in banishing from his mind 
 all feelings of contradiction, and irritation, and impa- 
 tience ; in order to delight himself with the contem- 
 plation of some noble action of a heroic time, and to
 
 18 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 enable others, through his representation of it, to de- 
 light in it also. 
 
 I am far indeed from making any claim, for my- 
 self, that I possess tliis discipline ; or for the follow- 
 ing poems, that they breathe its spirit. But I say,, 
 that in the sincere endeavor to learn and practise, 
 amid the bewildering confusion of our times, what is 
 sound and true in poetical art, I seemed to myself to 
 find the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, 
 among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what 
 they wanted in art, and we do not. It is this uncer- 
 taintj' which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism. 
 How often have I felt this when reading words of dis- 
 paragement or of cavil : that it is the imcertainty as 
 to what is really to be aimed at which makes our dif- 
 ficulty, not the dissatisfaction of the critic, who himself 
 suffers from the same uncertainty. i\"o/? me tua fer- 
 vida terrent Dicta ; . . . Dii me terrent, et Jupiter 
 hostis.^ 
 
 Two kinds of dilettanti^ says Goethe, there are in 
 poetry : he who neglects the indispensable mechanical 
 part, and thinks he has done enough if he shows spir- 
 ituality and feeling ; and he who seeks to arrive at 
 poetry merely by mechanism, in which he can acquire 
 an artisan's readiness, and is without soul and matter. 
 And he adds, that the first does most harm to art, 
 and the last to himself. If we must be dilettanti : if it 
 is impossible for us, under the circumstances amidst 
 which we live, to think clearly, to feel nobly, and to 
 delineate firmly : if we cannot attain to the mastery 
 of the great artists — let us, at least, have so much 
 respect for our art as to prefer it to ourselves. Let us 
 not bewilder our successors : let us transmit to them 
 the practice of poetry, with its boundaries and whole- 
 some regulative laws, under which excellent works
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 19 
 
 may again, perhaps, at some future time, be produced, 
 not yet fallen into oblivion through our neglect, not 
 yet condemned and cancelled by the influence of their 
 eternal enemy, caprice.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE 
 PRESENT TIMEi 
 
 Many objections have been made to a proposition 
 which, in some remarks of mine^ on translating 
 Homer, I ventured to put forth ; a proposition about 
 criticism, and its importance at the present day. I 
 said : " Of the literature of France and Germany, as 
 of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, 
 for now many years, has been a critical effort ; the 
 endeavor, in all branches of knowledge, theology, 
 philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as 
 in itself it really is." I added, that owing to the oper- 
 ation in English literature of certain causes, " almost 
 the last thing for which one would come to English 
 literature is just that very thing which now Europe 
 most desires, — criticism " ; and that the power and 
 value of English literature was thereby impaired. 
 More than one rejoinder declared that the importance 
 I here assigned to criticism was excessive, and as- 
 serted the inherent superiority of the creative effort 
 of the human spirit over its critical effort. And the 
 other day, having been led by a Mr. Shairp's ^ excel- 
 lent notice of Wordsworth ^ to turn again to his biog- 
 raphy, I found, in the words of this great man, whom 
 I, for one, must always listen to with the profoundest 
 respect, a sentence passed on the critic's business, 
 which seems to justify every possible disparagement 
 of it. Wordsworth says in one of his letters ^ : — 
 
 "The writers in these publications" (the Reviews), 
 " while they prosecute their inglorious employment, 
 cannot be supposed to be in a state of mind very
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 21 
 
 favorable for being affected by the finer influences 
 of a thing so pure as genuine poetry." 
 
 And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation 
 quotes a more elaborate judgment to the same effect : — 
 
 " Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, 
 infinitely lower than the inventive ; and he sai-d to-day 
 that if the quantity of time consumed in writing cri- 
 tiques on the works of others were given to original 
 composition, of whatever kind it might be, it would 
 be much better employed ; it would make a man find 
 out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely 
 less mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do 
 much injury to the minds of others, a stupid invention, 
 either in prose or verse, is quite harmless." 
 
 It is almost too much to expect of poor human 
 nature, that a man capable of producing some effect 
 in one line of literature, should, for the greater good of 
 society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and 
 obscurity in another. Still less is this to be expected 
 from men addicted to the composition of the " false 
 or malicious criticism " of which Wordsworth speaks. 
 However, everybody would admit that a false or ma- 
 licious criticism had better never have been written. 
 Everybody, too, would be willing to admit, as a gen- 
 eral proposition, that the critical faculty is lower than 
 the inventive. But is it true that criticism is really, 
 in itself, a baneful and injurious employment ; is it 
 true that all time given to writing critiques on the 
 works of others would be much better employed if it 
 were given to original composition, of whatever kind 
 this may be? Is it true that Johnson had better have 
 gone on producing more Irenes^ instead of writing his 
 Lives of the Poets ; nay, is it certain that Words- 
 worth himself was better employed in making his 
 Ecclesiastical Sonnets than when he made his cele-
 
 22 ^L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 brated Preface^ so full of criticism, and criticism of 
 the works of others ? Wordsworth was himself a 
 great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted that 
 he has not left us more criticism ; Goethe was one of 
 the greatest of critics, and we may sincerely congratu- 
 late ourselves that he has left us so much criticism. 
 Without wasting time over the exaggeration which 
 Wordsworth's judgment on criticism clearly contains, 
 or over an attempt to trace th€ causes, — not difficult, 
 I think, to be traced, — which may have led Words- 
 worth to this exaggeration, a critic may with advan- 
 tage seize an occasion for trying his own conscience, 
 and for asking himself of what real service at any 
 given moment the practice of criticism either is or 
 may be made to his own mind and spirit, and to the 
 minds and spirits of others. 
 
 The critical power is of lower rank than the crea- 
 tive. True ; but in assenting to this proposition, one 
 or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable 
 that the exercise of a creative power, that a free 
 creative activity, is the highest function of man; it is 
 proved to be so by man's finding in it his true hap- 
 piness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have 
 the sense of exercising this free creative activity in 
 other ways than in producing great works of liter- 
 ature or art ; if it were not so, all but a very few men 
 would be shut out from the true happiness of all 
 men. They may have it in well-doing, they may have 
 it in learning, they may have it even in criticizing. 
 This is one thing to be kept in mind. Another is, 
 that the exercise of the creative power in the pro- 
 duction of great works of literature or art, however 
 high this exercise of it may rank, is not at all epochs 
 and under all conditions possible ; and that therefore 
 labor may be vainly spent in attempting it, which
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 23 
 
 might with more fruit be used in preparing for it, 
 in rendering it possible. This creative power works 
 with elements, with materials ; what if it has not 
 those materials, those elements, ready for its use? 
 In that case it must surely wait till they are ready. 
 Now, in literature, — I will limit myself to liter- 
 ature, for it is about literature that the question 
 arises, — the elements with which the creative power 
 works are ideas ; the best ideas on every matter 
 which literature touches, current at the time. At 
 any rate we may lay it down as certain that in mod- 
 ern literature no manifestation of the creative power 
 not working with these can be very important or 
 fruitful. And I say current at the time, not merely 
 accessible at the time ; for creative literary genius 
 does not principally show itself in discovering new 
 ideas : that is rather the business of the philosopher. 
 The grand work of literary genius is a work of syn- 
 thesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery ; 
 its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired 
 by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by 
 a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them ; 
 of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them 
 in the most effective and attractive combinations, — 
 making beautiful works with them, in short. But it 
 must have the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst 
 the order of ideas, in order to work freely ; and these 
 it is not so easy to command. This is why great crea- 
 tive epochs in literature are so rare, this is why 
 there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the pro- 
 ductions of many men of real genius ; because, for 
 the creation of a master-work of literature two powers 
 must concur, the power of the man and the power 
 of the moment, and the man is not enough without 
 the moment ; the creative power has, for its happy
 
 24 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 exercise, appointed elements, and those elements are 
 not in its own control. 
 
 Nay, they are moi-e within the control o£ the criti- 
 cal power. It is the business of the critical power, as 
 I said in the words already quoted, " in all branches 
 of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, sci- 
 ence, to see the object as in itself it really is." Thus 
 it tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation of 
 which the creative power can profitably avail itself. 
 It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not abso- 
 lutely true, yet true by comparison with that which 
 it displaces ; to make the best ideas prevail. Presently 
 these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth is 
 the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth every- 
 where ; out of this stir and growth come the creative 
 epochs of literature. 
 
 Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considera- 
 tions of the general march of genius and of society, 
 — considerations which are apt to become too abstract 
 and impalpable, — every one can see that a poet, for 
 instance, ought to know life and the world before 
 dealing with them in poetry ; and life and the world 
 being in modern times very complex things, the crea- 
 tion of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a 
 great critical effort behind it ; else it must be a. com- 
 paratively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. This 
 is why Byron's poetry had so little endurance in it, 
 and Goethe's so much ; both Byron and Goethe had a 
 great productive power, but Goethe's was nourished by 
 a great critical effort providing the true materials for 
 it, and Byron's was not ; Goethe knew life and the 
 world, the poet's necessary subjects, much more com- 
 prehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a 
 great deal more of them, and he knew them much more 
 as they really are.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 25 
 
 It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative 
 activity in our literature, through the first quarter 
 of this century, had about it in fact something prema- 
 ture ; and that from this cause its productions are 
 doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes 
 which accompanied and do still accompany them, to 
 prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far 
 less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes 
 from its having proceeded without having its proper 
 data, without sufficient materials to work with. In 
 other words, the English j)oetry of the first quarter of 
 this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative 
 force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so 
 empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth 
 even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness 
 and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, and 
 disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he is, 
 so much that I cannot wish him different ; and it is 
 vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from 
 what he is, to suppose that he coidd have been different. 
 But surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth 
 an even greater poet than he is, — his thought richer, 
 and his influence of wider application, — was that he 
 should have read more books, among them, no doubt, 
 those of that Goethe whom he disparaged without 
 reading him. 
 
 But to speak of books and reading may easily lead 
 to a misunderstanding hei'e. It was not really books 
 and reading that lacked to our poetry at this epoch : 
 Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense 
 reading. Pindar and Sophocles — as we all say so 
 glibly, and often with so little discernment of the real 
 import of what we are saying — had not many books ; 
 Shakespeare was no deep reader. True ; but in the 
 Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, in the England of
 
 26 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Shakespeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas in the 
 highest degree animating and nourishing to the crea- 
 tive power; society was, in the fullest measure, per- 
 meated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive. And 
 this state of things is the true basis for the creative 
 power's exercise, in this it finds its data, its materials, 
 truly ready for its hand ; all the books and reading in 
 the world are only valuable as they are helps to this. 
 Even when this does not actually exist, books and read- 
 ing may enable a man to construct a kind of semblance 
 of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge and in- 
 telligence in which he may live and work. This is by 
 no means an equivalent to the artist for the nationally 
 diffused life and thought of the epochs of Sophocles 
 or Shakespeare ; but, besides that it may be a means 
 of preparation for such epochs, it does really consti- 
 tute, if many share in it, a quickening and sustaining 
 atmosphere of great value. Such an atmosphere the 
 many-sided learning and the long and wideh' combined 
 critical effort of Germany formed for Goethe, when 
 he lived and worked. There was no national glow of 
 life and thought there as in the Athens of Pericles or 
 the England of Elizabeth. That was the poet's weak- 
 ness. But there was a sort of equivalent for it in the 
 complete culture and unfettered thinking of a large 
 body of Germans. That was his strength. In the Eng- 
 land of the first quarter of this century there was 
 neither a national glow of life and thought, such as 
 we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a culture and 
 a force of learning and criticism such as were to be 
 found in Germany. Therefore the creative power of 
 poetry wanted, for success in the highest sense, mate- 
 rials and a basis ; a thorough interpretation of the 
 world was necessarily denied to it. 
 
 At first sight it seems strange that out of the immense
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 27 
 
 stir of the French Revolution and its age should not 
 have come a crop of works of genius equal to that 
 which came out of the stir of the great productive time 
 of Greece, or out of that of the Renascence, with its 
 powerful episode the Reformation. But the truth is that 
 the stir of the French Revolution took a character which 
 essentially distinguished it from such movements as 
 these. These were, in the main, disinterestedly intel- 
 lectual and spiritual movements ; movements in which 
 the human spirit looked for its satisfaction in itself 
 and in the increased play of its own activity. The 
 French Revolution took a political, practical character. 
 The movement, which went on in France under the 
 old regime, from 1700 to 1789, was far more really 
 akin than that of the Revolution itself to the move- 
 ment of the Renascence ; the France of Voltaire and 
 Rousseau told far more powerfully upon the mind of 
 Europe than the France of the Revolution. Goethe 
 reproached this last expressly with having " thrown 
 quiet culture back." Nay, and the true key to how 
 much in our Byron, even in our Wordsworth, is this ! 
 — that they had their source in a great movement of 
 feeling, not in a great movement of mind. The French 
 Revolution, however, — that object of so much blind 
 love and so much blind hati-ed, — found undoubtedly 
 its motive-power in the intelligence of men, and not in 
 their practical sense ; this is what distinguishes it from 
 the English Revolution of Chai'les the First's time. 
 This is what makes it a more spiritual event than our 
 Revolution, an event of much more powerful and 
 woi'ld-wide interest, though practically less successful ; 
 it appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, 
 certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a thing. Is it 
 rational? 1642 asked of a thing. Is it legal? or, when 
 it went furthest, Is it according to conscience ? This
 
 28 ALVTTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 is the English fashion, a fashion to be treated, wdthin 
 its own sj^here, with the highest respect ; for its suc- 
 cess, within its own sphere, has been prodigious. But 
 what is law in one place is not law in another ; what 
 is law here to-day is not law even here to-morrow ; and 
 as for conscience, what is binding on one man's con- 
 science is not binding on another's. The old woman ^ 
 who threw her stool at the head of the surpliced min- 
 ister in St. Giles's Church at Edinburgh obeyed an 
 impulse to which millions of the human race may be 
 permitted to remain strangers. But the prescriptions 
 of reason are absolute, unchanging, of universal valid- 
 ity ; to cowit hy tens is the easiest icay of coiinting — 
 that is a proposition of which every one, from here to 
 the Antipodes, feels the force ; at least I shoidd say so 
 if we did not live in a country where it is not impos- 
 sible that any morning we may find a letter in the 
 Times declaring that a decimal coinage is an absurd- 
 ity. That a whole nation should have been penetrated 
 with an enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an ardent 
 zeal for making its prescriptions triumph, is a very 
 remarkable thing, when we consider how little of mind, 
 or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes 
 into the motives which alone, in general, impel great 
 masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direction 
 given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and 
 follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution 
 derives from the force, truth, and universality of the 
 ideas which it took for its law, and from the passion 
 with which it could inspire a multitude for these ideas, 
 a unique and still living power ; it is, — it will prob- 
 ably long remain, — the greatest, the most animating 
 event in liistory. And as no sincere passion for the 
 things of the mind, even though it turn out in many 
 respects an unfortunate passion, is ever quite thrown
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 29 
 
 away and quite barren of good, France has reaped 
 from hers one fruit — the natui'al and legitimate fruit 
 though not precisely the grand fruit she expected : she 
 is the country in Europe where tliejpeo'ple is most alive. 
 But the mania for giving an immediate jjolitical 
 and practical application to all these fine ideas of the 
 reason was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his ele- 
 ment : on this theme we can all go on for hours. And 
 all we are in the habit of saying on it has undoubt- 
 edly a great deal of truth. Ideas cannot be too much 
 prized in and for themselves, cannot be too much 
 lived with ; but to transport them abruptly into the 
 world of politics and practice, violently to revolution- 
 ize this world to their bidding, — that is quite another 
 thing. There is the world of ideas and there is the 
 world of practice ; the French are often for suppress- 
 ing the one and the English the other ; but neither is 
 to be suppressed. A member of the House of Com- 
 mons said to me the other day : " That a thing is an 
 anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it whatever." 
 I venture to think he was wrong ; that a thing is an 
 anomaly is an objection to it, but absolutely and in 
 the sphere of ideas : it is not necessarily, under such 
 and such circumstances, or at such and such a mo- 
 ment, an objection to it in the sphere of politics and 
 practice. Joubert has said beautifully : " C'est la force 
 et le droit qui reglent toutes choses dans le monde ; 
 la force en attendant le droit." ^ (Force and right are 
 the governors of this world ; force till right is ready.) 
 Force till right is ready; and till right is ready, 
 force, the existing order of things, is justified, is the 
 legitimate ruler. But right is something moral, and 
 implies inward recognition, free assent of the will ; we 
 are not ready for right, — rights so far as we are 
 concerned, is not ready ^ — until we have attained
 
 80 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 this sense of seeing it and willing it. The way in 
 which for us it may change and transform force, the 
 existing order of things, and become, in its turn, the 
 legitimate ruler of the world, should depend on the way 
 in which, when our time comes, we see it and will it. 
 Therefore for other people enamored of their own 
 newly discerned right, to attempt to impose it upon 
 us as ours, and violently to substitute their right for 
 our force, is an act of tyranny, and to be resisted. It 
 sets at naught the second gi-eat half of our maxim, 
 force till right is ready. This was the grand error of 
 the French Revolution ; and its movement of ideas, 
 by quitting the intellectual sphere and rushing fu- 
 riously into the jjolitical sphere, ran, indeed, a prodi- 
 gious and memorable course, but produced no such 
 intellectual fruit as the movement of ideas of the 
 Renascence, and created, in opposition to itself, what 
 I may call an epoch of concentration. The great force 
 of that epoch of concentration was England : and the 
 great voice of that epoch of concentration was Burke. 
 It is the fashion to treat Burke's writings on the 
 French Revolution ^ as superannuated and conquered 
 by the event ; as the eloquent but unphilosophical 
 tirades of bigotry and prejudice. I will not deny 
 that they are often disfigured by the violence and 
 passion of the moment, and that in some directions 
 Burke's view was bounded, and his observation there- 
 fore at fault. But on the whole, and for those who 
 can make the needful corrections, what distinguishes 
 these ^vl'itings is their pi'ofound, permanent, fruitful, 
 philosophical truth. They contain the true philosophy 
 of an epoch of concentration, dissipate the heavy 
 atmosphere which its own nature is apt to engender 
 round it, and make its resistance rational instead of 
 mechanical.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 31 
 
 But Burke is so great because, almost alone in 
 England, lie brings thought to bear upon politics, 
 he saturates politics with thought. It is his acci- 
 dent that his ideas were at the service of an epoch 
 of concentration, not of an epoch of expansion ; 
 it is his characteristic that he so lived by ideas, 
 and had such a source of them welling up within 
 him, that he could float even an epoch of con- 
 centration and English Tory politics with them. It 
 does not hurt him that Dr. Price ^ and the Liberals 
 were enraged with him ; it does not even hurt him 
 that George the Third and the Tories were enchanted 
 with him. His greatness is that he lived in a world 
 which neither English Liberalism nor English Tory- 
 ism is apt to enter ; — the world of ideas, not the 
 world of catchwords and party habits. So far is it 
 from being really true of him that he " to party gave 
 up what was meant for mankind," ^ that at the very 
 end of his fierce struggle with the French Revolution, 
 after all his invectives against its false pretensions, 
 hollowness, and madness, with his sincere convictions 
 of its mischievousness, he can close a memorandum on 
 the best means of combating it, some of the last pages 
 he ever wrote, — the Thoughts on French Affairs, in 
 December 1791, — with these striking words: — 
 
 " The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The 
 remedy must be where power, wisdom, and informa- 
 tion, I hope, are more united with good intentions than 
 they can be with me. I have done with this subject, 
 I believe, forever. It has given me many anxious 
 moments for the last two years. If a great change is 
 to he made in human affairs, the minds of men loill he 
 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 oj^j^osing this mighty
 
 32 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 current in human affairs^ will appear rather to resist 
 the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs 
 of men. They icill not be resolute and Jlmi, but per- 
 verse and obstijiate.^' 
 
 That return of Burke upon himself has always 
 seemed to me one of the finest things in English lit- 
 erature, or indeed in any literature. That is what 
 I call living by ideas : when one side of a question has 
 long had your earnest support, when all your feelings 
 are engaged, when you hear all round you no lan- 
 guage but one, when your party talks this language 
 like a steam-engine and can imagine no other, — still 
 to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so 
 it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of 
 the question, and, like Balaam,^ to be unable to speak 
 anything but ichat the Lord has put in your mouth. 
 I know nothing more striking, and I must add that I 
 know nothing more un-English. 
 
 For the Englishman in general is like my friend the 
 Member of Parliament, and believes, point-blank, that 
 for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no objection 
 to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland ^ of 
 Burke's day, who, in a memorandum on the French 
 Revolution, talks of " certain miscreants, assuming the 
 name of philosophers, who have presumed themselves 
 capable of establishing a new system of society." The 
 Englishman has been called a political animal, and he 
 values what is political and practical so much that ideas 
 easily become objects of dislike in his eyes, and think- 
 ers " miscreants," because ideas and thinkers have 
 rashly meddled with politics and practice. This would 
 be all very well if the dislike and neglect confined 
 themselves to ideas transported out of their own sphere, 
 and meddling rashly with practice ; but they are in- 
 evitably extended to ideas as such, and to the whole
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 33 
 
 life of intelligence ; practice is everything, a free play 
 of the mind is nothing. The notion of the free play of 
 the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself, 
 being an object of desire, being an essential provider 
 of elements without which a nation's spirit, whatever 
 compensations it may have for them, must, in the long 
 run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an English- 
 man's thoughts. It is noticeable that the word cui^i- 
 osity, which in other languages is used in a good sense, 
 to mean, as a high and fine quality of man's nature, 
 just this disinterested love of a free play of the mind 
 on all subjects, for its own sake, — it is noticeable, I 
 say^ that this word has in our language no sense of the 
 kind, no sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. 
 But criticism, real criticism, is essentially the exercise 
 of this very quality. It obeys an instinct prompting it 
 to try to know the best that is known and thought in 
 the world, irrespectively of practice, politics, and every- 
 thing of the kind ; and to value knowledge and thought 
 as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any 
 other considerations whatever. This is an instinct for 
 which there is, I think, little original sympathy in the 
 practical English nature, and what there was of it has 
 undergone a long benumbing period of blight and sup- 
 pression in the epoch of concentration which followed 
 the French Revolution. 
 
 But epochs of concentration cannot well endure for- 
 ever ; epochs of expansion, in the due course of things, 
 follow them. Such an epoch of expansion seems to be 
 opening in this country. In the first place all danger 
 of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our 
 practice has long disappeared ; like the traveller in the 
 fable, therefore, we begin to wear our cloak a little 
 more loosely. Then, with a long peace, the ideas of 
 Europe steal gradually and amicably in, and mingle,
 
 84 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 though in infinitesimally small quantities at a time, 
 with our own notions. Then, too, in sjsite of all that 
 is said about the absorbing and brutalizing influence 
 of our passionate material progress, it seems to me 
 indisputable that this progress is likely, though not 
 certain, to lead in the end to an apparition of intel- 
 lectual life ; and that man, after he has made himself 
 perfectly comfortable and has now to determine what 
 to do with himself next, may begin to remember that 
 he has a mind, and that the mind may be made the 
 source of great pleasure. I grant it is mainly the priv- 
 ilege of faith, at present, to discern this end to our 
 railways, our business, and our fortune-making ; but 
 we shall see if, here as elsewhere, faith is not in the 
 end the true prophet. Our ease, our travelling, and our 
 unbounded liberty to hold just as hard and securely 
 as we please to the practice to which our notions have 
 given birth, all tend to beget an inclination to deal a 
 little more freely with these notions themselves, to can- 
 vass them a little, to penetrate a little into their real 
 nature. Flutterings of curiosity, in the foreign sense 
 of the word, appear amongst us, and it is in these that 
 criticism must look to find its account. Criticism first ; 
 a time of true creative activity, perhaps, — which, as 
 I have said, must inevitably be preceded amongst us 
 by a time of criticism, — hereafter, when criticism 
 has done its work. 
 
 It is of the last importance that English criticism 
 should clearly discern what rule for its course, in order 
 to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and to 
 produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The 
 rule may be summed up in one word, — disinterested- 
 ness. And how is criticism to show disinterestedness? 
 By keeping aloof from what is called " the practical 
 view of things " ; by resolutely following the law of
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 35 
 
 its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind 
 on all subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing 
 to lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, prac- 
 tical considerations about ideas, which plenty of people 
 will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought 
 often to be attached to them, which in this country at 
 any rate are certain to be attached to them quite suf- 
 ficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do 
 with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know 
 the best that is known and thought in the world, and 
 by in its turn making this known, to create a current 
 of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with 
 inflexible honesty, with due ability ; but its business 
 is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of 
 practical consequences and applications, questions 
 which will never fail to have due prominence given to 
 them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its 
 own nature, merely continues in the old rut which it 
 has hitherto followed in this country, and will cer- 
 tainly miss the chance now given to it. For what is at 
 present the bane of criticism in this country ? It is 
 that practical considerations cling to it and stifle it. 
 It subserves interests not its own. Our organs of criti- 
 cism are organs of men and parties having practical 
 ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are 
 the first thing and the play of mind the second ; so 
 much play of mind as is compatible with the jDrosecu- 
 tion of those practical ends is all that is wanted. An 
 organ like the Revue des Deux Mondesi 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 a free play of the mind, we 
 have not. But we have the Edinhurgh Revieio, exist- 
 ing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much 
 play of the mind as may suit its being that ; we have
 
 36 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 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 Quarterly Hevieic, 
 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 com- 
 mon, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as much 
 play of mind as may suit its being that. And so on 
 through all the various fractions, political and religious, 
 of our society ; every fraction has, as such, its organ 
 of criticism, but the notion of combining all fractions 
 in the common pleasure of a free disinterested play of 
 mind meets with no favor. Directly this play of mind 
 wants to have more scope, and to forget the pressure 
 of practical considerations a little, it is checked, it is 
 made to feel the chain. We saw this the other day in 
 the extinction, so much to be regretted, of the Home 
 and Foreign Heviev:} Perhaps in no organ of criti- 
 cism in this country was there so much knowledge, so 
 much play of mind ; but these could not save it. The 
 Duhlin jRevicti' subordinates play of mind to the prac- 
 tical business of English and Irish Catholicism, and 
 lives. It must needs be that men should act in sects 
 and parties, that each of these sects and parties should 
 have its organ, and should make this organ subser^'e 
 the interests of its action : but it woidd be well, too, 
 that there should be a criticism, not the minister of 
 these interests, not their enemy, but absolutely and 
 entirely independent of them. No other criticism will 
 ever attain any real authority or make any real way 
 towards its end, — the creating a current of true and 
 fresh ideas. 
 
 It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure 
 intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from 
 practice, has been so directly polemical and contro-
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 37 
 
 versial,that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, 
 its best spiritual work ; which is to keep man from a 
 self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing-, 
 to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind 
 dwell uj)on what is excellent in itself, and the abso- 
 lute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical practi- 
 cal criticism makes men blind even to the ideal imper- 
 fection of their practice, makes them willingly assert 
 its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure it 
 against attack : and clearly this is narrowing and 
 baneful for them. If they were reassured on the 
 practical side, speculative considerations of ideal per- 
 fection they might be brought to entertain, and their 
 spiritual horizon would thus gradually widen. Sir 
 Charles Adderley^ says to the Warwickshire farm- 
 ers : — 
 
 " Talk of the improvement of breed ! Why, the 
 race we ourselves represent, the men and women, the 
 old Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the whole 
 world. . . . The absence of a too enervating climate, 
 too unclouded skies, and a too luxurious nature, has 
 produced so vigorous a race of people, and has rendered 
 us so superior to all the world." 
 
 Mr. Roebuck 2 says to the Sheffield cutlers: — 
 
 "I look around me and ask what is the state of 
 England? Is not property safe? Is not every man 
 able to say what he likes ? Can you not walk from one 
 end of England to the other in perfect security? I ask 
 you whether, the world over or in past history, there 
 is anything like it ? Nothing. I pray that our unri- 
 valled happiness may last." 
 
 Now obviously there is a peril for poor human 
 nature in words and thoughts of such exuberant self- 
 satisfaction, until we find ourselves safe in the streets 
 of the Celestial City.
 
 38 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " Das wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blicke 
 Der vorwarts sieht, wie viel noch iibrig bleibt — "^ 
 
 says Goethe ; " the little that is clone seems nothing 
 when we look forward and see how much we have yet 
 to do." Clearly this is a better line of reflection for 
 weak humanity, so long as it remains on this earthly 
 field of labor and trial. 
 
 But neither Sir Charles Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck 
 is by nature inaccessible to considerations of this sort. 
 They only lose sight of them owing to the controver- 
 sial life we all lead, and the practical form which all 
 speculation takes with us. They have in view oppo- 
 nents whose aim is not ideal, but practical ; and in 
 their zeal to uphold their own practice against these 
 innovators, they go so far as even to attribute to this 
 practice an ideal perfection. Somebody has been want- 
 ing to introduce a six-pound franchise, or to abolish 
 church-rates, or to collect agricultural statistics by 
 force, or to diminish local self-government. How nat- 
 ural, in reply to such proposals, very likely improper 
 or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark and to say 
 stoutly, " Such a race of people as we stand, so supe- 
 rior to all the world ! The old Anglo-Saxon race, the 
 best breed in the whole world ! I pray that our unri- 
 valled happiness may last! I ask you whether, the 
 world over or in past history, there is anything like 
 it ? " And so long as criticism answers this dithyramb 
 by insisting that the old Anglo-Saxon race would be 
 still more superior to all others if it had no church- 
 rates, or that our unrivalled happiness would last yet 
 longer with a six-pound franchise, so long will the 
 strain, " The best breed in the whole world ! " swell 
 louder and louder, everything ideal and refining will 
 be lost out of sight, and both the assailed and their 
 critics will remain in a sphere, to say the truth, per-
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 39 
 
 fectly unvital, a sphere in which spiritual progression 
 is impossible. But let criticism leave church-rates and 
 the franchise alone, and in the most candid spirit, 
 without a single lurking thought of practical innova- 
 tion, confront with our dithyramb this paragraph on 
 which I stumbled in a newspaper immediately after 
 reading Mr. Roebuck : — 
 
 " A shocking child murder has just been committed 
 at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the work- 
 house there on Saturday morning with her young ille- 
 gitimate child. The child was soon afterwards found 
 dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. 
 Wragg is in custody." 
 
 Nothing but that; but, in juxtaposition with the 
 absolute eulogies of Sir Charles Adderley and Mr. 
 Roebuck, how eloquent, how suggestive are those few 
 lines! "Our old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the 
 whole world!" — how much that is harsh and ill- 
 favored there is in this best ! Wragg ! If we are to 
 talk of ideal perfection, of " the best in the whole 
 world," has any one reflected what a touch of grossness 
 in our race, what an original short-coming in the more 
 delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural 
 growth amongst us of such hideous names, — Higgin- 
 bottom, Stiggins, Bugg ! In Ionia and Attica they 
 were luckier in this respect than " the best race in 
 the world" ; by the Ilissus there was no Wragg, poor 
 thing! And "our unrivalled happiness"; — what an 
 element of grimness, bareness, and hideousness mixes 
 with it and blurs it ; the workhouse, the dismal Map- 
 perly Hills, — how dismal those who have seen them 
 will remember ; — the gloom, the smoke, the cold, the 
 strangled illegitimate child ! " I ask you whether, the 
 world over or in past history, there is anything like 
 it ? " Perhaps not, one is inclined to answer ; but
 
 40 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 at any rate, in that case, tlie world is very mucli to 
 be pitied. And the final touch, — short, bleak and 
 inhuman : Wragg is in custochj. The sex lost in the 
 confusion of our unrivalled happiness ; or (shall I say?) 
 the superfluous Christian name lopped off by the 
 straightforward vigor of our old Anglo-Saxon breed ! 
 There is profit for the spirit in such contrasts as this ; 
 criticism serves the cause of perfection by establishing 
 them. By eluding sterile conflict, by refusing to 
 remain in the sphere where alone narrow and relative 
 conceptions have any worth and validity, criticism 
 may diminish its momentary importance, but only in 
 this way has it a chance of gaining admittance for 
 those wider and more perfect conceptions to which all 
 its duty is really owed. Mr. Roebuck will have a poor 
 opinion of an adversary who replies to his defiant 
 songs of triumph only by murmuring under his breath, 
 Wragg is in custody ; but in no other way will these 
 songs of triumph be induced gradually to moderate 
 themselves, to get rid of what in them is excessive 
 and offensive, and to fall into a softer and truer key. 
 It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect 
 action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and 
 that, by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue 
 of detachment ^ and abandoning the sphere of practi- 
 cal life, it condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. 
 Slow and obscure it may be, but it is the only proper 
 work of criticism. The mass of mankind will never 
 have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are ; 
 very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On 
 these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the 
 general practice of the world. That is as much as say- 
 ing that whoever sets himself to see things as they are 
 will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is 
 only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 41 
 
 that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The 
 rush and roar of practical life will always have a diz- 
 zying and attracting effect upon the most collected 
 spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex ; most 
 of all will this be the case where that life is so power- 
 ful as it is in England. But it is only by remaining 
 collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of 
 view of the practical man, that the critic can do the 
 practical man any service ; and it is only by the 
 greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by 
 at last convincing even the practical man of his sin- 
 cerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which 
 perpetually threaten him. 
 
 For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, 
 and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest 
 culture greatly find their account. But it is not easy 
 to lead a practical man, — unless you reassure him as 
 to your practical intentions, you have no chance of 
 leading him, — to see that a thing which he has 
 always been used to look at from one side only, which 
 he greatly values, and which, looked at from that side, 
 quite deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and admiring 
 which he bestows upon it, — that this thing, looked at 
 from another side, may appear much less beneficent and 
 beautiful, and yet retain all its claims to our practical 
 allegiance. Where shall we find language innocent 
 enough, how shall we make the spotless purity of our 
 intentions evident enough, to enable us to say to 
 the political Englishmen that the British Constitution 
 itself, which, seen from the practical side, looks such 
 a magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen from 
 the speculative side, — with its compromises, its love 
 of facts, its horror of theory, its studied avoidance of 
 clear thoughts, — that, seen from this side, our august 
 Constitution sometimes looks, — forgive me, shade of
 
 42 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Lord Somers ! ^ — a colossal machine for the manufac- 
 ture of Philistines ? How is Cobbett ^ to say this and 
 not be misunderstood, blackened as he is with the 
 smoke of a lifelong conflict in the field of political 
 practice? how is Mr. Carlyle to say it and not be 
 misunderstood, after his furious raid into this field 
 with his Latter-day Pam^Metsf^ how is Mr. Rus- 
 kin,* after his pugnacious political economy? I say, 
 the critic must keep out of the region of immediate 
 practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, 
 if he wants to make a beginning for that more free 
 speculative treatment of things, which may perhaps 
 one day make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but 
 in a natural and thence irresistible manner. 
 
 Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain 
 exposed to frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere 
 so much as in this country. For here people are 
 particularly indisposed even to comprehend that with- 
 out this free disinterested treatment of things, truth 
 and the highest culture are out of the question. So 
 immersed are they in practical life, so accustomed 
 to take all their notions from this life and its processes, 
 that they are apt to think that ti'uth and culture 
 themselves can be reached by the processes of this 
 life, and that it is an impertinent singularity to think 
 of reaching them in any other. " We are all terrcejird" ^ 
 cries their eloquent advocate ; " all Philistines '^ together. 
 Away with the notion of proceeding by any other 
 course than the course dear to the Philistines ; let us 
 have a social movement, let us organize and combine 
 a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us call 
 it the liberal parti/, and let us all stick to each other, 
 and back each other up. Let us have no nonsense 
 about independent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, 
 and the few and the many. Don't let us trouble
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 43 
 
 ourselves about foreign thought ; we shall invent the 
 whole thing for ourselves as we go along. If one 
 of us speaks well, applaud him ; if one of us speaks 
 ill, applaud him too ; we are all in the same move- 
 ment, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of 
 truth." In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really 
 a social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring 
 a chairman, a secretary, and advertisements ; with the 
 excitement of an occasional scandal, with a little resist- 
 ance to give the happy sense of difficulty overcome ; 
 but, in general, plenty of bustle and very little thought. 
 To act is so easy, as Goethe says ; to think is so hard ! ^ 
 It is true that the critic has many temptations to go 
 with the stream, to make one of the party movement, 
 one of these terrm filii ; it seems ungracious to refuse 
 to be a terrm fiUus, when so many excellent people 
 are ; but the critic's duty is to refuse, or, if resistance 
 is vain, at least to cry with Obermann: Perissons en 
 resistant? 
 
 How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had 
 ample opportunity of experiencing when I ventured 
 some time ago to criticize the celebrated first volume 
 of Bishop Colenso.^ The echoes of the storm which was 
 then raised I still, fi'om time to time, hear grumbling 
 round me. That storm arose out of a misunderstand- 
 ing almost inevitable. It is a result of no little culture 
 to attain to a clear perception that science and reli- 
 gion are two wholly different things. The multitude 
 will forever confuse them ; but happily that is of no 
 great real importance, for while the multitude imag- 
 ines itself to live by its false science, it does really 
 live by its true religion. Dr. Colenso, however, in his 
 first volume did all he could to strengthen the confu- 
 sion,^ and to make it dangerous. He did this with the 
 best intentions, I freely admit, and with the most can-
 
 44 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 did ignorance that this was the natural effect of what 
 he was doing ; but, says Joubert, " Ignorance, which 
 in matters of morals extenuates the crime, is itself, in 
 intellectual matters, a crime of the first order." i I crit- 
 icized Bishop Colenso's speculative confusion. Imme- 
 diately there was a cry raised : " What is this ? here 
 is a liberal attacking a liberal. Do not you belong to 
 the movement ? are not you a friend of truth ? Is not 
 Bishop Colenso in pursuit of truth? then speak with 
 proper respect of his book. Dr. Stanley ^ is another 
 friend of truth, and you speak with proper respect 
 of his book ; why make these invidious differences ? 
 both books are excellent, admirable, liberal ; Bishop 
 Colenso's perhaps the most so, because it is the bold- 
 est, and will have the best practical consequences for 
 the liberal cause. Do you want to encourage to the 
 attack of a brother liberal his, and your, and our 
 implacable enemies, the Church and State Revieio 
 or the Record^ — the High Church rhinoceros and the 
 Evangelical hyena? Be silent, therefore; or rather 
 speak, speak as loud as ever you can ! and go into 
 ecstasies over the eighty and odd pigeons." 
 
 But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indis- 
 criminate method. It is unfortunately possible for a 
 man in pursuit of truth to write a book which reposes 
 upon a false conception. Even the practical conse- 
 quences of a book are to genuine criticism no recom- 
 mendation of it, if the book is, in the highest sense, 
 blundering. I see that a lady ^ who herself, too, is in 
 pursuit of truth, and who writes with great ability, 
 but a little too much, perhaps, under the influence of 
 the practical spirit of the English liberal movement, 
 classes Bishop Colenso's book and M. Kenan's^ to- 
 gether, in her survey of the religious state of Europe, 
 as facts of the same order, works, both of them, of
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 45 
 
 *' great importance" ; " great ability, power, and skill " ; 
 Bishop Colenso's, perhaps, the most powerful ; at least, 
 Miss Cobbe gives special expression to her gratitude 
 that to Bishop Colenso " has been given the strength 
 to grasp, and the courage to teach, truths of such deep 
 import." In the same way, more than one popular 
 writer has compared him to Luther. Now it is just 
 this kind of false estimate which the critical spirit is, 
 it seems to me, bound to resist. It is really the strong- 
 est possible proof of the low ebb at which, in England, 
 the critical spirit is, that while the critical hit in the 
 religious literature of Germany is Dr. Strauss's ^ book, 
 in that of France M. Renan's book, the book of Bishop 
 Colenso is the critical hit in the religious literature of 
 England. Bishop Colenso's book reposes on a total 
 misconception of the essential elements of the religious 
 problem, as that problem is now presented for solu- 
 tion. To criticism, therefore, which seeks to have the 
 best that is known and thought on this problem, it 
 is, however well meant, of no importance whatever. 
 M. Renan's book attempts a new synthesis of the ele- 
 ments furnished to us by the Four Gospels. It attempts, 
 in my opinion, a synthesis, perhaps premature, perhaps 
 impossible, certainly not successful. Up to the present 
 time, at any rate, we must acquiesce in Fleury's sen- 
 tence on such recastings of the Gospel story: Qui- 
 conque s' imagine la pouvoir mieux ecrire, ne Ventend 
 pas? M. Renan had himself passed by anticipation a 
 like sentence on his own work, when he said : "If a 
 new presentation of the character of Jesus were offered 
 to me, I would not have it ; its very clearness would 
 be, in my opinion, the best proof of its insufficiency." 
 His friends may with perfect justice rejoin that at the 
 sight of the Holy Land, and of the actual scene of the 
 Gospel story, all the current of M. Renan's thoughts
 
 46 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 may have naturally changed, and a new casting of 
 that story irresistibly suggested itself to him ; and 
 that this is just a case for applying Cicero's maxim : 
 Change of mind is not inconsistency — nemo doctus 
 unquani mutationem consilli inconstantiam dixit esse} 
 Nevertheless, for criticism, M. Renan's first thought 
 must still be the truer one, as long as his new casting 
 so fails more fully to commend itself, more fully (to 
 use Coleridge's happy phrase ^ about the Bible) tojind 
 us. Still M. Renan's attempt is, for criticism, of the 
 most real interest and importance, since, with all its 
 difficulty, a fresh synthesis of the New Testament 
 data — not a making war on them, in Voltaire's fash- 
 ion, not a leaving them out of mind, in the world's 
 fashion, but the putting a new construction upon them, 
 the taking them from under the old, traditional, con- 
 ventional point of view and placing them under a new 
 one — is the very essence of the religious problem, 
 as now presented ; and only by efforts in this direction 
 can it receive a solution. 
 
 Again, in the same spirit in which she judges Bishop 
 Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest liberals of 
 our practical race, both here and in America, herself 
 sets vigorously about a positive reconstruction of re- 
 ligion, about making a religion of the future out of 
 hand, or at least setting about making it. We must 
 not rest, she and they are always thinking and saying, 
 in negative criticism, we must be creative and con- 
 structive; hence we have such works as her recent 
 Heligious Duty^ and works still more considerable, 
 perhaps, by others, which will be in every one's mind. 
 These works often have much ability ; they often 
 spring out of sincere convictions, and a sincere wish 
 to do good ; and they sometimes, perhaps, do good. 
 Their fault is (if I may be permitted to say so) onQ
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 47 
 
 which they have in common with the British College 
 of Health, in the New Road. Every one knows the 
 British College of Health ; it is that building with the 
 lion and the statue of the Goddess Hygeia before it ; 
 at least I am sure about the lion, though I am not 
 absolutely certain about the Goddess Hygeia. This 
 building does credit, perhaps, to the resources of Dr. 
 Morrison and his disciples ; but it falls a good deal 
 short of one's idea of what a British College of Health 
 ought to be. In England, where we hate public inter- 
 ference and love individual enterprise, we have a whole 
 crop of places like the British College of Health ; the 
 grand name without the grand thing. Unluckily, 
 creditable to individual enterprise as they are, they 
 tend to impair our taste by making us forget what 
 more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly 
 belongs to a public institution. The same may be said 
 of the religions of the future of Miss Cobbe and 
 others. Creditable, like the British College of Health, 
 to the resources of their authors, they yet tend 
 to make us forget what more grandiose, noble, or 
 beautiful character properly belongs to religious con- 
 structions. The historic religions, with all their faults, 
 have had this ; it certainly belongs to the religious 
 sentiment, when it truly flowers, to have this ; and we 
 impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion of the 
 future without it. What then is the duty of criticism 
 here? To take the practical point of view, to applaud 
 the liberal movement and all its- works, — its New 
 Road religions of the future into the bargain, — for 
 their general utility's sake ? By no means ; but to be 
 perpetually dissatisfied with these works, while they 
 perpetually fall short of a high and perfect ideal. 
 
 For criticism, these are elementary laws ; but they 
 never can be popular, and in this country they have
 
 48 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 been very little followed, and one meets with immense 
 obstacles in following them. That is a reason foi' 
 asserting them again and again. Criticism must 
 maintain its independence of the practical spirit and 
 its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the practical 
 spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere 
 of the ideal they seem imjDoverishing and limiting. It 
 must not hurry on to the goal because of its practical 
 importance. It must be patient, and know how to 
 wait ; and flexible, and know how to attach itself to 
 things and how to withdraw from them. It must be 
 apt to study and praise elements that for the fidness 
 of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they 
 belong to a power which in the practical sphere may 
 be maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual 
 shortcomings or illusions of jjowers that in the prac- 
 tical sphere may be beneficent. And this without any 
 notion of favoring or injuring, in the practical sphere, 
 one power or the other ; without any notion of play- 
 ing off, in this sphere, one power against the other. 
 When one looks, for instance, at the English Divorce 
 Court — an institution which perhaps has its practical 
 conveniences, but which in the ideal sphere is so hid- 
 eous ; an institution which neither makes divorce im- 
 possible nor makes it decent, which allows a man to 
 get rid of his wife, or a wife of her husband, but 
 makes them drag one another first, for the public edi- 
 fication, through a mire of unutterable infamy, — 
 when one looks at this charming institution, I say, 
 with its crowded trials, its newspaper reports, and its 
 money compensations, this institution in which the 
 gross unregenerate British Philistine has indeed 
 stamped an image of himself, — one may be permitted 
 to find the marriage theory of Catholicism refreshing 
 and elevating. Or v/hen Protestantism, in virtue of its
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 49 
 
 supposed rational and intellectual oi'igin, gives the law 
 to criticism too magisterially, criticism may and must 
 remind it that its pretensions, in this respect, are illu- 
 sive and do it harm ; that the Reformation was a 
 moral rather than an intellectual event ; that Luther's 
 theory of grace ^ no more exactly reflects the mind of 
 the spirit than Bossuet's philosophy of history 2 reflects 
 it; and that there is no more antecedent probability 
 of the Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas being agree- 
 able to perfect reason than of Pope Pius the Ninth's. 
 But criticism will not on that account forget the 
 achievements of Protestantism in the practical and 
 moral sphere ; nor that, even in the intellectual sphere, 
 Protestantism, though in a blind and stumbling man- 
 ner, carried forward the Renascence, while Catholi- 
 cism threw itself violently across its path. 
 
 I lately heard a man of thought and energy con- 
 trasting the want of ardor and movement which he now 
 found amongst young men in this country with what 
 he remembered in his own youth, twenty years ago. 
 "What reformers we were then!" he exclaimed; 
 " What a zeal we had ! how we canvassed every in- 
 stitution in Church and State, and were prepared to 
 remodel them all on first princijiles ! " He was inclined 
 to regret, as a spiritual flagging, the lull which he 
 saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as a pause in 
 which the turn to a new mode of spiritual progress 
 is being accomplished. Everything was long seen, by 
 the young and ardent amongst us, in inseparable con- 
 nection with politics and practical life. We have pretty 
 well exhausted the benefits of seeing things in this 
 connection, we have got all that can be got by so see- 
 ing them. Let us try a more disinterested mode of 
 seeing them ; let us betake ourselves more to the serener 
 life of the mind and spirit. This life, too, may have
 
 50 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 its excesses and dangers ; but they are not for us at 
 present. Let us think of quietly enlarging our stock 
 of true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon as we get an 
 idea or half an idea, be running out with it into the 
 street, and trying to make it rule there. Our ideas will, 
 in the end, shape the world all the better for maturing 
 a little. Perhaps in fifty years' time it will in the Eng- 
 lish House of Commons be an objection to an institu- 
 tion that it is an anomaly, and my friend the Member 
 of Parliament will shudder in his grave. But let us in 
 the meanwhile rather endeavor that in twenty years' 
 time it may, in English literature, be an objection to a 
 proposition that it is absurd. That will be a change 
 so vast, that the imagination almost fails to grasp it. 
 Ab integro sceclorum nascitur orclo} 
 
 If I have insisted so much on the course which criti- 
 cism must take where politics and religion are concerned, 
 it is because, where these burning matters are in ques- 
 tion, it is most likely to go astray. I have wished, above 
 all, to insist on the attitude which criticism should 
 adopt towards things in general ; on its right tone and 
 temper of mind. But then comes another question as 
 to the subject-matter which literary criticism should 
 most seek. Here, in general, its course is determined 
 for it by the idea which is the law of its being : the 
 idea of a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate 
 the best that is known and thought in the world, and 
 thus to establish a current of fresh and true ideas. By 
 the very nature of things, as England is not all the 
 world, much of the best that is known and thought in 
 the world cannot be of English growth, must be for- 
 eign ; by the nature of things, again, it is just this that 
 we are least likely to know, while English thought is 
 streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes excellent 
 care that we shall not be ignorant of its existence. The
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 51 
 
 English critic of literature, therefore, must dwell much 
 on foreign thought, and with particular heed on any 
 part of it, which, while significant and fruitful in itself, 
 is for any reason specially likely to escape him. Again, 
 judging is often spoken of as the critic's one business, 
 and so in some sense it is ; but the judgment which 
 almost insensibly forms itself in a fair and clear mind, 
 along with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one ; and 
 thus knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be 
 the critic's great concern for himself. And it is by 
 communicating fresh knowledge, and letting his own 
 judgment pass along with it, — but insensibly, and in 
 the second place, not the first, as a sort of companion 
 and clue, not ias an abstract lawgiver, — that the critic 
 will generally do most good to his readers. Sometimes, 
 no doubt, for the sake of establishing an author's place 
 in literature, and his relation to a central standard (and 
 if this is not done, how are we to get at our hest in the 
 world f^ criticism may have to deal with a subject- 
 matter so familiar that fresh knowledge is out of the 
 question, and then it must be all judgment ; an enuncia- 
 tion and detailed application of principles. Here the 
 great safeguard is never to let oneself become abstract, 
 always to retain an intimate and lively consciousness 
 of the truth of what one is saying, and, the moment 
 this fails us, to be sure that something is wrong. Still 
 under all circumstances, this mere judgment and 
 application of principles is, in itself, not the most 
 satisfactory work to the critic ; like mathematics, 
 it is tautological, and cannot well give us, like fresh 
 learning, the sense of creative activity. 
 
 But stop, some one will say ; all this talk is of no prac- 
 tical use to us whatever ; this criticism of yours is not 
 what we have in our minds when we speak of criticism ; 
 when we speak of critics and criticism, we mean critics
 
 52 ]\L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 and criticism of the current English literature of the 
 day, when you offer to tell criticism its function, it is 
 to this criticism that we expect you to address your- 
 self. I am sorry for it, for I am afraid I must disap- 
 point these expectations. I am bound by my own 
 definition of criticism; a disinterested endeavor tolearn 
 and propagate the hest that is known and thought in 
 the loorld. How much of current English literature 
 comes into this " best that is known and thought in 
 the world " ? Not very much I fear ; certainly less, at 
 this moment, than of the current literature of France 
 or Germany. Well, then, am I to alter my definition 
 of criticism, in order to meet the requirements of a 
 number of practising English critics, who, after all, are 
 free in their choice of a business? That would be 
 making criticism lend itself just to one of those alien 
 practical considerations, which, I have said, are so fatal 
 to it. One may say, indeed, to those who have to deal 
 with the mass — so much better disregarded — of cur- 
 rent English literature, that they may at all events 
 endeavor, in dealing with this, to try it, so far as they 
 can, by the standard of the best that is known and 
 thought in the world ; one may say, that to get any- 
 where near this standard, every critic should try and 
 possess one gi'eat literature, at least, besides his own ; 
 and the more unlike his own, the better. But, after all, 
 the criticism I am really concerned with, — the criti- 
 cism which alone can much help us for the future, the 
 criticism which, throughout Europe, is at the present 
 day meant, when so much stress is laid on the impor- 
 tance of criticism and the critical spirit, — is a criti- 
 cism which regards Europe as being, for intellectual 
 and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound 
 to a joint action and working to a common result ; 
 and whose members have, for their proper outfit, a
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 53 
 
 knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, 
 and of one another. Special, local, and temporary ad- 
 vantages being put out of account, that modern nation 
 will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most 
 progress, which most thoroughly carries out this pro- 
 gram. And what is that but saying that we too, all of 
 us, as individuals, the more thoroughly we carry it out, 
 shall make the more progress? 
 
 There is so much inviting us ! — what are we to 
 take? what will nourish us in growth towards perfec- 
 tion? That is the question which, with the immense 
 field of life and of literature lying before him, the 
 critic has to answer; for himself first, and afterwards 
 for others. In this idea of the critic's business the es- 
 says brought together in the following pages have had 
 their origin ; in this idea, widely different as are their 
 subjects, they have, perhaps, their unity. 
 
 I conclude with what I said at the beginning : to 
 have the sense of creative activity is the great happi- 
 ness and the great proof of being alive, and it is not 
 denied to criticism to have it ; but then criticism must 
 be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its 
 knowledge. Then it may have, in no contemptible 
 measure, a joyful sense of creative activity ; a sense 
 which a man of insight and conscience will prefer to 
 what he might derive from a poor, starved, fragmen- 
 tary, inadequate creation. And at some epochs no other 
 creation is possible. 
 
 Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity 
 belongs only to genuine creation ; in literature we must 
 never forget that. But what true man of letters ever 
 can forget it ? It is no such common matter for a gifted 
 nature to come into possession of a current of true and 
 living ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of 
 them, that we are likely to unden-ate it. The epochs
 
 54 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of -iEschylus and Shakespeare make us feel their pre- 
 eminence. In an epoch like those is, no doubt, the true 
 life of literature; there is the promised land, towards 
 which criticism can only beckon. That promised land 
 it will not be ours to enter, and we shall die in the 
 wilderness : but to have desired to enter it, to have 
 saluted it from afar, is already, perhaps, the best dis- 
 tinction among contemporaries ; it will certainly be the 
 best title to esteem with posterity.
 
 (p. u 
 
 V) 
 
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY i 
 
 " The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, 
 where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as 
 time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. 
 
 3 ere is not a creed which is not shaken, not an 
 redited dogma which is not shown to be question- 
 aWe, not a received tradition which does not threaten 
 t| dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the 
 fi.ct, in the supposed fact ; it has attached its emotion 
 i the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry 
 ^le idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, 
 It divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the 
 lea ; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our 
 eligion to-day is its unconscious poetry." ^ 
 I Let me be permitted to quote these words of my 
 wn, as uttering the thought which should, in my 
 pinion, go with us and govern us in all our study of 
 )oetry. In the present woi'k it is the course of one 
 
 !;reat contributory stream to the world-river of poetiy 
 hat we are invited to follow. We are here invited to 
 .race the stream of English poetry. But whether we 
 ;et ourselves, as here, to follow only one of the several 
 ;treams that make the mighty river of poetry, or 
 vhether we seek to know them all, our governing 
 thought should be the same. We should conceive of 
 poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the 
 3ustom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it as 
 capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, 
 than those which in general men have assigned to it 
 hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we 
 have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to con-
 
 56 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 sole us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will 
 appear incomplete ; and most of what now passes with 
 us for religion and philosophy will be rejilaced by poetry. 
 Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it. For 
 finely and truly does Wordsworth call poetry "the 
 impassioned expression which is in the countenance 
 of all science" ;i and what is a countenance without 
 its expression? Again, Wordsworth finely and truly 
 calls poetry " the breath and finer spirit of all knowl- 
 edge " : ^ our religion, parading evidences such as tlx)se 
 on which the popular mind relies now ; our philosopiy, 
 pluming itself on its reasonings about causation aid 
 finite and infinite being ; what are they but the sh:d- 
 ows and dreams and false shows of knowledge ? lie 
 day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves j>r 
 having trusted to them, for having taken them sei- 
 ously ; and the more we perceive their hoUowness, te 
 more we shall prize "the breath and finer spirit f 
 knowledge" offered to us by poetry. 
 
 But if w^e conceive thus highly of the destinies f 
 poetry, we must also set our standard for poetry hig, 
 since poetry, to be capable of fulfilling such high d€- 
 tinies, must be poetry of a high order of excellenc 
 We must accustom ourselves to a high standard ai 
 to a strict judgment. Sainte-Beuve relates that Nap 
 leon one day said, when somebody was spoken of i 
 his presence as a charlatan : " Charlatan as muc 
 as you please ; but where is there not charlatanism ? 
 — "Yes," answers Saiiite-Beuve,^ "in politics, in tl 
 art of governing mankind, that is perhaps true. Bi 
 in the order of thought, in art, the glory, the ete: 
 nal honor is that charlatanism shall find no entrance 
 herein lies the inviolableness of that noble portion c 
 man's being." It is admirably said, and let us hold fas 
 to it. In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it i
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 57 
 
 the glory, the eternal honor, that charlatanism shall find 
 no entrance ; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate 
 and inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or oblit- 
 erating the distinctions between excellent and infe- 
 rior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and 
 untrue or only half-true. It is charlatanism, conscious 
 or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. 
 And in poetry, more than anywhere else, it is unper- 
 missible to confuse or obliterate them. For in poetry 
 the distinction between excellent and inferior, sound 
 and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or 
 only half-true, is of paramount importance. It is of 
 paramoimt importance because of the high destinies 
 of poetry. In poetry, as a criticism of life ^ under the 
 conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of 
 poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race 
 will find, we have said, as time goes on and as other 
 helps fail, its consolation and stay. But the consola- 
 tion and stay will be of power in proportion to the 
 power of the criticism of life. And the criticism of life 
 will be of power in proportion as the poetry conveying 
 it is excellent rather than inferior, sound rather than 
 unsound or half-sound, true rather than untrue or 
 half -true. 
 
 The best poetry is what we want ; the best poetry 
 will be found to have a power of forming, sustain- 
 ing, and delighting us, as nothing else can. A clearer, 
 deeper sense of the best^ in poetry, and of the strengih 
 and joy to be drawn from it, is the most jirecious benefit 
 which we can gather from a poetical collection such as 
 the present. And yet in the very nature and conduct 
 of such a collection there is inevitably something which 
 tends to obscure in us the consciousness of what our 
 benefit should be, and to distract us from the pursuit 
 of it. We should therefore steadily set it before our
 
 58 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 minds at the outset, and should compel ourselves to 
 revert constantly to the thought of it as we proceed. 
 
 Yes ; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the 
 best, the really excellent, and of the strength and joy 
 to be drawn from it, should be present in our minds 
 and should govern our estimate of what we read. But 
 this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be 
 superseded, if we are not watchful, by two other kinds 
 of estimate, the historic estimate and the personal 
 estimate, both of which are fallacious. A poet or a 
 poem may count to us historically, they may count to 
 us on grounds personal to ourselves, and they may 
 count to us really. They may count to us historically. 
 The course of development of a nation's language, 
 thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting ; and by 
 regarding a poet's work as a stage in this course of 
 development we may easily bring ourselves to make it 
 of more importance as poetry than in itself it reaUy is, 
 we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated 
 praise in criticising it ; in short, to over-rate it. So 
 arises in our poetic judgments the fallacy caused by 
 the estimate which we may caU historic. Then, again, 
 a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds personal 
 to ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings, and cir- 
 cumstances, have great power to sway our estimate of 
 this or that poet's work, and to make us attach more 
 importance to it as poetry than in itself it really pos- 
 sesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high im- 
 portance. Here also we over-rate the object of our 
 interest, and apply to it a language of praise which is 
 quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source of a 
 second fallacy in our poetic judgments — the fallacy 
 caused by an estimate which we may call personal. 
 
 Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how natu- 
 rally the study of the history and development of a
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 59 
 
 poetry may incline a man to pause over reputations 
 and works once conspicuous but now obscure, and to 
 quarrel with a careless public for skipping, in obedi- 
 ence to mere tradition and habit, from one famous 
 name or work in its national poetry to another, igno- 
 rant of what it misses, and of the reason for keeping 
 what it keeps, and of the whole process of growth in 
 its poetry. The French have become diligent students 
 of their own early poetry, which they long neglected; 
 the study makes many of them dissatisfied with their 
 so-called classical poetry, the court-tragedy of the 
 seventeenth century, a poetry which Pellisson^ long 
 ago reproached with its want of the true poetic stamp, 
 with its politesse sterile et rami^ante? but which 
 nevertheless has reigned in France as absolutely as if 
 it had been the perfection of classical poetry indeed. 
 The dissatisfaction is natural ; yet a lively and accom- 
 plished critic, M. Charles d'Hericault,^ the editor of 
 Clement Marot, goes too far when he says that " the 
 cloud of glory playing round a classic is a mist as 
 dangerous to the future of a literature as it is intoler- 
 able for the purposes of history." " It hinders," he 
 goes on, " it hinders us from seeing more than one 
 single point, the culminating and exceptional point ; 
 the summary, fictitious and arbitrary, of a thought and 
 of a work. It substitutes a halo for a physiognomy, it 
 puts a statue where there was once a man, and hiding 
 from us all trace of the labor, the attempts, the weak- 
 nesses, the failures, it claims not study but veneration ; 
 it does not show us how the thing is done, it imposes 
 upon us a model. Above all, for the historian this 
 creation of classic personages is inadmissible ; for it 
 withdraws the poet from his time, from his proper life, 
 it breaks historical relationships, it blinds criticism by 
 conventional admiration, and renders the investigation
 
 60 IVLVTTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of literary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human 
 personage no longer, but a God seated immovable 
 amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus; 
 and hardly will it be possible for the young student, 
 to whom such work is exhibited at such a distance 
 from him, to believe that it did not issue ready made 
 from that divine head." 
 
 All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must 
 plead for a distinction. Everything depends on the 
 reality of a poet's classic character. If he is a dubious 
 classic, let us sift him ; if he is a false classic, let us 
 explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work 
 belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true 
 and right meaning of the word classic, classical), then 
 the great thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as 
 deeply as ever we can, and to appreciate the wide dif- 
 ference between it and all work which has not the 
 same high chai'acter. This is what is salutary, this is 
 what is formative ; this is the great benefit to be got 
 from the study of poetry. Everything which interferes 
 with it, which hinders it, is injurious. True, we must 
 read our classic with open eyes, and not with eyes 
 blinded with superstition ; we must perceive when his 
 work comes short, when it drops out of the class of 
 the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at 
 its proper value. But the use of this negative criti- 
 cism is not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to 
 have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what 
 is truly excellent. To trace the labor, the attempts, 
 the weaknesses, the faihn-es of a genuine classic, to 
 acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his 
 historical relationships, is mere literary dilettantism 
 imless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for 
 its end. It may be said that the more we know about 
 a classic the better we shall enjoy him ; and, if we
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 61 
 
 lived as long as Methuselah and had all of us heads 
 of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, 
 this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. 
 But the case here is much the same as the case with 
 the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The 
 elaborate philological groundwork which we require 
 them to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for 
 appreciating the Greek and Latin authors worthily. 
 The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better 
 we shall be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. 
 True, if time were not so short, and schoolboys' wits 
 not so soon tired and their power of attention ex- 
 hausted ; only, as it is, the elaborate philological j^rep- 
 aration goes on, but the authors are little known and 
 less enjoyed. So with the investigator of " historic ori- 
 gins " in poetry. He ought to enjoy the true classic all 
 the better for his investigations; he often is distracted 
 from the enjoyment of the best, and with the less 
 good he overbusies himself, and is prone to over-rate 
 it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him. 
 
 The idea of tracing historic origins and historical 
 relationships cannot be absent from a compilation like 
 the present. And naturally the poets to be exhibited 
 in it will be assigned to those persons for exhibition 
 who are known to prize them highly, rather than to 
 those who have no special inclination towards them. 
 ^ Moreover the very occupation with an author, and the 
 business of exhibiting him, disposes us to affirm and 
 amplify his importance. In the present work, there- 
 fore, we are sure of frequent temptation to adopt the 
 historic estimate, or the personal estimate, and to for- 
 get the real estimate ; which latter, nevertheless, we 
 must employ if we are to make poetry yield us its full 
 benefit. So high is that benefit, the benefit of clearly 
 feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent,
 
 02 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 the truly classic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to 
 set it fixedly before our minds as our object in study- 
 ing poets and poetry, and to make the desire of attain- 
 ing it the one principle to which, as the Imitation says, 
 whatever we may read or come to know, we always 
 return. Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum 
 se77iper oportet redire principium?- 
 I The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect 
 our judgment and our language when we are dealing 
 I with ancient poets ; the personal estimate when we are 
 1 1 dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate 
 ^iLmodern. The exaggerations due to the historic esti- 
 mate are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much 
 gravity. Their report hardly enters the general ear ; 
 probably they do not always impose even on the liter- 
 ary men who adopt them. But they lead to a danger- 
 ous abuse of language. So we hear Csedmon,^ amongst 
 our own poets, compared to Milton. I have already 
 noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French 
 critic for " historic origins." Another eminent French 
 critic, M. Vitet,^ comments upon that famous docu- 
 ment of the early poetry of his nation, the Chanson 
 de Roland.^ It is indeed a most interesting document. 
 The jocidator or jongleur Taillefer, who was with 
 William the Conqueror's army at Hastings, marched 
 before the Norman troops, so said the tradition, sing- 
 ing "of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, 
 and of the vassals who died at Roncevaux " ; and it is 
 suggested that in the Chanson de Roland by one 
 Turoldus or Theroulde, a poem preserved in a manu- 
 script of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library 
 at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even 
 some of the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. 
 The poem has vigor and freshness ; it is not without 
 pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 63 
 
 a document of some poetic value, and of very high 
 historic and linguistic value ; he sees in it a grand and 
 beautiful work, a monument of epic genius. In its 
 general design he finds the grandiose conception, in 
 its details he finds the constant union of simplicity 
 with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of 
 the genuine epic, and distinguish it from the artificial 
 epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is 
 the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly 
 given. Higher praise there cannot well be, and it is 
 the praise due to epic poetry of the highest order only, 
 and to no other. Let us try, then, the Chanson de 
 Roland at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays 
 himself down under a pine-tree, with his face turned 
 towards Spain and the enemy — 
 
 " De plusurs choses k remembrer li prist, 
 De tantes teres cume li bers cunquisfc, 
 De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, 
 De Carlemagne sun seignor ki I'nurrit." ^ 
 
 That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable 
 poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and 
 such praise is sufficient for it. But now turn to Homer — 
 
 ''Cis <pa.TO- Tovs 8' ^Stj KaTfx^v (pval^oos ala 
 €P AaKfSalfjLOVi ad6i, (piXri eV irarpiSi yairj^ 
 
 We are here in another world, another order of 
 poetry altogether ; here is rightly due such supreme 
 praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the Chanson 
 de Roland. If our words are to have any meaning, 
 if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must 
 not heap that supreme praise upon poetry of an order 
 immeasurably inferior. 
 
 Indeed there can be no more useful help for dis- 
 covering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly 
 excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to 
 have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the
 
 64 MATTHEW AENOLD 
 
 ^reat masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to 
 other poetry. Of course we are not to require this 
 other poetry to resemble them ; it may be very dis- 
 similar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, 
 when we have lodged them well in our minds, an 
 infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or 
 absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of 
 this quality, in all other poetry which we may place 
 beside them. Short passages, even single lines, will 
 serve our turn quite sufficiently. Take the two lines 
 which I have just quoted from Homer, the poet's 
 comment on Helen's mention of her brothers ; — or 
 take his 
 
 'a SfiXd, ri (T<pwl S6fj.ev U-qKrj'i ivaKTi 
 BvrjTa ; vfie^s S' fffrhv ayrtpv t adavdrw re. 
 ^ 'iva Sva'TrjvoicTi /jl€t' auSpdaii' &\y€^ €X'J''"*"'> ^ 
 
 the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus ; — or take 
 finally his 
 
 Koi <Tf, yfpoy, rh irplv yuev' aKOvofxev lj\$iov elvai- ^ 
 
 the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before 
 
 him. Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, 
 
 Ugolino's tremendous words — 
 
 " lo no piangeva ; si dentro impietrai. 
 Piangevan elli . . ." ^ 
 
 take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil — 
 
 " lo son fatta da Dio, sua merc^, tale, 
 Che la vostra miseria non mi taiige, 
 Ne fiamma d'esto iiicendio non m'assale ..." * 
 
 take the simple, but perfect, single line — 
 
 " In la sua volontade ^ nostra pace." ^ 
 
 Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the 
 
 Fourth's expostulation with sleep — 
 
 " Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
 Seal up tlie ship-boy's e3es, and rock his brains 
 In cradle of the rude imperious surge ..." *
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 65 
 
 and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio — 
 
 " If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain 
 To tell my story . . ." ^ 
 
 Take of Milkm that Miltonic passage — 
 
 " Darken'd so, yet shone 
 Above them all the archangel ; but his face 
 Deep scars of thunder had intreuch'd, and care 
 Sat on his faded cheek . . ." ^ 
 
 add two such lines as — 
 
 " And courage never to submit or yield 
 And what is else not to be overcome . . ." ^ 
 
 and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proser- 
 pine, the loss 
 
 "... which cost Ceres all that pain 
 To seek her through the world." * 
 
 These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are 
 enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound 
 our judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious 
 estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate. 
 
 The specimens I have quoted differ widely from 
 one another, but they have in common this : the pos- 
 session of the very highest poetical quality. If we are 
 thoroughly penetrated by their power, we shall find 
 that we have acquired a sense enabling us, whatever 
 poetry may be laid before us, to feel the degree in 
 which a high poetical quality is present or wanting 
 there. Critics give themselves great labor to draw out 
 what in the abstract constitutes the characters of a 
 high quality of poetry. It is much better simply to 
 have recourse to concrete examples ; — to take speci- 
 mens of poetry of the high, the very highest qual- 
 ity, and to say : The characters of a high quality of 
 poetry are what is expressed there. They are far better
 
 66 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 recognized by being felt in the verse of the master, 
 than by being perused in the prose of the critic. 
 Nevertheless if we are urgently pressed to give some 
 I critical account of them, we may safely, perhaps, ven- 
 ture on laying down, not indeed how and why the 
 characters arise, but where and in what they arise. 
 They are in the matter and substance of the poetry, 
 and they are in its manner and style. Both of these, 
 the substance and matter on the one hand, the style 
 and manner on the other, have a mark, an accent, 
 of high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are 
 asked to define this mark and accent in the abstract, 
 our answer must be : No, for we should thereby be 
 darkening the question, not clearing it. The mark 
 and accent are as given by the substance and matter 
 of that poetry, by the style and manner of that poetry, 
 and of all other poetry which is akin to it in quality. 
 Only one thing we may add as to the substance 
 and matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aris- 
 totle's profound observation ^ that the superiority of 
 i_ (, poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher 
 I truth and a higher seriousness (^(})t\oao(j)(OT€pov Kal 
 ^ jif/ya-'TrovSaioTepov'). Let us add, therefore, to what we 
 U^ have said, this : that the substance and matter of the 
 best poetry acquire their special character from pos- 
 sessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness. 
 We may add yet further, what is in itself evident, 
 that to the style and manner of the best poetry their 
 special character, their accent, is given by their diction, 
 and, even yet more, by their movement. And though 
 we distinguish between the two characters, the two 
 accents, of superiority, yet they are nevertheless vitally 
 j connected one with the other. The superior character 
 j of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance of 
 [ the best poetry, is inseparable from the superiority
 
 THE STUDY OP POETRY 67 
 
 of diction and movement marking its style and man- 
 ner. The two superiorities are closely related, and are 
 in steadfast proportion one to the other. So far as 
 high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to a 
 poet's matter and substance, so far also, we may be y*^ 
 
 sure, will a high poetic stamp of diction and move- ^^^\^ '^ 
 ment be wanting to his style and manner. In propor- .. .'^''^ 
 tion as this high stamp of diction and movement, 
 again, is absent from a poet's style and manner, we 
 shall find, also, that high poetic truth and seriousness 
 are absent from his substance and matter. "T 
 
 So stated, these are but dry generalities ; their 
 whole force lies in their application. And I could .»«. 
 
 wish every student of poetry to make the application 
 of them for himself. Made by himself, the applica- / / ' ^ " 
 tion would impress itself upon his mind far more 
 deeply than made by me. Neither will my limits 
 allow me to make any full application of the gener- x/t^.^ 
 alities above propounded ; but in the hope of bring- 
 ing out, at any rate, some significance in them, and 
 of establishing an important principle more firmly by 
 their means, I wiU, in the space which remains to me, 
 follow rapidly from the commencement the course of 
 our English poetry with them in my view. 
 
 Once more I return to the early poetry of France, 
 with which our own poetry, in its origins, is indis- 
 solubly connected. In the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies, that seed-time of all modern language and 
 literature, the poetry of France had a clear pi-edomi- 
 nance in Europe. Of the two divisions of that poetry, 
 its productions in the langue d'o'il and its productions 
 in the langve d'oc, the poetry of the langue cVoc} 
 of southern France, of the troubadours, is of impor- 
 tance because of its effect on Italian literature ; — the 
 first literature of modern Europe to strike the true and
 
 68 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 grand note, and to bring forth, as in Dante and Pe- 
 trarch it brought forth, classics. But the predomi- 
 nance of French poetry in Eui'ope, during the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries, is due to its poetry of the 
 langue cTo'il, the poetry of northern France and of 
 the tongue which is now the French language. In the 
 twelfth century the bloom of this romance-poetry was 
 earlier and stronger in England, at the court of our 
 Anglo-Norman kings, than in France itself. But it 
 was a bloom of French poetry; and as our native 
 poetry formed itself, it formed itself out of this. The 
 romance-poems which took possession of the heart and 
 imagination of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries are French ; " they are," as Southey justly 
 says, " the pride of French literature, nor have we 
 anything which can be placed in competition with 
 them." Themes were supplied from all quarters : but 
 the romance-setting which was common to them all, 
 and which gained the ear of Europe, was French. 
 This constituted for the French poetry, literature, and 
 language, at the height of the Middle Age, an unchal- 
 lenged predominance. The Italian Brunetto Latini,^ 
 the master of Dante, wrote his Treasure in French 
 because, he says, " la parleure en est plus delitable et 
 plus commune a toutes gens." In the same century, 
 the thirteenth, the French romance-writer. Christian 
 of Troyes,^ formulates the claims, in chivalry and let- 
 ters, of France, his native country, as follows : — 
 
 " Or vons ert par ce livre apris, 
 Que Gresse ot de chevalerie 
 Le premier los et de clergie ; 
 Puis vint chevalerie h Roine, 
 Et de la clergie la some, 
 Qui ore est en France venue. 
 Diex doinst qu'ele i soit retenue 
 Et que li lius li abelisse
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 69 
 
 Tant que de France n'isse 
 L'onor qui s'i est arest^e ! " 
 
 " Now by this book you will learn that first Greece 
 Lad the renown for chivalry and letters : then chivalry 
 and the primacy in letters passed to Rome, and now 
 it is come to France. God grant it may be kept there ; 
 and that the place may please it so well, that the honor 
 which has come to make stay in France may never 
 depart thence ! " 
 
 Yet it is now all gone, this French romance-poetry, 
 of which the weight of substance and the power of 
 style are not unfairly represented by this extract from 
 Christian of Troyes. Only by means of the historic 
 estimate can we persuade ourselves now to think that 
 any of it is of poetical importance. 
 
 But in the fourteenth century there comes an Eng- 
 lishman nourished on this poetry ; taught his trade by 
 this poetry, getting words, rhyme, meter from this 
 poetry ; for even of that stanza ^ which the Italians 
 used, and which Chaucer derived immediately from the 
 Italians, the basis and suggestion was probably given 
 in France. Chaucer (I have already named him) fas- 
 cinated his contemporaries, but so too did Christian 
 of Troyes and Wolfram of Eschenbach. ^ Chaucer's 
 power of fascination, however, is enduring ; his poetical 
 importance does not need the assistance of the historic 
 estimate ; it is real. He is a genuine source of joy and 
 strength, which is flowing still for us and will flow 
 always. He will be read, as time goes on, far more 
 generally than he is read now. His language is a cause 
 of difficulty for us ; but so also, and I think in quite 
 as great a degree, is the language of Burns. In Chau- 
 cer's case, as in that of Bui'us, it is a difficulty to be 
 unhesitatingly accepted and overcome. 
 
 If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense
 
 70 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 superiority of Chaucer's poetry over the romance-poetry 
 — why it is that in passing from this to Chaucer we 
 suddenly feel ourselves to be in another world, we shall 
 find that his superiority is both in the substance of his 
 poetry and in the style of his poetry. His superiority in 
 substance is given by his large, free, simple, clear yet 
 kindly view of human life, — so unlike the total want, 
 in the romance-poets, of all intelligent command of it. 
 Chaucer has not their helplessness ; he has gained the 
 power to survey the world from a central, a truly 
 human point of view. We have only to call to mind 
 the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The right 
 comment upon it Is Dryden's : " It is sufficient to say, 
 according to the proverb, that Aere i.<? GocVs plenty "^ 
 And again : " He is a perpetual fountain of good sense." 
 It Is by a large, free, sound representation of things, 
 that poetry, this high criticism of life, has truth of 
 substance ; and Chaucer's poetry has truth of substance. 
 Of his style and manner, if we think first of the 
 romance-poetry and then of Chaucer's divine liquid- 
 ness of diction, his divine fluidity of movement, it is 
 difficult to speak temperately. They are irresistible, 
 and justify all the rapture with which his successors 
 speak of his " gold dew-drops of speech." Johnson 
 misses the point entirely when he finds fault with 
 Dryden for ascribing to Chaucer the first refinement 
 of our numbers, and says that Gower ^ also can show 
 smooth numbers and easy rhymes. The refinement of 
 our numbers means something far more than this. A 
 nation may have versifiers with smooth numbers and 
 easy rhymes, and yet may have no real poetry at all. 
 Chaucer is the father of our splendid English poetry ; 
 he is our " well of English undefiled," because by tiie 
 lovely charm of his diction, the lovely charm of his 
 movement, he makes an epoch and founds a tradition.
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 71 
 
 In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, we can fol- 
 low the tradition of the liquid diction, the fluid move- 
 ment, of Chaucer ; at one time it is his liquid diction of 
 which in these poets we feel the virtue, and at another 
 time it is his fluid movement. And the virtue is irre- 
 sistible. 
 
 Bounded as is my space, I must yet find room for an 
 example of Chaucer's virtue, as I have given examples 
 to show the vii'tue of the great classics. I feel disposed 
 to say that a single line is enough to show the charm 
 of Chaucer's verse; that merely one line like this — 
 " O martyr souded ^ in virgiuitee ! " 
 
 has a virtue of manner and movement such as we shall 
 not find in all the verse of romance-poetry ; — but this 
 is saying nothing. The virtue is such as we shall not 
 find, perhaps, in all English poetry, outside the poets 
 whom I have named as the special inheritors of Chau- 
 cer's tradition. A single line, however, is too little if 
 we have not the strain of Chaucer's verse well in our 
 memory; let us take a stanza. It is from The Pri- 
 oress's Tale^ the story of the Christian child mur- 
 dered in a Jewry — 
 
 " My tlirote is cut unto my nekke-bone 
 Saide this child, and as by way of kinde 
 I should have deyd, yea, long^ time agone ; 
 But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookes finde, 
 Will that his glory last and be in niinde, 
 And for the worship of his mother dere 
 Yet may I sing O Alma loud and clere." 
 
 Wordsworth has modernized this Tale, and to feel 
 
 how delicate and evanescent is the charm of verse, we 
 
 have only to read Wordsworth's first three lines of 
 
 this stanza after Chaucer's — 
 
 " My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow, 
 Said this young child, and by the law of kind 
 I should have died, yea, many hours ago."
 
 72 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 The charm is departed. It is often said that the 
 power of liquidness and fluidity in Chaucer's verse 
 was dependent upon a free, a licentious dealing with 
 language, such as is now impossible ; upon a liberty, 
 such as Burns too enjoyed, of making words like neck, 
 bird, into a dissyllable by adding to them, and words 
 like cause, rhyme, into a dissyllable by sounding the 
 e mute. It is true that Chaucer's fluidity is conjoined 
 with this liberty, and is admirably served by it; but 
 we ought not to say that it was dependent upon it. 
 It was dependent upon his talent. Other poets with a 
 like liberty do not attain to the fluidity of Chaucer ; 
 Burns himself does not attain to it. Poets, again, who 
 have a talent akin to Chaucer's, such as Shakespeare 
 or Keats, have known how to attain to his fluidity 
 without the like liberty. 
 
 And yet Chaucer is not one of the great classics. 
 His poetry transcends and effaces, easily and without 
 effort, all the romance-poetry of Catholic Christendom ; 
 it transcends and effaces all the English poetry con- 
 temporary with it, it transcends and effaces all the 
 English poetry subsequent to it down to the age of 
 Elizabeth. Of such avail is poetic truth of substance, 
 in its natural and necessary union with poetic truth of 
 style. And yet, I say, Chaucer is not one of the great 
 classics. He has not their accent. What is wanting to 
 him is suggested by the mere mention of the name of 
 the first great classic of Christendom, the immortal 
 poet who died eighty years before Chaucer, — Dante. 
 The accent of such verse as 
 
 " In la sua volontade fe nostra pace . . ." 
 
 is altogether beyond Chaucer's reach ; we praise him, 
 but we feel that this accent is out of the question for 
 him. It may be said that it was necessarily out of the
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 73 
 
 reach of any poet in the England of that stage of 
 growth. Possibly ; but we are to adopt a real, not a his- 
 toric, estimate of poetry. However we may account for 
 its absence, something is wanting, then, to the poetry 
 of Chaucer, which poetry must have before it can be 
 placed in the glorious class of the best. And there is 
 no doubt what that something is. It is the o-TrouSaioT?/?, 
 the high and excellent seriousness, which Aristotle 
 assigns as one of the grand virtues of poetry. The 
 substance of Chaucer's poetry, his view of things and 
 his criticism of life, has largeness, freedom, shrewd- 
 ness, benignity ; but it has not this high seriousness. 
 Homer's criticism of life has it, Dante's has it, Shake- 
 speare's has it. It is this chiefly which gives to our 
 spirits what they can rest upon ; and with the increas- 
 ing demands of our modern ages upon poetry, this 
 virtue of giving us what we can rest upon will be more 
 and more highly esteemed. A voice from the slums 
 of Paris, fifty or sixty years after Chaucer, the voice 
 of poor Villon ^ out of his life of riot and crime, has 
 at its happy moments (as, for instance, in the last 
 stanza of La Belle Heaulmiere ^) more of this impor- 
 tant poetic virtue of seriousness than all the produc- 
 tions of Chaucer. But its apparition in Villon, and in 
 men like Villon, is fitful ; the greatness of the great 
 poets, the power of their criticism of life, is that their 
 virtue is sustained. 
 
 To our praise, therefore, of Chaucer as a poet there 
 must be this limitation : he lacks the high seriousness 
 of the great classics, and therewith an important part 
 of their virtue. Still, the main fact for us to bear in 
 mind about Chaucer is his sterling value according to 
 that real estimate which we firmly adopt for all poets. 
 He has poetic truth of substance, though he has not 
 high poetic seriousness, and corresponding to his
 
 74 ^L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 truth of substance he has an exquisite virtue of style 
 and manner. AVith him is born our real poetry. 
 
 For my present purpose I need not dwell on oiir 
 Elizabethan poetry, or on the continuation and close 
 of this poetry in Milton. AVe all of us profess to be 
 agreed in the estimate of this poetry ; we all of us 
 recognize it as great poetry, our greatest, and Shake- 
 speare and Milton as our poetical classics. The real 
 estimate, here, has universal currency. With the next 
 age of our poetry divergency and difficulty begin. An 
 historic estimate of that poetry has established itself ; 
 and the question is, whether it will be found to coin- 
 cide with the real estimate. 
 
 The age of Drj-den, together with our whole eight- 
 eenth century which followed it, sincerely believed 
 itself to have produced poetical classics of its own, 
 and even to have made advance, in poetry, beyond all 
 its predecessors. Dryden regards as not seriously dis- 
 putable the opinion " that the sweetness of English 
 verse was never understood or practised by our 
 fathers." ^ Cowley could see nothing at all in Chau- 
 cer's poetry. 2 Dryden heartily admired it, and, as we 
 have seen, praised its matter admirably; but of its 
 exquisite manner and movement all he can find to say 
 is that " there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune 
 in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not per- 
 fect.'' ^ Addison, wishing to praise Chaucer's nmnbers, 
 compares them with Dryden's ovm. And all through 
 the eighteenth century, and down even into our o^^^l 
 times, the stereotyped phrase of approbation for good 
 verse found in our early poetry has been, that it even 
 approached the verse of Dryden, Addison, Pope, and 
 Johnson. 
 
 Are Dryden and Pope poetical classics ? Is the his- 
 toric estimate, which represents them as such, and
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 75 
 
 which has been so long established that it cannot 
 easily give way, the real estimate ? Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge,! ag jg ^^11 known, denied it ; but the au- 
 thority of Wordsworth and Coleridge does not weigh 
 much with the young generation, and there are many 
 signs to show that the eighteenth century and its 
 judgments are coming into favor again. Are the fa- 
 vorite poets of the eighteenth century classics ? 
 
 It is impossible within my present limits to discuss 
 the question fuUy. And what man of letters would 
 not shrink from seeming to dispose dictatorially of 
 the claims of two men who are, at any rate, such 
 masters in letters as Dryden and Pope ; two men of 
 such admirable talent, both of them, and one of them, 
 Dryden, a man, on all sides, of such energetic and 
 genial power? And yet, if we are to gain the full 
 benefit from poetry, we must have the real estimate 
 of it. I cast about for some mode of arriving, in the 
 present case, at such an estimate without offence. And 
 perhaps the best way is to begin, as it is easy to begin, 
 with cordial praise. 
 
 When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator 
 of Homer, expressing himseK in his preface thus : 
 " Though truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep 
 a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and Ganges few 
 eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here will so 
 discover and confirm that, the date being out of her 
 darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall now 
 gird his temples with the sun," — we pronounce that 
 such a prose is intolerable. When we find Milton 
 writing : " And long it was not after, when I was con- 
 firmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frus- 
 trate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
 things, ought himself to be a true poem," ^ — we pro- 
 nounce that such a prose has its own grandeur, but
 
 76 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 that it Is obsolete and inconvenient. But when we find 
 Dryden telling us : " What Virgil wrote in the vigor 
 of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken 
 to translate in my declining years ; struggling with 
 wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, 
 liable to be misconstrued in all I write," ^ — then we 
 exclaim that here at last we have the true English 
 prose, a prose such as we would all gladly use if we only 
 knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton's contemporary. 
 
 But after the Restoration the time had come when 
 our nation felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, 
 too, the time had likewise come when our nation felt 
 the imperious need of freeing itself from the absorb- 
 ing preoccupation which religion in the Puritan age 
 had exercised. It was impossible that this freedom 
 should be bi'ought about without some negative excess, 
 without some neglect and impairment of the religious 
 life of the soul ; and the spiritual history of the eight- 
 eenth century shows us that the freedom was not 
 achieved without them. Still, the freedom was achieved; 
 the preoccupation, an undoubtedly baneful and re- 
 tarding one if it had continued, was got rid of. And 
 as with religion amongst us at that period, so it was 
 also with letters. A fit prose was a necessity ; but it 
 was impossible that a fit prose should establish itself 
 amongst us without some touch of frost to the imagi- 
 native life of the soul. The needful qualities for a fit 
 prose are regularity, uniformity, precision, balance. 
 The men of letters, whose destiny it may be to bring 
 their nation to the attainment of a fit prose, must of 
 necessity, whether they work in prose or in verse, give 
 a predominating, an almost exclusive attention to the 
 qualities of regularity, uniformity, precision, balance. 
 But an almost exclusive attention to these qualities 
 involves some repression and silencing of poetry.
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 77 
 
 We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glo- 
 rious founder, Pope as the splendid high priest, of our 
 age of prose and reason, of our excellent and indis- 
 pensable eighteenth century. For the purposes of their 
 mission and destiny their poetry, like their prose, is 
 admirable. Do you ask me whether Dryden's verse, 
 take it almost where you will, is not good ? 
 
 " A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged, 
 Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged." ^ 
 
 I answer : Admirable for the purposes of the inaugu- 
 rator of an age of prose and reason. Do you ask me 
 whether Pope's verse, take it almost where you will, is 
 not good ? 
 
 "To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down ; I'J^-'P^^^ 
 
 Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own.^" ?^ , . . 
 
 I answer : Admirable for the purposes of the high 
 priest of an age of prose and reason. But do you ask 
 me whether such verse proceeds from men with an 
 adequate poetic criticism of life, from men whose criti- 
 cism of life has a high seriousness, or even, without 
 that high seriousness, has poetic largeness, freedom, 
 insight, benignity ? Do you ask me whether the appli- 
 cation of ideas to life in the verse of these men, often 
 a powerful application, no doubt, is a powerful poetic 
 application ? Do you ask me whether the poetry of 
 these men has either the matter or the inseparable 
 manner of such an adequate poetic criticism ; whether 
 it has the accent of 
 
 " Absent thee from felicity awhile . . ." 
 
 rV^ 
 
 '•rA 
 
 or of 
 or of 
 
 " And what is else not to be overcome 
 
 " O martyr souded in virginitee ! " 
 
 I answer : It has not and cannot have them ; it is the 
 poetry of the builders of an age of prose and reason.
 
 78 MATTHEW AKNOLD 
 
 Though they may write in verse, though they may in 
 a certain sense be masters of the art of versification, 
 Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they 
 are classics of our prose. 
 
 Gray is our poetical classic of that literature and 
 age ; the position of Gray is singular, and demands a 
 word of notice here. He has not the volume or the 
 power of poets who, coming in times more favorable, 
 have attained to an independent criticism of life. But 
 he lived with the great poets, he lived, above all, with 
 the Greeks, through perpetually studying and enjoy- 
 ing them ; and he caught their poetic point of view 
 for regarding life, caught their poetic manner. The 
 point of view and the manner are not self-sprung in 
 him, he caught them of others ; and he had not the 
 free and abundant use of them. But whereas Addison 
 and Pope never had the use of them. Gray had the use 
 of them at times. He is the scantiest and frailest of 
 classics in our poetry, but he is a classic. 
 
 And now, after Gray, we are met, as we draw 
 towards the end of the eighteenth century, we are met 
 by the great name of Burns. AYe enter now on times 
 where the personal estimate of poets begins to be rife, 
 and where the real estimate of them is not reached 
 without difficulty. But in spite of the disturbing pres- 
 sures of personal partiality, of national partiality, let 
 us try to reach a real estimate of the poetry of Burns. 
 By his English poetry Burns in general belongs to 
 the eighteenth century, and has little importance for 
 us. 
 
 " Mark ruffian Violence, distaiu'd with crimes, 
 Rousing elate in these degenerate times ; 
 View nnsuspecting Innocence a prey, 
 As guileful Fraud points out the erring way; 
 While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue 
 The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong ! " ^
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 79 
 
 Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and 
 fame would have disappeared long ago. Nor is Clar- 
 inda's^ love-poet, Sylvander, the real Burns either. 
 But he tells us himself : " These English songs gravel 
 me to death. I have not the command of the language 
 that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think that 
 my ideas are more barren in English than in Scotch. 
 I have been at Duncan Gray to dress it in English, 
 but all I can do is desperately stupid." ^ We English 
 turn naturally, in Burns, to the poems in our own lan- 
 guage, because we can read them easily ; but in those 
 poems we have not the real Burns. 
 
 The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. 
 Let us boldly say that of much of this poetry, a poetry 
 dealing perpetually with Scotch drink, Scotch religion, 
 and Scotch manners, a Scotchman's estimate is apt to 
 be personal. A Scotchman is used to this world of 
 Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners ; 
 he has a tenderness for it ; he meets its poet half way. 
 In this tender mood he reads pieces like the Holy Fair 
 or Halloween. But this world of Scotch drink, Scotch 
 religion, and Scotch manners is against a poet, not for 
 him, when it is not a partial countryman who reads 
 him ; for in itself it is not a beautiful world, and no 
 one can deny that it is of advantage to a poet to deal 
 with a beautiful world. Burns's world of Scotch drink, 
 Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, is often a harsh, 
 a sordid, a repulsive world ; even the world of his 
 Cotter^s Saturday Night is not a beautiful world. 
 No doubt a poet's criticism of life may have such 
 truth and power that it triumphs over its world and 
 delights us. Burns may triumph over his world, 
 often he does triumph over his world, but let us 
 observe how and where. Burns is the first case we 
 have had where the bias of the personal estimate
 
 80 ]VIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 tends to mislead ; let us look at him closely, he can 
 bear it. 
 
 Many of his admirers will tell us that we have 
 Burns, convivial, genuine, delightful, here — 
 
 " Leeze me on drink ! it gies us mair 
 Than either school or college ; 
 It kindles wit, it wankeus lair, 
 
 It pangs us fou o' knowledge. 
 Be 't whisky gill or penny wheep 
 
 Or ony stronger potion. 
 It never fails, on drinking deep, 
 To kittle up our notion 
 
 By night or day." ^ 
 
 There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, 
 and it is unsatisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian 
 poetry, but because it has not that accent of sincerity 
 which bacchanalian poetry, to do it justice, very often 
 has. There is something in it of bravado, something 
 which makes us feel that we have not the man speak- 
 ing to us with his real voice ; something, therefore, 
 poetically unsound. 
 
 With still more confidence will his admirers tell us 
 that we have the genuine Burns, the great poet, when 
 his strain asserts the independence, equality, dignity, 
 of men, as in the famous song For a' that and a' 
 that — 
 
 " A prince can mak' a belted knight, 
 A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
 But an honest man 's aboon his might, 
 Guid faith he mauna fa' that ! 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 Their dignities, and a' that, 
 The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, 
 Are higher rank than a' that." 
 
 Here they find his grand, genuine touches ; and still 
 more, when this puissant genius, who so often set 
 morality at defiance, falls moralizing —
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 81 
 
 " The sacred lowe o' weel-placed love 
 
 Luxuriantly indulge it ; 
 But never tempt th' illicit rove, 
 
 Tho' naething should divulge it. 
 I waive the quantum o' the sin, 
 
 The hazard o' concealing, 
 But och ! it hardens a' within, 
 
 And petrifies the feeling. "^ 
 
 Or in a higher strain — 
 
 "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us ; 
 He knows each chord, its various tone ; 
 
 Each spring, its various bias. 
 Then at the balance let 's be mute, 
 
 We never can adjust it ; 
 What 's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what 's resisted." ^ 
 
 Or in a better strain yet, a strain, his admirers will 
 
 say, unsurpassable — ■ 
 
 " To make a happy fire-side clime 
 To weans and wife. 
 That 's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life." » 
 
 There is criticism of life for you, the admirers of Burns 
 will say to us ; there is the application of ideas to life ! 
 There is, undoubtedly. The doctrine of the last-quoted 
 lines coincides almost exactly with what was the aim 
 and end, Xenophon tells us, of all the teaching of 
 Socrates. And the application is a powerful one ; 
 made by a man of vigorous understanding, and (need 
 I say ?) a master of language. 
 
 But for supreme poetical success more is required 
 than the powerful application of ideas to life ; it must 
 be an application under the conditions fixed by the 
 laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Those laws 
 fix as an essential condition, in the poet's treatment of 
 such matters as are here in question, high seriousness; 
 TT— the hio'h seriousness which comes from absolute
 
 82 ]VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 sincerity. The accent of higli seriousness, born of ab- 
 solute sincerity, is what gives to such verse as 
 
 " In la sua volontade e nostra pace . . ." 
 
 to such criticism of life as Dante's, its power. Is this 
 accent felt in the passages which I have been quoting 
 from Burns ? Surely not ; surely, if our sense is 
 quick, we must perceive that we have not in those 
 passages a voice from the very inmost soul of the gen- 
 uine Burns ; he is not speaking to us from these 
 depths, he is more or less preaching. And the 
 compensation for admiring such passages less, for 
 missing the perfect poetic accent in them, will be that 
 we shall admire more the poetry where that accent is 
 found. 
 
 No; Burns, like Chaucer, comes short of the high 
 seriousness of the great classics, and the virtue of mat- 
 ter and manner which goes with that high seriousness 
 is wanting to his work. At moments he touches it in 
 a prof oimd and passionate melancholy, as in those four 
 immortal lines taken by Bj-ron as a motto for The 
 Bride of Ahydos, but which have in them a depth of 
 poetic quality such as resides in no verse of Byron's 
 
 own — 
 
 " Had we never loved sae kindly, 
 Had we never loved sae blindly, 
 Never met, or never parted, 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 
 
 But a whole poem of that quality Burns cannot make ; 
 the rest, in the Farewell to Xancy, is verbiage. 
 
 We arrive best at the real estimate of Burns, I 
 think, by conceiving his work as having truth of mat- 
 ter and truth of manner, but not the accent or the 
 poetic virtue of the highest masters. His genuine criti- 
 cism of life, when the sheer poet in him speaks, is 
 ironic ; it is not —
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 83 
 
 " Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme 
 These woes of mine fulfil, 
 Here firm I rest, they must be best 
 Because they are Thy will ! " ^ 
 
 It is far rather : Whistle owre the lave ot ! Yet we 
 may say of him as of Chaucer, that of life and the 
 world, as they come before him, his view is large, free, 
 shrewd, benignant, — truly poetic, therefore ; and his 
 manner of rendering what he sees is to match. But we 
 must note, at the same time, his great difference from 
 Chaucer. The freedom of Chaucer is heightened, in 
 Burns, by a fiery, reckless energy ; the benignity of 
 Chaucer deepens, in Burns, into an overwhelming 
 sense of the pathos of things ; — of the pathos of 
 human nature, the pathos, also, of non-human nature. 
 Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer's manner, the man- 
 ner of Burns has spring, bounding swiftness. Burns 
 is by far the greater force, though he has perhaps less 
 charm. The world of Chaucer is fairer, richer, more 
 significant than that of Burns ; but when the largeness 
 and freedom of Burns get full sweep, as in Tarn o' 
 Shanter, or still more in that puissant and splendid 
 production. The Jolly Beggars, his world may be what 
 it will, his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the world 
 of The Jolly Beggars there is more than hideousness 
 and squalor, there is bestiality ; yet the piece is a su- 
 perb poetic success. It has a breadth, truth, and power 
 which make the famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, 
 of Goethe's Faust, seem artificial and tame beside it, 
 and which are only matched by Shakespeare and Aris- 
 tophanes. 
 
 Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so 
 admirably, and also in those poems and songs where 
 to shrewdness he adds infinite archness and wit, and 
 to benignity infinite pathos, where his manner is flaw-
 
 84 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 less, and a perfect poetic whole is the result, — in 
 things like the address to the mouse whose home he 
 had ruined, in things like Duncan Gray^ Tarn Glen^ 
 Whistle and I'll come to you my Lad., Auld Lang 
 Syne (this list might be made much longer), — here 
 we have the genuine Burns, of whom the real estimate 
 must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor with the excel- 
 lent (TTrovSaioTrj'i of the great classics, nor with a verse 
 rising to a criticism of life and a virtue like theirs ; 
 but a poet with thorough truth of substance and an 
 answering truth of style, giving us a poetry sound to 
 the core. We all of us have a leaning towards the 
 pathetic, and may be inclined perhaps to prize Burns 
 most for his touches of piercing, sometimes almost 
 intolerable, pathos ; for verse like — 
 
 " We twa hae paidl't i' the burn 
 From moriiin' sun till dine; 
 But seas between us braid hae roar'd 
 Sin auld lang syne ..." 
 
 where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is 
 by the perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer 
 masterpieces that he is poetically most wholesome for 
 us. For the votary misled by a personal estimate of 
 Shelley, as so many of us have been, are, and will be, 
 — of that beautiful spirit building his many-colored 
 haze of words and images 
 
 " Pinnacled dim in the intense inane " — ^ 
 
 Tio contact can be wholesomer than the contact with 
 
 Burns at his archest and soundest. Side by side with 
 
 the 
 
 " On the brink of the night and the morning 
 My coursers are wont to respire, 
 But the Earth has just wliispered a warning 
 
 That their flight must be swifter than fire . . ." ^
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 85 
 
 of Prometheus Unhound, how salutary, how very 
 salutary, to place this from Tam Glen — 
 
 " My minnie does constantly deave me 
 And bids me beware o' young men ; 
 They flatter, she says, to deceive me ; 
 But wha can think sae o' Tam Glen ? " 
 
 But we enter on burning ground as we approach 
 the poetry of times so near to us — poetry like that 
 of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth — of which the 
 estimates are so often not only personal, but personal 
 with passion. For my purpose, it is enough to have 
 taken the single case of Burns, the first poet we come 
 to of whose work the estimate formed is evidently apt 
 to be personal, and to have suggested how we may 
 proceed, using the poetry of the great classics as a 
 sort of touchstone, to correct this estimate, as we had 
 previously corrected by the same means the historic 
 estimate where we met with it. A collection like the 
 present, with its succession of celebrated names and 
 celebrated poems, offers a good opportunity to us for 
 resolutely endeavoring to make our estimates of poetry 
 real. I have sought to point out a method which will 
 help us in making them so, and to exhibit it in use so 
 far as to put any one who likes in a way of applying 
 it for himself. 
 
 At any rate the end to which the method and the 
 estimate are designed to lead, and from leading to 
 which, if they do lead to it, they get their whole value, 
 ■ — the benefit of being able clearly to feel and deeply 
 to enjoy the best, the truly classic, in poetry, — is an 
 end, let me say it once more at parting, of supreme 
 importance. We are often told that an era is opening 
 in which we are to see multitudes of a common sort of 
 readers, and masses of a common sort of literature ; 
 that such readers do not want and could not relish
 
 86 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 anything better than such literature, and that to pro- 
 vide it is becoming a vast and profitable industry. 
 Even if good literature entirely lost currency with the 
 world, it would still be abundantly worth while to 
 continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never will lose 
 currency with the woi-ld, in spite of momentary ap- 
 pearances ; it never will lose supremacy. Currency 
 and supremacy are insured to it, not indeed by the 
 world's deliberate and conscious choice, but by some- 
 thing far deeper, — by the instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion in humanity.
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE i 
 
 Practical people talk with a smile of Plato and 
 of his absolute ideas ; and it is impossible to deny that 
 Plato's ideas do often seem unpractical and imprac- 
 ticable, and especially when one views them in con- 
 nection with the life of a great work-a-day world like 
 the United States. The necessary staple of the life of 
 such a world Plato regards with disdain ; handicraft 
 and trade and the working professions he regards with 
 disdain ; but what becomes of the life of an industrial 
 modern community if you take handicraft and trade 
 and the working professions out of it ? The base me- 
 chanic arts and handicrafts, says Plato, bring about a 
 natural weakness in the principle of excellence in a 
 man, so that he cannot govern the ignoble growths in 
 him, but nurses them, and cannot understand foster- 
 ing any other. Those who exercise such arts and 
 trades, as they have their bodies, he says, marred by 
 their vulgar businesses, so they have their souls, too, 
 bowed and broken by them. And if one of these un- 
 comely people has a mind to seek self-culture and 
 philosophy, Plato compares him to a bald little tinker,^ 
 who has scraped together money, and has got his re- 
 lease from service, and has had a bath, and bought a 
 new coat, and is rigged out like a bridegroom about 
 to marry the daughter of his master who has fallen 
 into poor and helpless estate. 
 
 Nor do the working professions fare any better than 
 trade at the hands of Plato. He draws for us an in- 
 imitable picture of the working lawyer,^ and of his 
 life of bondage ; he shows how this bondage from his
 
 88 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 youth up has stunted and warped him, and made him 
 small and crooked of soul, encompassing him with dif- 
 ficulties which he is not man enough to rely on justice 
 and truth as means to encounter, but has recourse, for 
 help out of them, to falsehood and wrong. And so, 
 says Plato, this poor creature is bent and broken, and 
 grows up from boy to man without a particle of sound- 
 ness in him, although exceedingly smart and clever in 
 his own esteem. 
 
 One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws 
 these pictures. But we say to ourselves that his ideas 
 show the influence of a primitive and obsolete order of 
 things, when the warrior caste and the priestly caste 
 were alone in honor, and the humble work of the 
 world was done by slaves. We have now changed aU 
 that : the modern majesty^ consists in work, as Emer- 
 son declares ; and in work, we may add, principally of 
 such plain and dusty kind as the work of cultivators 
 of the ground, handicraftsmen, men of trade and busi- 
 ness, men of the working professions. Above all is 
 this true in a great industrious community such as 
 that of the United States. 
 
 Now education, many people go on to say, is still 
 mainly governed by the ideas of men like Plato, who 
 lived when the warrior caste and the priestly or phil- 
 osophical class were alone in honor, and the really 
 useful part of the community were slaves. It is an 
 education fitted for persons of leisure in such a com- 
 munity. This education passed from Greece and Rome 
 to the feudal communities of Europe, where also the 
 warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone held in 
 honor, and where the really useful and working part 
 of the community, though not nominally slaves as in 
 the pagan world, were practically not much better off 
 than slaves, and not more seriously regarded. And
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 89 
 
 how aLsurcl it is, people end by saying, to inflict tliis 
 education upon an industrious modern community, 
 where very few indeed are persons of leisure, and the 
 mass to be considered has not leisure, but is bound, for 
 its own great good, and for the great good of the 
 world at large, to plain labor and to industrial pur- 
 suits, and the education in question tends necessarily 
 to make men dissatisfied with these pursuits and un- 
 fitted for them ! 
 
 That is what is said. So far I must defend Plato, 
 as to plead that his view of education and studies is 
 in the general, as it seems to me, sound enough, and 
 fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever their 
 pursuits may be. " An intelligent man," says Plato, 
 " will prize those studies which result in his soul get- 
 ting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will 
 less value the others." ^ I cannot consider that a bad 
 description of the aim of education, and of the motives 
 which shoidd govern us in the choice of studies, 
 whether we are preparing ourselves for a hereditary 
 seat in the English House of Lords or for the pork 
 trade in Chicago. 
 
 Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that 
 his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, that he 
 had no conception of a great industrial community 
 such as that of the United States, and that such a com- 
 munity must and will shape its education to suit its 
 own needs. If the usual education handed down to it 
 from the past does not suit it, it will certainly before 
 long drop this and try another. The usual education 
 in the past has been mainly literary. The question is 
 whether the studies which were long supposed to be 
 the best for all of us are practically the best now ; 
 whether others are not better. The tyranny of the 
 past, many think, weighs on us injuriously in the pre-
 
 90 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 dominance given to letters in education. The question 
 is raised whether, to meet the needs of our modern 
 life, the predominance ought not now to pass from 
 letters to science ; and naturally the question is no- 
 where raised with more energy than here in the 
 United States. The design of abasing what is called 
 " mere literary instruction and education," and of 
 exalting what is called " sound, extensive, and prac- 
 tical scientific knowledge," is, in this intensely modern 
 world of the United States, even more perhaps than 
 in Europe, a very popular design, and makes great 
 and rapid progress. 
 
 I am going to ask whether the present movement 
 for ousting letters from their old predominance in 
 education, and for transferring the predominance in 
 education to the natural sciences, whether this brisk 
 and flourishing movement ought to prevail, and whether 
 it is likely that in the end it really will prevail. An ob- 
 jection may be raised which I will anticipate. My own 
 studies have been almost wholly in letters, and my 
 visits to the field of the natural sciences have been very 
 slight and inadequate, although those sciences have 
 always strongly moved my curiosity. A man of letters, 
 it will perhaps be said, is not competent to discuss the 
 comparative merits of letters and natural science as 
 means of education. To this objection I reply, first of 
 aU, that his incompetence, if he attempts the discus- 
 sion but is really incompetent for it, will be abun- 
 dantly visible ; nobody will be taken in ; he will have 
 plenty of sharp observers and critics to save mankind 
 from that danger. But the line I am going to follow is, 
 as you will soon discover, so extremely simple, that 
 perhaps it may be followed without failure even by 
 one who for a more ambitious line of discussion would 
 be quite incompetent.
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 91 
 
 Some of you may possibly remember a plirase of mine 
 which has been the object of a good deal of comment ; 
 an observation to the effect that in our culture, the aim 
 being to know ourselves and the worlds we have, as 
 the means to this end, to know the best which has been '1 L 
 thought and said in the worlds A man of science,?^ ^ ^ 
 who is also an excellent writer 'and the very prince of 
 debaters, Professor Huxley, in a discourse ^ at the 
 opening of Sir Josiah Mason's college at Birmingham, 
 laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by quoting 
 some more words of mine, which are these : " The 
 civilized world is to be regarded as now being, for 
 intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confed- 
 eration, bound to a joint action and working to a 
 common result ; and whose members have for their 
 proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and East- 
 ern antiquity, and of one another. Special local and 
 temporary advantages being put out of account, that 
 modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual 
 sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly car- 
 ries out this programme."^ • 
 
 Now on my phrase, thus enlarged. Professor Hux- 
 ley remarks that when I speak of the above-mentioned 
 knowledge as enabling us to know ourselves and the 
 world, I assert literature to contain the materials 
 which suffice for thus making us know ourselves and 
 the world. But it is not by any means clear, says he, 
 that after having learnt all which ancient and modern 
 literatures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently 
 broad and deep foundation for that criticism of life, 
 that knowledge of ourselves and the world, which con- 
 stitutes culture. On the contrary, Professor Huxley 
 declares that he finds himself " wholly unable to admit 
 that either nations or individuals will really advance, 
 if their outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical
 
 92 IMATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 science. An army without weapons of precision, and 
 with no particular base of operations, might more 
 hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than 
 a man, devoid of a knowledge of what physical science 
 has done in the last century, upon a criticism of life." 
 
 This shows how needful it is for those who are to 
 discuss any matter together, to have a common under- 
 standing as to the sense of the terms they employ, — 
 how needful, and how difficult. What Professor Hux- 
 ley says, implies just the reproach which is so often 
 brought against the study of belles lettres, as they are 
 called : that the study is an elegant one, but slight and 
 ineffectual; a smattering of Greek and Latin and 
 other ornamental things, of little use for any one 
 whose object is to get at truth, and to be a practical 
 man. So, too, M. Renan^ talks of the "superficial 
 humanism " of a school-course which treats us as if we 
 were all going to be poets, writers, preachers, orators, 
 and he opposes this humanism to positive science, or 
 the critical search after truth. And there is always a 
 tendency in those who are remonstrating against the 
 predominance of letters in education, to understand 
 by letters belles lettres, and by belles lettres a su- 
 perficial humanism the opposite of science or true 
 knowledge. 
 
 But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman 
 anticjuity, for instance, which is the knowledge people 
 have called the humanities, I for my part mean a 
 knowledge which is something more than a superficial 
 humanism, mainly decorative. "I call all teaching 
 scientific,'' says Wolf, the critic of Homer, " which is 
 systematically laid out and followed up to its origi- 
 nal sources. For example : a knowledge of classical 
 antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical an- 
 tiquity are correctly studied in the original languages."
 
 OJA 
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 93 
 
 There can be no doubt that Wolf ^ is perfectly right ; | 
 that all learning is scientific which is systematically 
 laid out and followed up to its original sources, and 
 that 9, genuine humanism is scientific. 
 
 When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman an- 
 tiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and 
 the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much 
 vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of 
 authors in the Greek and Latin languages, I mean 
 knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and 
 genius, and what they were and did in the world ; 
 what we get from them, and what is its value. That, 
 at least, is the ideal ; and when we talk of endeavor- 
 ing to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help to 
 knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavor- 
 ing so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however 
 much we may still fall short of it. 
 
 The same also as to knowing our own and other 
 modern nations, with the like aim of getting to un- 
 derstand ourselves and the world. To know the best 
 that has been thought and said by the modern nations, 
 is to know, says Professor Huxley, "only what modern 
 literatures have to tell us ; it is the criticism of life con- 
 tained in modern literature." And yet " the distinctive 
 character of our times," he urges, "lies in the vast and 
 constantly increasing part which is played by natural 
 knowledge." And how, therefore, can a man, devoid 
 of knowledge of what physical science has done in 
 the last century, enter hopefully upon a criticism of 
 modern life ? 
 
 Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the 
 terms we are using. I talk of knowing the best which 
 has been thought and uttered in the world ; Pi-ofessor 
 Huxley says this means knowing literature. Liter- 
 ature is a large word ; it may mean everything written
 
 94 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's Elements 
 and Newton's Principia are thus literature. All knowl- 
 edge that reaches us through books is literature. But 
 by literature Professor Huxley means belles lettres. 
 He means to make me say, that knowing the best 
 which has been thought and said by the modern na^ 
 tions is knowing their belles lettres and no more. And 
 this is no sufficient equipment, he argues, for a criti- 
 cism of modern life. But as I do not mean, by know- 
 ing ancient Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin 
 belles lettres^ and taking no accoimt of Rome's mili- 
 tary, and political, and legal, and administrative work 
 in the world ; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I un- 
 derstand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the 
 guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific 
 method, and the founder of our mathematics and phys- 
 ics and astronomy and biology, — I understand knowing 
 her as all this, and not merely knowing certain Greek 
 poems, and histories, and treatises, and speeches, — so 
 as to the knowledge of modern nations also. By know- 
 ing modern nations, I mean not merely knowing their 
 belles lettres^ but knowing also what has been done 
 by such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. 
 " Our ancestors learned," says Professor Huxley, " that 
 the earth is the centre of the visible universe, and that 
 man is the cynosure of things terrestrial ; and more 
 especially was it inculcated that the course of nature 
 had no fixed order, but that it could be, and constantly 
 was, altered." But for us now, continues Professor 
 Huxley, " the notions of the beginning and the end 
 of the world entertained by our forefathers are no 
 longer credible. It is very certain that the earth is not 
 the chief body in the material universe, and that the 
 world is not subordinated to man's use. It is even 
 more certain that nature is the expression of a definite
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 95 
 
 order, with which nothing interferes." " And yet," he 
 cries, " the purely classical education advocated by the 
 representatives of the humanists in our day gives no 
 inklii>g of all this ! " 
 
 In due place and time I will just touch upon that 
 vexed question of classical education ; but at present 
 the question is as to what is meant by knowing the 
 best which modern nations have thought and said. It 
 is not knowing their belles lettres merely which is 
 meant. To know Italian belles lettres, is not to know 
 Italy, and to know English belles lettres is not to 
 know England. Into knowing Italy and England 
 there comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton 
 amongst it. The reproach of being a superficial hu- 
 manism, a tincture of belles lettres, may attach rightly 
 enough to some other disciplines ; but to the particular 
 discipline recommended when I proposed knowing the 
 best that has been thought and said in the world, it 
 does not apply. In that best I certainly include what 
 in modern times has been thought and said by the 
 great observers and knowers of nature. 
 
 There is, therefore, really no question between Pro- 
 fessor Huxley and me as to whether knowing the great 
 Results of the modern scientific study of nature is not 
 required as a part of our culture, as well as knowing 
 the products of literature and art. But to follow the 
 processes by which those results are reached, ought, 
 say the friends of physical science, to be made the 
 staple of education for the bulk of mankind. And here 
 there does arise a question between those whom Pro- 
 fessor Huxley calls with playful sarcasm " the Levites 
 of culture," and those whom the poor humanist is 
 sometimes apt to regard as its Nebuehadnezzars. 
 
 The great results of the scientific investigation of 
 nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how much
 
 96 aiATTHEW AENOLD 
 
 of our study are we bound to give to the processes by 
 which those results are reached ? The results have 
 their visible bearing on human life. But all the pro- 
 cesses, too, all the items of fact, by which those re- 
 sults are reached and established, are interesting. All 
 knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowl- 
 edge of nature is interesting to all men. It is very 
 interesting to know, that, from the albuminous white 
 of the egg, the chick in the egg gets the materials for 
 its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers ; while from the 
 fatty yolk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy which 
 enable it at length to break its shell and begin the 
 world. It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it is 
 interesting, to know that when a taper burns, the wax 
 is converted into carbonic acid and water. Moreover, 
 it is quite true that the habit of dealing with facts, 
 which is given by the study of nature, is, as the friends 
 of physical science praise it for being, an excellent 
 discipline. The appeal, in the study of nature, is 
 constantly to observation and experiment ; not only is 
 it said that the thing is so, but we can be made to see 
 that it is so. Not only does a man tell us that when a 
 taper burns the wax is converted into carbonic acid 
 and water, as a man may tell us, if he likes, that 
 Charon is punting his ferry-boat on the river Styx, 
 or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Glad- 
 stone the most admirable of statesmen ; but we are 
 made to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and 
 water does actually happen. This reality of natural 
 knowledge it is, which makes the friends of physical 
 science contrast it, as a knowledge of things, with the 
 humanist's knowledge, which is, say they, a knowl- 
 edge of words. And hence Professor Huxley is moved 
 to lay it down that, " for the purpose of attaining real 
 culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 97 
 
 as effectual as an exclusively literary education." And 
 a certain President of the Section for Mechanical 
 Science in the British Association is, in Scripture 
 phrase, " very bold," and declares that if a man, in his 
 mental training, " has substituted literature and his- 
 tory for natural science, he has chosen the less useful 
 alternative." But whether we go these lengths or not, we 
 must all admit that in natural science the habit gained 
 of dealing with facts is a most valuable discipline, and 
 that every one should have some experience of it. 
 
 More than this, however, is demanded by the re- 
 formers. It is proposed to make the training in natural 
 science the main part of education, for the great ma- 
 jority of mankind at any rate. And here, I confess, I 
 part company with the friends of physical science, with 
 whom up to this point I have been agreeing. In dif- 
 fering from them, however, I wish to proceed with the 
 utmost caution and diffidence. The smallness of my 
 own acquaintance with the disciplines of natural science 
 is ever before my mind, and I am fearful of doing 
 these disciplines an injustice. The ability and pug- 
 nacity of the partisans of natural science make them 
 formidable persons to contradict. The tone of tenta- 
 tive inquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and 
 bounded knowledge, is the tone I would wish to take 
 and not to depart from. At present it seems to me, 
 that those who are for giving to natural knowledge, 
 as they call it, the chief place in the education of the 
 majority of mankind, leave one important thing out 
 of their account : the constitution of hunian nature. 
 But I put this forward on the strength of some facts 
 not at all recondite, very far from it ; facts capable 
 of being stated in the simplest possible fashion, and to 
 which, if I so state them, the man of science will, I 
 am sure, be willing to allow their due weight.
 
 98 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can- 
 He can hardly deny, that when we set ourselves to 
 enumerate the powers which go to the building up of 
 human life, and say that they are the power of con- 
 duct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power 
 of beauty, and the power of social life and manners, — 
 lie can hardly deny that this scheme, though drawn 
 in rough and plain lines enough, and not pretending to 
 scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true repre- 
 sentation of the matter. Human nature is built up by 
 these powers ; we have the need for them all. When 
 we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them 
 all, we shall then be in a fair way for getting sober- 
 ness, and righteousness with wisdom. This is evident 
 enough, and the friends of physical science would 
 admit it. 
 
 But perhaps they may not have sufficiently observed 
 another thing : namely, that the several powers just 
 mentioned are not isolated, but there is, in the gener- 
 ality of mankind, a perpetual tendency to jelate them 
 one to another in divers ways. With one such way of 
 relating them I am particularly concerned now. Fol- 
 lowing our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we 
 acquire pieces of knowledge : and presently in the gen- 
 erality of men, there arises the desire to relate these 
 pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to our 
 sense for beauty, — and there is weariness and dissat- 
 isfaction if the desire is balked. Now in this desire 
 lies, I think, the strength of that hold which letters 
 have upon us. 
 
 All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting ; 
 and even items of knowledge which from the nature 
 of the case cannot well be related, but must stand 
 isolated in our thoughts, have their interest. Even lists 
 of exceptions have their interest. If we are studying
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 99 
 
 Greek accents it is interesting to know that pais 
 and pas, and some other nionos3dlables of the same 
 form of declension, do not take the circumflex upon 
 the last syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in 
 this resisect, from the common rule. If we are study- 
 ing physiology, it is interesting to know that the pul- 
 monaiy artery carries dark blood and the pulmonary 
 vein carries bright blood, departing in this respect 
 from the common rule for the division of labor be- 
 tween the veins and the arteries. But every one knows 
 how we seek naturally to combine the pieces of our 
 knowledge together, to bring them under general rules, 
 to relate them to principles ; and how unsatisfactory 
 and tiresome it would be to go on forever learning 
 lists of exceptions, or accumulating items of fact which 
 must stand isolated. 
 
 Well, that same need of relating our knowledge, 
 which operates here within the sphere of our knowl- 
 edge itself, we shall find operating, also, outside that 
 sphere. We experience, as we go on learning and 
 knowing, — the vast majority of us experience, — the 
 need of relating what we have learnt and known to 
 the sense which we have in us for conduct, to the sense 
 which we have in us for beauty. 
 
 A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in Arca- 
 dia, Diotima^ by name, once explained to the philos- 
 opher Socrates that love, and impulse, and bent of all 
 kinds, is, in fact, nothing else but the desire in men 
 that good should forever be present to them. This 
 desire for good, Diotima assured Socrates, is our 
 fundamental desire, of which fundamental desire every 
 impulse in us is only some one particular form. And 
 therefore this fundamental desire it is, I suppose, — 
 this desire in men that good should be forever present 
 to them, — which acts in us when we feel the impulse
 
 100 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 for relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct 
 and to our sense for beauty. At any rate, with men 
 in general the instinct exists. Such is human nature. 
 And the instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, 
 and human nature is preserved by our following the 
 lead of its innocent instincts. Therefore, in seeking 
 to gratify this instinct in question, we are following the 
 instinct of self-preservation in humanity. 
 ""But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot be 
 made to directly serve the instinct in question, cannot 
 be directly related to the sense for beauty, to the sense 
 for conduct. These are instrument-knowledges ; they 
 lead on to other knowledges, which can. A man who 
 passes his life in instrument-knowledges is a sj)ecialist. 
 They may be invaluable as instruments to something 
 beyond, for those who have the gift thus to employ 
 them ; and they may be disciplines in themselves wherein 
 it is useful for every one to have some schooling. But 
 it is inconceivable that the generality of men should 
 pass all their mental life with Greek accents or with 
 formal logic. My friend Professor Sylvester,^ who is 
 one of the first mathematicians in the world, holds 
 transcendental doctrines as to the virtue of mathemat- 
 ics, but those doctrines are not for common men. In 
 the very Senate House and heart of our English 
 Cambridge I once ventured, though not without an 
 apology for my profaneness, to hazard the opinion 
 that for the majority of mankind a little of mathe- 
 matics, even, goes a long way. Of course this is quite 
 consistent with their being of immense importance as 
 an instrument to something else ; but it is the few 
 who have the aptitude for thus using them, not the 
 bulk of mankind. 
 
 The natural sciences do not, however, stand on the 
 same footing with these instrument-knowledges. Ex-
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 101 
 
 perience shows us that the generality of men will find 
 more interest in learning that, when a taper burns, 
 the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, or 
 in learning the explanation of the phenomenon of 
 dew, or in learning how the circulation of the blood is 
 carried on, than they find in learning that the genitive 
 plural of pais and pas does not take the cii^cumflex on 
 the termination. And one piece of natural knowledge 
 is added to another, and others are added to that, and 
 at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr. 
 Darwin's famous proposition ^ that " our ancestor was 
 a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed 
 ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Or we come to 
 propositions of such reach and magnitude as those 
 which Professor Huxley delivers, when he says that 
 the notions of our forefathers about the beginning 
 and the end of the world were all wrong, and that 
 nature is the expression of a definite order with which 
 nothing interferes. ? 
 
 Interesting, indeed, these results of science are, im- \ 
 portant they are, and we should all of us be acquainted 
 with them. But what I now wish you to mark is, that 
 we are still, when they are propounded to us and we 
 receive them, we are still in the sphere of intellect and 
 knowledge. And for the generality of men there will 
 be found, I say, to arise, when they have duly taken 
 in the proposition that their ancestor was "a hairy 
 quadi'uped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, 
 probably arboreal in his habits," there will be found 
 to arise an invincible desire to relate this proposition 
 to the sense in us for conduct, and to the sense in us 
 for beauty. But this the men of science will not do 
 for us, and will hardly even profess to do. They will 
 give us other pieces of knowledge, other facts, about 
 other animals and their ancestors, or about plants, or 
 
 lONIVEitSiTY OF CALIFOIiNIA 
 SANTA BARBABA
 
 102 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 about stones, or about stars ; and they may finally 
 bring us to those great " general conceptions of the 
 universe, which are forced upon us all," says Professor 
 Huxley, " by the progress of physical science." But 
 still it will be knowledge only which they give us ; 
 knowledge not put for us into relation with our sense 
 for conduct, our sense for beauty, and touched with 
 emotion by being so put ; not thus put for us, and 
 therefore, to the majority of mankind, after a certain 
 while, unsatisfying, wearying. 
 
 Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what do 
 we mean by a born naturalist? We mean a man in 
 whom the zeal for observing nature is so uncommonly 
 strong and eminent, that it marks him off from the 
 bulk of mankind. Such a man will pass his life hap- 
 pily in collecting natural knowledge and reasoning 
 upon it, and will ask for nothing, or hardly anything, 
 more. I have heard it said that the sagacious and 
 admirable naturalist whom we lost not very long ago, 
 Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his part 
 he did not experience the necessity for two things 
 which most men find so necessary to them, — religion 
 and poetry ; science and the domestic affections, he 
 thought, were enough. To a born naturalist, I can 
 well understand that this should seem so. So absorb- 
 ing is his occupation with nature, so strong his love 
 for his occupation, that he goes on acquiring natural 
 knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has little time 
 or inclination for thinking about getting it related to 
 the desire in man for conduct, the desire in man for 
 beauty. He relates it to them for himself as he goes 
 along, so far as he feels the need ; and he draws from 
 the domestic affections all the additional solace neces- 
 sary. But then Darwins are extremely rare. Another 
 great and admirable master of natural knowledge.
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 103 
 
 Faraday, was a Sandemanian.^ That is to say, he 
 related his knowledge to his instinct for conduct and 
 to his instinct for beauty, by the aid of that respectable 
 Scottish sectary, Robert Sandeman. And so strong, in 
 general, is the demand of religion and poetry to have 
 their share in a man, to associate themselves with his 
 knowing, and to relieve and rejoice it, that, probably, 
 for one man amongst us with the disposition to do as 
 Darwin did in this respect, there are at least fifty 
 with the disposition to do as Faraday. 
 
 Educ ation lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying ^ ^ 
 this demand. Professor Huxley holds up to scorn ■''" * 
 mediffivaL education, with its neglect of the knowledge 
 of nature, its poverty even of literary studies, its formal ^., i^caj^ 
 logic devoted to " showing how and why that which the ' i 
 
 Church said was true must be true." But the great Kd<tfi^i,.il 
 mediaeval Universities were not brought into being, we 
 may be sure, by the zeal for giving a jejune and con- 
 temptible education. Kings have been their nursing 
 fathers, and queens have been their nursing mothers,*" 
 but not for this. The mediaeval Universities came into 
 being, because the supposed knowledge, delivered by 
 Scripture and the Church, so deeply engaged men's 
 hearts, by so simply, easily, and powerfully relating it- 
 self to their desire for conduct, their desire for beauty. 
 All other knowledge was dominated by this supposed 
 knowledge and was subordinated to it, because of the 
 surpassing strength of the hold which it gained upon 
 the affections of men, by allying itself profoundly with 
 their sense for conduct, their sense for beauty. 
 
 But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the 
 universe fatal to the notions held by our forefathers 
 have been forced upon us by physical science. Grant 
 to him that they are thus fatal, that the new concep- 
 tions must and will soon become current everywhere,
 
 104 IVLITTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 and that every one will finally perceive them to be fatal 
 to the beliefs of our forefathers. The need of humane 
 letters, as they are truly called, because they serve the 
 paramount desire in men that good should be forever 
 present to them, — the need of humane letters, to es- 
 tablish a relation between the new conceptions, and 
 our instinct for beauty, our instinct for conduct, is 
 only the more visible. The Middle Age could do with- 
 out humane letters, as it could do without the study 
 of nature, because its supposed knowledge was made 
 to engage its emotions so powerfully. Grant that the 
 supposed knowledge disappears, its power of being 
 made to engage the emotions will of course disappear 
 along with it, — but the emotions themselves, and 
 their claim to be engaged and satisfied, will remain. 
 Now if we find by experience that humane letters 
 have an undeniable power of engaging the emotions, 
 the importance of humane letters in a man's training 
 becomes not less, but greater, in proportion to the 
 success of modern science in extirpating what it calls 
 *' mediaeval thinking." 
 
 Have humane letters, then, have poetry and elo- 
 quence, the power here attributed to them of engag- 
 ing the emotions, and do they exercise it ? And if they 
 have it and exercise it, hov) do they exercise it, so as 
 to exert an influence upon man's sense for conduct, 
 his sense for beauty ? Finally, even if they both can 
 and do exert an influence upon the senses in question, 
 how are they to relate to them the results — the 
 modern results — of natural science ? All these ques- 
 tions may be asked. First, have poetry and eloquence 
 the power of calling out the emotions ? The appeal is 
 to experience. Experience shows that for the vast ma- 
 jority of men, for mankind in general, they have the 
 power. Next, do they exercise it ? They do. But then,
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 105 
 
 hoio do they exercise it so as to affect man's sense for 
 conduct, his sense for beauty? And this is perhaps a 
 case for applying the Preacher's words : " Though a 
 man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it ; 
 yea, farther, though a wise man think to know it, 
 yet shall he not be able to find it." ^ Why should 
 it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to 
 say, " Patience' is a Virtue," and quite another thing, 
 in its effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer, 
 
 T\i)Thv yap Mo7pat Ov/xhy 64arav avOpuiroiaiv — "^ 
 
 "for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed 
 to the children of men"? Why should it be one 
 thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with 
 the philosopher Spinoza, Fclicitas hi ea conslstit 
 quod ho7no suuyn esse co7iservare potest — "Man's 
 happiness consists in his being able to preserve his 
 own essence," and quite another thing, in its effect 
 upon the emotions, to say with the Gospel, " What is 
 a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and 
 lose himself, forfeit himself ? " ^ How does this dif- 
 ference of effect arise ? I cannot tell, and I am not 
 much concerned to know ; the imjjortant thing is that 
 it does arise, and that we can profit by it. But how, 
 finally, are poetry and eloquence to exercise the power 
 of relating the modern results of natural science to 
 man's instinct for conduct, his instinct for beauty? 
 And here again I answer that I do not know how 
 they will exercise it, but that they can and will exer- 
 cise it I am sure. I do not mean that modern philo- 
 sophical poets and modern philosophical moralists are 
 to come and relate for us, in express terms, the re- 
 sults of modern scientific research to our instinct for 
 conduct, our instinct for beauty. But I mean that we 
 shall find, as a matter of experience, if we know the
 
 106 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 best that has been thought and uttered in the world, 
 we shall find that the art and poetry and eloquence 
 of men who lived, perhaps, long ago, who had the most 
 limited natural knowledge, who had the most erro- 
 neous conceptions about many important matters, we 
 shall find that this art, and poetry, and eloquence, 
 have in fact not only the power of refreshing and de- 
 lighting us, they have also the power, — such is the 
 strength and worth, in essentials, of their authors' 
 criticism of life, — they have a fortifying, and elevat- 
 ing, and quickening, and suggestive power, capable 
 of wonderfully helping us to relate the results of 
 modern science to our need for conduct, our need for 
 beauty. Homer's conceptions of the physical vmiverse 
 were, I imagine, grotesque ; but really, under the shock 
 of hearing from modern science that " the world is not 
 subordinated to man's use, and that man is not the 
 /,»X^J . cynosure of things terrestrial," I could, for my own 
 part, desire no better comfort than Hotoer's hue which 
 I quoted just now, 
 
 rXrp-bv yap 3Iorpat &vfj2)v diaav dvdpiinrounv — 
 
 " for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to 
 '' the children of men " ! 
 
 And the more that men's minds are cleared, the 
 more that the results of science are frankly accepted, 
 the more that poetjry and eloquence come to be re- 
 ceived and studied as what in truth they really are, — 
 the criticism of life by gifted men, alive and active 
 with extraordinary power at an unusual number of 
 points; — so much the more will the value of humane 
 letters, and of art also, which is an utterance having 
 a like kind of power with theirs, be felt aud acknowl- 
 edged, and their place in education be secured. 
 
 Let us, therefore, all of us, avoid indeed as much as
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 107 
 
 possible any invidious comparison between the merits 
 of humane letters, as means of education, and the 
 merits of the natural sciences. But when some Presi- 
 dent of a Section for Mechanical Science insists on 
 making the comparison, and tells us that " he who in 
 his training has substituted literature and history for 
 natural science has chosen the less useful alternative," 
 let us make answer to him that the student of humane 
 letters only, will, at least, know also the great general 
 conceptions brought in by modern physical science : for 
 science, as Professor Huxley says, forces them upon 
 us all. But the student of the natural sciences only, 
 will, by our very hypothesis, know nothing of humane 
 letters ; not to mention that in setting himself to be 
 perpetually accumulating natural knowledge, he sets 
 himself to do what only specialists have in general the 
 gift for doing genially. And so he will probably be 
 unsatisfied, or at any rate incomplete, and even more 
 incomplete than the student of humane letters only. 
 
 I once mentioned in a school-report, how a young 
 man in one of our English training colleges having to 
 paraphrase the passage in Macbeth beginning, 
 
 "Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ? " ^ 
 
 turned this line into, " Can you not wait upon the luna- 
 tic ? " And I remarked what a curious state of things 
 it would be, if every pupil of our national schools 
 knew, let us say, that the moon is two thousand one 
 hundred and sixty miles in diameter, and thought at 
 the same time that a good paraphrase for 
 
 " Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ? '* 
 
 was, " Can you not wait upon the lunatic? " If one is 
 driven to choose, I think I would rather have a young 
 person ignorant about the moon's diameter, but aware
 
 ^YV- 
 
 VV^: 
 
 108 IVIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 that " Can you not wait upon the lunatic ? " is bad, 
 than a young person whose education had been such 
 as to manage things the other way. 
 » I Or to go higher than the pupils of our national 
 schools. I have in my mind's eye a member of our 
 British Parliament who comes to travel here in Amer- 
 ica, who afterwards relates his travels, and who shows 
 a really masterly knowledge of the geology of this 
 great country and of its mining capabilities, but who 
 ends by gravely suggesting that tlie United States 
 should borrow a prince from our Royal Family, and 
 should make him their king, and should create a House 
 of Lords of great landed proprietors after the pattern 
 of ours; and then America, he thinks, would have her 
 future happily and perfectly secured. Surely, in this 
 case, the President of the Section for Mechanical Sci- 
 ence would himself hardly say that our member of 
 Parliament, by concentrating himself upon geology 
 and mineralogy, and so on, and not attending to lit- 
 erature and history, had "chosen the more useful 
 alternative." 
 
 If then there is to be separation and option between 
 humane letters on the one hand, and the natural sci- 
 ences on the other, the great majority of mankind, all 
 who have not exceptional and overpowering aptitudes 
 for the study of nature, would do well, I cannot but 
 think, to choose to be educated in humane letters 
 rather than in the natural sciences. Letters will call 
 out their being at more jDoints, will make them live 
 more. 
 
 I said that before I ended I would just touch on the 
 question of classical education, and I will keep my 
 word. Even if literature is to retain a large place in 
 our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends of 
 progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the grand
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 109 
 
 offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. The attackers 
 of the established course of study think that against 
 Greek, at any rate, they have irresistible arguments. 
 Literature may perhaps be needed in education, they 
 say ; but why on earth should it be Greek literature ? 
 Why not French or German ? Nay, " has not an Eng- 
 lishman models in his own literature of every kind of 
 excellence ? " As before, it is not on any weak pleadings 
 of my own that I rely for convincing the gainsayers ; 
 it is on the constitution of human nature itself, and 
 on the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. The 
 instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as 
 the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct 
 for conduct. If the instinct for beauty is served by 
 Greek literature and art as it is served by no other 
 literature and art, we may trust to the instinct of self- 
 preservation in humanity for keeping Greek as part of 
 our culture. We may trust to it for even making the 
 study of Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek 
 will come, I hope, some day to be studied more ration- 
 ally than at present ; but it will be increasingly stud- 
 ied as men increasingly feel the need in them for 
 beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and Greek lit- 
 erature can serve this need. Women will again study 
 Greek, as Lady Jane Grey^ did ; I believe that in 
 that chain of forts, with which the fair host of the 
 Amazons are now engirdling our English universities, 
 I find that here in America, in colleges like Smith 
 College in Massachusetts, and Vassar College in the 
 State of New York, and in the happy families of the 
 mixed universities out West, they are studying it 
 already. ... *--f ..■ , -• ■ - '^' ' 
 
 Defuitunamihisymmetria prisca, — " The antique 
 symmetry was the one thing wanting to me," said 
 Leonardo da Vinci ; and he was an Italian. I will not 
 
 h^o.
 
 110 MATTHEW AEXOLD 
 
 presume to speak for the Americans, but I am sure 
 that, in the Englishman, the want of this admirable 
 symmetry of the Greeks is a thousand times more 
 great and crying than in any Italian. The results of 
 the want show themselves most glaringly, perhaps, in 
 our architecture, but they show themselves, also, in all 
 our art. Fit details strictly combined^ in view of a 
 large general result nohly conceived ; that is just the 
 beautifiil symmetria prisca of the Greeks, and it is 
 just where we English fail, where all our art fails. 
 Sti'iking ideas we have, and well executed details we 
 have ; but that high symmetry which, -with satisfpng 
 and delightful effect, combines them, we seldom or 
 never have. The glorious beauty of the Acropolis at 
 Athens did not come from single fine things stuck 
 about on that hill, a statue here, a gateway there ; — 
 no, it arose from all things being perfectly combined 
 for a supreme total effect. AVhat must not an English- 
 man feel about our deficiencies in this respect, as the 
 sense for beauty, whereof this symmetry is an essen- 
 tial element, awakens and strengthens within him ! 
 what will not one day be his respect and desire for 
 Greece and its .vjmmetria prisca. when the scales drop 
 from his eyes as he walks the London streets, and he 
 sees such a lesson in meanness, as the Strand, for 
 instance, in its true deformity I But here we are com- 
 ing to our friend Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not 
 intrude upon it, for he is its very sufficient guardian. 
 And so we at last find, it seems, we fipd flowing in 
 favor of the humanities the natm-al and necessary 
 stream of things, which seemed against them when we 
 started. The " hairy quadruped furnished with a tail 
 and pointed ears, probably arlioreal in his habits," this 
 good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, 
 something destined to develop into a necessity for
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 111 
 
 humane letters. Nay, more ; we seem finally to be 
 even led to the further conclusion that our hairy 
 ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity 
 for Greek. 
 
 And, therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really 
 think that humane letters are in much actual danger 
 of being thrust out from their leading place in educa- 
 tion, in spite of the array of authorities against them 
 at this moment. So long as human nature is what it 
 is, their attractions will remain irresistible. As with 
 Greek, so with letters generally : they will some day 
 come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, but 
 they will not lose their place. What will happen will 
 rather be that there will be crowded into education 
 other matters besides, far too many ; there will be, 
 perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion and 
 false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose 
 their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they 
 will get it back again. We shall be brought back to 
 them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor human- 
 ist may possess his soul in patience, neither strive nor 
 cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the partisans 
 of physicaljcience, and their present favor with the 
 public, to be far greater than his own, and still have 
 a happy faith that the nature of things works silently 
 on behalf of the studies which he loves, and that, while 
 we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with the great 
 results reached by modern science, and to give our- 
 selves as much training in its disciplines as we can 
 conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will 
 always require humane letters ; and so much the more, 
 as they have the more and the greater results of science 
 to relate to the need in man for conduct, and to the 
 need in him for beauty. ^^
 
 II. LITERARY CRITICISM 
 HEINRICH HEINE 1 
 
 " I KNOW not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath 
 should one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly 
 as I have loved it, has always been to me but a divine 
 plaything. I have never attached any great value to 
 poetical fame ; and I trouble myself very Httle whether 
 people praise my verses or blame them. But lay on 
 my coffin a sword ; for I was a brave soldier in the 
 Liberation War of humanity." ^ 
 
 Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared 
 quite as much as his brethren of the genus irri- 
 tahile whether people praised his verses or blamed 
 them. And he was very little of a hero. Posterity will 
 certainly decorate his tomb with the emblem of the 
 lauiel rather than with the emblem of the sword. 
 Still, for his contemporaries, for us,, for the Europe 
 of the present century, he is significant chiefly for the 
 reason which he himself in the words just quoted 
 assigns. He is significant because he was, if not pre- 
 eminently a brave, yet a brilliant, a most effective 
 soldier in the Liberation War of humanity. 
 
 To ascertain the master-current in the literature of 
 an epoch, and to distinguish this from all minor cur- 
 rents, is one of the critic's highest functions ; in dis- 
 charging it he shows how far he possesses the most 
 indispensable quality of his office, — justness of spirit. 
 The living writer who has done most to make England 
 acquainted with German authors, a man of genius, but 
 to whom precisely this one quality of justness of spirit
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 113 
 
 is perhaps wanting, — I mean Mr. Carlyle, — seems 
 to me in the result of his labors on German literature 
 to afford a proof how very necessary to the critic this 
 quality is. Mr. Carlyle has spoken admirably of 
 Goethe ; but then Goethe stands before all men's eyes, 
 the manifest centre of German literature ; and from 
 this central source many rivers flow. Which of these 
 rivers is the main stream ? which of the courses of 
 spirit which we see active in Goethe is the course 
 which will most influence the future, and attract and 
 be continued by the most powerful of Goethe's succes- 
 sors ? — that is the question. Mr. Carlyle attaches, it 
 seems to me, far too much importance to the romantic 
 school of Germany, — Tieck, Novalis, Jean Paul 
 Richter,! — and gives to these writers, really gifted 
 as two, at any rate, of them are, an undue prominence. 
 These writers, and others with aims and a general 
 tendency the same as theirs, are not the real inherit- 
 ors and continuators of Goethe's power ; the current of 
 their activity is not the main current of German liter- 
 ature after Goethe. Far more in Heine's works flows 
 this main current ; Heine, far more than Tieck or Jean 
 Paul Richter, is the continuator of that which, in 
 Goethe's varied activity, is the most powerful and vital ; 
 on Heine, of all German authors who survived Goethe, 
 incomparably the largest portion of Goethe's mantle 
 fell. I do not forget that when Mr. Carlyle was deal- 
 ing with German literature, Heine, though he was 
 clearly risen above the horizon, had not shone forth 
 with all his strength ; I do not forget, too, that after 
 ten or twenty years many things may come out plain 
 before the critic which before were hard to be dis- 
 cerned by him ; and assuredly no one would dream of 
 imputing it as a fault to Mr. Carlyle that twenty 
 years ago he mistook the central current in German
 
 114 MATTHEW ARXOLD 
 
 literature, overlooked the rising Heine, and attached 
 undue importance to that romantic school which Heine 
 was to destroy ; one may rather note it as a misfortune, 
 sent perhaps as a delicate chastisement to a critic, who 
 — man of genius as he is, and no one recognizes his 
 genius more admirably than I do — has, for the func- 
 tions of the critic, a little too much of the self-will and 
 eccentricity of a genuine son of Great Britain. 
 
 Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most impor- 
 tant German successor and continuator of Goethe in 
 Goethe's most important line of activity. And which 
 of Goethe's lines of activity' is this? — His line of 
 activity as " a soldier in the war of liberation of 
 humanity." 
 
 Heine himself would hardly have admitted this affil- 
 iation, though he was far too powerful-minded a man 
 to decry, with some of the vulgar German liberals, 
 Goethe's genius. " The wind of the Paris Revolution," 
 he writes after the three days of 1830, "blew about 
 the candles a little in the dark night of Germany, so 
 that the red curtains of a German throne or two 
 caught lire ; but the old watchmen, who do the police 
 of the German kingdoms, are already bringing out the 
 fire engines, and will keep the candles closer snuffed 
 for the future. Poor, fast-bound German people, lose 
 not all heart in thy bonds I The fashionable coating 
 of ice melts off from my heart, my soid quivers and 
 my eyes burn, and that is a disadvantageous state of 
 things for a writer, who should control his subject- 
 matter and keep himself beautifully objective, as the 
 artistic school would have us, and as Goethe has done; 
 he has come to be eighty years old doing this, and 
 minister, and in good condition : — poor German 
 people ! that is thy greatest man ! " ^ 
 
 But hear Goethe himself : " If I were to say what
 
 HEINRICH BDEINE 115 
 
 I had really been to the Germans in general, and to 
 the young German poets in particular, I should say I 
 had been their liberator J'^ 
 
 Modern times find themselves with an immense 
 system of institutions, established facts, accredited 
 dogmas, customs, rules, which have come to them from 
 times not modern. In this system their life has to be 
 carried forward ; yet they have a sense that this sys- 
 tem is not of their own creation, tliat it by no means 
 corresponds exactly with the wants of their actual life, 
 that, for them, it is customary, not rational. The 
 awakening of this sense is the awakening of the mod- 
 ern spirit. The modern spirit is now awake almost 
 everywhere ; the sense of want of correspondence be- 
 tween the foi-ms of modern Europe and its spirit, 
 between the new wine of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries, and the old bottles of the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries, or even of the sixteenth and seventeenth, 
 almost every one now perceives; it is no longer dan- 
 gerous to affirm that this want of correspondence 
 exists ; people are even beginning to be shy of denying 
 it. To remove this want of correspondence is begin- 
 ning to be the settled endeavor of most persons of 
 good sense. Dissolvents of the old European system 
 of dominant ideas and facts we must all be, all of 
 us who have any power of working ; what we have to 
 study is that we may not be acrid dissolvents of it. 
 
 And how did Goethe, that grand dissolvent in an 
 age when there were fewer of them than at present, 
 proceed in his task of dissolution, of liberation of the 
 modern European from the old routine ? He shall tell 
 us himseK. " Through me the German poets have 
 become aware that, as man must live from within out- 
 wards, so the artist must work from within outwards, 
 seeing that, make what contortions he will, he can only
 
 116 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 bring to light his own individuality. I can clearly 
 mark where this influence of mine has made itseK felt ; 
 there arises out of it a kind of poetry of nature, and 
 only in this way is it possible to be original." 
 
 My voice shall never be joined to those which decry 
 Goethe, and if it is said that the foregoing is a lame 
 and impotent conclusion to Goethe's declaration that 
 he had been the liberator of the Germans in general, 
 and of the young German poets in particular, I say it 
 is not. Goethe's profound, imperturbable naturalism 
 is absolutely fatal to all routine thinking, he puts the 
 standard, once for all, inside every man instead of out- 
 side him ; when he is told, such a thing must be so, 
 there is immense authority and custom in favor of its 
 being so, it has been held to be so for a thousand 
 years, he answers with Olympian politeness, " But is 
 it so ? is it so to me ? " Nothing could be more really 
 subversive of the foundations on which the old Euro- 
 pean order rested ; and it may be remarked that no 
 persons are so radically detached from this order, no 
 persons so thoroughly modern, as those who have felt 
 Goethe's influence most deeply. If it is said that 
 Goethe professes to have in this way deeply influenced 
 but a few persons, and those persons poets, one may 
 answer that he could have taken no better way to 
 secure, in the end, the ear of the world ; for poetry 
 is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely 
 effective mode of saying things, and hence its impor- 
 tance. Nevertheless the process of liberation, as Goethe 
 worked it, though sure, is undoubtedly slow ; he came, 
 as Heine says, to be eighty years old in thus working 
 it, and at the end of that time the old Middle-Age 
 machine was still creaking on, the thirty German 
 coiirts and their chamberlains subsisted in all their 
 glory ; Goethe himself was a minister, and the visible
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 117 
 
 triumph of the modern spirit over prescription and 
 routine seemed as far off as ever. It was the year 
 1830 ; the German sovereigns had passed the preced- 
 ing- fifteen years in breaking the promises of freedom 
 they had made to their subjects when they wanted 
 their help in the final struggle with Napoleon. Great 
 events wei'e happening in France ; the revolution, de- 
 feated in 1815, had arisen from its defeat, and was 
 wresting from its adversaries the jjower. Heinrich 
 Heine, a young man of genius, born at Hamburg,i 
 and with all the culture of Germany, but by race a 
 Jew ; with warm sympathies for France, whose revolu- 
 tion had given to his race the rights of citizenship, and 
 whose rule had been, as is well known, popular in 
 the Rhine provinces, where he passed his youth ; with 
 a passionate admiration for the great French Emperor, 
 with a passionate contempt for the sovereigns who had 
 overthrown him, for their agents, and for their policy, 
 — Heinrich Heine was in 1830 in no humor for any 
 such gradual process of liberation from the old order of 
 things as that which Goethe had followed. His coun- 
 sel was for open war. Taking that terrible modern 
 weapon, the pen, in his hand, he passed the remain- 
 der of his life in one fierce battle. What was that 
 battle ? the reader will ask. It was a life and death 
 battle with Philistinism. 
 
 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 ejncier (grocer), to 
 designate the sort of being whom the Germans des- 
 ignate by the Philistine ; but the French term — 
 besides that it casts a slur upon a. respectable class,
 
 118 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 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 epicier ; Mr. Carlyle has made several such efforts : 
 " respectability with its thousand gigs," ^ he says ; — 
 well, the occupant of every one of these gigs is, Mr. 
 Carlyle means, a Philistine. However, the word re- 
 spectable is far too valuable a word to be thus per- 
 verted from its proper meaning ; if the English are 
 ever to have a word for the thing we are speaking of, 
 — and so prodigious are the changes which the mod- 
 ern 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. 
 
 Philistine must have originally meant, in the'mind 
 of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, 
 unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the 
 children of the light. The party of change, the would- 
 be remodellers of the old traditional European order, 
 the invokers of reason against custom, the representa- 
 tives of the modern spirit in every sphere where it is 
 applicable, regarded themselves, with the robust self- 
 confidence natural to reformers as a chosen people, as 
 children of the light. They regarded their adversaries 
 as humdrum people, slaves to routine, enemies to light; 
 stupid and oppressive, but at the same time very 
 strong. This explains the love which Heine, that Pal- 
 adin of the modern spirit, has for Erance ; it explains 
 the jjref erence which he gives to France over Ger- 
 many : " The French," he says, " are the chosen people 
 of the new religion, its first gospels and dogmas have 
 been drawn up in their language ; Paris is the new 
 Jerusalem, and the Rhine is the Jordan which divides
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 119 
 
 the consecrated land of freedom from the land of the 
 Philistines." ^ He means that the French, as a people, 
 have shown more accessibility to ideas than any other 
 people; that prescription and routine have had less 
 hold upon them than upon any other people ; that they 
 have shown most readiness to move and to alter at the 
 bidding (real or supposed) of reason. This explains, 
 too, the detestation which Heine had for the English : 
 " I might settle in England," he says, in his exile, " if 
 it were not that I should find there two things, coal- 
 smoke and Englishmen ; I cannot abide either." What 
 he hated in the English was the " jichtbrittische Be- 
 schranktheit," as he calls it, — the gemiine British 
 narrowness. In truth, the English, profoundly as they 
 have modified the old Middle-Age order, great as is 
 the liberty which they have secured for themselves, 
 have in all their changes proceeded, to use a familiar 
 expression, by the rule of thumb ; what was intolerably 
 inconvenient to tliem they have suppressed, and as 
 they have suppressed it^ not because it was irrational, 
 but because it was practically inconvenient, they have 
 seldom in suppressing it appealed to reason, but always, 
 if possible, to some precedent, or form, or letter, which 
 served as a convenient instrument for their purpose, 
 and which saved them from the necessity of recur- 
 ring to general principles. They have thus become, 
 in a certain sense, of all people the most inaccessible 
 to ideas and the most impatient of them ; inaccessible 
 to them, because of their want of familiarity with 
 them ; and impatient of them because they have got 
 on so well without them, that they despise those who, 
 not having got on as well as themselves, still make a 
 fuss for what they themselves have done so well with- 
 out. But there has certainly followed from hence, in 
 this country, somewhat of a general depression of pure
 
 120 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 intelligence : Philistia has come to be thought by us 
 the true Land of Promise, and it is anything but 
 that ; the born lover of ideas, the bom hater of com- 
 monplaces, must feel in this country, that the skj' over 
 his head is of brass and iron. The enthusiast for the 
 idea, for reason, values reason, the idea, in and for 
 themselves ; he values them, irrespectively of the prac- 
 tical conveniences which their triumph may obtain for 
 him ; and the man who regards the possession of these 
 practical conveniences as something sufficient in it- 
 self, something which compensates for the absence or 
 surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, a Phil- 
 istine. This is why Heine so often and so mercilessly 
 attacks the liberals ; much as he hates conservatism he 
 hates Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks 
 conservatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not 
 in the name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett^ 
 is thus for him, much as he disliked our clergy and 
 aristocracy whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with 
 six fingers on every hand and on every foot six toes, 
 four-and-twenty in number : a Philistine, the staff of 
 whose spear is like a weaver's beam. Thus he speaks 
 of him : — 
 
 " While I translate Cobbett's words, the man him- 
 self comes bodily before my mind's eye, as I saw him 
 at that uproarious dinner at the Crown and Anchor 
 Tavern, with his scolding red face and his radical 
 laugh, in which venomous hate mingles with a mock- 
 ing exultation at his enemies' surely approaching down- 
 fall. He is a chained cur, who falls with equal fury on 
 every one whom he does not know, often bites the best 
 friend of the house in his calves, barks incessantly, 
 and just because of this incessantness of his barking 
 cannot get listened to, even when he barks at a real 
 thief. Therefore the distinguished thieves who plunder
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 121 
 
 England do not think it necessary to throw the growl- 
 ing Cobbett a bone to stop his mouth. This makes the 
 dog furiously savage, and he shows all his hungry 
 teeth. Poor old Cobbett ! England's dog ! I have no 
 love for thee, for every vulgar nature my soul abhors ; 
 but thou touchest me to the inmost soul with pity, as 
 I see how thou strainest in vain to break loose and to 
 get at those thieves, who make off with their booty 
 before thy very eyes, and mock at thy fruitless springs 
 and thine impotent howling." ^ 
 
 There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A 
 chosen circle of children of the modern spirit, per- 
 fectly emancipated from prejudice and commonplace, 
 regarding the ideal side of things in all its efforts for 
 change, passionately despising half-measures and con- 
 descension to human folly and obstinacy, — with a 
 bewildered, timid, torpid multitude behind, — conducts 
 a country to the government of Herr von Bismarck. 
 A nation regarding the practical side of things in its 
 efforts for change, attacking not what is irrational, but 
 what is pressingly inconvenient, and attacking this as 
 one body, " moving altogether if it move at all," ^ and 
 treating children of light like the very harshest of step- 
 mothers, comes to the prosperity and liberty of modern 
 England. For all that, however, Philistia (let me say 
 it again) is not the true promised land, as we English 
 commonly imagine it to be ; and our excessive neglect 
 of the idea, and consequent inaptitude for it, threatens 
 us, at a moment when the idea is beginning to exercise 
 a real power in human society, with serious future 
 inconvenience, and, in the meanwhile, cuts us off from 
 the sympathy of other nations, which feel its power 
 more than we do. 
 
 But, in 1830, Heine very soon found that the fire- 
 engines of the German governments were too much
 
 122 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 * 
 
 for liis direct efforts at incendiarism. " What demon 
 drove me," he cries, " to write my Reisebilder, to edit 
 a newspaper, to plague myself with our time and its 
 interests, to try and shake the poor German Hodge 
 out of his thousand years' sleep in his hole? What 
 good did I get by it ? Hodge opened his eyes, only to 
 shut them again immediately ; he yawned, only to begin 
 snoring^ asrain the next minute louder than ever ; he 
 stretched his stiff ungainly limbs, only to sink down 
 again directly afterwards, and lie like a dead man in 
 the old bed of his accustomed habits. I must have rest ; 
 but where am I to find a resting-place ? In Germany I 
 can no longer stay."' 
 
 This is Heine's jesting account of his own efforts to 
 rouse Germany : now for his pathetic account of them ; 
 it is because he unites so much wit with so much pathos 
 that he is so effective a writer : — 
 
 "The Emperor Charles the Fifth ^ sate in sore 
 straits, in the Tyrol, encompassed by his enemies. All 
 his knights and courtiers had forsaken him ; not one 
 came to his help. I know not if he had at that time 
 the cheese face with which Holbein has painted him 
 for us. But I am sure that under lip of his, with its 
 contempt for mankind, stuck out even more than it 
 does in his portraits. How could he but contemn the 
 tribe which in the sunshine of his prosperity had 
 fawned on him so devotedly, and now, in his dark dis- 
 tress, left him all alone? Then suddenly his door 
 opened, and there came in a man in disguise, and, as 
 he threw back his cloak, the Kaiser recognized in him 
 his faithful Conrad von der Rosen, the court jester. 
 This man brought him comfort and counsel, and he 
 was the court jester ! 
 
 " ' O German fatherland I dear German people I I 
 am thy Conrad von der Rosen. The man whose proper
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 123, 
 
 business was to amuse thee, and who in good times 
 should have catered only for thy mirth, makes his way 
 ipto thy prison in time of need ; here, under my cloak, 
 I bring thee thy sceptre and crown; dost thou not 
 recognize me, my Kaiser ? If I cannot free thee, I will 
 at least comfort thee, and thou shalt at least have one 
 with thee who will prattle with thee about thy sorest 
 affliction, and whisjaer courage to thee, and love thee, 
 and whose best joke and best blood shall be at thy 
 service. For thou, my people, art the true Kaiser, the 
 true lord of the land ; thy will is sovereign, and more 
 legitimate far than that purple Tel est notre plaisir^ 
 which invokes a divine right with no better warrant 
 than the anointings of shaven and shorn jugglers ; 
 thy will, my people, is the sole rightful source of power. 
 Though now thou liest down in thy bonds, yet in the 
 end will thy rightful cause prevail ; the day of deliver- 
 ance is at hand, a new time is beginning. My Kaiser, 
 the night is over, and out there glows the ruddy dawn.' 
 
 '"Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou art mis- 
 taken ; perhaps thou takest a headsman's gleaming 
 axe for the sun, and the red of dawn is only blood.' 
 
 " ' No, my Kaiser, it is the sun, though it is rising 
 in the west ; these six thousand years it has always 
 risen in the east ; it is high time there should come a 
 change.' 
 
 " ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou hast lost 
 the bells out of thy red cap, and it has now such an 
 odd look, that red cap of thine ! ' 
 
 " ' Ah, my Kaiser, thy distress has made me shake 
 my head so hard and fierce, that the fool's bells have 
 dropped ofP my cap ; the cap is none the worse for 
 that.' 
 
 " ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, what is that noise 
 of breaking and cracking outside there ? '
 
 »124 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " ' Hush ! that is the saw and the carpenter's axe, and 
 soon the doors of thy prison will be burst open, and 
 thou wilt be free, my Kaiser ! ' 
 
 " ' Am I then really Kaiser ? Ah, I forgot, it is the 
 fool who tells me so ! ' 
 
 " ' Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the air of thy prison 
 makes thee so desponding ! when once thou hast got thy 
 rights again, thou wilt feel once more the bold impe- 
 rial blood in thy veins, and thou wilt be proud like a 
 Kaiser, and violent, and gracious, and unjust, and smil- 
 ing, and ungrateful, as princes are.' 
 
 " ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, when I am free, 
 what wilt thou do then ? ' 
 
 " ' I will then sew new bells on to my cap.' 
 
 " ' And how shall I recompense thy fidelity ? ' 
 
 " ' Ah, dear master, by not leaving me to die in a 
 ditch ! '" 1 
 
 I wish to mark Heine's place in modern European 
 literature, the scope of his activity, and his value. I 
 cannot attempt to give here a detailed account of his 
 life, or a description of his separate works. In May 
 1831 he went over his Jordan, the Rhine, and fixed 
 himself in his new Jerusalem, Paris. There, hencefor- 
 ward, he lived, going in general to some French water- 
 ing-place in the summer, but making only one or two 
 short visits to Germany during the rest of his life. 
 His works, in verse and prose, succeeded each other 
 without stopping ; a collected edition of them, filling 
 seven closely-printed octavo volumes, has been pub- 
 lished in America ; ^ in the collected editions of few 
 people's works is there so little to skip. Those who 
 wish for a single good specimen of him should read his 
 first important work, the work which made his reputa- 
 tion, the JReisebllder, or " Travelling Sketches " : prose 
 and verse, wit and seriousness, are mingled in it, and
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 125 
 
 the mingling of these is characteristic of Heine, and is 
 nowhere to be seen practised more naturally and hap- 
 pily than in his Heisebilder. In 1847 his health, which 
 till then had always been perfectly good, gave way. He 
 had a kind of paralytic stroke. His malady proved to 
 be a softening of the spinal marrow : it was incurable ; 
 it made rapid progress. In May 1848, not a year after 
 his first attack, he went out of doors for the last time ; 
 but his disease took more than eight years to kiU him. 
 For nearly eight years he lay helpless on a couch, with 
 the use of his limbs gone, wasted almost to the pro- 
 portions of a child, wasted so that a woman could carry 
 him about ; the sight of one eye lost, that of the other 
 greatly dimmed, and requiring, that it might be exer- 
 cised, to have the palsied eyelid lifted and held up 
 by the finger ; all this, and besides this, suffering at 
 short intervals pai'oxysms of nervous agony. I have 
 said he was not preeminently brave ; but in the aston- 
 ishing force of spirit with which he retained his activity 
 of mind, even his gayety, amid all his suffering, and 
 went on composing with undiminished fire to the last, 
 he was truly brave. Nothing could clog that aerial 
 lightness. " Pouvez-vous siffler ? " his doctor asked him 
 one day, when he was almost at his last gasp; — 
 " siffler," as every one knows, has the double meaning 
 of to whistle and to hiss: — "Helas! non," was his 
 v^^hispered answer ; " pas meme une comedie de M. 
 Scribe! " M. Scribe ^ is, or was, the favorite dramatist 
 of the French Philistine. " My nerves," he said to 
 some one who asked him about them in 1855, the year 
 of the great Exhibition in Paris, " my nerves are of 
 that quite singularly remarkable miserableness of na- 
 ture, that I am convinced they would get at the Exhi- 
 bition the grand medal for pain and misery." He read 
 all the medical books which treated of his complaint.
 
 126 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 "But," said he to some one who found him thus en- 
 gaged, "what good this reading is to do me I don't 
 know, except that it will qualify me to give lectures in 
 heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth about dis- 
 eases of the spinal marrow."' AVhat a matter of grim 
 seriousness are our own ailments to most of us! yet 
 with this gayety Heine treated his to the end. That 
 end, so long in coming, came at last. Heine died on the 
 17th of February, 1856, at the age of fifty-eight. By 
 his will he forbade that his remains should be trans- 
 ported to Germany. He lies buried in the cemetery of 
 Montmartre, at Paris. 
 
 His direct political action was null, and this is 
 neither to be wondered at nor regretted ; direct polit- 
 ical action is not the true function of literature, and 
 Heine was a born man of letters. Even in his favorite 
 France the turn taken by public affairs was not at all 
 what he wished, though he read French politics by no 
 means as we in England, most of us, read them. He 
 thought things were tending there to the triumph of 
 communism ; and to a champion of the idea like Heine, 
 what there is gfi-oss and narrow in communism was 
 very repulsive. "It is all of no use," he cried on his 
 death-bed, " the future belongs to our enemies, the Com- 
 munists, and Louis Napoleon ^ is their John the Bap- 
 tist." " And yet," — he added with aU his old love for 
 that remarkable entity, so full of attraction for him, so 
 profoundly unknown in England, the French people, 
 — " do not believe that God lets all this go forward 
 merely as a grand comedy. Even though the Commun- 
 ists deny him to-day, he knows better than they do, 
 that a time will come when they will learn to believe 
 in him." After 1831, liis hopes of soon upsetting the 
 German Governments had died away, and his propa- 
 gandism took another, a more truly literary, character.
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 127 
 
 It took the character of an intrepid application of the 
 modern spirit to literature. To the ideas with which 
 the burning questions of modern life filled him, he 
 made all his subject-matter minister. He touched all 
 the great points in the career of the human race, and 
 here he but followed the tendency of the wide culture 
 of Germany ; but he touched them with a wand which 
 brought them all under a light where the modern eye 
 cares most to see them, and here he gave a lesson to the 
 culture of Germany, — so wide, so impartial, that it is 
 apt to become slack and powerless, and to lose itself in its 
 materials for want of a strong central idea round which 
 to group all its other ideas. So the mystic and romantic 
 school of Germany lost itself in the Middle Ages, was 
 overpowered by their influence, came to ruin by its 
 vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a far pro- 
 founder sense of the mystic and romantic charm of the 
 Middle Age than Goerres, or Brentano, or Arnim,i 
 Heine the chief romantic poet of Germany, is yet also 
 much more than a romantic poet : he is a great modern 
 poet, he is not conquered by the Middle Age, he has a 
 talisman by which he can feel — along with but above 
 the power of the fascinating Middle Age itself — the 
 power of modern ideas. 
 
 A French critic of Heine thinks he has said enough 
 in saying that Heine proclaimed in German countries, 
 with beat of drum, the ideas of 1789, and that at the 
 cheerful noise of his drum the ghosts of the Middle 
 Age took to flight. But this is rather too French an 
 account of the matter. Germany, that vast mine of 
 ideas, had no need to import ideas, as such, from any 
 foreign country ; and if Heine had carried ideas, as 
 such, from France into Germany, he would but have 
 been carrying coals to Newcastle. But that for which 
 France, far less meditative than Germany, is eminent,
 
 128 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 is the prompt, ardent, and practical application of an 
 idea, when she seizes it, in all departments of human 
 activity which admit it. And that in which Germany 
 most fails, and by failing in which she appears so help- 
 less and impotent, is just the practical application of 
 her innumerable ideas. " A\''hen Candide," says Heine 
 himself, " came to Eldorado, he saw in the streets a 
 number of boys who were playing with gold-nuggets 
 instead of marbles. This degree of luxury made him 
 imagine that they must be the king's children, and 
 he was not a little astonished when he found that in 
 Eldorado gold-nuggets are of no more value than mar- 
 bles are with us, and that the schoolboys play with 
 them. A similar thing happened to a friend of mine, 
 a foreigner, when he came to Germany and first read 
 German books. He was perfectly astounded at the 
 wealth of ideas which he found in them ; but he soon 
 remarked that ideas in Germany are as plentiful as 
 gold-nuggets in Eldorado, and that those writers whom 
 he had taken for intellectual princes, were in reality 
 only common schoolboys." ^ Heine was, as he calls 
 himself, a " Child of the French Revolution," an " In- 
 itiator," because he vigorously assured the Germans 
 that ideas were not counters or marbles, to be played 
 with for their own sake ; because he exhibited in liter- 
 ature modern ideas applied with the utmost freedom, 
 clearness, and originality. And therefore he declared 
 that the great task of his life had been the endeavor 
 to establish a cordial relation between France and 
 Germany. It is because he thus operates a junction 
 between the French spirit and German ideas and 
 German culture, that he founds something new, opens 
 a fresh period, and deserves the attention of criticism 
 far more than the German poets his contemporaries, 
 who merely continue an old period till it expires. It
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 129 
 
 may be predicted that in the literature of other coun- 
 tries, too, the Fi'ench spirit is destined to make its 
 influence felt, — as an element, in alliance with the 
 native spirit, of novelty and movement, — as it has 
 made its influence felt in German literature ; fifty 
 years hence a critic will be demonstrating to our grand- 
 children how this phenomenon has come to pass. 
 
 We in England, in our great burst of literature 
 during the .first thirty years of the present century, 
 had no manifestation of the modern spirit, as this 
 spirit manifests itself in Goethe's works or Heine's. 
 And the reason is not far to seek. We had neither 
 the German wealth of ideas, nor the French enthu- 
 siasm for applying ideas. There reigned in the mass 
 of the nation that inveterate inaccessibility to ideas, 
 that Philistinism, — to use the German nickname, — 
 •which reacts even on the individual genius that is 
 exempt from it. In our greatest literary epoch, that 
 of the Elizabethan age,^ English society at large was 
 accessible to ideas, was permeated by them, was vivified 
 by them, to a degree which has never been reached 
 in England since. Hence the unique greatness in Eng- 
 lish literature of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. 
 They were powerfully upheld by the intellectual life 
 of their nation ; they applied freely in literature the 
 then modern ideas, — the ideas of the Renascence and 
 the Reformation. A few years afterwards the great 
 English middle class, the kernel of the nation, the class 
 whose intelligent sympathy had upheld a Shakespeai-e, 
 entered the prison of Puritanism, and had the key 
 turned on its spirit there for two hundred years. He 
 enlargeth a nation, says Job, and straiteneth it again.^ 
 
 In the literary movement of the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century the signal attempt to apply freely 
 the modern spirit was made in England by two mem-
 
 130 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 bers of the aristocratic class, Byron and Shelley. Aris- 
 tocracies are, as such, naturally impenetrable by ideas ; 
 but their individual members have a 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 freely developing it. But By- 
 ron and SheUey did not succeed in their attempt freely 
 to apply the modern spirit in English literature ; they 
 could not succeed in it ; the resistance to baffle them, 
 the want of intelligent sympathy to guide and uphold 
 them, were too great. Their literary creation, com- 
 pared with the literary creation of Shakespeare and 
 Spenser, compared with the literary creation of Goethe 
 and Heine, is a failui'c. The best literary creation of 
 that time in England proceeded from men who did 
 not make the same bold attempt as Byron and Shelley. 
 What, in fact, was the career of the chief English 
 men of letters, their contemporaries ? The gravest of 
 them, Wordsworth, retired (in Middle-Age phrase) 
 into a monastery. I mean, he plunged himself in the 
 inward life, he voluntarily cut himself off from the 
 modern spirit. Coleridge took to opium. Scott became 
 the historiographer-royal of feudalism. Keats passion- 
 ately gave himself up to a sensuous genius, to his fac- 
 ulty for interpreting nature ; and he died of consump- 
 tion at twenty-five. Wordsworth, Scott, and Keats 
 have left admirable works ; far more solid and com- 
 plete works than those which Byron and Shelley have 
 left. But their works have this defect, — they do not 
 belong to that which is the main current of the liter- 
 ature of modern epochs, they do not apply modern 
 ideas to life ; they constitute, therefore, minor cin^rents, 
 and all other literary work of our day, however popu- 
 lar, which has the same defect, also constitutes but
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 131 
 
 a minor current. Byron and Shelley will long be 
 remembered, long after the inadequacy of their actual 
 work is clearly recognized, for their passionate, their 
 Titanic effort to flow in the main stream of modern 
 literature ; their names will be greater than their 
 writings ; stat magni nominis umbra.^ 
 
 Heine's literary good fortune was superior to that 
 of Byron and Shelley. His theatre of operations was 
 Germany, whose Philistinism does not consist in her 
 want of ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she 
 teems with them and loves them, but, as I have said, 
 in her feeble and hesitating application of modern 
 ideas to life. Heine's intense modernism, his absolute 
 freedom, his utter rejection of stock classicism and 
 stock romanticism, his bringing all things under the 
 point of view of the nineteenth century, were under- 
 stood and laid to heart by Germany, through virtue 
 of her immense, tolerant intellectualism, much as there 
 was in all Heine said to affront and wound Germany. 
 The wit and ardent modern spirit of France Heine 
 joined to the culture, the sentiment, the thought of 
 Germany. This is what makes him so remarkable : 
 his wonderful clearness, lightness, and freedom, united 
 with such power of feeling, and width of range. Is 
 there anywhere keener wit than in his story of the 
 French abbe who was his tutor, and who wanted to 
 get from him that la religion is French for der 
 Glmibe : " Six times did he ask me the question : 
 ' Henry, what is Jer Glauhe in French ? ' and six 
 times, and each time with a greater burst of tears, 
 did I answer him — 'It is le credit.'' And at the 
 seventh time, his face purple with rage, the infuriated 
 questioner screamed out: 'It \^ la religion'' -, and a 
 rain of cuffs descended upon me, and all the other 
 boys burst out laughing. Since that day I have never
 
 132 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 been able to hear la religion mentioned, without feel- 
 ing a tremor run through my back, and my cheeks 
 grow red with shame." ^ Or in that comment on the 
 fate of Professor Saalfeld, who had been addicted to 
 writing furious pamphlets against Napoleon, and who 
 was a professor at Gbttingen, a great seat, according 
 to Heine, of pedantry and Philistinism. " It is curi- 
 ous," says Heine, " the three greatest adversaries of 
 Napoleon have all of them ended miserably. Castle- 
 reagh ^ cut his own throat ; Louis the Eighteenth 
 rotted upon his throne ; and Professor Saalfeld is still 
 a professor at Gottingen." ^ It is impossible to go 
 beyond that. 
 
 What wit, again, in that saying which every one 
 has heard : " The Englishman loves liberty like his 
 lawful wife, the Frenchman loves her like his mis- 
 tress, the German loves her like his old grandmother." 
 But the turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying 
 is not so well known ; and it is by that turn he shows 
 himself the born poet he is, — full of delicacy and 
 tenderness, of inexhaustible resource, infinitely new 
 and striking : — 
 
 " And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how things 
 may turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in an ill-tem- 
 per with his wife, is capable of some day putting a rope 
 round her neck, and taking her to be sold at Smith- 
 field. The inconstant Frenchman may become unfaith- 
 ful to his adored mistress, and be seen fluttering about 
 the Palais Royal after another. But the Germamoill 
 never quite abandon his old grandmother; he will 
 always keep for her a nook by the chimney-corner, 
 where she can tell her fairy stories to the listening 
 children." * 
 
 Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily 
 both the weakness and the strength of Germany ; — :
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 133 
 
 pedantic, simple, enslaved, free, ridiculous, admirable 
 Germany ? 
 
 And Heine's verse, — his Lieder f Oh, the com- 
 fort, after dealing with French people of genius, irre- 
 sistibly impelled to try and express themselves in verse, 
 launching out into a deep which destiny has sown 
 with so many rocks for them, — the comfort of coming 
 to a man of genius, who finds in verse his freest and 
 most perfect expression, whose voyage over the deep 
 of poetry destiny makes smooth ! After the rhythm, 
 to us, at any rate, with the German paste in our com- 
 position, so deeply unsatisfying, of — 
 
 "Ah ! que me dites-vous, et que vous dit mon ame ? 
 Que dit le ciel k I'aube et la flamme k la flamme ? " 
 
 what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like — 
 
 " Take, oh, take those lips away, 
 That so sweetly were forsworn — "^ 
 
 or — 
 
 " Siehst sehr sterbeblasslich aus, 
 Doch getrost ! du bist zu Haus — " ' 
 
 in which one's soul can take pleasure ! The magic of 
 Heine's poetical form is incomparable ; he chiefly uses a 
 form of old German popular poetry , a ballad-form which 
 has more rapidity and grace than any ballad-form of 
 ours ; he employs this form with the most exquisite light- 
 ness and ease, and yet it has at the same time the inborn 
 fulness, pathos, and old-world charm of all true forms 
 of popular poetry. Thus in Heine's poetry, too, one 
 perpetually blends the impression of French modern- 
 ism and clearness, with that of German sentiment and 
 fulness ; and to give this blended impression is, as I 
 have said, Heine's great characteristic. To feel it, one 
 must read him ; he gives it in his form as well as in 
 his contents, and by translation I can only reproduce 
 it so far as his contents give it. But even the contents
 
 134 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of many of his poems are cajDable of giving a certain 
 sense of it. Here, for instance, is a poem in which he 
 makes his profession of faith to an innocent beautiful 
 soul, a sort of Gretchen, the child of some simple 
 mining people having their hut among the pines at 
 the foot of the Hartz Mountains, who reproaches him 
 with not holding the old articles of the Christian 
 creed : — 
 
 " Ah, my child, while I was yet a little boy, while 
 I yet sate upon my mother's knee, I believed in God 
 the Father, who rules up there in Heaven, good and 
 great ; 
 
 " Who created the beautiful earth, and the beauti- 
 ful men and women thereon ; who ordained for sun, 
 moon, and stars their courses. 
 
 " When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended yet 
 a great deal more than this, and comprehended, and 
 grew intelligent ; and I believe on the Son also ; 
 
 " On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revealed 
 love to us; and, for his reward, as always happens, 
 was crucified by the people. 
 
 " Now, when I am grown up, have read much, have 
 travelled much, my heart swells within me, and with 
 my whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost. 
 
 " The greatest miracles were of his working, and 
 still greater miracles doth he even now work ; he burst 
 in sunder the oppressor's stronghold, and he burst in 
 sunder the bondsman's yoke. 
 
 " He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old 
 right ; all mankind are one race of noble equals before 
 him. 
 
 " He chases away the evil clouds and the dark cob- 
 webs of the brain, which have spoilt love and joy for 
 us, which day and night have loured on us. 
 
 " A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the Holy
 
 HEINEICH HEINE 135 
 
 Ghost chosen out to fulfil his will, aud he has put 
 courage into their souls. 
 
 " Their good swords flash, their bright banners 
 wave ; what, thou wouldst give much, my child, to look 
 upon such gallant knights ? 
 
 " Well, on me, my child, look ! kiss me, and look 
 boldly upon me ! one of those knights of the Holy 
 Ghost am I." 1 
 
 One has only to turn over the pages of his Roman- 
 cero^ — a collection of poems written in the first years 
 of his illness, with his whole power and charm still in 
 them, and not, like his latest poems of all, painfully 
 touched by the air of his Matrazzen-griift, his " mat- 
 tress-grave," — to see Heine's width of range; the 
 most varied figures succeed one another, — Rhampsini- 
 tus,^ Edith with the Swan Neck,* Charles the First, 
 Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine of Mabille, 
 Melisanda of Tripoli,^ Richard Coeur de Lion, Pedro 
 the Cruel,^ Firdusi,^ Cortes, Dr. Dollinger;^ — but 
 never does Heine attempt to be hiibsch ohjectiv, " beau- 
 tifully objective," to become in spirit an old Egyptian, 
 or an old Hebrew, or a Middle- Age knight, or a Span- 
 ish adventurer, or an English royalist; he always 
 remains Heinrich Heine, a son of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. To give a notion of his tone, I will quote a few 
 stanzas at the end of the Spanish Atridce,^ in which 
 he describes, in the character of a visitor at the court 
 of Henry of Transtamare ^^ at Segovia, Henry's treat- 
 ment of the children of his brother, Pedro the Cruel. 
 Don Diego Albuquerque, his neighbor, strolls after 
 dinner through the castle with him : — 
 
 " In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels 
 where are kept the king's hounds, that with their 
 growling and yelping let you know a long way off where 
 they are,
 
 136 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong 
 iron grating for its outer face, a cell like a cage. 
 
 " Two human figures sate therein, two young boys ; 
 chained by the leg, they crouched in the dirty straw. 
 
 " Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the 
 other not much older; their faces fair and noble, but 
 pale and wan with sickness. 
 
 " They were all in rags, almost naked ; and their 
 lean bodies showed wounds, the marks of ill-usage ; 
 both of them shivered with fever. 
 
 " They looked up at me out of the depth of their 
 misery ; ' Who,' I cried in horror to Don Diego, ' are 
 these pictures of wretchedness ? ' 
 
 " Don Diego seemed embarrassed ; he looked round 
 to see that no one was listening ; then he gave a deep 
 sigh ; and at last, putting on the easy tone of a man 
 of the world, he said : — 
 
 " ' These are a pair of king's sons, who were early 
 left orphans ; the name of their father was King Pedro, 
 the name of their mother, Maria de Padilla. 
 
 " ' After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry 
 of Transtaraare had relieved his brother, King 
 Pedro, of the troublesome burden of the crown, 
 
 " ' And likewise of that still more troublesome bur- 
 den, which is called life, then Don Henry's victorious 
 magnanimity had to deal with his brother's children. 
 
 " ' He has adopted them, as an uncle should ; and 
 he has given them free quarters in his own castle. 
 
 " ' The room which he has assigned to them is cer- 
 tainly rather small, but then it is cool in summer, 
 and not intolerably cold in winter. 
 
 " ' Their fare is rye-bread, which tastes as sweet as 
 if the goddess Ceres had baked it express for her 
 beloved Proserpine, 
 
 " ' Not unfrequently, too, he sends a scullion to
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 137 
 
 them with garbanzos/ and then the young gentlemen 
 know that it is Sunday in Spain. 
 
 " ' But it is not Sunday every day, and garbanzos do 
 not come every day ; and the master of the hounds 
 gives them the treat of his whip. 
 
 " ' For the master of the hounds, who has under his 
 superintendence the kennels and the pack, and the 
 nephews' cage also, 
 
 " ' Is the unfortunate husband of that lemon-faced 
 woman with the white ruff, whom we remarked to-day 
 at dinner. 
 
 " ' And she scolds so sharp, that often her husband 
 snatches his whip, and rushes down here, and gives it 
 to the dogs and to the poor little boys. 
 
 " ' But his majesty has expressed his disapproval 
 of such proceedings, and has given orders that for the 
 future his nephews are to be treated differently from 
 the dogs. 
 
 " ' He has determined no longer to entrust the 
 disciplining of his nephews to a mercenary stranger, 
 but to carry it out with his own hands.' 
 
 " Don Diego stopped abruptly ; for the seneschal of 
 the castle joined us, and politely expressed his hope 
 that we had dined to our satisfaction." 
 
 Observe how the irony of the whole of that, finish- 
 ing with the grim innuendo of the last stanza but one, 
 is at once truly masterly and truly modern. 
 
 No account of Heine is complete which does not 
 notice the Jewish element in him. His race he treated 
 with the same freedom with which he treated every- 
 thing else, but he derived a great force from it, and 
 no one knew this better than he himself. He has 
 excellently pointed out how in the sixteenth century 
 there was a double renascence, — a Hellenic renascence 
 and a Hebrew renascence — and how both have been
 
 138 IMATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 great powers ever since. He bimseK had in him both 
 the spirit of Greece and the spirit of Judsea : both 
 these spirits reach the infinite, which is the true goal 
 of all poetry and all art, — the Greek spirit by beauty, 
 the Hebrew spirit by sublimity. By his perfection of 
 literary form, by his love of clearness, by his love of 
 beauty, Heine is Greek ; by his intensity, by his untam- 
 ableness, by his " longing which cannot be uttered," ^ 
 he is Hebrew. Yet what Hebrew ever treated the 
 things of the Hebrews like this ? — 
 
 " There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging 
 in the Baker's Broad Walk, a man whose name is 
 Moses Lump ; all the week he goes about in wind and 
 rain, with his pack on his back, to earn his few shil- 
 lings ; but when on Friday evening he comes home, he 
 finds the candlestick with seven candles lighted, and 
 the table covered with a fair white cloth, and he puts 
 away from him his pack and his cares, and he sits down 
 to table with his squinting wife and yet more squint- 
 ing daughter, and eats fish with them, fish which has 
 been dressed in beautiful white garlic sauce, sings 
 therewith the grandest psalms of King David, rejoices 
 with his whole heart over the deliverance of the chil- 
 dren of Israel out of Egypt, rejoices, too, that all the 
 wicked ones who have done the children of Israel hurt, 
 have ended by taking themselves off ; that King Pha- 
 raoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Hamun, Antiochus, Titus, and 
 all such people, are well dead, while he, Closes Lump, 
 is 3'et alive, and eating fish with wife and daughter ; and 
 I can tell 30U, Doctor, the fish is delicate and the man 
 is happy, he has no call to torment himself about cul- 
 ture, he sits contented in his religion and in his green 
 bedgown, like Diogenes in his tub, he contemplates 
 with satisfaction his candles, which he on no account 
 will snuff for himself ; and I can tell you, if the can-
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 139 
 
 (lies burn a little dim, and the snuffers-woman, whose 
 business it is to snuff them, is not at hand, and Roth- 
 schild the Great were at that moment to come in, with 
 all his brokers, bill discounters, agents, and chief 
 clerks, with whom he conquers the world, and Roth- 
 schild were to say : ' Moses Lump, ask of me what 
 favor you will, and it shall be granted you ' ; — Doc- 
 tor, I am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly an- 
 swer : ' Snuff me those candles ! ' and Rothschild the 
 Great would exclaim with admiration : ' If I were 
 not Rothschild, I would be Moses Lump.' " ^ 
 
 There Heine shows us his own people by its comic 
 side ; in the poem of the Princess Sahhath ^ he shows 
 it to us by a more serious side. The Princess Sabbath, 
 " the tranquil Princess, pearl and flower of all beauty, 
 fair as the Queen of Sheba, Solomon's bosom friend, 
 that blue stocking from Ethiopia, who wanted to shine 
 by her esprit, and with her wise riddles made herseK in 
 the long run a bore " (with Heine the sarcastic turn 
 is never far off), this princess has for her betrothed 
 a prince whom sorcery has transformed into an animal 
 of lower race, the Prince Israel. 
 
 " A dog with the desires of a dog, he wallows all 
 the week long in the filth and refuse of life, amidst 
 the jeers of the boys in the street. 
 
 "But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour, 
 suddenly the magic passes off, and the dog becomes 
 once more a human being. 
 
 " A man with the feelings of a man, with head and 
 heart raised aloft, in festal garb, in almost clean garb, 
 he enters the halls of his Father. 
 
 " Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father ! Ye tents 
 of Jacob, I kiss with my lips your holy door-posts ! " 
 
 Still more he shows us this serious side in his beau- 
 tiful poem on Jehuda ben Halevy,^ a poet belonging
 
 140 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 to "the great golden age of the Arabian, Old-Spanish, 
 Jewish school of poets," a contemporary of the trou- 
 badours : — 
 
 " He, too, — the hero whom we sing, — Jehuda ben 
 Halevy, too, had his lady-love ; but she was of a spe- 
 cial sort. 
 
 " She was no Laura. ^ whose eyes, mortal stars, in 
 the cathedral on Good Friday kindled that world- 
 renowned flame. 
 
 " She was no chatelaine, who in the blooming glory 
 of her youth presided at tourneys, and awarded the 
 victor's crown. 
 
 " Xo casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no lady 
 doctrinaire, who delivered her oracles in the judgment- 
 chamber of a Court of Love.^ 
 
 " She, whom the Rabbi loved, was a woe-begone 
 poor darling, a mourning picture of desolation . . . 
 and her name was Jerusalem." 
 
 Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his 
 pilgrimage to Jeriisalem : and there, amid the ruins, 
 singfs a son": of Sion which has become famous amonsr 
 his people : — 
 
 " That lay of pearled tears is the wide-famed La- 
 ment, which is sung in all the scattered tents of Jacob 
 throughout the world. 
 
 " On the ninth day of the month which is called 
 ^b, on the anniversary of Jerusalem's destruction by 
 Titus Vespasianus. 
 
 " Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben 
 Hale\y sang with his dying breath amid the holy ruins 
 of Jerusalem. 
 
 " Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sat there 
 upon the fragment of a fallen column ; down to his 
 breast fell, 
 
 " Like a gray forest, his hair ; and cast a weird
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 141 
 
 shadow on the face which looked out through it, — 
 his troubled pale face, with the spiritual eyes. 
 
 " So he sat and sang, like unto a seer out of the 
 foretime to look upon ; Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed 
 to have risen out of his grave. 
 
 " But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft 
 on his barb, lolling in his saddle, and brandishing a 
 naked javelin ; 
 
 " Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his 
 deadly shaft, and shot away like a winged shadow. 
 
 "Quietly flowed the Rabbi's life-blood, quietly he 
 sang his song to an end ; and his last dying sigh was 
 Jerusalem ! " 
 
 But, most of all, Heine shows us this side in a 
 strange poem describing a public dispute, before King 
 Pedro and his Court, between a Jewish and a Chris- 
 tian champion, on the merits of their respective faiths. 
 In the strain of the Jew all the fierceness of the old 
 Hebrew genius, all its rigid defiant Monotheism, 
 appear : — 
 
 " Our God has not died like a poor innocent lamb 
 for mankind ; he is no gushing philanthropist, no 
 declaimer. 
 
 " Our God is not love, caressing is not his line ; but 
 he is a God of thunder, and he is a God of revenge. 
 
 " The lightnings of his wrath strike inexorably 
 every sinner, and the sins of the fathers are often 
 visited upon their remote posterity. 
 
 " Our God, he is alive, and in his hall of heaven 
 he goes on existing away, throughout all the eterni- 
 ties. 
 
 " Our God, too, is a God in robust health, no myth, 
 pale and thin as sacrificial wafers, or as shadows by 
 Cocytus. 
 
 " Our God is strong. In his hand he upholds sun,
 
 142 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 moon, and stars ; thrones break, nations reel to and 
 fro, when he knits his forehead. 
 
 " Our God loves music, the voice of the harp and 
 the song of feasting ; but the sound of church-bells he 
 hates, as he hates the grunting of pigs." ^ 
 
 Nor must Heine's sweetest note be unheard, — his 
 plaintive note, his note of melancholy. Here is a strain 
 which came from him as he lay, in the winter night, 
 on his "mattress-grave " at Paris, and let his thoughts 
 wander home to Germany, " the great child, entertain- 
 ing herself with her Christmas-tree." " Thou tookest," 
 — he cries to the German exile, — 
 
 " Thou tookest thy flight towards sunshine and hap- 
 piness ; naked and poor returnest thou back. German 
 truth, German shirts, — one gets them worn to tatters 
 in foreign parts. 
 
 " Deadly pale are thy looks, but take comfort, thou 
 art at home ! one lies warm in German earth, warm as 
 by the old pleasant fireside. 
 
 " Many a one, alas, became crippled, and could get 
 home no more ! longingly he stretches out his arms ; 
 God have mercy upon him ! " ^ 
 
 God have mercy upon him ! for what remain of the 
 days of the years of his life are few and evil. " Can it 
 be that I still actually exist? My body is so shrunk 
 that there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, 
 and my bed makes me think of the melodious grave of 
 the enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broce- 
 liand in Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine 
 like green flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those 
 trees, brother Merlin, and their fresh waving ! for over 
 my mattress-grave here in Paris no green leaves rustle ; 
 and early and late I hear nothing but the rattle of 
 carriages, hammering, scolding, and the jingle of the 
 piano. A grave without rest, death without the privi-
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 143 
 
 leges of the departed, who have no longer any need to 
 spend money, or to write letters, or to compose books. 
 What a melancholy situation ! " ^ 
 
 He died, and has left a blemished name ; with his 
 crying faults, — his intemperate susceptibility, his 
 unserupulousness in passion, his inconceivable attacks 
 on his enemies, his still more inconceivable attacks on 
 his friends, his want of generosity, his sensuality, his 
 incessant mocking, — how could it be otherwise ? Not 
 only was he not one of Mr. Carlyle's " respectable " 
 people, he was profoundly f?isrespectable ; and not 
 even the merit of not being a Philistine can make up 
 for a man's being that. To his intellectual deliverance 
 there was an addition of something else wanting, and 
 that something else was something immense : the old- 
 fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliver- 
 ance. Goethe says that he was deficient in love; to me 
 his weakness seems to be not so much a deficiency in 
 love as a deficiency in self-respect, in true dignity of 
 character. But on this negative side of one's criticism 
 of a man of great genius, I for my part, when 1 have 
 once clearly marked that this negative side is and 
 must be there, have no pleasure in dwelling. I prefer 
 to say of Heine something positive. He is not an ade- 
 quate interpreter of the modern world. He is only a 
 brilliant soldier in the Liberation War of humanity. 
 But, such as he is, he is (and posterity too, I am quite 
 sure, will say this), in the European poetry of that 
 quarter of a century which follows the death of Goethe, 
 incomparably the most important figui-e. 
 
 What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, is 
 Nature ! With what prodigality, in the march of gen- 
 erations, she employs human power, content to gather 
 almost always little result from it, sometimes none ! 
 Look at Byron, that Byron whom the present genera-
 
 144 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 tion of Englishmen are forgetting ; Byron, the greatest 
 natural force, the greatest elementary power, I cannot 
 but think, which has appeared in our literature since 
 Shakespeare. And what became of this wonderful 
 production of nature ? He shattered himself, he inev- 
 itably shattered himself to pieces against the huge, 
 black, cloud-topped, interminable precipice of British 
 Philistinism. But BjTon, it may be said, was eminent 
 only by his genius, only by his inborn force and fire ; 
 he had not the intellectual equipment of a supreme 
 modern poet ; except for his genius he was an ordinary 
 nineteenth-century English gentleman, with little cul- 
 ture and with no ideas. IVell, then, look at Heine. 
 Heine had all the cidture of Germany ; in his head 
 fermented all the ideas of modern Europe. And what 
 have we got from Heine ? A half-result, for want of 
 moral balance, and of nobleness of soul and character. 
 That is what I say ; there is so much power, so many 
 seem able to i*un well, so many give pi'omise of run- 
 ning well ; — so few reach the goal, so few are chosen. 
 Many are called, few chosen.
 
 3 CC.— yp^ J-JPVA. , 
 
 MARCUS AUEELIUSi 
 
 Mr. Mill 2 says, in his book on Liberty, that 
 " Christian morality is in great part merely a protest 
 against paganism ; its ideal is negative rather than 
 positive, passive rather than active." He says, that, in 
 certain most important respects, " it falls far below 
 the best morality of the ancients." Now, the object 
 of systems of morality is to take possession of human 
 life, to save it from being abandoned to passion or 
 allowed to drift at hazard, to give it happiness by 
 establishing it in the practice of virtue ; and this 
 object they seek to attain by prescribing to human life 
 fixed principles of action, fixed rules of conduct. In 
 its uninspired as well as in its inspired moments, in 
 its days of languor and gloom as well as in its days 
 of sunshine and energy, human life has thus always a 
 clue to follow, and may always be making way towards 
 its goal. Christian morality has not failed to supply to 
 human life aids of this sort. It has supplied them far 
 more abundantly than many of its critics imagine. The 
 most exquisite document after those of the New Testa- 
 ment, of all the documents the Christian spirit has 
 ever inspired, — the Lnitation^ — by no means con- 
 tains the whole of Christian morality ; nay, the dis- 
 paragers of this morality would think themselves sure 
 of triumphing if one agreed to look for it in the Imi- 
 tation only. But even the Imitation is full of pas- 
 sages like these : " Vita sine proposito languida et 
 vaga est " ; — " Omni die renovare debemus propo- 
 situm nostrum, dicentes : nunc hodie perfecte inci- 
 piamus, quia nihil est quod hactenus fecimus " ; —
 
 146 I^L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " Secundum propositum nostrum est cursus profectus 
 nostri "' ; — " Raro etiam unum vitium perfecte vinci- 
 mus, et ad quotidianiim profectum non accendimur"; 
 " Semper aliquid eerti propouendum est " ; " Tibi ipsi 
 violentiam frequenter fac." (^A life without a pur- 
 pose is a languid, drifting thing ; — Every day we 
 ought to reneio our i^urpose, saying to ourselves: 
 This day let us make a sound heginning, for lohat 
 we have hitherto done is noiight ; — Our improve- 
 ment is in j)roportion to our purpose ; — We hardly 
 ever manage to get completely rid even of one fault, 
 and do not set our hearts on daily improvement ; — 
 Always place a definite purpose hefore thee ; — Get 
 the habit of mastering thine inclination.^ These are 
 moral precepts, and moral precepts of the best kind. 
 As rules to hold possession of our conduct, and to 
 keep us in the right course through outward troubles 
 and inward perplexity, they are equal to the best ever 
 furnished by the great masters of morals — Epictetus 
 and Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and 
 •then rigorously followed as laws, are, and must be, 
 for the sage only. The mass of mankind have neither 
 force of intellect enough to apprehend them clearly as 
 ideas, nor force of character enough to follow them 
 strictly as laws. The mass of mankind can be carried 
 along a course full of hardship for the natural man, 
 can be borne over the thousand impediments of the 
 narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bound- 
 ing emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading 
 Epictetus^ or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of 
 constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the 
 burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can 
 bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet 
 have borne it 1 Yet, even for the sage, this sense of
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 147 
 
 labor and sorrow in his march towards the goal con- 
 stitutes a relative inferiority ; the noblest souls of 
 whatever creed, the pagan Empedocles ^ as well as the 
 Christian Paul, have insisted on the necessity of an 
 inspiration, a joyful emotion, to make moral action 
 perfect ; an obscure indication of this necessity is the 
 one drop of truth in the ocean of verbiage with which 
 the controversy on justification by faith has flooded 
 the world. But, for the ordinary man, this sense of 
 labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute disqualifica- 
 tion ; it paralyzes him ; under the weight of it, he can- 
 not make way towards the goal at all. The paramount 
 virtue of religion is, that it has lighted up morality ; 
 that it has supjjlied the emotion and inspiration need- 
 ful for carrying the sage along the narrow way per- 
 fectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. 
 Even the religions with most dross in them have had 
 something of this virtue ; but the Christian religion 
 manifests it with unexampled splendor. " Lead me, 
 Zeus and Destiny ! " says the prayer of Epictetus, 
 *' whithersoever I am appointed to go ; I will follow 
 without wavering ; even though I turn coward and 
 shrink, I shall have to follow all the same." ^ The 
 fortitude of that is for the strong, for the few ; even 
 for them the spiritual atmosphere with which it sur- 
 rounds them is bleak and gray. But, " Let thy loving 
 spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness " ; ^ 
 ■ — " The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, 
 and thy God thy glory " ; * — " Unto you that fear 
 my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with 
 healing in his wings," ^ says the Old Testament ; 
 " Born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor 
 of the will of man, but of God " ; ^ — " Except a man 
 be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God " ; ^ 
 — " Whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the
 
 U8 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 world," ^ says the New. The ray of sunshine is there, 
 the glow of a divine warmth ; — the austerity of the 
 sage melts away under it, the paralysis of the weak is 
 healed : he who is vivified by it renews his strength ; 
 " all thmgs are possible to him " ; ^ " he is a new crea- 
 ture." ^ 
 
 Epietetus says : " Every matter has two handles, 
 one of which will bear taking hold of, the other not. 
 If thy brother sin against thee, lay not hold of the 
 matter by this, that he sins against thee ; for by this 
 handle the matter will not bear taking hold of. But 
 rather lay hold of it by this, that he is thy brother, 
 thy born mate ; and thou wilt take hold of it by what 
 will bear handling." * Jesus, being asked whether a 
 man is bound to forgive his brother as often as seven 
 times, answers : " I say not imto thee, until seven 
 times, but until seventy times seven." ^ Epietetus 
 here suggests to the reason grounds for forgiveness 
 of injuries which Jesus does not : but it is vain to say 
 that Epietetus is on that account a better moralist 
 than Jesus, if the warmth, the emotion, of Jesus's an- 
 swer fires his hearer to the practice of forgiveness of 
 injuries, while the thought in Epictetus's leaves him 
 cold. So with Christian morality in general : its dis- 
 tinction is not that it propounds the maxim, " Thou 
 shalt love God and thy neighbor," ^ with more devel- 
 opment, closer reasoning, truer sincerity, than other 
 moral systems ; it is that it propounds this maxim 
 with an inspiration which wonderfully catches the 
 hearer and makes him act upon it. It is because Mr. 
 Mill has attained to the perception of truths of this 
 nature, that he is, — instead of being, like the school 
 from which he proceeds, doomed to sterility, — a writer 
 of distinguished mark and influence, a writer deserv- 
 ing all attention and respect ; it is (I must be par-
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 149 
 
 doned for saying) because he Is not sufficiently leav- 
 ened with them, that he falls just short of being a 
 great writer. 
 
 That which gives to the moral writings of the Em- 
 peror Marcus Aurelius their peculiar character and 
 charm, is their being suffused and softened by some- 
 thing of this very sentiment whence Christian morality- 
 draws its best power. Mr. Long ^ has recently pub- 
 lished in a convenient form a translation of these 
 writings, and has thus enabled English readers to 
 judge Marcus Aurelius for themselves; he has 
 rendered his countrymen a real service by so doing. 
 Mr. Long's reputation as a scholar is a sufficient 
 guarantee of the general fidelity and accuracy of his 
 translation ; on these matters, besides, I am hardly 
 entitled to speak, and my praise is of no value. But 
 that for which I and the rest of the unlearned may 
 venture to praise Mr. Long is this: that he treats 
 Marcus Aurelius's writings, as he treats all the other 
 remains of Greek and Roman antiquity which he 
 touches, not as a dead and dry matter of learning, but 
 as documents with a side of modern applicability and 
 living interest, and valuable mainly so far as this side 
 in them can be made clear ; that as in his notes on 
 Plutarch's Roman Lives he deals with the modern 
 epoch of Caesar and Cicero, not as food for schoolboys, 
 but as food for men, and men engaged in the current 
 of contemporary life and action, so in his remarks and 
 essays on Marcus Aurelius he treats this truly modern 
 striver and thinker not as a Classical Dictionary hero, 
 but as a present source from which to draw " example 
 of life, and instruction of manners." Why may not 
 a son of Dr. Arnold ^ say, what might naturally here 
 be said by any other critic, that in this lively and 
 fruitful way of considering the men and affairs of
 
 150 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ancient Greece and Rome, Mr. Long resembles Dr. 
 Arnold ? 
 
 One or two little complaints, however, I have against 
 Mr. Long, and I will get them off my mind at once. 
 In the first place, why could he not have found gentler 
 and juster terms to describe the translation of his pred- 
 ecessor, Jeremy Collier,^ — the redoubtable enemy of 
 stage plays, — than these : " a most coarse and vulgar 
 copy of the original ? " As a matter of taste, a trans- 
 lator should deal leniently with his predecessor ; but 
 putting that out of the question, Mr. Long's language 
 is a great deal too hard. Most English people who knew 
 Marcus Aurelius before Mr. Long appeared as his 
 introducer, knew him through Jeremy Collier. And 
 the acquaintance of a man like Marcus Aurelius is 
 such an imperishable benefit, that one can never lose 
 a peculiar sense of obligation towards the man who 
 confers it. Apart from this claim upon one's tender- 
 ness, however, Jeremy Collier's version deserves re- 
 spect for its genuine spirit and vigor, the spirit and 
 vigor of the age of Dryden. Jeremy Collier too, like 
 Mr. Long, regarded in Mai'cus Aurelius the living 
 moralist, and not the dead classic ; and his warmth of 
 feeling gave to his style an impetuosity and rhythm 
 which from Mr. Long's style (I do not blame it on 
 that account) are absent. Let us place the two side 
 by side. The Impressive opening of Marcus Aurelius's 
 fifth book, Mr. Long translates thus : — 
 
 " Li the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let 
 this thought be present: I am rising to the work of 
 a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am 
 going to do the things for which I exist and for which 
 I was brought into the world ? Or have I been made 
 for this, to lie in the bed clothes and keep myself 
 warm ? — But this is more pleasant. — Dost thou
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 151 
 
 exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action 
 or exertion?" 
 
 Jeremy Collier has : — 
 
 " When you find an unwillingness to rise early in 
 the morning, make this short speech to yourself : ' I am 
 getting up now to do the business of a man ; and am 
 I out of humor for going about that which I was made 
 for, and for the sake of which I was sent into the 
 world? Was I then designed for nothing but to doze 
 and batten beneath the counterpane? I thought 
 action had been the end of your being.' " 
 
 In another striking passage, again, Mr. Long has : — 
 
 " No longer wonder at hazard ; for neither wilt thou 
 read thy own memoirs, nor the acts of the ancient 
 Romans and Hellenes, and the selections from books 
 which thou wast reserving for thy old age. Hasten 
 then to the end which thou hast before thee, and, 
 throwing away idle hopes, come to thine own aid, if 
 thou carest at all for thyself, while it is in thy power." i 
 
 Here his despised predecessor has : — 
 
 " Don't go too far in your books and overgrasp 
 yourself. Alas, you have no time left to peruse your 
 diary, to read over the Greek and Roman history : 
 come, don't flatter and deceive yourself ; look to the 
 main chance, to the end and design of reading, and 
 mind life more than notion : I say, if you have a kind- 
 ness for your person, drive at the practice and help 
 youself, for that is in your own power." 
 
 It seems to me that here for style and force Jeremy 
 Collier can (to say the least) perfectly stand compar- 
 ison with Mr. Long. Jeremy Collier's real defect as a 
 translator is not his coarseness and vulgarity, but his 
 imperfect acquaintance with Greek ; this is a serious 
 defect, a fatal one ; it rendered a translation like Mr. 
 Long's necessary. Jeremy Collier's work will now be
 
 152 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 forgotten, and Mr. Long stands master of the field ; 
 but he may be content, at any rate, to leave his pred- 
 ecessor's grave unharmed, even if he will not throw 
 upon it, in passing, a handful of kindly earth. 
 
 Another complaint I have against Mr. Long is, that 
 he is not quite idiomatic and simple enough. It is a 
 little formal, at least, if not pedantic, to say Ethic and 
 Dialectic, instead of Ethics and Dialectics, and to 
 say " Hellenes and Romans " instead of " Greeks and 
 Romans." And why, too, — the name of Antoninus 
 being preoccupied by Antoninus Pius/ — will Mr. 
 Long call his author Marcus Antoninus instead of 
 Marcus Aurelius f Small as these matters appear, 
 they are important when one has to deal with the 
 general public, and not with a small circle of scholars ; 
 and it is the general public that the translator of a 
 short masterpiece on morals, such as is the book of 
 Marcus Aurelius, should have in view ; his aim shoiild 
 be to make Marcus Aurelius's work as popular as the 
 Ifnitation, and Marcus Aurelius's name as familiar as 
 Socrates's. In rendering or naming him, therefore, 
 punctilious accuracy of phrase is not so much to be 
 sought as accessibility and currency ; everything which 
 may best enable the Emperor and his precepts volitare 
 per ora virum."^ It is essential to render him in lan- 
 guage perfectly plain and improfessional, and to call 
 him by the name by which he is best and most dis- 
 tinctly known. The translators of the Bible talk 
 of pence and not denarii, and the admirers of Voltaire 
 do not celebrate him under the name of Arouet.^ 
 
 But, after these trifling complaints are made, one 
 must end, as one began, in unfeigned gratitude to Mr. 
 Long for his excellent and substantial reproduction in 
 English of an invaluable work. In general the sub- 
 stantiality, soundness, and precision of Mr. Long's
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 153 
 
 rendering are (I will venture, after all, to give my 
 opinion about them) as conspicuous as the living spirit 
 with which he treats antiquity ; and these qualities are 
 particularly desirable in the translator of a work like 
 that of Marcus Aurelius, of which the language is often 
 corrupt, almost always hard and obscure. Any one 
 who wants to appreciate Mr. Long's merits as a trans- 
 lator may read, in the original and in Mr. Long's 
 translation, the seventh chapter of the tenth book ; he 
 will see how, through all the dubiousness and involved 
 manner of the Greek, Mr. Long has firmly seized upon 
 the clear thought which is certainly at the bottom of 
 that troubled wording, and, in distinctly rendering this 
 thought, has at the same time thrown round its expres- 
 sion a characteristic shade of painf ulness and difficulty 
 which just suits it. And Marcus Aurelius's book is one 
 which, when it is rendered so accurately as Mr. Long 
 renders it, even those who know Greek tolerably well 
 may choose to read rather in the translation than in 
 the original. For not only are the contents here in- 
 comparably more valuable than the external form, but 
 this form, the Greek of a Roman, is not exactly one 
 of those styles which have a physiognomy, which are 
 an essential part of their author, which stamp an 
 indelible impression of him on the reader's mind. 
 An old Lyons commentator finds, indeed, in Marcus 
 Aurelius's Greek, something characteristic, something 
 specially firm and imperial ; but I think an ordinary 
 mortal will hardly find this : he will find crabbed Greek, 
 without any great charm of distinct physiognomy. 
 The Greek of Thucydides and Plato has this charm, 
 and he who reads them in a translation, however accu- 
 rate, loses it, and loses much in losing it ; but the Greek 
 of Marcus Aurelius, like the Greek of the New Testa- 
 ment, and even more than the Greek of the New
 
 154 ]\L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Testament, Is wanting in it. If one could be assured 
 that the English Testament were made perfectly accu- 
 rate, one might be almost content never to open a Greek 
 Testament again ; and, Mr. Long's version of Marcus 
 Aurelius being what it is, an Englishman who reads 
 to live, and does not live to read, may henceforth let 
 the Greek original repose upon its shelf. 
 
 The man whose thoughts Mr. Long has thus faith- 
 fully reproduced, is perhaps the most beautiful figure 
 in history. He is one of those consoling and hope- 
 inspiring marks, which stand forever to remind our 
 weak and easily discouraged race how high human 
 goodness and perseverance have once been carried, 
 and may be carried again. The interest of mankind is 
 peculiarly attracted by examples of signal goodness in 
 high places ; for that testimony to the worth of good- 
 ness is the most striking which is borne by those to 
 whom all the means of pleasure and self-indulgence 
 lay open, by those who had at their command the king- 
 doms of the world and the glory of them. Marcus 
 Aurelius was the ruler of the grandest of empires ; 
 and he was one of the best of men. Besides him, his- 
 tory presents one or two sovereigns eminent for their 
 goodness, such as Saint Louis or Alfred. But Marcus 
 Aurelius has, for us moderns, this great superiority in 
 interest over Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and 
 acted in a state of society modern by its essential char- 
 acteristics, in an epoch akin to our own, in a brilliant 
 centre of civilization. Trajan talks of " our enlight- 
 ened age " just as glibly as the Times ^ talks of it. 
 Marcus Aurelius thus becomes for us a man like our- 
 selves, a man in all things tempted as we are. Saint 
 Louis ^ inhabits an atmosphere of mediaeval Catholi- 
 cism, which the man of the nineteenth century may 
 admire, indeed, may even passionately wish to inhabit,
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 155 
 
 but which, strive as he will, he cannot really inhabit. 
 Alfred belongs to a state of society (I say it with all 
 deference to the Saturday Remew ^ critic who keeps 
 such jealous watch over the honor of our Saxon ances- 
 tors) half barbarous. Neither Alfred nor Saint Louis 
 can be morally and intellectually as near to us as 
 Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 The record of the outward life of this admirable 
 man has in it little of striking incident. He was born 
 at Rome on the 26th of April, in the year 121 of the 
 Christian era. He was nephew and son-in-law to his 
 predecessor on the throne, Antoninus Pius. When 
 Antoninus died, he was forty years old, but from the 
 time of his earliest manhood he had assisted in admin- 
 istering public affairs. Then, after his uncle's death 
 in 161, for nineteen years he reigned as emperor. 
 The barbarians were pressing on the Roman frontier, 
 and a great part of Marcus Aurelius's nineteen years 
 of reign was passed in cam])aigning. His absences 
 from Rome were numerous and long. We hear of him 
 in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece ; but, above all, 
 in the countries on the Danube, where the war with 
 the barbarians was going on, — in Austria, Moravia, 
 Hungary. In these countries much of his Journal 
 seems to have been written ; parts of it are dated from 
 them ; and there, a few weeks before his fifty -ninth 
 birthday, he fell sick and died.^ The record of him on 
 which his fame chiefly rests is the record of his inward 
 life, — his Journal, ov Commentaries, or Meditations, 
 or Thoughts, for by all these names has the work been 
 called. Perhaps the most interesting of the records of 
 his outward life is that which the first book of this 
 work supplies, where he gives an account of his edu- 
 cation, recites the names of those to whom he is in- 
 debted for it, and enumerates his obligations to each
 
 156 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of them. It is a refreshing and consoling picture, a 
 priceless treasure for those, who, sick of the " wild and 
 dreamlike trade of blood and guile," which seems to 
 be nearly the whole of what history has to offer to our 
 view, seek eagerly for that substratum of right think- 
 ing and well-doing which in all ages must surely have 
 somewhere existed, for without it the continued life of 
 humanity would have been impossible. " From my 
 mother I learnt piety and beneficence, and abstinence 
 not only from evU deeds but even from evil thoughts ; 
 and further, simplicity in my way of living, far re- 
 moved from the habits of the rich." Let us remember 
 that, the next time we are reading the sixth satire of 
 Juvenal.^ " From my tutor I learnt " (hear it, ye tutors 
 of princes I ) "endurance of labor, and to want little 
 and to work with ni}' own hands, and not to meddle 
 with other people's afPairs, and not to be ready to lis- 
 ten to slander." The vices and foibles of the Greek 
 sophist or rhetorician — the Grcecnlns esvriens ^ — 
 are in everybody's mind ; but he who reads Marcus 
 Aurelius's account of his Greek teachers and masters, 
 will understand how it is that, in spite of the vices 
 and foibles of individual Grceadi^ the education of the 
 human race owes to Greece a debt which can never be 
 overrated. The vague and colorless praise of history 
 leaves on the mind hardly any impression of Antoni- 
 nus Pius : it is only from the private memoranda of 
 his nephew that we learn what a disciplined, hard- 
 working, gentle, wise, virtuous man he was ; a man 
 who, perhaps, interests mankind less than his immor- 
 tal nephew only because he has left in writing no record 
 of his inner life, — cat^et qvia vote sacro? 
 
 Of the outward life and circumstances of Marcus 
 Aurelius, beyond these notices which he has himself sup- 
 plied, there are few of much interest and importance.
 
 • MARCUS AURELIUS 157 
 
 There is the fine anecdote of his speech when he heard 
 of the assassination of the revolted Avidius Cassius,! 
 against whom he was marching ; he was sorry ^ he said, 
 to he deprived of the pleasiire of pardonincj him. And 
 there are one or two more anecdotes of him which 
 show the same spirit. But the great record for the 
 outward life of a man who has left such a record of 
 his lofty inward aspirations as that which Marcus 
 Aurelius has left, is the clear consenting voice of all 
 his contemporaries, — high and low, friend and enemy, 
 pagan and Christian, — in praise of his sincerity, jus- 
 tice, and goodness. The world's charity does not err 
 on the side of excess, and here was a man occupying 
 the most conspicuous station in the world, and profess- 
 ing the highest possible standard of conduct ; — yet the 
 world was obliged to declare that he walked worthily 
 of his profession. Long after his death, his bust was 
 to be seen in the houses of private men through the 
 wide Roman empire. It may be the vulgar part of 
 human nature which busies itself with the semblance 
 and doings of living sovereigns, it is its nobler part 
 which busies itself with those of the dead ; these busts 
 of Marcus Aurelius, in the homes of Gaul, Britain, 
 and Italy, bear witness, not to the inmates' frivolous 
 curiosity about princes and palaces, but to their rever- 
 ential memory of the passage of a great man upon 
 the earth. 
 
 Two things, however, before one turns from the out- 
 ward to the inward life of Marcus Aurelius, force 
 themselves upon one's notice, and demand a word of 
 comment ; he persecuted the Christians, and he had 
 for his son the vicious and brutal Commodus.^ The 
 persecution at Lyons, in which Attalus ^ and Pothinus 
 suffered, the persecution at Smyrna, in which Polycarp * 
 suffered, took place in his reign. Of his humanity, of
 
 158 IlL\TTHEW ARNOLD ' 
 
 his tolerance, of his horror of cruelty and violence, of 
 his wish to refrain fi-om severe measures against the 
 Christians, of his anxiety to temper the severity of 
 these measures when they appeared to him indispen- 
 sable, there is no doubt : but, on the one hand, it is 
 certain that the letter, attributed to him, directing 
 that no Christian should be punished for being a 
 Christian, is spurious; it is almost certain that his 
 alleged answer to the authorities of Lj'ons, in which 
 he directs that Christians persisting in their profession 
 shall be dealt with according to law, is genuine. Mr. 
 Long seems inclined to try and throw doubt over the 
 persecution at Lyons, by pointing out that the letter 
 of the Lyons Christians relating it, alleges it to have 
 been attended by miraculous and incredible incidents. 
 " A man," he says, " can only act consistently by 
 accepting all this letter or rejecting it all, and we 
 cannot blame him for either." But it is contrary to all 
 experience to say that because a fact is related with 
 incorrect additions, and embellishments, therefore it 
 probably never happened at all ; or that it is not, in 
 general, easy for an impartial mind to distinguish be- 
 tween the fact and the embellishments. I cannot doubt 
 that the Lyons persecution took place, and that the 
 punishment of Christians for being Christians was 
 sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius. But then I must add 
 that nine modern readers out of ten, when they read 
 this, will, I believe, have a perfectly false notion of 
 what the moral action of Marcus Aurelius, in sanc- 
 tioning that punishment, really was. They imagine 
 Trajan, or Antoninus Pius, or Marcus Aurelius, fresh 
 from the perusal of the Gospel, fully aware of the 
 spirit and holiness of the Christian saints, ordering 
 their extermination because he loved darkness rather 
 than light. Far from this, the Christianity which these
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 159 
 
 emperors aimed at repressing was, in their conception 
 of it, something philosophically contemptible, polit- 
 ically subversive, and morally abominable. As men, 
 they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned 
 people, with us, regard Mormonism ; as rulers, they 
 regarded it much as Liberal statesmen, with us, 
 regard the Jesuits. A kind of Mormonism, constituted 
 as a vast secret society, with obscure aims of political 
 and social subversion, was what Antoninus Pius and 
 Marcus iVurelius believed themselves to be repressing 
 when they punished Christians. The early Christian 
 apologists again and again declare to us under what 
 odious imputations the Christians lay, how general 
 was the belief that these imputations were well-grounded, 
 how sincere was the horror which the belief inspired. 
 The multitude, convinced that the Christians were 
 atheists who ate human flesh and thought incest no 
 crime, displayed against them a fury so passionate as 
 to embarrass and alarm their rulers. The severe 
 expressions of Tacitus, exitiabilis svperstitio — odio 
 humanl generis convicti} show how deeply the prej- 
 udices of the multitude imbued the educated class 
 also. One asks oneself with astonishment how a doc- 
 trine so benign as that of Jesus Christ can have in- 
 curred misrepresentation so monstrous. The inner and 
 moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, no doubt, 
 in this, — that Christianity was a new spirit in the 
 Roman world, destined to act in that world as its dis- 
 solvent ; and it was inevitable that Christianity in the 
 Roman world, like democracy in the modern world, 
 like every new spirit with a similar mission assigned 
 to it, should at its first appearance occasion an in- 
 stinctive shrinking and repugnance in the world which 
 it was to dissolve. The outer and palpable causes of 
 the misrepresentation were, for the Roman public at
 
 160 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 large, the confounding of the Christians with the Jews, 
 that isolated, fierce, and stubborn race, whose stub- 
 bornness, fierceness, and isolation, real as they were, 
 the fancy of a civilized Roman yet further exaggerated ; 
 the atmosphere of mystery and novelty which sur- 
 rounded the Christian rites ; the very simplicity of 
 Christian theism. For the Roman statesman, the cause 
 of mistake lay in that character of secret assemblages 
 which the meetings of the Christian community wore, 
 under a State-system as jealous of unauthorized asso- 
 ciations as is the State-system of modern France. 
 
 A Roman of Marcus Aurelius's time and position 
 could not well see the Christians except through the 
 mist of these prejudices. Seen through such a mist, the 
 Christians appeared with a thousand faults not their 
 own ; but it has not been sufficiently remarked that 
 faults really their own many of them assuredly ap- 
 peared with besides, faults especially likely to strike 
 such an observer as Marcus Aurelius, and to confirm 
 him in the prejudices of his race, station, and rearing. 
 We look back upon Christianity after it has proved 
 what a future it bore within it, and for us the sole 
 representatives of its early struggles are the pure and 
 devoted sj^irits through whom it proved this ; Marcus 
 Aurelius saw it with its future yet unshown, and with 
 the tares among its professed progeny not less con- 
 spicuous than the wheat. Who can doubt that among 
 the professing Christians of the second century, as 
 among the professing Christians of the nineteenth, 
 there was plenty of folly, plenty of rabid nonsense, 
 plenty of gross fanaticism ? who will even venture to 
 affirm that, separated in great measure from thfe intel- 
 lect and civilization of the world for one or two cen- 
 turies, Christianity, wonderful as have been its fruits, 
 had the development perfectly worthy of its inestimable
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 161 
 
 germ? Who will venture to affirm that, by the alli- 
 ance of Christianity with the virtue and intelligence 
 of men like the Antonines, — of the best product of 
 Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman 
 civilization had yet life and power, — Christianity and 
 the world, as well as the Antonines themselves, would 
 not have been gainers ? That alliance was not to be. 
 The Antonines lived and died with an utter miscon- 
 ception of Christianity ; Christianity grew up in the 
 Catacombs, not on the Palatine. And Marcus Aure- 
 lius incurs no moral reproach by having authorized 
 the punishment of the Christians ; he does not thereby 
 become in the least what we mean by a persecutor. 
 One may concede that it was impossible for him to 
 see Christianity as it really was ; — as impossible as 
 for even the moderate and sensible Fleury ^ to see the 
 Antonines as they really were ; — one may concede 
 that the point of view from which Christianity ap- 
 peared something anti-civil and anti-social, which the 
 State had the faculty to judge and the duty to sup- 
 press, was inevitably his. Still, however, it remains true 
 that this sage, who made perfection his aim and rea- 
 son his law, did Christianity an immense injustice and 
 rested in an idea of State-attributes which was illusive. 
 And this is, in truth, characteristic of Marcus Aure- 
 lius, that he is blameless, yet, in a certain sense, un- 
 fortunate; in his character, beautiful as it is, there is 
 something melancholy, circumscribed, and ineffectual. 
 For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one 
 must say that he is not to be blamed on that account, 
 but that he is unfortunate. Disposition and temper- 
 ament are inexplicable things ; there are natures on 
 which the best education and example are thrown 
 away ; excellent fathers may have, without any fault 
 of theirs, incurably vicious sons. It is to be remem-
 
 162 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 bered, also, that Commodus was left, at the perilous 
 age of nineteen, master of the world ; while his father, 
 at that age, was but beginning a twenty years' ap- 
 prenticeship to wisdom, labor, and self-command, under 
 the sheltering teachership of his uncle Antoninus. 
 Commodus was a prince apt to be led by favorites ; 
 and if the story is true which says that he left, all 
 through his reign, the Christians untroubled, and as- 
 cribes this lenity to the influence of his mistress Marcia, 
 it shows that he could be led to good as well as to evil. 
 But for such a nature to be left at a critical age with 
 absolute power, and wholly without good counsel and 
 direction, was the more fatal. Still one cannot help 
 wishing that the example of Marcus Aurelius could have 
 availed more with his own only son. One cannot but 
 think that with such virtue as his there should go, 
 too, the ardor which removes mountains, and that 
 the ardor which removes mountains might have even 
 won Commodus. The word ineffectual again rises to 
 one's mind ; Marcus Aurelius saved his own soul by 
 his righteousness, and he could do no more. Happy 
 they who can do this I but still happier, who can do 
 more ! 
 
 Yet, when one passes from his outward to his in- 
 ward life, when one turns over the pages of his 3Ied- 
 itations, — entries jotted down from day to day, amid 
 the business of the city or the fatigues of the camp, 
 for his own guidance and support, meant for no eye 
 but his own, without the slightest attempt at style, 
 with no care, even, for correct writing, not to be sur- 
 passed for naturalness and sincerity, — all disposition 
 to carp and cavil dies away, and one is overpowered 
 by the charm of a character of such purity, delicacy, 
 and virtue. He fails neither in small things nor in 
 great ; he keeps watch over himself both that the great
 
 MARCUS AURELroS 163 
 
 springs of action may be right in him, and that the 
 minute details of action may be right also. How 
 admirable in a hard-tasked ruler, and a ruler too, with 
 a passion for thinking and reading, is such a memoran- 
 dum as the following : — 
 
 "Not frequently nor without necessity to say to any 
 one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure ; 
 nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required 
 by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging 
 urgent occupation." ^ 
 
 And, when that ruler is a Roman emperor, what an 
 " idea " is this to be written down and meditated by 
 him: — 
 
 " The idea of a polity 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 free- 
 dom of the governed." ^ 
 
 And, for all men who "drive at practice," what 
 practical rules may not one accumulate out of these 
 Meditations : — 
 
 " The greatest part of what we say or do being 
 unnecessary, if a man takes this away, he will have 
 more leisure and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on every 
 occasion a man should ask himself : ' Is this one of the 
 unnecessary things ? ' Now a man should take away not 
 only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, 
 for thus superfluous acts will not follow after." ^ 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " We ought to check in the series of our thoughts 
 everything that is without a purpose and useless, but 
 most of all the over curious feeling and the malignant ; 
 and a man should use himself to think of those things 
 only about which if one should suddenly ask, ' What 
 hast thou now in thy thoughts?' with perfect open-
 
 164 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ness thou raightest immediately answer, ' This or 
 That ' ; so that from thy words it should be plain that 
 everything in thee is simple and benevolent, and such 
 as befits a social animal, and one that cares not for 
 thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any rivalry or 
 envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou 
 wouldst blush if thou shouldst say thou hadst it in thy 
 mind." ^ 
 
 So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Frank- 
 lin, he discourses on his favorite text, Let nothing he 
 done without a -purpose. But it is when he enters the 
 region where Franklin cannot follow him, when he 
 utters his thoughts on the ground-motives of human 
 action, that he is most interesting ; that he becomes 
 the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius. Chris- 
 tianity uses language very liable to be misunderstood 
 when it seems to tell men to do good, not, certainly, 
 from the vulgar motives of worldly interest, or vanity, 
 or love of human praise, but " that their Father which 
 seeth in secret may reward them openly." The motives 
 of reward and punishment have come, from the mis- 
 conception of language of this kind, to be strangely 
 overpressed by many Christian moralists, to the de- 
 terioration and disfigurement of Christianity. Marcus 
 Aurelius says, truly and nobly : — 
 
 " One man, when he has done a service to another, 
 is ready to set it down to his account as a favor con- 
 ferred. Another is not ready to do this, but still in 
 his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and 
 he knows what he has done. A third in a manner does 
 not even know what he has done, hut he is like a vine 
 which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing 
 more after it has once produced its ptroper fruit. As 
 a horse when he has run, a dog when he has caught 
 the game, a bee when it has made its honey, so a man
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 165 
 
 •when he has done a good act, does not call out for 
 others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, 
 as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in sea- 
 son. Must a man, then, be one of these, who in a man- 
 ner acts thus without observing it? Yes." ^ 
 
 And again : — 
 
 "What more dost thou want when thou hast done a 
 man a service ? Art thou not content that thou hast 
 done something conformable to thy nature, and dost 
 thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye demanded 
 a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking ? " ^ 
 
 Christianity, in order to match morality of this 
 strain, has to correct its apparent offers of external 
 reward, and to say : The kingdom of God is within 
 you. 
 
 I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that 
 the morality of Marcus Aurelius acquires a special 
 character, and reminds one of Christian morality. The 
 sentences of Seneca ^ are stimulating to the intellect ; 
 the sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the char- 
 acter ; the sentences of Marcus Aurelius find their 
 way to the soul. I have said that religious emotion 
 has the power to light up morality : the emotion of 
 Marcus Aurelius does not quite light up his morality, 
 but it suffuses it ; it has not power to melt the clouds 
 of effort and austerity quite away, but it shines through 
 them and glorifies them ; it is a spirit, not so much of 
 gladness and elation, as of gentleness and sweetness ; 
 a delicate and tender sentiment, which is less than joy 
 and more than resignation. He says that in his youth 
 he learned from Maximus, one of his teachers, " cheer- 
 fulness in all circumstances as well as in illness ; and 
 a just admixture in the moral character of sweet- 
 ness and dignity " : and it is this very admixture of 
 sweetness with his dignity which makes him so beau-
 
 166 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 tiful a moralist. It enables him to carry even into 
 his observation of nature, a delicate penetration, a 
 sympathetic tenderness, worthy of Wordsworth ; the 
 spirit of such a remark as the following has hardly a 
 parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, in the whole 
 range of Greek and Roman literature : — 
 
 " Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open ; and in 
 the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being- 
 near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. 
 And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's 
 eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth 
 of wild boars, and many other things, — though 
 they are far from being beautifiU, in a certain sense, 
 — still, because they come in the course of nature, 
 have a beauty in them, and they please the mind ; so 
 that if a man should have a feeling and a deeper 
 insight with respect to the things which are produced 
 in the universe, there is hardly anything which comes 
 in the course of nature which will not seem to him to 
 be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure." ^ 
 
 But it is when his strain passes to directly moral 
 subjects that his delicacy and sweetness lend to it the 
 greatest charm. Let those who can feel the beauty of 
 spiritual refinement read this, the reflection of an 
 emperor who prized mental superiority highly : — 
 
 " Thou sayest, ' Men cannot admire the sharpness 
 of thy wits.' Be it so ; but there are many other 
 things of which thou canst not say, ' I am not formed 
 for them by nature.' Show those qualities, then, which 
 are altogether in thy power, — sincerity, gravity, en- 
 durance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with 
 thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frank- 
 ness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, 
 magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities 
 thou art at once able to exhibit, as to which there is
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 167 
 
 no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet 
 thou still remainest voluntarily below the mark? Or 
 art thou compelled, through being defectively fur- 
 nished by nature, to murmur, and to be mean, and to 
 flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to try 
 to please men, and to make great display, and to be so 
 restless in thy mind? No, indeed; but thou mightest 
 have been delivered from these things long ago. Only, 
 if in truth thou canst be charged with being rather 
 slow and dull of comprehension, thou must exert thy- 
 self about this also, not neglecting nor yet taking 
 pleasure in thy dulness." ^ 
 
 The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, 
 when he sees the isolation and moral death caused by 
 sin, not on the cheerless thought of the misery of this 
 condition, but on the inspiriting thought that man is 
 blest with the power to escape from it : — 
 
 " Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the 
 natural unity, — for thou wast made by nature a part, 
 but thou hast cut* thyself off, — yet here is this beau- 
 tiful provision, that it is in thy power again to unite 
 thyself. God has allowed this to no other part, — 
 after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come 
 together again. But consider the goodness with which 
 he has privileged man ; for he has j^ut it in his jjower, 
 when he has been separated, to return and to be united 
 and to resume his place." ^ 
 
 It enables him to control even the passion for re- 
 treat and solitude, so strong in a soul like his, to which 
 the world could offer no abiding city : — 
 
 " Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the 
 country, seashores, and mountains ; and thou, too, art 
 wont to desire such things very much. But this is al- 
 together a mark of the most common sort of men, for 
 it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire
 
 108 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or 
 more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into 
 his own soul, particularly when he has within him 
 such thoughts that by looking into them he is immedi- 
 ately in perfect tranquillit}'. Constantly, then, give to 
 thyself this retreat, and renew thyself ; and let thy 
 principles be brief and fundamental, which as soon as 
 thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse 
 the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all 
 discontent with the things to which thou returnest." ^ 
 
 Against ihh feeling of discontent and weariness, so 
 natural to the great for whom there seems nothing 
 left to desire or to strive after, but so enfeebling to 
 them, so deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never ceased 
 to struggle. With resolute thankfulness he kept in 
 remembrance the blessings of his lot ; the true blessings 
 of it, not the false : — 
 
 " I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to a 
 ruler and a father (Antoninus Pius) who was able to 
 take away all pride from me, and to bring me to the 
 knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a 
 palace without either guards, or embroidered dresses, 
 or any show of this kind ; but tliat it is in such a man's 
 power to bring himself very near to the fashion of a 
 private person, without being for this reason either 
 meaner in thought or more remiss in action with re- 
 spect to the things which must be done for public 
 interest. ... I have to be thankful that my children 
 have not been stupid nor deformed in body ; that I did 
 not make more proficiency in rhetoric, poetrj'-, and the 
 other studies, by which I should perhaps have been 
 complete^ engrossed, if I had seen that I was making 
 great progress in them ; . . . that I knew ApoUonius, 
 Rusticus, Maximus; . . . that I received clear and 
 frequent impressions about living according to nature,
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 169 
 
 and what kind of a life that is, so that, so far as de- 
 pended on Heaven, and its gifts, help, and inspiration, 
 nothing hindered me from forthwith living according 
 to nature, though I still fall short of it through my 
 own fault, and through not observing the admonitions 
 of Heaven, and, I may almost say, its direct instruc- 
 tions ; that my body has held out so long in such a kind 
 of life as mine ; that though it was my mother's lot to 
 die young, she spent the last years of her life with me ; 
 that whenever I wished to help any man in his need, 
 I was never told that I had not the meafls of doing it ; 
 that, when I had an inclination to philosophy, I did 
 not fall into the hands of a sophist." ^ 
 
 And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these helps and 
 blessings vouchsafed to him, his mind (so, at least, it 
 seems to me) would sometimes revert with awe to the 
 perils and temptations of the lonely height where he 
 stood, to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Do- 
 mitian,^ in their hideous blackness and ruin ; and then 
 he wrote down for himself such a warning entry as 
 this, significant and terrible in its abruptness : — 
 
 "A black character, a womanish character, a stub- 
 born character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, coun- 
 terfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical ! " ^ 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 " About what am I now employing my soul ? On 
 every occasion I must ask myself this question, and 
 inquire, What have I now in this part of me which they 
 call the ruling principle, and whose soul have I now ? — 
 that of a child, or of a young man, or of a weak woman, 
 or of a tyrant, or of one of the lower animals in the 
 service of man, or of a wild beast ? " * 
 
 The character he wished to attain he knew well, 
 and beautifully he has marked it, and marked, too, his 
 sense of shortcoming : — -*
 
 170 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " When thou hast assumed these names, — gooc!, 
 modest, true, rational, equal-minded, magnanimous, — 
 take care that thou dost not change these names ; and, 
 if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. 
 If thou maintainest thyself in possession of these 
 names without desiring that others should call thee 
 by them, thou wilt be another being, and wilt enter 
 on another life. For to continue to be such as thou 
 hast hitherto been, and to be torn in pieces and de- 
 filed in such a life, is the character of a very stupid 
 man, and one ^verfond of his life, and like those half- 
 devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though cov- 
 ered with wounds and gore still entreat to be kept to 
 the following day, though they will be exposed in the 
 same state to the same claws and bites. Therefore fix 
 thyself in the possession of these few names : and if 
 thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou wast 
 removed to the Happy Islands." ^ 
 
 For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man's 
 point of life "between two infinities " (of that expres- 
 sion Marcus Aurelius is the real owner) was to him 
 anything but a Happy Island, and the performances 
 on it he saw through no veils of illusion. Nothing is 
 in general more gloomy and monotonous than declama- 
 tions on the hollowness and transitoriness of human 
 life and grandeur: but here, too, the great charm of 
 Marcus Aurelius, his emotion, comes in to relieve the 
 monotony and to break through the gloom ; and even 
 on this eternally used topic he is imaginative, fresh, 
 and striking : — 
 
 " Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. 
 Thou wilt see all these things, people marrying, bring- 
 ing up children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, traffick- 
 ing, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately 
 arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for somebody
 
 MARCUS AURELroS 171 
 
 to die, grumbling about the present, loving, heaping 
 up treasure, desiring to be consuls or kings. Well then 
 that life of these people no longer exists at all. Again, 
 go to the times of Trajan. All is again the same. 
 Their life too is gone. But chiefly thou shouldst think 
 of those whom thou hast thyself known distracting 
 themselves about idle things, neglecting to do what 
 was in accordance with their proper constitution, and 
 to hold firmly to this and to be content with it." ^ 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " The things which are much valued in life are 
 empty, and rotten, and trifling ; and people are like 
 little dogs, biting one another, and little children 
 quarrelling, crying, and then straightway laughing. 
 But fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and truth, are 
 fled 
 
 * Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.' 
 
 What then is there which still detains thee here ? " 2 
 
 And once more : — 
 
 " Look down from above on the countless herds of 
 men, and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely 
 varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differ- 
 ences among those who are born, who live together, 
 and die. And consider too the life lived by others in 
 olden time, and the life now lived among barbarous 
 nations, and how many know not even thy name, and 
 how many will soon forget it, and how they who per- 
 haps now are praising thee will very soon blame thee, 
 and that neither a posthumous name is of any value, 
 nor reputation, nor anything else." ^ 
 
 He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) 
 " the prime principle in man's constitution is the 
 social " ; 4 and he labored sincerely to make not only 
 his acts towards his fellow-men, but his thoughts also, 
 suitable to this conviction ; —
 
 172 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of 
 the virtues of those who live with thee ; for instance, 
 the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the 
 liberality of a third, and some other good quality of 
 a fourth."! 
 
 Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to 
 live in a state of rapture at the spectacle afforded to 
 him by his fellow-creatures ; above all it is hard, when 
 such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed, 
 and has had the meanness and perversity of his fel- 
 low-creatures thrust, in no common measure, upon his 
 notice, — has had, time after time, to experience how 
 " within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom 
 thou art now a beast and an ape." His true strain of 
 thought as to his relations with his fellow-men is rather 
 the following. He has been enumerating the higher 
 consolations which may support a man at the approach 
 of death, and he goes on : — 
 
 " But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of com- 
 fort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made 
 best reconciled to death by observing the objects from 
 which thou art going to be removed, and the morals 
 of those with whom thy soid will no longer be mingled. 
 For it is no way right to be offended with men, but it 
 is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them 
 gently ; and yet to remember that thy departure will 
 not be from men who have the same principles as thy- 
 self. For this is the only thing, if there be any, 
 which could di-aw us the contrary way and attach us 
 to life, to be permitted to live with those who have 
 the same principles as ourselves. But now thou seest 
 how great is the distress caused by the difference of 
 those who live together, so that thou mayest say: 
 'Come quick, O death, lest perchance I too should 
 forget myself.' " ^
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 173 
 
 faithless and perverse generation / how long 
 shall I be with you f how long shall I suffer you ? ^ 
 Sometimes this strain rises even to passion : — 
 
 " Short is the little which remains to thee of life. 
 Live as on a mountain. Let men see, let them know, 
 a real man, who lives as he was meant to live. If they 
 cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is 
 better than to live as men do." ^ 
 
 It is remarkable how little of a merely local and tem- 
 porary character, how little of those scorice which a 
 reader has to clear away before he gets to the precious 
 ore, how little that even admits of doubt or question, 
 the morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. Perhaps as 
 to one point we must make an exception. Marcus 
 Aurelius is fond of urging as a motive for man's cheer- 
 ful acqiiiescence in whatever befalls him, that " what- 
 ever happens to every man is for the interest of the 
 universal " ; ^ that the whole contains nothing which 
 is not for its advantage ; that everything which hap- 
 pens to a man is to be accepted, " even if it seems 
 disagreeable, because it leads to the health of the uni- 
 verse.^^ ^ And the whole course of the universe, he adds, 
 has a providential reference to man's welfare : " all 
 other things have been made for the sake of rational 
 beings^ ^ Religion has in all ages freely used this lan- 
 guage, and it is not religion which will object to 
 Marcus Aurelius's use of it ; but science can hardly ac- 
 cept as severely accurate this employment of the terms 
 interest and advantage. To a sound nature and a clear 
 reason the proposition that things happen " for the 
 interest of the universal," as men conceive of inter,est, 
 may seem to have no meaning at all, and the proposi- 
 tion that " all things have been made for the sake of 
 rational beings " may seem to be false. Yet even to 
 this language, not irresistibly cogent when it is thus
 
 174 ]VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 absolutely used, Marcus Aurelius gives a turn which 
 makes it true and useful, when he saj^s : " The ruling 
 part of man can make a material for itself out of that 
 which opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls into it, 
 and rises higher by means of this very material " ; ^ — 
 when he says : " What else are all things except exer- 
 cises for the reason ? Persevere then until thou shalt 
 have made all things thine own, as the stomach which 
 is strengthened makes all things its own, as the blaz- 
 ing fire makes flame and brightness out of everj'^thing 
 that is thrown into it " ; ^ — when he says : " Thou wilt 
 not cease to be miserable till thy mind is in such a 
 condition, that, what luxury is to those who enjoy 
 pleasure, such shall be to thee, in every matter which 
 presents itself, the doing of the things which are con- 
 formable to man's constitution ; for a man ought to 
 consider as an enjoyment everything which it is in his 
 power to do according to his own nature, — and it is 
 in his power everywhere." ^ In this sense it is, indeed, 
 most true that " all things have been made for the 
 sake of rational beings " ; that " all things work to- 
 gether for good." 
 
 In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius 
 prescribes is action which every sound nature must 
 recognize as right, and the motives he assigns are 
 motives which every clear reason must recognize as valid. 
 And so he remains the especial friend and comforter 
 of all clear-headed and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted 
 and upward striving men, in those ages most especially 
 that walk by sight, not by faith, but 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. 
 
 Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such 
 souls love him most ! it is rather because of the emo-
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS 175 
 
 tion which lends to his voice so touching an accent, 
 it is because he too yearns as they do for something 
 unattained by him. What an affinity for Christianity 
 had this persecutor of the Christians ! The effusion of 
 Christianity, its relieving tears, its happy self-sacrifice, 
 were the very element, one feels, for which his soul 
 longed ; they were near him, they brushed him, he 
 touched them, he passed them by. One feels, too, 
 that the Marcus Aurelius one reads must still have 
 remained, even had Christianity been fully known to 
 him, in a great measure himself ; he would have been 
 no Justin ; — but how would Christianity have affected 
 him ? in what measure would it have changed him ? 
 Granted that he might have found, like the Alogi ^ 
 of modern times, in the most beautiful of the Gos- 
 pels, the Gospel which has leavened Christendom most 
 powerfully, the Gospel of St. John, too much Greek 
 metaphysics, too much gnosis ; ^ granted that this Gos- 
 pel might have looked too like what he knew already to 
 be a total surprise to him : what, then, would he have 
 said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the twenty-sixth 
 chapter of St. Matthew ? What would have become 
 of his notions of the exitlabllis superstition of the 
 " obstinacy of the Christians " ? Tain question ! yet 
 the greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he 
 makes us ask it. We see him wise, just, self -governed, 
 tender, thankful, blameless ; yet, with all this, agi- 
 tated, stretching out his arms for something beyond, 
 — tendentemque maims ripce ulterioris amove?
 
 THE CONTKIBUTION OF THE CELTS TO 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 1 
 
 If I were asked where English poetry got these 
 three things, its turn for style, its turn for melancholy, 
 and its turn for natural magic, for catching and ren- 
 dering the charm of nature in a wonderfully near and 
 vivid way, — I should answer, with some doubt, that 
 it got much of its turn for style from a Celtic source ; 
 with less doubt, that it got much of its melancholy 
 from a Celtic source ; with no doubt at all, that 
 from a Celtic source it got nearly all its natural 
 magic. 
 
 Any German with penetration and tact in matters 
 of literary criticism will own that the principal defi- 
 ciency of German poetry is in style ; that for style, 
 in the highest sense, it shows but little feeling. Take 
 the eminent masters of style, the poets who best give 
 the idea of what the peculiar power which lies in style 
 is — Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton. An example of 
 the peculiar effect which these poets produce, you can 
 hardly give from German poetry. Examples enough 
 you can give from German poetry of the effect pro- 
 duced by genius, thought, and feeling expressing them- 
 selves in clear language, simple language, passionate 
 language, eloquent language, with harmony and mel- 
 ody : but not of the peculiar effect exercised by emi- 
 nent power of style. Every reader of Dante can at once 
 call to mind what the peculiar effect I mean is ; I 
 spoke of it in my lectures on translating Homer, and 
 there I took an example of it from Dante, who per- 
 haps manifests it more eminently than any other poet.
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 177 
 
 But from Milton, too, one may take examples of it 
 abundantly ; compare this from Milton : — 
 
 "... nor sometimes forget 
 Those other two equal with me in fate, 
 So were I equall'd with them in renown, 
 Blind Thamyris and blind Mseonides — " ^ 
 
 with this from Goethe : — 
 
 " Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
 Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt." ^ 
 
 Nothing can be better in its way than the style in 
 which Goethe there presents his thought, but it is the 
 style of prose as much as of poetry ; it is lucid, har- 
 monious, earnest, eloquent, but it has not received that 
 peculiar kneading, heightening, and recasting which is 
 observable in the style of the passage' from Milton — 
 a style which seems to have for its cause a certain 
 pressure of emotion, and an ever-surging, yet bridled, 
 excitement in the poet, giving a special intensity to 
 his way of delivering himself. In poetical races and 
 epochs this turn for style is peculiarly observable ; 
 and perhaps it is only on condition of having this 
 somewhat heightened and difficult manner, so differ- 
 ent from the plain manner of prose, that poetry gets 
 the privilege of being loosed, at its best moments, into 
 that perfectly simple, limpid style, which is the su- 
 preme style of all, but the simplicity of which is still 
 not the simplicity of prose. The simplicity of Menan- 
 der's ^ style is the simplicity of prose, and is the same 
 kind of simplicity as that which Goethe's style, in the 
 passage I have quoted, exhibits ; but Menander does 
 not belong to a great poetical moment, he comes too 
 late for it ; it is the simple passages in poets like 
 Pindar or Dante which are perfect, being masterpieces 
 of poetical simplicity. One may say the same of the 
 simple passages in Shakespeare ; they are perfect,
 
 178 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 their simplicity being a poetical simplicity. They are 
 the golden, easeful, crowning moments of a manner 
 which is always pitched in another key from that of 
 prose, a manner changed and heightened ; the Eliza- 
 bethan style, regnant in most of our dramatic poetry 
 to this day, is mainly the continuation of this manner 
 of Shakespeare's. It was a manner much more turbid 
 and strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, 
 Dante, or Milton ; often it was detestable ; but it owed 
 its existence to Shakespeare's instinctive impulse to- 
 wards style in poetry, to his native sense of the neces- 
 sity for it ; and without the basis of style everywhere, 
 faulty though it may in some places be, we should not 
 have had the beauty of expression, unsurpassable for 
 effectiveness and charm, which is reached in Shakes- 
 peare's best passages. The turn for style is perceptible 
 all through English poetry, proving, to my mind, the 
 genuine poetical gift of the race ; this turn imparts 
 to our poetry a stamp of high distinction, and some- 
 times it doubles the force of a poet not by nature of 
 the very highest order, such as Gray, and raises him 
 to a rank beyond what his natural richness and power 
 seem to promise. Goethe, with his fine critical per- 
 ception, saw clearly enough both the power of style in 
 itself, and the lack of style in the literature of his own 
 country ; and perhaps if we regard him solely as a 
 German, not as a European, his great work was that 
 he labored all his life to impart style into German 
 literature, and firmly to establish it there. Hence the 
 immense importance to him of the world of classical 
 art, and of the productions of Greek or Latin genius, 
 where style so eminently manifests its power. Had he 
 found in the German genius and literature an element 
 of style existing by nature and ready to his hand, half 
 his work, one may say, would have been saved him,
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 170 
 
 and he might have done much more in poetry. But as 
 it was, he had to try and create, out of his own powers, 
 a style for German poetry, as well as to provide con- 
 tents for this style to carry ; and thus his labor as a 
 poet was doubled. 
 
 It is to be observed that power of style, in the 
 sense in which I am here speaking of style, is some- 
 thing quite different from the power of idiomatic, 
 simple, nervous, racy expression, such as the expres- 
 sion of healthy, robust natures so often is, such as 
 Luther's was in a striking degree. Style, in my sense 
 of the word, is a peculiar recasting and heightening, 
 under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of 
 what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add 
 dignity and distinction to it ; and dignity and distinc- 
 tion are not terms which suit many acts or words of 
 Luther. Deeply touched with the Gemeinheit^ which 
 is the bane of his nation, as he is at the same time 
 a grand example of the honesty which is his nation's 
 excellence, he can seldom even show himself brave, 
 resolute, and truthful, without showing a strong dash 
 of coarseness and commonness all the while ; the right 
 definition of Luther, as of our own Bunyan, is that he 
 is a Philistine of genius. So Luther's sincere idio- 
 matic German, — such language as this : " Hilf, lieber 
 Gott, wie manchen Jammer habe icli gesehen, dass 
 der gemeine Mann doch so gar nichts weiss von der 
 christlichen Lehre! " — no more proves a power of style 
 in German literature, than Cobbett's^ sinewy idio- 
 matic English proves it in English literature. Power 
 of style, properly so-called, as manifested in masters 
 of style like Dante or Milton in poetry, Cicero, Bos- 
 suet ^ or Bolingbroke ^ in prose, is something quite 
 different, and has, as I have said, for its characteristic 
 effect, this : to add dignity and distinction.
 
 180 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 This something is style., and the Celts certainly 
 have it in a wonderful measure. Style is the most 
 striking quality of their poetry. Celtic poetry seems 
 to make up to itself for being unable to master the 
 world and give an adequate interpretation of it, by 
 throwing all its force into style, by bending language 
 at any rate to its will, and expressing the ideas it 
 has with unsurpassable intensity, elevation, and effect. 
 It has all through it a sort of intoxication of st}de — 
 a Pindarisyyi, to use a word formed from the name of 
 the poet, on whom, above all other poets, the power 
 of style seems to have exercised an inspiring and in- 
 toxicating effect; and not in its great poets only, in 
 Taliesin, or Llywarch Hen, or Ossian,i does the Celtic 
 genius show this Pindarism, but in aU its produc- 
 tions : — 
 
 " The grave of March is this, and this the grave of Gwythyr ; 
 Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfreidd ; 
 But unknown is the grave of Arthur." ^ 
 
 That comes from the Welsh Memorials of the Graves 
 of the Warriors^ and if we compare it with the fa- 
 miliar memorial inscriptions of an English churchyard 
 (for we English have so much Germanism in us that 
 our productions offer abundant examples of German 
 want of style as well as of its opposite) : — 
 
 " Afflictions sore long time I bore, 
 Physicians were in vain, 
 Till God did please Death should me seize 
 And ease me of my pain — " 
 
 if, I say, we compare the Welsh memorial lines with 
 the English, which in their Gemeinheit of style are 
 truly Germanic, we shall get a clear sense of what that 
 Celtic talent for style I have been speaking of is. 
 
 Its chord of penetrating passion and melancholy,
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 181 
 
 again, its Titanism as we see it in Byron, — what 
 other European poetry possesses that like the English, 
 and where do we get it from ? The Celts, with their 
 vehement reaction against the despotism of fact, with 
 their sensuous nature, their manifold striving, their 
 adverse destiny, their immense calamities, the Celts 
 are the prime authors of this vein of piercing regret 
 and passion, — of this Titanism in poetry. A famous 
 book, Macpherson's Ossian,^ carried in the last cen- 
 tury this vein like a flood of lava through Europe. 
 I am not going to criticize Macpherson's Ossian 
 here. Make the part of what is forged, modern, taw- 
 dry, spurious, in the book, as large as you please; 
 strip Scotland, if you like, of every feather of bor- 
 rowed plumes which on the strength of Macpherson's 
 Ossian she may have stolen from that vetus et major 
 /Scoria, the true home of the Ossianic poetry, Ireland; 
 I make no objection. But there will still be left in the 
 book a residue with the very soul of the Celtic genius 
 in it, and which has the proud distinction of having 
 brought this soul of the Celtic genius into contact 
 with the genius of the nations of modern Europe, and 
 enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, and 
 echoing Sora, and Selma with its silent halls ! — we 
 all owe them a debt of gratitude, and when we are 
 unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse forget us ! 
 Choose any one of the better passages in Macpher- 
 son's Ossian and you can see even at this time of day 
 what an apparition of newness and power such a 
 strain must have been to the eighteenth century : — 
 
 " I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were 
 desolate. The fox looked out from the windows, the 
 rank grass of the wall waved round her head. Raise 
 the song of mourning, O bards, over the land of 
 strangers. They have but fallen before us, for one day
 
 182 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 we must fall. Why dost thou build the hall, son of 
 the winged days ? Thou lookest from thy towers to- 
 day; yet a few years, and the blast of the desert 
 comes ; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles 
 round thy half- worn shield. Let the blast of the desert 
 come I we shall be renowned in our day." 
 
 All Europe felt the power of that melancholy ; but 
 what I wish to point out is, that no nation of Europe 
 so caught in its poetry the passionate penetrating 
 accent of the Celtic genius, its strain of Titanisra, as 
 the English. Goethe, like Napoleon, felt the spell of 
 Ossian very powerfully, and he quotes a long passage 
 from him in his Werther.^ But what is there Celtic, 
 turbulent, and Titanic about the German Werther, 
 that amiable, cultivated and melancholy young man, 
 having for his sorrow and suicide the perfectly definite 
 motive that Lotte cannot be his? Faust, again, has 
 nothing unaccountable, defiant, and Titanic in him ; 
 his knowledge does not bring him the satisfaction he 
 expected from it, and meanwhile he finds himself poor 
 and growing old, and balked of the palpable enjoy- 
 ment of life ; and here is the motive for Faust's dis- 
 content. In the most energetic and impetuous of 
 Goethe's creations, — his Prometheus^ — it is not 
 Celtic self-will and passion, it is rather the Germanic 
 sense of justice and reason, which revolts against the 
 despotism of Zeus. The German Sehnsiicht itself is a 
 wistful, soft, tearful longing, rather than a struggling, 
 fierce, passionate one. But the Celtic melancholy is 
 struggling, fierce, passionate ; to catch its note, listen 
 to Lly warch Hen in old age, addressing his crutch : — 
 
 " O my crutch I is it not autumn, when the fern is 
 red, the water-flag yellow? Have I not hated that 
 wliich I love ? 
 
 O my crutch ! is it not winter-time now, when men
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 183 
 
 talk together after that they have drunken ? Is not the 
 side of my bed left desolate? 
 
 O my crutch ! is it not spring, when the cuckoo 
 passes through the air, when the foam sparkles on the 
 sea ? The young maidens no longer love me. 
 
 O my crutch ! is it not the first day of May ? The 
 furrows, are they not shining ; the young corn, is it not 
 springing ? Ah ! the sight of thy handle makes me 
 wroth. 
 
 my crutch ! stand straight, thou wilt support me 
 the better ; it is very long since I was Llywarch. 
 
 Behold old age, which makes sport of me, from the 
 hair of my head to my teeth, to my eyes, which women 
 loved. 
 
 The four things I have all my life most hated fall 
 upon me together, — coughing and old age, sickness 
 and sorrow. 
 
 1 am old, I am alone, shapeliness and warmth are 
 gone from me ; the couch of honor shall be no more 
 mine ; I am miserable, I am bent on my crutch. 
 
 How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night 
 when he was brought forth ! sorrows without end, and 
 no deliverance from his burden." i 
 
 There is the Titanism of the Celt, his passionate, tur- 
 bulent, indomitable reaction against the despotism of 
 fact ; and of whom does it remind us so much as of 
 Byron ? 
 
 "The fire which on my bosom preys 
 Is lone as some volcanic isle; 
 No torch is kindled at its blaze; 
 A funeral pile ! " ^ 
 Or, again : — 
 
 " Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
 Count o'er thy days from anguish free, 
 And know, whatever thou hast been, 
 'Tis something: better not to be." ^
 
 184 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 One has only to let one's memory begin to fetch 
 passages from Byron striking the same note as that 
 passage from Llywarch Hen, and she will not soon 
 stop. And all Byron's heroes, not so much in collision 
 with outward things, as breaking on some rock of re- 
 volt and misery in the depths of their own nature ; 
 Manfred, self-consumed, fighting blindly and passion- 
 ately with I know not what, having nothing of the 
 consistent development and intelligible motive of Faust, 
 
 — Manfred, Lara, Cain,i what are they but Titanic? 
 Where in European poetry are we to find this Celtic 
 passion of revolt so warm-breathing, puissant, and sin- 
 cere : except perhaps in the creation of a yet greater 
 poet than Bp'on, but an English poet, too, like Byron, 
 
 — in the Satan of Milton ? 
 
 "... What though the field be lost? 
 All is not lost; the unconquerable will, 
 And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
 And courage never to submit or yield, 
 And what is else not to be overcome." ^ 
 
 There, surely, speaks a genius to whose composition 
 the Celtic fibre was not wholly a stranger I 
 
 The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble and dis- 
 tinguished gave his poetry style ; his indomitable per- 
 sonality gave it pride and passion ; his sensibility 
 and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the 
 gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical 
 charm of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling 
 spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in romance. 
 They have a mysterious life and grace there ; they are 
 Nature's own children, and utter her secret in a way 
 which makes them something quite different from the 
 woods, waters, and plants of Greek and Latin poetry. 
 Now of this delicate magic, Celtic romance is so pre-
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 185 
 
 eminent a mistress, that it seems impossible to believe 
 the power did not come into romance from the Celts.* 
 Magic is just the word for it, — the magic of nature ; 
 not merely the beauty of nature, — that the Greeks 
 and Latins had ; not merely an honest smack of the 
 soil, a faithful realism, — that the Germans had ; but 
 the intimate life of Nature, her weird power and her 
 fairy charm. As the Saxon names of places, with the 
 pleasant wholesome smack of the soil in them, — 
 Weathersfield, Thaxted, Shalford, — are to the Celtic 
 names of places, with their penetrating, lofty beauty, 
 — Velindra, Tyntagel, Caernarvon, — so is the homely 
 realism of German and Norse nature to the fairy-like 
 loveliness of Celtic nature. Gwydion wants a wife for 
 his pupil : " Well," says Math, " we will Seek, I and 
 thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him 
 out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, 
 and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of 
 the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, 
 the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And 
 they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower- 
 Aspect." 2 Celtic romance is full of exquisite touches 
 like that, showing the delicacy of the Celt's feeling in 
 these matters, and how deeply Nature lets him come 
 into her secrets. The quick dropping of blood is called 
 " faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of 
 reed-grass upon the earth, when the dew of June is at 
 the heaviest." And thus is Olwen described : " More 
 yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and 
 her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and 
 fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms 
 of the wood-anemony amidst the spray of the meadow 
 fountains." ^ For loveliness it would be hard to beat 
 that ; and for magical clearness and nearness take the 
 following : —
 
 186 MATTHEW AENOLD 
 
 " And in the evening Peredur entered a valley, and 
 at the head of the valley he came to a hermit's cell, 
 and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there he 
 spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and 
 when he went forth, behold, a shower of snow had 
 fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild- 
 fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse 
 scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon 
 the bird. And Peredur stood and compared the black- 
 ness of the raven, and the whiteness of the snow, and 
 the redness of the blood, to the hair of the lady whom 
 best he loved, which was blacker than the raven, and 
 to her skin, which was whiter than the snow, and to 
 her two cheeks which were redder than the blood upon 
 the snow appeared to be." ^ 
 
 And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not less 
 beautiful : — 
 
 " And early in the day Geraint and Enid left the 
 wood, and they came to an open country, with mead- 
 ows on one hand and mowers mowing the meadows. 
 And there was a river before them, and the horses 
 bent down and drank the water. And they went up 
 out of the river by a steep bank, and there they met 
 a slender stripling with a satchel about his neck ; and 
 he had a small blue pitcher in his hand, and a bowl 
 on the mouth of the pitcher." ^ 
 
 And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek 
 in its clear beauty, is suddenly magicalized by the 
 romance touch, — 
 
 " And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, 
 one-half of which was in flames from the root to the 
 top, and the other half was green and in full leaf." 
 
 Magic is the word to insist upon, — a magically 
 vivid and near interpretation of nature ; since it is this 
 which constitutes the special charm and power of the
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 187 
 
 effect I am calling attention to, and it is for this that 
 the Celt's sensibility gives him a peculiar aptitude. 
 But the matter needs rather fine handling, and it is 
 easy to make mistakes here in our criticism. In the 
 first place, Europe tends constantly to become more 
 and more one community, and we tend to become Eu- 
 ropeans instead of merely Englishmen, Frenchmen, 
 Germans, Italians ; so whatever aptitude or felicity 
 one people imparts into spiritual work, gets imitated 
 by the others, and thus tends to become the common 
 property of all. Therefore anything so beautiful and 
 attractive as the natural magic I am speaking of, is 
 sure, nowadays, if it appears in the productions of the 
 Celts, or of the English, or of the French, to appear 
 in the productions of the Germans also, or in the pro- 
 ductions of the Italians ; but there will be a stamp of 
 perfectness and inimitableness about it in the litera- 
 tures where it is native, which it will not have in the 
 literatures where it is not native. Novalis^ or Riickert,^ 
 for instance, have their eye fixed on nature, and have 
 undoubtedly a feeling for natural magic ; a rough- 
 and-ready critic easily credits them and the Germans 
 with the Celtic fineness of tact, the Celtic nearness to 
 nature and her secret ; but the question is whether the 
 strokes in the German's picture of nature ^ have ever 
 the indefinable delicacy, charm, and perfection of the 
 Celt's touch in the pieces I just now quoted, or of 
 Shakespeare's touch in his daffodil,* Wordsworth's in 
 his cuckoo,5 Keats's in his Autumn, Obermann's in 
 his mountain birch-tree, or his Easter-daisy among the 
 Swiss farms, ^ To decide where the gift for natural 
 magic originally lies, whether it is properly Celtic or 
 Germanic, we must decide this question. 
 
 In the second place, there are many ways of han- 
 dling nature, and we are here only concerned with one
 
 188 1VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of them ; but a rough-and-ready critic imagines that it 
 is all the same so long as nature is handled at all, and 
 fails to draw the needful distinction between modes of 
 handling her. But these modes are many ; I will men- 
 tion four of them now : there is the conventional way 
 of handling nature, there is the faithfid way of han- 
 dling nature, there is the Greek way of handling na- 
 ture, there is the magical way of handling nature. In 
 all these three last the eye is on the object, but with a 
 difference ; in the faithful way of handhng nature, the 
 eye is on the object, and that is all you can say ; in 
 the Greek, the eye is on the object, but lightness and 
 brightness are added ; in the magical, the eye is on the 
 object, but charm and magic are added. In the con- 
 ventional way of handling nature, the eye is not on 
 the object ; what that means we all know, we have 
 only to think of our eighteenth-century poetry : — 
 
 "As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night — "^ 
 
 to call up any number of instances. Latin poetry sup- 
 plies plenty of instances too ; if we put this from Pro- 
 pertius's Hylas : — 
 
 "... manus beroum . . . 
 MoUia composita litora fronds tegit — " ^ 
 
 side by side with the line of Theocritus by which it 
 was suggested : — 
 
 \uixu)v yap cr(pLv e/cetro M^'/as, aTi^ddeacriv 6veiap — ^ 
 
 we get at the same moment a good specimen both of 
 the conventional and of the Greek way of handling 
 nature. But from our own poetry we may get speci- 
 mens of the Greek way of handling nature, as well as 
 of the conventional : for instance, Keats's : — 
 
 " What little town by river or seashore, 
 Or mountain-built with quiet citadel, 
 Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ?" *
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 189 
 
 is Greek, as Greek as a thing from Homer or Theo- 
 critus ; it is composed with the eye on the object, a 
 radiancy and light clearness being added. German 
 poetry abounds in specimens of the faithful way of 
 handling nature ; an excellent example is to be found 
 in the stanzas called Zue'ignung ^, prefixed to Goethe's 
 poems ; the morning walk, the mist, the dew, the sun, 
 are as faithful as they can be, they are given with the 
 eye on the object, but there the merit of the work, as 
 a handling of nature, stops ; neither Greek radiance 
 nor Celtic magic is added ; the power of these is not 
 what gives the poem in question its merit, but a power 
 of quite another kind, a power of moral and spiritual 
 emotion. But the power of Greek radiance Goethe 
 could give to his handling of nature, and nobly too, as 
 any one who will read his Wanderer, — the poem in 
 which a wanderer falls in with a peasant woman and 
 her child by their hut, built out of the ruins of a 
 temple near Cuma, — may see. Only the power of 
 natural magic Goethe does not, I think, give ; whereas 
 Keats passes at will from the Greek power to that 
 power which is, as I say, Celtic ; from his 
 
 " What little town, by river or seashore — " 
 
 to his 
 or his 
 
 " White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine, 
 Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves — "' 
 
 "... magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn — " ^ 
 
 in which the very same note is struck as in those ex- 
 tracts which I quoted from Celtic romance, and struck 
 with authentic and unmistakable power. 
 
 Shakespeare, in handling nature, touches this Celtic 
 note so exquisitely, that perhaps one is inclined to be 
 always looking for the Celtic note in him, and not to 
 recognize his Greek note when it comes. But if one
 
 190 IVLVTTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 attends well to the difference between the two notes, 
 and bears in mind, to guide one, such things as Vir- 
 gil's " moss-grown springs and grass softer than 
 sleep : " — 
 
 " Muscosi f ontes et somno mollior herba — " '• 
 as his charming flower-gatherer, who — 
 
 " Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens 
 Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi — "* 
 
 as his quinces and chestnuts : — 
 
 "... cana legam tenera lauugine mala 
 Castaueasque nuces . , . " ^ 
 
 then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in 
 
 Shakespeare's 
 
 " I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
 Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine. 
 With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine — " * 
 
 it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, again 
 
 in his 
 
 "... look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! " " 
 
 we are at the very point of transition from the Greek 
 
 note to the Celtic; there is the Greek clearness and 
 
 brightness, with the Celtic aerialness and magic coming 
 
 in. Then we have the sheer, inimitable Celtic note in 
 
 passages like this : — 
 
 " Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, 
 By paved fountain or by rushy brook, 
 Or in the beached margent of the sea — " ^ 
 
 or this, the last I will quote : — 
 
 " The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
 And they did make no noise, in such a night 
 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls — 
 
 ... in such a night 
 Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew —
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS 191 
 
 ... in such a night 
 Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, 
 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love 
 To come again to Carthage." ^ 
 
 And those last lines of all are so drenched and intoxi- 
 cated with the fairy-dew of that natural magic which 
 is our theme, that I cannot do better than end with 
 them. 
 
 And now, with the pieces of evidence in our hand, 
 let us go to those who say it is vain to look for Celtic 
 elements in any Englishman, and let us ask them, first, 
 if they seize what we mean by the power of natural 
 magic in Celtic poetry ; secondly, if English poetry 
 does not eminently exhibit this power ; and, thirdly, 
 where they suppose English poetry got it from?
 
 GEORGE SANDi 
 
 The months go round, and anniversaries return; 
 on the ninth of June George Sand will have been dead 
 just one year. She was born in 1804 ; she was almost 
 seventy-two years old when she died. She came to 
 Paris after the revolution of 1830, with her Indiana^ 
 written, and began her life of independence, her life of 
 authorship, her life as George Sand. She continued at 
 work till she died. For forty-five years she was writing 
 and publishing, and filled Europe with her name. 
 
 It seems to me but the other day that I saw her, yet 
 it was in the August of 1846, more than thirty years 
 ago. I saw her in her own Berry, at Nohant,^ where 
 her childhood and youth were passed, where she re- 
 turned to live after she became famous, where she died 
 and has now her grave. There must be many who, after 
 reading her books, have felt the same desire which in 
 those days of my youth, in 1846, took me to Nohant, 
 — the desire to see the country and the places of which 
 the books that so charmed us were full. Those old 
 provinces of the centre of France, primitive and slum- 
 bering, — Berry, La Marche, Bourbonnais ; those sites 
 and streams in them, of name once so indifferent to us, 
 but to which George Sand gave such a music for our 
 ear, — La Chatre, Ste. Severe, the Vallee Noire., the 
 Indre, the Creuse ; how many a reader of George Sand 
 must have desired, as I did, after frequenting them so 
 much in thought, fairly to set eyes- upon them ! 
 
 I had been reading Jeanne.'^ I made up my mind to 
 go and see Tonlx Ste. Croix, Boussac, and the Druid- 
 ical stones on Mont Barlot, the Pierres Jaunatres.^
 
 GEORGE SAND 193 
 
 I remember looking out Toulx in Cassini's great map ^ 
 at the Bodleian Library. The railway through the 
 centre of France went in those days no farther than 
 Vierzon. From Vierzon toChateauroux one travelled by 
 an ordinary diligence, from Chateauroux to La Chatre 
 by a humbler diligence, from La Chatre to Boussac by 
 the humblest diligence of all. At Boussac diligence 
 ended, a,nd patache^ began. Between Chsiteauroux and 
 La Chatre, a mile or two before reaching the latter 
 place, the road passes by the village of Nohant. The 
 Chateau of Nohant, in which Madame Sand lived, is a 
 plain house by the road-side, with a walled garden. 
 Down in the meadows, not far off, flows the Indre, 
 bordered by trees. I passed Nohant without stopping, 
 at La Chatre I dined and changed diligence, and went 
 on by night up the valley of the Indre, the Vallee 
 JV^oire, past Ste. Severe to Boussac. At Ste. Severe the 
 Indre is quite a small stream. In the darkness we 
 quitted its valley, and when day broke we were in the 
 wilder and bai'er country of La Marche, with Boussac 
 before us, and its high castle on a precipitous rock 
 over the Little Creuse. 
 
 That day and the next I wandered through a silent 
 country of heathy and ferny landes,^ a region of gran- 
 ite boulders, holly, and broom, of copsewood and great 
 chestnut trees ; a region of broad light, and fresh 
 breezes and wide horizons. I visited the Pierres Jau- 
 natres. I stood at sunset on the platform of Toulx 
 Ste. Croix, by the scrawled and almost effaced stone 
 lions, — a relic, it is said, of the English rule, — and 
 gazed on the blue mountains of Auvergne filling the 
 distance, and southeastward of them, in a still further 
 and fainter distance, on what seemed to be the moun- 
 tains over Le Puy and the high valley of the Loire. 
 
 From Boussac I addressed to Madame Sand the
 
 194 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 sort of letter of which she must in her lifetime have 
 had scores, a letter conveying to her, in bad French, 
 the homage of a youthful and enthusiastic foreigner 
 who had read her works with delight. She received 
 the infliction good-naturedly, for on my return to La 
 Chatre I found a message left at the inn by a servant 
 from Nohant that Madame Sand would be glad to see 
 me if I called. The mid-day breakfast at Nohant was 
 not yet over when I reached the house, and I found a 
 large party assembled. I entered with some trepida- 
 tion, as well I might, considering how I had got there ; 
 but the simplicity of Madame Sand's manner put me at 
 ease in a moment. She named some of those present ; 
 amongst them were her son and daughter, the Maurice 
 and Solange ^ so familiar to us from her books, and 
 Chopin 2 with his wonderful eyes. There was at that 
 time nothing astonishing in Madame Sand's appear- 
 ance. She was not in man's clothes, she wore a sort of 
 costume not impossible, I should think (although on 
 these matters I speak with hesitation), to members of 
 the fair sex at this hour amongst ourselves, as an out- 
 door dress for the country or for Scotland. She made 
 me sit by her and poured out for me the insipid and 
 depressing beverage, hoissonfade et melancolique, as 
 Balzac called it, for which English people are thought 
 abroad to be always thirsting, — tea. She conversed of 
 the country through which I had been wandering, of 
 the Berry peasants and their mode of life, of Switzer- 
 land, whither I was going ; she touched politely, by a 
 few questions and remarks, upon England and things 
 and persons English, — upon Oxford and Cambridge, 
 Byron, Bulwer. As she spoke, her eyes, head, bearing, 
 were all of them striking ; but the main impression she 
 made was an impression of what I have already men- 
 tioned, — of simplicity^ frank, cordial simplicity. After
 
 GEORGE SAND 195 
 
 breakfast she led the way into the garden, asked me a 
 few kind questions about myself and my plans, gath- 
 ered a flower or two and gave them to me, shook 
 hands heartily at the gate, and I saw her no more. In 
 1859 M. Michelet^ gave me a letter to her, which 
 would have enabled me to present myself in more reg- 
 ular fashion. Madame Sand was then in Paris. But a 
 day or two passed before I could call, and when I 
 called, Madame Sand had left Paris and had gone 
 back to Nohant. The impression of 1846 has remained 
 my single impression of her. 
 
 Of her gaze, form, and speech, that one impression 
 is enough ; better perhaps than a mixed impression 
 from seeing her at sundry times and after successive 
 changes. But as the first anniversary of her death ^ 
 draws near, there arises again a desire which I felt 
 when she died, the desire, not indeed to take a critical 
 survey of her, — very far from it. I feel no inclina- 
 tion at all to go regularly through her productions, to 
 classify and value them one by one, to pick out from 
 them what the English public may most like, or to 
 present to that public, for the most part ignorant of 
 George Sand and for the most part indifferent to her, 
 a full history and a judicial estimate of the woman 
 and of her writings. But I desire to recall to my own 
 mind, before the occasion offered by her death passes 
 quite away, — to recall and collect the elements of 
 that powerful total-impression which, as a writer, she 
 made upon me ; to recall and collect them, to bring 
 them distinctly into view, to feel them in all their 
 depth and power once more. What I here attempt is 
 not for the benefit of the indifferent ; it is for my own 
 satisfaction, it is for myself. But perhaps those for 
 whom George Sand has been a friend and a power will 
 find an interest in following me.
 
 196 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Le sentiment de la vie ideale, qui li'est autre que la 
 vie normale telle que nous sommes appeles a la con- 
 naitre ; ^ — " the sentiment of the ideal life, which is 
 none other than man's normal life as we shall some 
 day know it," — those words from one of her last pub- 
 lications give the ruling thought of George Sand, the 
 ground-motive, as they say in music, of all her strain. 
 It is as a personage inspired by this motive that she 
 interests us. 
 
 The English public conceives of her as of a novel- 
 writer who wrote stories more or less interesting ; the 
 earlier ones objectionable and dangerous, the later 
 ones, some of them, unexceptionable and fit to be put 
 into the hands of the youth of both sexes. With such 
 a conception of George Sand, a story of hers like Con- 
 suelo 2 comes to be elevated in England into quite an 
 undue relative importance, and to pass with very many 
 people for her typical work, displaying all that is 
 really valuable and significant in the author. Consu- 
 elo is a charming story. But George Sand is some- 
 thing more than a maker of charming stories, and 
 only a portion of her is shown in Consvelo. She is 
 more, likewise, than a creator of characters. She has 
 created, with admirable truth to nature, characters 
 most attractive and attaching, such as Edmee, Gene- 
 vieve, Germain.^ But she is not adequately expressed 
 by them. We do not know her unless we feel the 
 spirit which goes through her work as a whole. 
 
 In order to feel this spirit it is not, indeed, neces- 
 sary to read all that she ever produced. Even three 
 or four only out of her many books might suffice to 
 show her to us, if they were well chosen ; let us say, 
 the Lettres d'un Voyageur, 3Iauprat, Fran<}ois le 
 Champi,'^ and a story which I was glad to see Mr. 
 Myers,^ in his appreciative notice of Madame Sand,
 
 GEORGE SAND 197 
 
 single out for praise, — Valvedre.^ In these may be 
 found all the principal elements of their author's strain : 
 the cry of agony and revolt, the trust in nature and 
 beauty, the aspiration towards a purged and renewed 
 human society. 
 
 Of George Sand's strain, during forty years, these 
 are the grand elements. Now it is one of them which 
 appears most prominently, now it is another. The cry of 
 agony and revolt is in her earlier work only, and passes 
 away in her later. But in the evolution of these three 
 elements, — the passion of agony and revolt, the conso- 
 lation from nature and from beauty, the ideas of social 
 renewal, — in the evolution of these is George Sand 
 and George Sand's life and power. Through their evo- 
 lution her constant motive declares and unfolds itself, 
 that motive which we have set forth above : " the sen- 
 timent of the ideal life, which is none other than man's 
 normal life as we shall one day know it." This is the 
 motive, and through these elements is its evolution : an 
 evolution pursued, moreover, with the most unfailing 
 resolve, the most absolute sincerity. 
 
 The hour of agony and revolt passed away for George 
 Sand, as it passed away for Goethe, as it passes away 
 for their readers likewise. It passes away and does not 
 return ; yet those who, amid the agitations, more or 
 less stormy, of their youth, betook themselves to the 
 early works of George Sand, may in later life cease to 
 read them, indeed, but they can no more forget them 
 than they can forget Werther.^ George Sand speaks 
 somewhere of her "days of Co'rinne.'"^ Days of Val- 
 entine, many of us may in like manner say, — days of 
 Valentine, days of Lelia^ days never to return ! They 
 are gone, we shall read the books no more, and yet how 
 ineffaceable is their impression ! How the sentences 
 from George Sand's works of that period still linger
 
 198 AL\TTHEW AENOLD 
 
 in our memory and haunt the ear with their cadences ! 
 Grandiose and moving, they come, those cadences, like 
 the siofhing of the wind through the forest, like the 
 breaking of the waves on the seashore. Lelia in her 
 cell on the mountain of the Camaldoli — 
 
 " Sibyl, Sibyl forsaken ; spirit of the days of old, 
 joined to a brain which rebels against the divine in- 
 spiration: broken hn'e, mute instrument, whose tones 
 the world of to-day, if it heard them, could not under- 
 stand, but yet in whose depth the eternal harmony 
 muruuirs imprisoned ; priestess of death, I, I who feel 
 and know that before now I have been Pythia, have 
 wept before now, before now have spoken, but who 
 cannot recollect, alas, cannot utter the word of healing I 
 Yes, yes! I remember the cavern of truth and the 
 access of revelation : but the word of human destiny. I 
 have forgotten it ; but the talisman of deliverance, it 
 is lost from my hand. And yet, indeed, much, much 
 have I seen I and when suffering presses me sore, when 
 indignation takes hold of me, when I feel Prometheus 
 wake up in my heart and beat his puissant wings 
 against the stone which confines him, — oh I then, in 
 prey to a frenzy without a name, to a despair without 
 bounds, I invoke the unknown master and friend who 
 might illumine my spirit and set free my tongue ; but 
 I grope in darkness, and my tired arms grasp nothing 
 save delusive shadows. And for ten thousand years, as 
 the sole answer to my cries, as the sole comfort in my 
 agony, I hear astir, over this earth accurst, the despair- 
 ing sob of impotent agony. For ten thousand years I 
 have cried in infinite space : Truth ! Truth ! For ten 
 thousand years infinite space keejis answering me: 
 Desire^ Desire. O Sibyl forsaken I O mute Pythia! 
 dash then thy head against the rocks of thy cavern, 
 and mingle thy raging blood with the foam of the sea ;
 
 GEORGE SAND 199 
 
 for thou deemest thyseK to have possessed the ahnighty 
 Word, and these ten thousand years thou art seeking 
 him in vain." ^ 
 
 Or Sylvia's cry over Jacques ^ by his glacier in the 
 Tyrol— 
 
 " When such a man as thou art is born into a world 
 where he can do no true service ; when, with the soul 
 of an apostle and the courage of a martyr, he has 
 simply to push his way among the heartless and aim- 
 less crowds which vegetate without living; the atmos- 
 phere suffocates him and he dies. Hated by sinners, 
 the mock of fools, disliked by the envious, abandoned 
 by the weak, what can he do but return to God, weary 
 with having labored in vain, in sorrow at having ac- 
 complished nothing ? The world remains in all its vile- 
 ness and in all its hatefulness; this is what men call, 
 ' the triumph of good sense over enthusiasm.' " 3 
 
 Or Jacques himself, and his doctrine — 
 
 " Life is arid and terrible, repose is a dream, pru- 
 dence is useless; mere reason alone serves simply to 
 dry up the heart ; there is but one virtue, the eternal 
 sacrifice of oneself." 
 
 Or George Sand speaking in her own person, in the 
 Lettres cVun Voyageur — 
 
 " Ah, no, I was not born to be a poet, I was born 
 to love. It is the misfortune of my destiny, it is the 
 enmity of others, which have made me a wanderer and 
 an artist. What I wanted was to live a human life ; I 
 had a heart, it has been torn violently from my breast. 
 All that has been left me is a head, a head full of noise 
 and pain, of horrible memories, of images of woe, of 
 scenes of outrage. And because in writing stories to 
 earn my bread I could not help remembering my sor- 
 rows, because I had the audacity to say that in mar- 
 ried life there were to be found miserable beings, by
 
 200 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 reason of the weakness which is enjoined upon the 
 woman, by reason of the brutality which is permitted 
 to the man, by reason of the turpitudes which society 
 covers and protects with a veil, I am pronounced im- 
 moral, I am treated as if I were the enemy of the 
 human race." ^ 
 
 If only, alas, together with her honesty and her 
 courage, she could feel within herself that she had 
 also light and hope and power ; that she was able to 
 lead those whom she loved, and who looked to her for 
 guidance ! But no ; her very own children, witnesses 
 of her suffering, her uncertainty, her struggles, her 
 evil report, may come to doubt her: — 
 
 " My poor children, my own flesh and blood, will 
 perhaps turn upon me and say: 'You are leading us 
 wrong, you mean to ruin us as well as yourself. Are 
 you not unhappy, reprobated, evil spoken of? What 
 have you gained by these unequal struggles, by these 
 much trumpeted duels of yours with custom and be- 
 lief? Let us do as others do; let us get what is to be 
 got out of this easy and tolerant world.' 
 
 " This is what they will say to me. Or at best, if, out 
 of tenderness for me, or from their own natural dis- 
 position, they give ear to my words and believe me, 
 whither shall I guide them ? Into what abysses shall 
 we go and plunge ourselves, we three? — for we shall 
 be our own three upon earth, and not one soul with 
 us. What shall I reply to them if they come and say 
 to me ; ' Yes, life is unbearable in a world like this. 
 Let us die together. Show us the path of Bernica, or 
 the lake of Stenio, or the glaciers of Jacques.' " 2 
 
 Nevertheless the failure of the. impassioned seekers 
 of a new and better world proves nothing, George 
 Sand maintains, for the world as it is. Ineffectual 
 they may be, but the world is stiU more ineffectual,
 
 GEORGE SAND 201 
 
 and it is the world's course which is doomed to ruin, 
 not theirs. " What has it done," exclaims George 
 Sand in her preface to Guerin's Centaure^ " what has 
 it done for our moral education, and what is it doing 
 for our children, this society shielded with such care?" 
 Nothing. Those whom it calls vain complainers and 
 rebels and madmen, may reply: — 
 
 " Suffer us to bewail our martyrs, poets without a 
 country that we are, forlorn singers, well versed in the 
 causes of their misery and of our own. You do not com- 
 prehend the malady which killed them ; they themselves 
 did not comprehend it. If one or two of us at the present 
 day open our eyes to a new light, is it not by a strange 
 and unaccountable good Providence ; and have we not 
 to seek our grain of faith in storm and darkness, com- 
 bated by doubt, irony, the absence of all sympathy, 
 all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and coun- 
 tenance in high places ? Try yourselves to speak to 
 your brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience ! 
 Try it! — but you cannot, busied as you are with 
 watching and patching up in all directions your dykes 
 which the flood is invading. The material existence of 
 this society of yours absorbs all your care, and requires 
 more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of 
 human thought are growing into strength, and rise on 
 all sides around you. Amongst these threatening ap- 
 paritions, there are some wliich fade away and reenter 
 the darkness, because the hour of life has not yet 
 struck, and the fiery spirit which quickened them 
 could strive no longer with the horrors of this present 
 chaos; but there are others that can wait, and you 
 will find them confronting you, up and alive, to say : 
 ' You have allowed the death of our brethren, and we, 
 we do not mean to die.' " 
 
 She did not, indeed. How should she faint and fail
 
 202 iVL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 before her time, because of a world out of joint, because 
 of the reign of stupidity, because of the jDassions of j'outh, 
 because of the difficulties and disgusts of married life in 
 the native seats of the homme sensuel moyen, the aver- 
 age sensual man, she who could feel so well the power 
 of those eternal consolers, nature and beauty? From 
 the very first they introduce a note of suavity in her 
 strain of grief and passion. Who can forget the lanes 
 and meadows of Valentine ? 
 
 George Sand is one of the few French writers who 
 keep us closely and truly intimate with rural nature. She 
 gives us the wild-flowers by their actual names, — snow- 
 drop, primrose, columbine, iris, scabious. Nowhere 
 has she touched her native Berry and its little-known 
 landscape, its campagnes ignorees, with a lovelier charm 
 than in Valentine. The winding and deep lanes running 
 out of the high road on either side, the fresh and calm 
 spots they take us to, " meadows of a tender green, plain- 
 tive brooks, clumps of alder and mountain ash, a whole 
 world of suave and pastoral nature," — how delicious it 
 all is I The grave and silent peasant whose very dog will 
 hardly deign to bark at you, the great white ox, " the 
 unfailing dean of these pastures," staring solemnly at 
 you from the thicket ; the farmhouse " with its avenue of 
 maples, and the Indre, here hardlj' more than a bright 
 ri%'ulet, stealing along through rushes and j-ellow iris, in 
 the field below," — who, I say, can forget them? And 
 that one lane in especial, the lane where Athenais puts 
 her arm out of the side window of the rustic carriage and 
 gathers May from the overarching hedge, — that lane 
 \vith its startled blackbirds, and humming insects, and 
 limpid water, and swaying water-plants, and shelving 
 gravel, and yellow wagtails hopping, half-pert, half- 
 frightened, on the sand, — that lane with its rushes, 
 cresses, and mint below, its honeysuckle and traveller's-
 
 GEORGE SAND 203 
 
 joy above, — how gladly might one give all that strangely 
 English picture in English, if the charm of Madame 
 Sand's language did not here defy translation ! Let us 
 try something less difficult, and yet something where 
 we may still have her in this her beloved world of 
 " simplicity, and sky, and fields and trees, and peasant 
 life, — peasant life looked at, by preference, on its good 
 and sound side." Voyez done la simplicite, vous autres, 
 voyez le del et las champs^ et les arbres, et les paysans^ 
 surtout dans ce quils ont de hon et de vrai. 
 
 The introduction to Xa Mare an Diable will give 
 us what we want. George Sand has been looking at an 
 engraving of Holbein's Laborer.^ An old thick-set 
 peasant, in rags, is driving his plough in the midst of 
 a field. All around spreads a wild landscape, dotted with 
 a few poor huts. The sun is setting behind a hill ; the 
 day of toil is nearly over. It has been a hard one ; the 
 groimd is rugged and stony, the laborer's horses are 
 but skin and bone, weak and exhausted. There is but 
 one alert figure, the skeleton Death, who with a whip 
 skips nimbly along at the horses' side and urges the 
 team. Under the picture is a quotation in old French, 
 to the effect that after the laborer's life of travail and 
 service, in which he has to gain his bread by the sweat 
 of his brow, here comes Death to fetch him away. And 
 from so rude a life does Death take him, says George 
 Sand, that Death is hardly unwelcome ; and in an- 
 other composition by Holbein, where men of almost 
 every condition, — popes, sovereigns, lovers, gamblers, 
 monks, soldiers, — are taunted with their fear of Death 
 and do indeed see his approach with terror, Lazarus 
 alone is easy and composed, and sitting on his dung- 
 hill at the rich man's door, tells Death that he does 
 not dread him. 
 
 With her thoughts full of Holbein's mournful
 
 204 IVIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 picture, George Sand goes out into the fields of her 
 own Berry : — 
 
 " My walk was by the border of a field which some 
 peasants were getting ready for being sown presentl3\ 
 The space to be ploughed was wide, as in Holbein's pic- 
 ture. The landscape was vast also ; the great lines of 
 green which it contained were just touched with rus- 
 set by the approach of autumn ; on the rich brown soil 
 recent rain had left, in a good many furrows, lines of 
 water, which shone in the sun like silver threads. The 
 day was clear and soft, and the earth gave out a light 
 smoke where it had been freshly laid open by the 
 ploughshare. At the top of the field an old man, whose 
 broad back and severe face were like those of the old 
 peasant of Holbein, but whose clothes told no tale of 
 poverty, was gravely driving his plough of an antique 
 shape, drawn by two tranquil oxen, with coats of a pale 
 buff, real patriarchs of the fallow, tall of make, some- 
 what thin, with long and backward-sloping horns, the 
 kind of old workmen who by habit have got to be hrothers 
 to one another, as throughout our country-side they are 
 called, and who, if one loses the other, refuse to work 
 with a new comrade, and fret themselves to death. 
 People unacquainted with the country wiU not believe 
 in this affection of the ox for his yoke-fellow. They 
 should come and see one of the poor beasts in a coi'ner 
 of his stable, thin, wasted, lashing with his restless 
 tail his lean flanks, blowing uneasily and fastidiously 
 on the provender offered to him, his eyes forever turned 
 towards the stable door, scratching with his foot the 
 empty place left at his side, sniffing the yokes and 
 bands which his companion has worn, and incessantly 
 calling for him with piteous lowings. The ox-herd will 
 tell you : Tliere is a pair of oxen done for ! his brother 
 is dead, and this one will work no more. He ought to
 
 GEORGE SAND 205 
 
 be fattened for killing ; but we cannot get him to eat, 
 and in a short time he will have starved himself to 
 death." 1 
 
 How faithful and close it is, this contact of George 
 Sand with country things, with the life of nature in 
 its vast plenitude and pathos ! And always in the end 
 the human interest, as is right, emerges and predom- 
 inates. What is the central figure in the fresh and 
 calm rural world of George Sand? It is the peasant. 
 And what is the peasant? He is France, life, the 
 future. And this is the strength of George Sand, and 
 of her second movement, after the first movement of 
 energy and revolt was over, towards nature and beauty, 
 towards the country, towards primitive life, the peas- 
 ant. She regarded nature and beauty, not with the 
 selfish and solitary joy of the artist who but seeks to 
 appropriate them for his own purposes, she regarded 
 them as a treasure of immense and hitherto unknown 
 application, as a vast power of healing and delight 
 for all, and for the peasant first and foremost. Yes, 
 she cries, the simple life is the true one ! but the peas- 
 ant, the great organ of that life, " the minister in that 
 vast temple which only the sky is vast enough to em- 
 brace," the peasant is not doomed to toil and moil in 
 it forever, overdone and unawakened, like Holbein's 
 laborer, and to have for his best comfort the thousht 
 that death will set him free. iVbn, notis iiavons plus 
 affaire a la mort, mais a la vie? " Our business 
 henceforth is not with death, but with life." 
 
 Joy is the great lifter of men, the great unfolder. 
 11 f ant que la vie soit bonne afin quelle soit feconde. 
 " For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a bless- 
 ing": — 
 
 " Nature is eternally young, beautiful, bountiful. 
 She pours out beauty and poetry for all that live, she
 
 206 AL\TTHEW ARXOLD 
 
 pours it out on all plants, and the plants are per- 
 mitted to expand in it freely. She possesses the secret 
 of happiness, and no man has been able to take it 
 away from her. The happiest of men would be he who 
 possessing the science of his labor and working vnth. 
 his hands, earning his comfort and his freedom by the 
 exercise of his intelligent force, found time to live by 
 the heart and by the brain, to understand his own 
 work and to love the work of God. The artist has 
 satisfactions of this kind in the contemplation and re- 
 production of nature's beauty ; but when he sees the 
 affliction of those who people this paradise of earth, 
 the upright and human-hearted artist feels a trouble 
 in the midst of his enjoyment. The happy day will be 
 when mind, heart, and hands shall be alive together, 
 shall work in concert ; when there shall be a harmony 
 between God's munificence and man's delight in it. 
 Then, instead of the piteous and frightful figure of 
 Death, skipping along whip in hand by the peasant's 
 side in the field, the allegorical painter will place there 
 a radiant angel, sowing with full hands the blessed 
 grain in the smoking furrow. 
 
 " And the dream of a kindly, free, poetic, laborious, 
 simple existence for the tiller of the field is not so 
 hard to realize that it must be banished into the world 
 of chimaeras. Virgil's sweet and sad cvj : ' O happy 
 peasants, if they but knew their own blessings I ' is a 
 regret ; but like all regrets, it is at the same time a 
 prediction. The day will come when the laborer may 
 be also an artist ; — not in the sense of rendering 
 nature's beauty, a matter which will be then of much 
 less importance, but in the sense of feeling it. Does 
 not this mysterious intuition of poetic beauty exist 
 in him already in the form of instinct and of vague 
 reverie? " ^
 
 GEORGE SAND 207 
 
 It exists in him, too, adds Madame Sand, in the 
 form of that nostalgia, that homesickness, which for- 
 ever pursues the genuine French peasant if you trans- 
 plant him. The peasant has here, then, the elements of 
 the poetic sense, and of its high and pure satisfactions. 
 
 " But one part of the enjoyment which we possess 
 is wanting to him, a pure and lofty pleasure which is 
 surely his due, minister that he is in that vast temple 
 which only the sky is vast enough to embrace. He 
 has not the conscious knowledge of his sentiment. 
 Those who have sentenced him to servitude from his 
 mother's womb, not being able to debar him from 
 reverie, have debarred him from reflection. 
 
 " Well, for all that, taking the peasant as he is, in- 
 complete and seemingly condemned to an eternal child- 
 hood, I yet find him a more beautiful object than the 
 man in whom his acquisition of knowledge has stifled 
 sentiment. Do not rate yourselves so high above him, 
 many of you who imagine that you have an impre- 
 scriptible right to his obedience ; for you yourselves 
 are the most incomplete and the least seeing of men. 
 That simplicity of his soul is more to be loved than the 
 false lights of yours." ^ 
 
 In all this we are passing from the second element 
 in George Sand to the third, — her aspiration for a 
 social new-birth, a renaissance sociale. It is eminently 
 the ideal of France ; it was hers. Her religion con- 
 nected itself with this ideal. In the convent where she 
 was brought up, she had in youth had an awakening 
 of fervent mystical piety in the Catholic form. That 
 form she could not keep. Popular religion of all kinds, 
 with its deep internal impossibilities, its " heaven and 
 hell serving to cover the illogical manifestations of 
 the Divinity's apparent designs respecting us," its 
 *' God made in our image, silly and malicious, vain
 
 208 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 and puerile, irritable or tender, after our fashion," 
 lost all sort of hold upon her : — 
 
 " Communion with such a God is impossible to me, 
 I confess it. He is wiped out from my memory : there 
 is no corner where I can find him any more. Nor do I 
 find such a God out of doors either ; he is not in the 
 fields and waters, he is not in the starry sky. No, nor 
 yet in the churches where men bow themselves ; it is 
 an extinct message, a dead letter, a thought that has 
 done its day. Nothing of this belief, nothing of this 
 God, subsists in me any longer." i 
 
 She refused to lament over the loss, to esteem it 
 other than a benefit : — 
 
 " It is an addition to our stock of light, this detach- 
 ment from the idolatrous conception of religion. It is 
 no loss of the religious sense, as the persisters in idol- 
 atry maintain. It is quite the contrary, it is a restitu- 
 tion of allegiance to the true Divinity. It is a step made 
 in the direction of this Divinity, it is an abjuration of 
 the dogmas which did him dishonor." 2 
 
 She does not attempt to give of this Divinity an 
 account much more precise than that which we have 
 in Wordsworth, — " a presence that disturbs me with 
 the joy of animating thoughts.^^^ 
 
 "Everything is divine (she says), even matter; 
 everything is superhuman, even man. God is every- 
 where ; he is in me in a measure proportioned to the 
 little that I am. My present life separates me from 
 him just in the degree determined by the actual state 
 of childhood of our race. Let me content myself, in 
 all my seeking, to feel after him, and to possess of him 
 as much as this imperfect soul can take in with the 
 intellectual sense I have."* 
 And she concludes : — 
 " The day will come when we shall no longer talk
 
 GEORGE SAND 209 
 
 about God idly, nay, when we shall talk about him as 
 little as possible. We shall cease to set him forth dog- 
 matically, to dispute about his nature. We shall put 
 compulsion on no one to pray to him, we shall leave 
 the whole business of worship within the sanctuary of 
 each man's conscience. And this will happen when we 
 are really religious." ^ 
 
 Meanwhile the sense of this spirit or presence which 
 animates us, the sense of the divine, is our stronghold 
 and our consolation. A man may say of it : " It comes 
 not by my desert, but the atom of divine sense given 
 to me nothing can rob me of." Divine sense, — the 
 phrase is a vague one ; but it stands to Madame Sand 
 for that to which are to be referred " all the best 
 thoughts and the best actions of life, suffering endured, 
 duty achieved, whatever purifies our existence, what- 
 ever vivifies our love." 
 
 Madame Sand is a Frenchwoman, and her religion 
 is therefore, as we might expect, with peculiar fervency 
 social. Always she has before her mind '' the natural 
 law which will have it (the italics are her own) that 
 the species man cannot subsist and prosper but by 
 association." Whatever else we may be in creation, 
 we are, first and foremost, " at the head of the species 
 which are called by instinct, and led by necessity, to 
 the life of association." The word love — the great 
 word, as she justly says, of the New Testament — 
 acquires from her social enthusiasm a peculiar sig- 
 nificance to her : — 
 
 " The word is a great one, because it involves infi- 
 nite consequences. To love means to help one another, 
 to have joint aspirations, to act in concert, to labor for 
 the same end, to develop to its ideal consummation the 
 fraternal instinct, thanks to which mankind have 
 brought the earth under their dominion. Every time
 
 210 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 that he has been false to this instinct which is his law 
 of life, his natural destiny-, man has seen his temples 
 crumble, his societies dissolve, his intellectual sense 
 go wrono^, his moral sense die out. The future is founded 
 on love." ^ 
 
 So long as love is thus spoken of in the general, 
 the ordinary serious Englishman will have no diffi- 
 culty in inclining himself with respect while Madame 
 Sand speaks of it. But when he finds that love implies, 
 with her, social equality, he will begin to be staggered. 
 And in truth for almost every Englishman Madame 
 Sand's strong language about equality, and about 
 France as the chosen vessel for exhibiting it, will 
 sound exaggerated. " The human ideal," she says, ''as 
 well as the social ideal, is to achieve equality." 2 France, 
 which has made equality its rallying cry, is therefore 
 " the nation which loves aud is loved," la nation qui 
 aime et qu'on aime. The republic of equality is in her 
 eyes " an ideal, a philosophy, a religion." She invokes 
 the " holy doctrine of social liberty and fraternal equal- 
 ity, ever reappearing as a ray of love and truth amidst 
 the storm." She calls it "the goal of man and the law 
 of the future." She thinks it the secret of the civiliza- 
 tion of France, the most civilized of nations. Amid 
 the disasters of the late war she cannot forbear a cry 
 of astonishment at the neutral nations, insensihles a 
 Vegorgement cTune civilisation comme la nbtre, "look- 
 ing on with insensibility while a civilization such as 
 ours has its throat cut." Germany, with its stupid 
 ideal of corporalism and Kruppism, is contrasted with 
 France, full of social dreams, too civilized for war, 
 incapable of planning and preparing war for twenty 
 years, she is so incapable of hatred ; — nous sommes si 
 incapables de ha'irf We seem to be listening, not to 
 George Sand, but to M. Victor Hugo, half genius,
 
 GEORGE SAND 211 
 
 half charlatan ; to M. Victor Hugo, or even to one of 
 those French declaimers in whom we come down to no 
 genius and all charlatan. 
 
 The form of such outbursts as we have quoted will 
 always be distasteful to an Englishman. It is to be 
 remembered that they came from Madame Sand under 
 the pressure and anguish of the terrible calamities of 
 1870. But what we are most concerned with, and 
 what Englishmen in general regard too little, is the 
 degree of truth contained in these allegations that 
 France is the most civilized of nations, and that she 
 is so, above all, by her " holy doctrine of equality." 
 How comes the idea to be so current ; and to be pas- 
 sionately believed in, as we have seen, by such a wo- 
 man as George Sand ? It was so passionately believed 
 in by her, that when one seeks, as I am now seeking, 
 to recall her image, the image is incomplete if the 
 passionate belief is kept from appearing. 
 
 I will not, with my scanty space, now discuss the 
 belief ; but I will seek to indicate how it must have 
 commended itself, I think, to George Sand. I have 
 somewhere called France " the country of Europe 
 where the people is most alive." ^ The people is what 
 interested George Sand. And in France the people is, 
 above all, the peasant. The workman in Paris or in 
 other great towns of France may afford material for 
 such pictures as those which M. Zola^ has lately given 
 us in U Assommoir — pictures of a kind long ago 
 labelled by Madame Sand as " the literature of mys- 
 teries of iniquity, which men of talent and imagina- 
 tion try to bring into fashion." But the real i^eople in 
 France, the foundation of things there, both in George 
 Sand's eyes and in reality, is the peasant. The peasant 
 was the object of Madame Sand's fondest predilections 
 in the present, and happiest hopes in the future. The
 
 212 AL\TTHEW AKNOLD 
 
 Revolution and its doctrine of equality had made the 
 French peasant. "What wonder, then, if she saluted 
 the doctrine as a holy and paramount one ? 
 
 And the French peasant is really, so far as I can 
 see, the largest and strongest element of soundness 
 which the body social of any European nation pos- 
 sesses. To him is due that astonishing recovery which 
 France has made since her defeat, and which George 
 Sand predicted in the very hour of ruin. Yes, in 1870 
 she predicted ce reveil general qui va siiivre, a la 
 grande surjirise des autres nations, Vespece d'agonie 
 oil elles nous voient tomhes} " the general re-arising 
 which, to the astonishment of other nations, is about 
 to follow the sort of agon}' in which they now see us 
 lying." To the condition, character, and qualities of 
 the French peasant this recovery is in the main due. 
 His material well-being is known to all of us. M. de 
 Laveleye,^ the well-known economist, a Belgian and a 
 Protestant, says that France, being the country of 
 Europe where the soil is more divided than anywhere 
 except in Switzerland and Norway, is at the same time 
 the country where well-being is most widely spread, 
 where wealth has of late years increased most, and 
 where population is least outrunning the limits which, 
 for the comfort and progress of the working classes 
 themselves, seem necessary. Geoi'ge Sand could see, 
 of course, the well-being of the French peasant, for 
 we can all see it. 
 
 But there is more. George Sand was a woman, with 
 a woman's ideal of gentleness, of " the charm of good 
 manners," as essential to civilization. She has some- 
 where spoken admirably of the variety and balance of 
 forces which go to make up true civilization ; " certain 
 forces of weakness, docility, attractiveness, sua-vnty, are 
 here just as real forces as forces of vigor, encroach-
 
 GEORGE SAND 213 
 
 ment, violence, or brutality." Yes, as real forces, 
 although Prince Bismarck cannot see it ; because hu- 
 man nature requires them, and, often as they may be 
 baffled, and slow as may be the process of their assert- 
 ing themselves, mankind is not satisfied with its own 
 civilization, and keeps fidgeting at it and altering it 
 again and again, until room is made for them. George 
 Sand thought the French people, — meaning princi- 
 pally, again, by the French people the people properly 
 so called, the peasant, — she thought it " the most 
 kindly, the most amiable, of all peoples." Nothing is 
 more touching than to read in her Jourjial, written 
 in 1870, while she was witnessing what seemed to be 
 " the agony of the Latin races," and undergoing what 
 seemed to be the process of " dying in a general death 
 of one's family, one's country, and one's nation," how 
 constant is her defence of the people, the peasant, 
 against her Republican friends. Her Republican 
 friends were furious with the peasant ; accused him 
 of stolidity, cowardice, want of patriotism ; accused 
 him of having given them the Empire, with all its 
 vileness ; wanted to take away from him the suffrage. 
 Again and again does George Sand take up his de- 
 fence, and warn her friends of the folly and danger 
 of their false estimate of him. " The contempt of the 
 masses, there," she cries, " is the misfortune and crime 
 of the present moment ! " ^ " To execrate the people," 
 she exclaims again, " is real blasphemy ; the people is 
 worth more than we are." 
 
 If the peasant gave us the Empire, says Madame 
 Sand, it was because he saw the parties of liberals 
 disputing, gesticulating, and threatening to tear one 
 another asunder and France too ; he was told the 
 Empire is peace, and he accepted the Empire. The 
 peasant was deceived, he is uninstructed, he moves
 
 214 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 slowly ; but lie moves, lie has admirable virtues, and 
 in him, says George Sand, is our life : — 
 
 " Poor Jacques Bonhomme ! accuse thee and despise 
 thee who will ; for my part 1 pity thee, and in spite 
 of thy faults I shall always love thee. Never will I 
 forget how, a child, I was carried asleep on thy shoul- 
 ders, how I was given over to thy care and followed 
 thee everywhere, to the field, the stall, the cottage. 
 They are all dead, those good old people who have 
 borne me in their arms ; but I remember them well, 
 and I appreciate at this hour, to the minutest detail, 
 the pureness, the kindness, the patience, the good 
 humor, the poetry, which presided over that rustic 
 education amidst disasters of like kind with those 
 which we are undergoing now. Why should I quarrel 
 with the peasant because on certain points he feels 
 and thinks differently from what I do? There are 
 other essential points on which we may feel eternally 
 at one with him, — probity and charity." ^ 
 
 Another generation of peasants had grown up since 
 that first revolutionary generation of her youth, and 
 equality, as its reign proceeded, had not deteriorated 
 but improved them. 
 
 " They have advanced greatly in self-respect and 
 well-being, these peasants fi-om twenty years old to 
 forty: they never ask for anything. When one meets 
 them they no longer take off their hat. If they know 
 you they come up to you and hold out their hand. 
 All foreigners who stay with us are struck with their 
 good bearing, with their amenity, and the simple, 
 friendly, and polite ease of their behavior. In presence 
 of people whom they esteem they are, like their fathers, 
 models of tact and politeness ; but they have more than 
 that mere sentiment of equality which was all that 
 their fathers had, — they have the idea of equality,
 
 GEORGE SAND 215 
 
 and the determination to maintain it. This step up- 
 wards they owe to their having- the franchise. Those 
 who would fain treat them as creatures of a lower 
 order dare not now show this disposition to their 
 face ; it would not be pleasant." ^ 
 
 Mr. Hamerton's^ interesting book about French 
 life has much, I think, to confirm this account of the 
 French peasant. What I have seen of France myself 
 (and I have seen something) is fully in agreement 
 with it. Of a civilization and an equality which makes 
 the peasant thus human, gives to the bulk of the 
 people well-being, probity, charity, self-respect, tact, 
 and good manners, let us pardon Madame Sand if 
 she feels and speaks enthusiastically. Some little vari- 
 ation on our own eternal trio of Barbarians, Philis- 
 tines, Populace,^ or on the eternal solo of Philistinism 
 among our brethren of the United States and the 
 Colonies, is surely permissible. 
 
 Where one is more inclined to differ from Madame 
 Sand is in her estimate of her Republican friends 
 of the educated classes. They may stand, she says, 
 for the genius and the soul of France ; they repre- 
 sent its " exalted imagination and profound sensibil- 
 ity," while the peasant represents its humble, sound, 
 indispensable body. Her protege, the peasant, is much 
 ruder with those eloquent gentlemen, and has his own 
 name for one and all of them, Vavocat, by which he 
 means to convey his belief that wor'ds are more to be 
 looked for from that quarter than seriousness and 
 profit. It seems to me by no means certain but that 
 the peasant is in the right. 
 
 George Sand herself has said admirable things of 
 these friends of hers ; of their want of patience, tem- 
 per, wisdom ; of their " vague and violent way of 
 talking " ; of their interminable flow of " stimulating
 
 216 IVLVTTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 phrases, cold as death." Her' own place is of course 
 with the party and propaganda of organic change. 
 But George Sand felt the poetry of the past ; she had 
 no hatreds ; the furies, the follies, the self-deceptions 
 of secularist and revolutionist fanatics filled her with 
 dismay. They are, indeed, the great danger of France, 
 and it is amongst the educated and articulate classes 
 of France that they prevail. If the educated and 
 articulate classes in France were as sound in their 
 way as the inarticulate peasant Is in his, France 
 would present a different spectacle. Not "imagination 
 and sensibility " are so much required from the edu- 
 cated classes of France, as simpler, more serious views 
 of life; a knowledge how great a part conduct (if 
 M. Challemel-Lacour 1 will allow me to say so) fills 
 in it; a better example. The few who see this, such 
 as Madame Sand among the dead, and M. Renan^ 
 among the living, perhaps awaken on that account, 
 amongst quiet observers at a distance, all the more 
 sympathy ; but in France they are isolated. 
 
 All the later work of George Sand, however, all her 
 hope of genuine social renovation, take the simple and 
 serious ground so necessary. " The cure for us is far 
 more simple than we will believe. All the better 
 natures amongst us see it and feel it. It is a good 
 direction given by ourselves to our hearts and con- 
 sciences ; — line honne direction donnee par nous- 
 mhnes a nos cmnrs et a nos consciences.^^ ^ These are 
 among the last words of her Journal of 1870. 
 
 Whether or not the number of George Sand's 
 works — always fresh, always attractive, but poured 
 out too lavishly and rapidly — is likely to prove a 
 hindrance to her fame, I do not care to consider. 
 Posterity, alarmed at the way in which its literary
 
 GEORGE SAND 217 
 
 baggage grows upon it, always seeks to leave behind 
 it as much as it can, as much as it dares, — every- 
 thing but masterpieces. But the immense vibration of 
 George Sand's voice upon the ear of Europe will not 
 soon die away. Her passions and her errors have been 
 abundantly talked of. She left them behind her, and 
 men's memory of her will leave them behind also. 
 There will remain of her to mankind the sense of 
 benefit and stimulus from the passage upon earth of 
 that large and frank nature, of that large and pure 
 utterance, — the large utterance of the early gods. 
 There will remain an admiring and ever widening re- 
 port of that great and ingenuous soul, simple, affec- 
 tionate, without vanity, without pedantry, human, 
 equitable, patient, kind. She believed herself, she 
 said, " to be in sympathy, across time and space, with 
 a multitude of honest wills which interrogate their con- 
 science and try to put themselves in accord with it." 
 This chain of sympathy will extend more aud more. 
 
 It is silent, that eloquent voice ! it is sunk, that 
 noble, that speaking head ! we sum up, as we best 
 can, what she said to us, and we bid her adieu. From 
 many hearts in many lands a troop of tender and 
 gratefid regrets converge towards her humble church- 
 yard in Berry. Let them be joined by these words of 
 sad homage from one of a nation which she esteemed, 
 and which knew her very little and very ill. Her guid- 
 ing thought, the guiding thought which she did her 
 best to make ours too, "the sentiment of the ideal 
 life, which is none other than man's normal life as we 
 shall one day know it," is in harmony with words and 
 promises familiar to that sacred place where she lies. 
 JExspectat resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi 
 sceculi.^
 
 /r' 
 
 *1^ 
 
 
 :«r 
 
 WORDSWORTH 1 
 
 I REMEMBER hearing Lord Macaulay say, after 
 Wordsworth's death, when subscriptions were being 
 collected to found a memorial of him, that ten years 
 earlier more money could have been raised in Cam- 
 bridge alone, to do honor to Wordsworth, than was 
 now raised all through the country. Lord Macaulay 
 had, as we know, his own heightened and telling way 
 of putting things, and we must always make allowance 
 for it. But probably it is true that Wordsworth has 
 never, either before or since, been so accepted and 
 popular, so established in possession of the minds of 
 all who profess to care for jjoetry, as he was between 
 the years 1830 and 1840, and at Cambridge. From 
 the very first, no doubt, he had his believers and wit- 
 nesses. But I have myself heard him declare that, for 
 he knew not how many years, his poetry had never 
 brought him in enough to buy his shoe-strings. The 
 poetry-reading public was very slow to recognize him, 
 and was very easily drawn away from him. Scott 
 effaced him with this public. Byron effaced him. 
 
 The death of Byron seemed, however, to make an 
 opening for Wordswoi-th. Scott, who had for some 
 time ceased to produce poetry himself, and stood before 
 the public as a great novelist ; Scott, too genuine him- 
 self not to feel the profound genuineness of Wordsworth, 
 and with an instinctive recognition of his firm hold on 
 nature and of his local truth, always admired him sin- 
 cerely, and praised him generously. The influence of 
 Coleridge upon young men of ability was then power- 
 ful, and was still gathering strength; this influence
 
 WORDSWORTH 219 
 
 told entirely in favor of Wordsworth's poetry. Cam- 
 bridge was a place where Coleridge's influence had 
 great action, and where Wordsworth's poetry, there- 
 fore, flourished especially. But even amongst the gen- 
 eral public its sale grew large, the eminence of its 
 author was widely recognized, and Rydal Mount ^ be- 
 came an object of pilgrimage. I remember Wordsworth 
 relating how one of the pilgrims, a clergyman, asked 
 him if he had ever written anything besides the Guide 
 to the Lakes. Yes, he answered modestly, he had writ- 
 ten verses. Not every pilgrim was a reader, but the 
 vogue was established, and the stream of pilgrims came. 
 
 Mr. Tennyson's decisive appearance dates from 
 1842.2 Q^^g cannot say that he effaced Wordsworth as 
 Scott and Byron had effaced him. The poetry of Words- 
 worth had been so loug before the public, the suffrage 
 of good judges was so steady and so strong in its favor, 
 that by 1842 the verdict of posterity, one may almost 
 say, had been already pronounced, and Wordsworth's 
 English fame was secure. But the vogue, the ear and 
 applause of the great body of poetry-readers, never quite 
 thoroughly perhaps his, he gradually lost more and 
 more, and Mr. Tennyson gained them. Mr. Tennyson 
 drew to himself, and away from Wordsworth, the po- 
 etry-reading j)ublic, and the new generations. Even 
 in 1850, when Wordsworth died, this diminution of 
 popularity was visible, and occasioned the remark of 
 Lord Macaulay which I quoted at starting. 
 
 The diminution has continued. The influence of 
 Coleridge has waned, and Wordsworth's poetry can no 
 longer draw succor from this ally. The poetry has not, 
 however, wanted eulogists ; and it may be said to have 
 brought its eulogists luck, for almost every one who 
 has praised Wordsworth's poetry has praised it well. 
 But the public has remained cold, or, at least, undeter-
 
 220 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 mined. Even tlie abundance of Mr. Palgrave's fine 
 and skilfully chosen specimens of Wordsworth, in 
 the Golden Treasury^ surprised many readers, and 
 gave offense to not a few. To tenth-rate critics and 
 compilers, for whom any violent shock to the public 
 taste would be a temerity not to be risked, it is 
 still quite permissible to speak of Wordsworth's 
 poetry, not only with ignorance, but with imperti- 
 nence. On the Continent he is almost unknown. 
 
 I cannot think, then, that Wordsworth has, up to 
 this time, at all obtained his deserts. " Glory," said 
 M. Renan the other day, "glory after all is the thing 
 which has the best chance of not being altogether 
 vanity." Wordsworth was a homely man, and himself 
 would certainly never have thought of talking of glory 
 as that which, after all, has the best chance of not 
 being altogether vanity. Yet we may well allow that 
 few things are less vain than reed glory. Let us con- 
 ceive of the whole group of civilized nations as being, 
 for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
 federation, bound to a joint action and working to- 
 wards a common result ; a confederation whose mem- 
 bers have a due knowledge both of the past, out of 
 which they all proceed, and of one another. This was 
 the ideal of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will im- 
 pose itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies 
 more and more. Then to be recognized by the verdict 
 of such a confederation as a master, or even as a seri- 
 ously and eminently worthy workman, in one's own 
 line of intellectual or spiritual activity, is indeed glory ; 
 a glory which it would be difficult to rate too highly. 
 For what could be more beneficent, more sahitary? 
 The world is forwarded by having its attention fixed 
 on the best things ; and here is a tribunal, free from 
 all suspicion of national and provincial partiality, put-
 
 WORDSWORTH 221 
 
 ting a stamp on the best things, and recommending 
 them for general honor and acceptance. A nation, 
 again, is furthered by recognition of its real gifts and 
 successes ; it is encouraged to develop them further. 
 And here is an honest verdict, telling us which of our 
 supjjosed successes are really, in the judgment of the 
 great impartial world, and not in our private judg- 
 ment only, successes, and which are not. 
 
 It is so easy to feel pi-ide and satisfaction in one's 
 own things, so hard to make sure that one is right in 
 feeling it ! We have a great empire. But so had Nebu- 
 chadnezzar. We extol the " unrivalled happiness " of 
 o]Lir national civilization. But then comes a candid 
 friend,^ and remarks that our upper class is material- 
 ized, our middle class vulgarized, and our lower class 
 brutalized. We are proud of our painting, our music. 
 But we find that in the judgment of other people our 
 painting is questionable, and our music non-existent. 
 We are proud of onr men of science. And here it 
 turns out that the world is with us ; we find that in 
 the judgment of other people, too, Newton among the 
 dead, and Mr. Darwin among the living, hold as high 
 a place as they hold in our national opinion. 
 
 Finally, we are proud of our poets and poetry. Now 
 poetry is nothing less than the most perfect speech of 
 man, that in which he comes nearest to being able to 
 utter the truth. It is no small thing, therefore, to suc- 
 ceed eminently in poetry. And so much is required 
 for duly estimating success here, that about poetry it 
 is perhaps hardest to arrive at a sure general verdict, 
 and takes longest. Meanwhile, our own conviction of 
 the superiority of our national poets is not decisive, is 
 almost certain to be mingled, as we see constantly in 
 English eulogy of Shakespeare, with much of provin- 
 cial infatuation. And we know what was the opinion
 
 222 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 current amongst our neighbors the French — people 
 of taste, acuteness, and quick literary tact — not a 
 hundred years ago, about our great poets. The old 
 Biograpliie UniverseUe^ notices the pretension of the 
 English to a place for their poets among the chief 
 poets of the world, and says that this is a pretension 
 which to no one but an Englishman can ever seem 
 admissible. And the scornful, disparaging tilings said 
 by foreigners about Shakespeare and Milton, and 
 about our national over-estimate of them, have been 
 often quoted, and will be in everyone's remembrance. 
 A great change has taken place, and Shakespeare is 
 now generally recognized, even in France, as one of 
 the greatest of poets. Yes, some anti-Gallican cynic 
 will say, the French rank him with Corneille and with 
 Victor Hugo ! But let me have the pleasure of quoting 
 a sentence about Shakespeare, which I met with by 
 accident not long ago in the Correspondant^ a French 
 review which not a dozen English people, I suppose, 
 look at. The writer is praising Shakespeare's prose. 
 With Shakespeare, he says, " prose comes in whenever 
 the subject, being more familiar, is unsuited to the 
 majestic English iambic." And he goes on : " Shake- 
 speare is the king of poetic rhythm and style, as well 
 as the king of the realm of thought : along with his 
 dazzling prose, Shakespeare has succeeded in giving us 
 the most varied, the most harmonious verse which has 
 ever sounded upon the human ear since the verse of 
 the Greeks." M. Henry Cochin,^ the writer of this 
 sentence, deserves our gratitude for it ; it would not 
 be easy to praise Shakespeare, in a single sentence, 
 more justly. And when a foreigner and a Frenchman 
 writes thus of Shakespeare, and when Goethe says of 
 Milton, in whom there was so much to repel Goethe 
 rather than to attract him, that " nothing has been
 
 WORDSWORTH 223 
 
 ever done so entirely in the sense of the Greeks as 
 Samson Agonistes,'' and that " Milton is in very truth 
 a poet whom we must treat with all reverence," then 
 we understand what constitutes a European recognition 
 of poets and poetry as contradistinguished fi-om a 
 merely national recognition, and that in favor both of 
 Milton and of Shakespeare the judgment of the high 
 court of appeal has finally gone. 
 
 I come back to M. Kenan's praise of glory, from 
 which I started. Yes, real glory is a most serious thing, 
 glory authenticated by the Amj)hictyonic Court i of 
 final appeal, definite glory. And even for poets and 
 poetry, long and difficult as may be the process of 
 arriving at the right award, the right award comes 
 at last, the definitive glory rests where it is deserved. 
 Every establishment of such a real glory is good and 
 wholesome for mankind at large, good and wholesome 
 for the nation which produced the poet crowned with 
 it. To the poet himself it can seldom do harm ; 
 for he, poor man, is in his grave, probabl}^, long before 
 his glory crowns him. 
 
 Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty 
 years, and certainly his lovers and admirers cannot 
 flatter themselves that this great and steady light of 
 glory as yet shines over him. He is not fully recog- 
 nized at home ; he is not recognized at all abroad. 
 Yet I firmly believe that the poetical performance of 
 Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, 
 of which all the world now recognizes the worth, im- 
 doubtedly the most considerable in our language from 
 the Elizabethan age to the present time. Chaucer is 
 anterior ; and on other grounds, too, he cannot well 
 be brought into the comparison. But taking the roll 
 of our chief poetical names, besides Shakespeare and 
 Milton, from the age of Elizabeth downwards, and
 
 224 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 going through it, — Spenser, Dryclen, Pope, Gray, 
 Goklsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, 
 Moore, Byron, Shelley, Keats (I mention those only 
 who are dead), — I think it certain that Wordsworth's 
 name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, above 
 them all. Several of the poets named have gifts and 
 excellences which Wordsworth has not. But taking 
 the performance of each as a whole, I say that Words- 
 worth seems to me to have left a body of poetical 
 work superior in power, in interest, in the qualities 
 which give enduring freslmess, to that which any one 
 of the others has left. 
 
 But this is not enough to say. I think it certain, 
 further, that if we take the chief poetical names of the 
 Continent since the death of Moliere, and, omitting 
 Goethe, confront the remaining names with that of 
 Wordsworth, the result is the same. Let us take Klop- 
 stock,! Lessing,2 Schiller, Uhland,'^ Riickert,* and 
 Heine ^ for Germany ; Filicaja,^ Alfieri,"" Manzoni,^ 
 and Leopardi ^ for Italy ; Racine,^^ Boileau,^^ Voltaire, 
 Andre Chenier,^^ Beranger,^"^ Lamartine,^* Musset,^^ 
 M. Victor Hugo (he has been so long celebrated that 
 although he still lives I may be permitted to name 
 him) for France. Several of tliese, again, have evi- 
 dently gifts and excellences to which Wordsworth can 
 make no pretension. But in real poetical achievement 
 it seems to me indubitable that to Wordsworth, here 
 again, belongs the palm. It seems to me that Words- 
 worth has left behind him a body of poetical work 
 which wears, and will wear, better on the whole than 
 the performance of any one of these personages, so far 
 more brilliant and celebrated, most of them, than the 
 homely poet of Rydal. Wordsworth's performance in 
 poetry is on the whole, in power, in interest, in the quali- 
 ties which give enduring freshness, superior to theirs.
 
 WORDSWORTH 225 
 
 This is a high claim to make for Wordsworth. But 
 if it is a just claim, if Wordsworth's place among the 
 poets who have appeared in the last two or three cen- 
 turies is after Shakespeare, Moliere, Milton, Goethe, 
 indeed, but before all the rest, then in time W^ords- 
 worth will have his due. We shall recognize him in his 
 place, as we recognize ShakesjDeare and Milton ; and 
 not only we ourselves shall recognize him, but he will 
 be recognized by Europe also. Meanwhile, those who 
 recognize him already may do well, perhaps, to ask 
 themselves whether there are not in the case of Words- 
 worth certain special obstacles which hinder or delay 
 his due recognition by others, and whether these ob- 
 stacles are not in some measure removable. 
 
 The Excursion and the Prelude^ his poems of great- 
 est bulk, are by no means Wordsworth's best work. 
 His best work is in his shorter pieces, and many in- 
 deed are there of these which are of first-rate excel- 
 lence. But in his seven volumes the pieces of high 
 merit are mingled with a mass of pieces very inferior 
 to them ; so inferior to them that it seems wonderful 
 how the same poet should have produced both, Shake- 
 speare frequently has lines and passages in a strain 
 quite false, and which are entirely unworthy of him. 
 But one can imagine him smiling if one could meet 
 him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so ; smiling and 
 replying that he knew it perfectly well himself, and 
 what did it matter ? But with Wordsworth the case is 
 different. Work altogether inferior, work quite unin- 
 spired, flat and dull, is produced by him with evident 
 unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us 
 with the same faith and seriousness as his best work. 
 Now a drama or an epic fill the mind, and one does 
 not look beyond them ; but in a collection of short 
 pieces the impression made by one piece requires to
 
 226 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 be continued and sustained by the piece following. In 
 reading Wordsworth the impression made by one of 
 his fine pieces is too often dulled and spoiled by a very 
 inferior piece coming after it. 
 
 Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some 
 sixty years ; and it is no exaggeration to say that 
 within one single decade of those years, between 1798 
 and 1808, almost all his really first-rate work was pro- 
 duced. A mass of inferior work remains, work done 
 before and after this golden prime, imbedding the first- 
 rate work and clogging it, obstructing our approach 
 to it, chilling, not unfrequently, the high-wrought 
 mood with which we leave it. To be recognized far 
 and wide as a great poet, to be possible and receivable 
 as a classic, Wordsworth needs to be relieved of a 
 great deal of the poetical baggage which now encum- 
 bers him. To administer this relief is indispensable, 
 unless he is to continue to be a poet for the few only, 
 — a poet valued far below his real worth by the world. 
 
 There is another thing. Wordsworth classified his 
 poems not according to any commonly received plan 
 of arrangement, but according to a scheme of mental 
 physiology. He has poems of the fancy, poems of the 
 imagination, poems of sentiment and reflection, and so 
 on. His categories are ingenious but far-fetched, and 
 the result of his employment of them is unsatisfactory. 
 Poems are separated one from another which possess 
 a kinship of subject or of treatment far more vital and 
 deep than the supposed unity of mental origin, which 
 was Wordsworth's reason for joining them with others. 
 
 The tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind was 
 infallible. We may rely upon it that we shall not im- 
 prove upon the classification adopted by the Greeks 
 for kinds of poetry; that their categories of epic, 
 dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a natural pro-
 
 WORDSWORTH 227 
 
 priety, and should be adhered to. It may sometimes 
 seem doubtful to which of two categories a poem be- 
 longs ; whether this or that poem is to be called, for 
 instance, narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there 
 is to be found in every good poem a strain, a pre- 
 dominant note, which determines the poem as belong- 
 ing to one of these kinds rather than the other ; and 
 here is the best proof of the value of the classification, 
 and of the advantage of adhering to it. Wordsworth's 
 poems will never produce their due effect until they 
 are freed from their present artificial arrangement, 
 and grouped more naturally. 
 
 Disengaged from the quantity of inferior work 
 which now obscures them, the best poems of Words- 
 worth, I hear many people say, would indeed stand 
 out in great beauty, but they would prove to be very 
 few in number, scarcely more than a half a dozen. I 
 maintain, on the other hand, that what strikes me 
 with admiration, what establishes in my opinion Words- 
 worth's superiority, is the great and ample body of 
 powerful work which remains to him, even after all 
 his inferior work has been cleared away. He gives us 
 so much to rest upon, so much which communicates 
 his spirit and engages ours ! 
 
 This is of very great importance. If it were a com- 
 parison of single pieces, or of three or four pieces, by 
 each poet, I do not say that Wordsworth would stand 
 decisively above Gray, or Burns, or Coleridge, or Keats, 
 or Manzoni, or Heine. It is in his ampler body of power- 
 ful work that I find his superiority. His good work 
 itself, his work which counts, is not all of it, of course, 
 of equal value. Some kinds of poetry are in themselves 
 lower kinds than others. The ballad kind is a lower 
 kind ; the didactic kind, still more, is a lower kind. 
 Poetry of this latter sort counts, too, sometimes, by
 
 228 IVIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 its biographical interest partly, not by its poetical in- 
 terest pure and simple ; but then this can only be 
 when the poet producing it has the power and impor- 
 tance of Wordsworth, a power and importance which 
 he assuredly did not establish by such didactic poetry 
 alone. Altogether, it is, I say, by the great body of 
 powerful and significant work which remains to him, 
 after every reduction and deduction has been made, 
 that Wordsworth's superiority is proved. 
 
 To exhibit this body of Wordsworth's best work, 
 to clear away obstructions from around it, and to let 
 it speak for itself, is what every lover of Wordsworth 
 should desire. Until this has been done, Wordsworth, 
 whom we, to whom he is dear, all of us know and feel 
 to be so great a poet, has not had a fair chance before 
 the world. When once it has been done, he will make 
 his way best, not by our advocacy of him, but by his 
 own worth and power. We may safely leave him to 
 make his way thus, we who believe that a superior 
 worth and power in poetry finds in mankind a sense 
 responsive to it and disposed at last to recognize it. 
 Yet at the outset, before he has been duly known and 
 recognized, we may do Wordsworth a service, per- 
 haps, by indicating in what his superior power and 
 worth will be found to consist, and in what it will 
 
 ^^^•'^'.„,. ^,vi:>^'- r-'V^ l,,,,:\..^- -.iM^ ■■^' >"^ 
 
 Long ago, in speaking of Homer, I said that the 
 noble and profound application of ideas to life is the 
 most essential part of poetic greatness. I said that 
 a great poet receives his distinctive character of supe- 
 riority from his application, luider the conditions im- 
 mutably fixed by the laws of poetic beaut}^ and poetic 
 truth, from his application, I say, to his subject, what- 
 ever it may be, of the ideas 
 
 " On man, on natnre, and on human life," ^ ' 
 
 • ■ . > .O r
 
 WORDSWORTH 229 
 
 which he has acquired for himself. The line quoted is 
 Wordsworth's own ; and his superiority arises from 
 his powerful use, in his best pieces, his powerful ap- 
 plication to his subject, of ideas " on man, on nature, 
 and on human life." 
 
 Voltaire, with his signal acuteness, most truly re- 
 marked that " no nation has treated in poetry moral 
 ideas with more energy and depth than the English 
 nation." And he adds ; " There, it seems to me, is the 
 great merit of the English poets." Voltaire does not 
 mean, by " treating in poetry moral ideas," the com- 
 posing moral and didactic^ poems ; — that brings us 
 but a very little way in poetry. He means just the 
 same thing as was meant when I spoke above " of the 
 noble and profound application of ideas to life " ; and 
 he means the application of these ideas under the con- 
 ditions fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty and 
 poetic ti'uth. If it is said that to call these ideas moral 
 ideas is to introduce a strong and injurious limitation, 
 I answer that it is to do nothing of the kind, because 
 moral ideas are really so main a part of human life. 
 The question, how to live, is itself a moral idea ; and 
 it is the question which most interests every man, and 
 with which, in some way or other, he is perpetually 
 occupied. A large sense is of course to be given to the 
 term m oral. AVhatever bears upon the question, " how 
 to live," comes under it. • _ Z. 
 
 " Nor love thy life, nor liate ; but, what thou liv'st, 
 Live well ; how long or sliort, permit to heaven." ^ 
 
 In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once 
 
 perceives, a moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats 
 
 consoles the forward-bending lover on the Grecian 
 
 Urn, the lover arrested and presented in immortal 
 
 relief by the sculptor's hand before he can kiss, with 
 
 the line, 
 
 %
 
 230 ^L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair — " 
 he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that 
 
 *' We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep," ^ -' — 7^- ' 
 
 he utters a moral idea. 
 
 Voltaire was ri^ht in thinkin(j that the enero'etic 
 and profound treatment of moral ideas, in this large 
 sense, is what distinguishes the English poetry. He 
 sincerely meant praise, not dispraise or hint of limi- 
 tation ; and they err who suppose that poetic limita- 
 tion is a necessary consequence of the fact, the fact 
 A beins: ^ranted as Voltaire states it. If what distin- 
 j^ guishes the greatest poets is their powerful and pro- 
 found application of ideas to life, which surely no good 
 critic will deny, then to prefix to the term ideas here 
 the term moral makes hardly any difference, because 
 human life itself is in so preponderating a decree 
 
 morah -^ - , •• -'^ *- V^-^:? .'••^"^- ^ ^K 
 
 It is important, therefore,' to hold fast to this : 
 that poetry is at bottom a cri ticism of l ife ; ^ that the 
 greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful 
 application of ideas to life, — to the question : How to 
 live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false 
 fashion : they are bound up with systems of thought 
 and belief which have had their day ; they are fallen 
 into the hands of pedants and professional dealers ; 
 they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, 
 at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them ; in 
 a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khay- 
 yam's words : •' Let us make up in the tavern for the 
 time which we have wasted in the mosque." Or we 
 find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them ; in a 
 poetry where the contents may be what they will, but 
 where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude
 
 WORDSWORTH 231 
 
 ourselves in either case ; and the best cure for onr 
 delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and 
 inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into 
 its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is 
 a poetry of revolt against life ; a poetry of indifference 
 towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards 
 life. 
 
 Epictetus had a happy figure for things like the 
 play of the senses, or literary form and finish, or argu- 
 mentative ingenuity, in comparison with " the best and 
 master thing" for us, as he called it, the concern, how 
 to live. Some people were afraid of them, he said, or 
 they disliked and undervalued them. Such people 
 were wrong ; they were unthankful or cowardly. But 
 the things might also be over-prized, and treated as 
 final when they are not. They bear to life the relation 
 which inns bear to home. " As if a man, journeying 
 home, and finding a nice inn on the road, and liking it, 
 were to stay forever at thejnn ! Man, thou hast for- 
 gotten thine object ; thy journey was not to this, but 
 through this. ' But this inn is taking.' And how many 
 other inns, too, are taking, and how many fields and 
 meadows ! but as places of passage merely. You have 
 an object, which is this : to get home, to do your duty 
 to your family, friends, and fellow-countrymen, to at- 
 tain inward freedom, serenity, happiness, contentment. 
 Style takes your fancy, arguing takes your fancy, and 
 you forget your home and want to make your abode 
 with them and to stay with them, on the plea that they 
 are taking. Who denies that they are taking? but as 
 places of passage, as inns. And when 1 say this, you 
 suppose me to be attacking the care for style, the care 
 for argument. I am not ; I attack the resting in them, 
 the not looking to the end which is beyond them." ^ 
 
 Now, when we come across a poet like Theophile Gau-
 
 On— •{/ 
 
 232 IVIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 tier,i we have a poet who has taken up his abode at an 
 inn, and never got farther. There may be inducements 
 to this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to 
 find delight in him, to cleave to him ; but after all, we 
 do not change the truth about him, — we only stay 
 ourselves in his inn along with him. And when we 
 come across a poet like Wordsworth, who sings 
 
 " Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope, 
 And melancholy fear subdued by faith. 
 Of blessed consolations in distress. 
 Of moral strength and intellectual power, O /; 
 Of joy in widest commonalty spread — "^ isLC cx.**"*^ 
 
 then we have a poet intent on "the best and master 
 thing," and who prosecutes his journey home. We say, 
 for brevity's sake, that he deals with life^ because he 
 deals with that in which life really consists. This is 
 what Voltaire means to praise in the English poets, — 
 this dealing with what is really life. But always it is 
 the mark of the greatest poets that they deal with it ; 
 and to say that the English poets are remarkable for 
 dealing with it, is only another way of saying, what is 
 true, that in poetry the English genius has especially 
 shown its power. 
 
 Wordsworth deals with it, and his greatness lies in 
 his dealing with it so powerfully. I have named a num- 
 ber of celebrated poets above all of whom he, in my 
 opinion, deserves to be placed. He is to be placed 
 above poets like Voltaire, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, 
 Schiller, because these famous personages, with a 
 thousand gifts and merits, never, or scarcely ever, at- 
 tain the distinctive accent and utterance of the high 
 and genuine poets — ljuu~i-^ 
 
 " Quique pii vates et Phcebo digna locuti," ^ 
 
 at all. Burns, Keats, Heine, not to speak of others in 
 our list, have this accent ; — who can doubt it ? And 
 V t '' t i-^vw av'mvv i>t>efi iL--^ x>|>vfe*' wvWKu
 
 WORDSWORTH 233 
 
 at the same time they have treasures of humor, felicity, 
 passion, for which in Wordsworth we shall look in 
 vain. Where, then, is Wordsworth's superiority? It 
 is here ; he deals with more of life than they do ; he 
 deals with Zi/e,as a whole, more powerfully. 
 
 No Wordsworthian will doubt this. Nay, the fer- 
 vent Wordsworthian will add, as Mr. Leslie Stephen i 
 does, that Wordsworth's poetry is precious because his 
 philosophy is sound ; that his " ethical system is as dis- 
 tinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler's "; 
 that his poetry is informed by ideas which " fall spon- 
 taneously into a scientific system of thought." But we 
 must be on our guard against the Wordsworthians, if 
 we want to secure for Wordsworth his due rank as a 
 poet. The Wordsworthians are apt to praise him for 
 the wrong things, and to lay far too much stress upon 
 what they call his philosophy. His poetry is the 
 reality, his philosophy — so far, at least, as it may put 
 on the form and habit of "a scientific system of 
 thought," and the more that it puts them on — is the 
 illusion. Perhaps we shall one day learn to make this 
 proposition general, and to say: Poetry is the reality, 
 philosophy the illusion. But in W^ordsworth's case, at 
 any rate, we cannot do him justice until we dismiss his 
 formal philosophy. 
 
 The Excursion abounds with philosophy and there- 
 fore the Excursion is to the Wordsworthian what it 
 never can be to the disinterested lover of poetry, — a 
 satisfactory work. " Duty exists," says Wordsworth, in 
 the Excursion; and then he proceeds thus — 
 
 "... Immutably survive, 
 For our support, the measures and the forms, 
 Which an abstract Intelligence supplies, 
 Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not." ^ 
 
 And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that
 
 234 ]VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 here is a sweet union of philosophy and poetry. But 
 the disinterested lover of poetry will feel that the lines 
 carry us really not a step farther than the proposition 
 which they would interpret ; that they are a tissue of 
 elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature 
 of poetry. 
 
 Or let us come direct to the centre of Wordsworth's 
 philosophy, as " an ethical system, as distinctive and 
 capable of systematical exposition as Bishop But- 
 ler's"— 
 
 "... One adequate support 
 For the calamities of mortal life 
 Exists, one only ; — an assured belief 
 That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
 Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
 Of infinite benevolence and power ; 
 Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
 All accidents, converting them to good." ^ 
 
 That is doctrine such as we hear in church too, relig- 
 ious and philosophic doctrine ; and the attached Words- 
 worthian loves passages of such doctrine, and brings 
 them forward in proof of his poet's excellence. But 
 however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here pre- 
 sented, none of the characters of poetic truth, the kind 
 of truth which we require from a poet, and in which 
 Wordsworth is really strong. 
 
 Even the " intimations " of the famous Ode,^ those 
 corner-stones of the supposed philosophic system of 
 Wordsworth, — the idea of tlie high instincts and 
 affections coming out in childhood, testifying of a 
 divine home recently left, and fading away as our life 
 proceeds, — this idea, of undeniable beauty as a play 
 of fancy, has itself not the character of poetic truth of 
 the best kind ; it has no real solidity. The instinct of 
 delight in Nature and her beauty had no doubt extraor- 
 dinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child.
 
 WORDSWORTH 235 
 
 But to say that universally this instinct is mighty in 
 childhood, and tends to die away afterwards, is to say 
 what is extremely doubtful. In many people, perhaps 
 with the majority of educated persons, the love of na- 
 ture is nearly imperceptible at ten years old, but strong 
 and operative at thirty. In general we may say of these 
 high instincts of early childhood, the base of the alleged 
 systematic philosophy of Wordsworth, what Thucyd- 
 ides says of the early achievements of the Greek 
 race: "It is impossible to speak with certainty of 
 what is so remote ; but from all that we can really 
 investigate, I should say that they were no very great 
 things." 
 
 Finally, the " scientific system of thought " in 
 Wordsworth gives us at least such poetry as this, 
 which the devout Wordsworthian accepts — 
 
 " O for the coming of that glorious time 
 When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth 
 And best protection, this Imperial Realm, 
 While she exacts allegiance, shall admit 
 An obligation, on her part, to teach 
 Them who are born to serve her and obey ; 
 Binding herself by statute to secure, 
 For all the children whom her soil maintains, 
 The rudiments of letters, and inform 
 The mind with moral and religious truth." ^ 
 
 Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the pro- 
 duction of these un-Voltairian lines must have been 
 imposed on him as a judgment ! One can hear them 
 being quoted at a Social Science Congress; one can 
 call up the whole scene. A great room in one of our 
 dismal provincial towns ; dusty air and jaded after- 
 noon daylight ; benches full of men with bald heads 
 and women in spectacles ; an orator lifting up his face 
 from a manuscript written within and without to 
 declaim these lines of Wordsworth ; and in the soul
 
 236 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of any poor child of nature who may have wandered 
 in thither, an unutterable sense of lamentation, and 
 mourning, and woe ! 
 
 " But turn we," as Wordsworth says, " from these 
 bold, bad men," the haunters of Social Science Con- 
 gresses. And let us be on our guard, too, against the 
 exhibitors and extollers of a " scientific system of 
 thought" in Wordsworth's poetry. Tlie poetry will 
 never be seen aright while they thus exhibit it. The 
 cause of its greatness is simple, and may be told quite 
 simply. AVordsworth's poetry is great because of the 
 extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the 
 joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in 
 the simple primary affections and duties ; and because 
 of the extraordinary power with which, in case after 
 case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to 
 make us share it. 
 
 The source of joy from which he thus draws is the 
 truest and most unfailing source of joy accessible to 
 man. It is also accessible universally. Wordsworth 
 brings us word, therefore, according to his own strong 
 and characteristic line, he brings us word 
 
 " Of joy in widest commonalty spread." ' 
 
 Here is an immense advantage for a poet. Words- 
 worth tells of what all seek, and tells of it at its truest 
 and best source, and yet a source where all may go 
 and draw for it. 
 
 Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that everything 
 is precious which Wordsworth, standing even at this 
 perennial and beautiful source, may give us. Words- 
 worthians are apt to talk as if it must be. They will 
 speak with the same reverence of The Sailor s Mother, 
 for example, as of Lricy Gray. They do their master 
 harm by such lack of discrimination. Lucy Gray is
 
 WORDSWORTH 237 
 
 a beautiful success ; The Sailor s Mother is a failure. 
 To give aright what he wishes to give, to interpret 
 and render successfully, is not always within W^ords- 
 worth's own command. It is within no poet's com- 
 mand ; here is the part of the Muse, the inspiration, 
 the God, the " not ourselves." ^ In Wordsworth's case, 
 the accident, for so it may almost be called, of in- 
 spiration, is of peculiar importance. No poet, perhaps, 
 is so evidently filled with a new and sacred energy 
 when the inspiration is upon him ; no poet, when it 
 fails him, is so left " weak as is a breaking wave." I 
 remember hearing him say that " Goethe's poetry was 
 not inevitable enough." The remark is striking and 
 true ; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but 
 its maker knew well how it came there. Wordsworth 
 is right, Goethe's poetry is not inevitable ; not inevit- 
 able enough. But W^ordsworth's poetry, when he is at 
 his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. 
 It might seem that Nature not o\\\y gave him the 
 matter for his poem, but wrote his poem for him. He 
 has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not 
 to catch at times his master's manner, and he has fine 
 Miltonic lines; but he has no assured poetic style of 
 his own, like Milton. When he seeks to have a style 
 he falls into ponderosity and pomposity. In the Excur- 
 sion we have his style, as an artistic product of his 
 own creation ; and although Jeffrey completely failed to 
 recognize Wordsworth's real greatness, he was yet not 
 wrong in saying of the Excursion^ as a work of poetic 
 style: "This will never do."^ And yet magical as is 
 that power, which Wordsworth has not, of assured 
 and possessed poetic style, he has something which is 
 an equivalent for it. 
 
 Every one who has any sense for these things feels 
 the subtle turn, the heightening, which is given to a
 
 238 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 poet's verse by his genius for style. We can feel it in 
 
 the 
 
 "After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well" — ^ 
 
 of Shakespeare ; in the 
 
 "... thougli fall'n on evil days, 
 On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues " — ^ 
 
 of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton's 
 power of poetic style which gives such worth to Par- 
 adise Regained, and makes a great poem of a work 
 in which Milton's imagination does not soar high. 
 Wordsworth has in constant possession, and at com- 
 mand, no style of this kind ; but he had too poetic a 
 nature, and had read the great poets too weU, not to 
 catch, as I have already remarked, something of it 
 occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonic lines ; 
 we find it in such a phrase as this, where the manner 
 is his own, not Milton's — 
 
 " the fierce confederate storm 
 Of sorrow barricadoed evermore 
 Within the walls of cities; " ^ 
 
 although even here, perhaps, the power of style which 
 is undeniable, is more properly that of eloquent prose 
 than the subtle heightening and change wrought by 
 genuine jjoetic style. It is style, again, and the eleva- 
 tion given by style, which chiefly makes the effective- 
 ness of Laodameia. Still the right sort of verse to 
 choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true 
 and most characteristic form of expression, is a line 
 like this from Michael — 
 
 " And never lifted up a single stone." 
 
 There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study 
 of poetic style, strictly so called, at all ; yet it is ex- 
 pression of the highest and most truly expressive 
 kind.
 
 WORDSWORTH 239 
 
 Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of 
 perfect plamness, relyhig for effect solely on the 
 weight and force of that which with entire fidelity it 
 utters, Burns could show him. 
 
 " The poor inhabitant below 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow 
 
 And softer flame; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low 
 
 And stain'd his name." ^ 
 
 Every one will be conscious of a likeness here to 
 Wordsworth ; and if Wordsworth did great things 
 with this nobly plain manner, we must remember, 
 what indeed he himself would always have been for- 
 ward to acknowledge, that Burns used it before him. 
 
 Still Wordsworth's use of it has something unique 
 and unmatchable. Nature herself seems, I say, to take 
 the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with 
 ^er own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises 
 from two causes ; from the profound sincereness with 
 which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the 
 profoundly sincere and natural character of his sub- 
 ject itself. He can and will treat such a subject with 
 nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere 
 naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, 
 as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Inde- 
 pendence ; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops 
 are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur. 
 
 Wherever we meet with the successfid balance, in 
 Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with pro- 
 found truth of execution, he is unique. His best poems 
 are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I 
 have a warm admiration for Laodameia and for the 
 great Ode ; but if I am to tell the very truth, I find 
 Laodameia not wholly free from something artificial,
 
 
 240 M.VTTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 and the great Ode not wholly free from something 
 declamatory. If 1 had to pick out poems of a kind 
 most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I 
 should rather choose poems such as Michael, The 
 Fountain, The Highland Reaper} And poems with 
 the peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes 
 these, Wordsworth produced in considerable number ; 
 besides very many other poems of which the worth, 
 althoug-h not so rare as the worth of these, is still 
 exceedingly high. 
 
 On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, not 
 only is Wordsworth eminent by reason of the good- 
 ness of his best work, but he is eminent also by reason 
 of the great body of good work which he has left to 
 us. With the ancients I will not compare him. In 
 many respects the ancients are far above us, and yet 
 there is something that we demand which they can 
 never give. Leaving the ancients, let us come to the 
 poets and poetry of Christendom. Dante, Shakespeare, 
 Moliere, Milton, Goethe, are altogether larger and 
 more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven than 
 AYordsworth. But I know not where else, among the 
 moderns, we are to find his superiors. 
 
 To disengage the poems which show his power, and 
 to present them to the English-speaking public and to 
 the world, is the object of this volume. I by no means 
 say that it contains all which in Wordsworth's poems 
 is interesting. Except in the case of 3fargaret, a 
 story composed separately from the rest of the Excur- 
 sion, and which belongs to a different part of England, 
 I have not ventured on detaching portions of poems, 
 or on gi\ing any piece other^Nase than as Wordsworth 
 himself gave it. But under the conditions imposed by 
 this reserve, the volume contains, I think, everything, 
 or nearly everything, which may best serve him with
 
 WORDSWORTH 241 
 
 the majority of lovers of poetry, nothing which may 
 disserve him. 
 
 I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians ; and if 
 we are to get Wordsworth recognized by the public 
 and by the world, we must recommend him not in the 
 spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of disinterested 
 lovers of poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. 
 I can read with pleasure and edification Peter Bell^ 
 and the whole series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets^ and 
 the address to Mr. Wilkinson's spade, and even the 
 Thanksgiving Ode ; — everything of Wordsworth, I 
 think, except Vaudracour and Julia. It is not for 
 nothing that one has been brought up in the venera- 
 tion of a man so truly worthy of homage ; that one 
 has seen him and heard him, lived in his neighborhood, 
 and been familiar with his country. No Wordsworth- 
 ian has a tenderer affection for this pure and sage 
 master than I, or is less really offended by his defects. 
 But Wordsworth is something more than the pure 
 and sage master of a small band of devoted followers, 
 and we ought not to rest satisfied until he is seen to 
 be what he is. He is one of the very chief glories of 
 English Poetry ; and by nothing is England so glori- 
 ous as by her poetry. Let us lay aside every weight 
 which hinders our getting him recognized as this, and 
 let our one study be to bring to pass, as widely as 
 possible and as truly as possible, his own word con- 
 cerning his poems : " They will coJiperate with the be- 
 nign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, 
 in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, 
 better, and happier." 
 
 a.
 
 III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT i 
 
 The disparagers of culture make its motive curios- 
 ity ; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere ex- 
 clusiveuess and vanity. The culture which is supposed 
 to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin 
 is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellect- 
 ual as curiosity ; it is valued either out of sheer vanity 
 and ignorance or else as an engine of social and class 
 distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, 
 from other people who have not got it. No serious 
 man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, 
 as culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very 
 differing estimate which serious people will set upon 
 culture, we must find some motive for culture in the 
 terms of which may lie a real ambiguity ; and such a 
 motive the word cuinosity gives us. 
 
 I have before now pointed out that we English do 
 not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense 
 as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is always 
 lased in a somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal and 
 intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may 
 be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, 
 but with us the word always conveys a certain notion 
 of frivolous and unedif3-ing activity. In the Quarterly 
 Hevieio, some little time ago, was an estimate of the 
 celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve,^ and a very 
 inadequate estimate it in my judgment was. And its 
 inadequacy consisted chiefly in this : that in our Eng- 
 lish way it left out of sight the double sense really
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 243 
 
 involved in the word curiosity^ thinking enough was 
 said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was 
 said that he was impelled in his ojserations as a critic 
 by curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M. 
 Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him, 
 would consider that this was praiseworthy and not 
 blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be 
 accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as 
 there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which 
 is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a 
 curiosity, — a desire after the things of the mind sim- 
 ply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing 
 them as they are, — which is, in an intelligent being, 
 natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see 
 things as they are, implies a balance and regulation of 
 mind which is not often attained without fruitful eifort, 
 and which is the vei-y opposite of the blind and dis- 
 eased impulse of mind which is what we mean to 
 blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : 
 " The first motive which ought to impel us to study 
 is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, 
 and tp_render an intelligent being yet more intelli- 
 gent."^ This is the true ground to assign for the gen- 
 uine scientific passion, however manifested, and for 
 culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and 
 it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term 
 curiosity stand to describe it. 
 
 But there is of culture another view, in which not 
 solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see 
 things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent 
 being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view 
 in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses 
 towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for 
 removing human error, clearing human confusion, and 
 diminishing human misei'y, the noble aspiration to
 
 m MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 leave the world better and happier than we found it, 
 
 — motives eminently such as ai-e called sociaj, — come 
 
 in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and 
 
 ^_^.eeniinent part. Culture is then properly clescrTbed 
 
 not as having- its origin in curiosity, but as having its 
 
 ^^ '/(Origin in the love of perfection ; it is a study of per- 
 
 «. p fection. It moves by the force, not merely or primar- 
 
 *^ ' ily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but 
 
 also of the moral and social passion for doing good. 
 
 ^ 
 ^ 
 
 J As, in the first view of it, we took for its worthy 
 
 y\ J-^^*? ^" ^^^ iiisi/ view ui iL, we luutL lui' lis woiiuy 
 
 jIa^ motto Montesquieu's words : '' To render an intelli- 
 
 '^ > 'gent being yet more intelligent!" so, in the second 
 view of it, there is no better motto which it can have 
 than these words of Bishop Wilson ; ^ " To make 
 reason and_ the wiU of God prevaiLI "^ 
 
 Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to 
 be overhastv in determininjj what reason and the will 
 
 ■*v^ ^ ) of God say, because its turn is for acting rather than 
 thinking and it wants to be beginning to act; and 
 whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which 
 proceed from its ovm state of development and share 
 in all the imj^erfections and immaturities of this, for 
 a basis of action; what distinguishes culture is, that 
 it is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by 
 the passion of doing good ; that it demands worthy 
 notions of reason and the will of God, and does not 
 readilj"- suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute 
 themselves for them. And knowing that no action or 
 institution can be salutary and stable which is not 
 based on reason and the will of God, it is not so bent 
 on acting and instituting, even with the great aim of 
 diminishing human error and misery ever before its 
 thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and in- 
 stituting are of little use. unless we know how and 
 what we oufrht to act and to institute.
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 245 
 
 This culture is more interesting and more far-reach- 
 ing than that other, which is founded solely on the 
 scientific passion for knowing. But it needs times of 
 faith and ardor, times when the intellectual horizon is 
 opening and widening all around us, to flourish in. 
 And is not the close and bounded intellectual horizon 
 within which we have long lived and moved now lift- 
 ing up, and are not new lights finding free passage to 
 shine in upon us ? For a long time there was no pas- 
 sage for them to make their way in upon us, and then 
 it was of no use to think of adapting the world's action 
 to them. Where was the hope of making reason and 
 the will of God prevail among peoj^le who had a rou- 
 tine which they had christened reason and the will of 
 God, in which they were inextricably bound, and be- 
 yond which they had no power of looking? But now 
 the iron force of adhesion to the old routine, — social, 
 political, religious, — has wonderfully yielded ; the iron 
 force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully 
 yielded. The danger now is, not that people should 
 obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old rou- 
 tine to pass for reason and the will of God, but either 
 that they should allow some novelty or other to pass 
 for these too easily, or else that they should underrate 
 the importance of them altogether, and think it enough 
 to follow action for its own sake, without troubling 
 themselves to make reason and the will of God pre- 
 vail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture to 
 be of service, culture which believes in making reason 
 and the will of God prevail, believes in perfection, is 
 the study and pursuit of perfection, and is no longer 
 debarred, by a rigid invincible exclusion of whatever 
 is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas, simply 
 because they are new. 
 
 The moment this view of culture is seized, the
 
 246 ]\L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 moment it is regarded not solely as tlie endeavor to 
 see things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge of 
 the universal order which seems to be intended and 
 aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's happi- 
 ness to go along with or his misery to go counter to, — 
 to learn, in short, the will of God, — the moment, I 
 say, culture is considered not merely as the endeavor 
 to see and learn this, but as the endeavor, also, to 
 make it prevail., the moral, social, and beneficent 
 character of culture becomes manifest. The mere en- 
 deavor to see and learn the truth for our own personal 
 satisfaction is indeed a commencement for making it 
 prevail, a preparing the way for this, which always 
 serves this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped with 
 blame absolutely in itself and not only in its carica- 
 ture and degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped 
 with blame, and disparaged with the dubious title of 
 curiosity, because in comparison with this wider en- 
 deavor of such great and plain utility it looks selfish, 
 petty, and unprofitable. 
 
 And religion, the greatest and most important of 
 the efforts by which the- human race has manifested 
 its impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of 
 the deepest human experience, — does not only enjoin 
 and sanction the aim which is the gi-eat aim of culture, 
 the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what perfec- 
 tion is and to make it prevail ; but also, in determin- 
 ing generally in what human perfection consists, re- 
 ligion comes to a conclusion identical with that which 
 culture, — culture seeking the determination of this 
 question through all the voices of human experience 
 which have been heard upon it, of art, science, poetry, 
 philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order to 
 give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution, — 
 likewise reaches. Religion says : The kingdom of God
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 247 
 
 is within you ; and culture, in like manner, places hu- 
 man perfection in an intern al condition, in the growth ! 
 and predominance of our humanity proper, as distin- • 
 guished from our animality. It places it in the ever- 
 increasing efficacy and in the general harmonious ex- 
 pansion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which 
 make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of 
 human nature. As I have said on a former occasion : 
 " It is in making endless additions to itself, in the 
 endless expansion of its powers, in endless growth in 
 wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the human race 
 finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an in- 
 dispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture." 
 Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a be- '^ 
 coming, is the character of perfection as culture con- 
 ceives it ; and here, too, it coincides with religion. 
 
 And because men are all members of one great 
 whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature 
 will not allow one member to be indifferent to the 
 rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the 
 rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea 
 of perfection which culture forms, must be a general 
 expansion. jPerffiction, as culture conceives it, is not 
 possible while the individual remains isolated. The 
 incHvidual is required, under pain of being stunted 
 and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, 
 to carry others along with him in his march towards 
 perfection, to be continually doing all he can to en- 
 large and increase the volume of the human stream 
 sweeping thitherward. And, here, once more, culture 
 lays on us the same obligation as religion, which says, 
 as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it, that " to 
 promote the kingdom of God is to increase and hasten 
 one's own happiness." ^ 
 
 But, finally, perfection, — as culture from a thorough 
 
 5)
 
 '^ 
 
 248 ' ]VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 clisinterestecl study of human nature and human ex- 
 perience learns to conceive it, — is a harmonious ex- 
 pansion of all the powers which make the beauty and 
 worth of human nature, and is not consistent with the 
 over-development of any one power at the expense of 
 the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion as religion 
 is generally conceived by us. 
 
 If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of 
 harmonious perfection, general perfection, and perfec- 
 tion which consists in becoming something rather than 
 in having something, in an inward condition of the 
 mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circum- 
 stances, — it is clear that cidture, instead of being 
 the frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright,^ and 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison,^ and many other Liberals are 
 apt to call it, has a very important function to fidfil 
 for mankind. And this function is particularly im- 
 portant in our moclern world, of which the whole civ- 
 ilization is, to a much greater degree than the civili- 
 zation of Greece and Rome, mechanical and exter nal,^ 
 and tends constantly to become more so. But above a ll 
 in our own country has culture a weighty part to 
 perform, because here that mechanical character, 
 which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown 
 in the most eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the 
 characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix 
 them, meet in this country with some powerful ten- 
 dency which thwarts them* and sets them at defiance. 
 The idea of perfection as an mioqrcl condition of the 
 mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical 
 and material civilization in esteem with us, and no- 
 where, as I have said, so much in esteem as with 
 us. The idea of perfection as a gejieral expansion of 
 the human family is at variance with our strong in- 
 dividualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 249 
 
 swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of 
 "every man for himself." Above all, the idea of per- 
 fection as a harmonious expansion of human nature 
 is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our 
 inaptitude for seeing more than one si(Ie of a thing, 
 with our intense energetic absorj^tion in the particular 
 pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a 
 rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers 
 have, and are likely long to have, a hard time of it, 
 and they will much oftener be regarded, for a great 
 while to come, as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than 
 as friends and benefactors. That, however, will not 
 prevent their doing in the end good service if they 
 persevere. And, meanwhile, the mode of action they 
 have to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight 
 against, ought to be made quite clear for every one 
 to see, who may be willing to look at the matter at- 
 tentively and dispassionately. 
 
 Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger ; 
 often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to 
 the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good 
 at all, is to serve ; but always in machinery, as if it 
 had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but 
 machinery ? what is population but machinery ? what 
 is coal but machinery? what are railroads but ma- 
 chinery? what is wealth but machinery? what are, 
 even, religious organizations but machinery ? Now 
 almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak 
 of these things as if they were precious ends in them- 
 selves, and therefore had some of the characters of 
 perfection indisputably joined to them. I have before 
 now noticed Mr. Roebuck's ^ stock argument for prov- 
 ing the greatness and happiness of England as she is, 
 and for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers. 
 Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this argu-
 
 250 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ment of his, so I do not know why I should be weary 
 of noticing it. " May not every man in England say 
 what he likes ? " — Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks ; and 
 that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man 
 may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be 
 satisfied. But the aspirations of culture, which is the 
 study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men 
 say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying, 
 — has good in it, and more good than bad. In the 
 same way the Times, replying to some foreign stric- 
 tures on the dress, looks, and behavior of the English 
 abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one 
 should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But 
 culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw 
 person may like, the rule by which he fashions him- 
 self ; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is 
 indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get 
 the raw person to like that. 
 
 And in the same way with respect to railroads and 
 coal. Every one must have observed the strange lan- 
 guage current during the late discussions as to the 
 possible failure of our supplies of coal. Our coal, 
 thousands of people were saying, is the real basis of 
 our national greatness ; if our coal runs short, there is 
 an end of the greatness of England. But what is great- 
 ness ? — culture makes as ask. Greatness is a spiritual 
 condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admira- 
 tion ; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is 
 that we excite love, interest, and admiration. If Eng- 
 land were swallowed up by the sea to-morrow, which of 
 the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the 
 love, interest, and admiration of mankind, — -would 
 most, tlierefore, show the evidences of having possessed 
 greatness, — the England of the last twenty years, or 
 the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spir-
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 251 
 
 itual effort, but when our coal, and our industrial opera- 
 tions depending on coal, were very little developed ? 
 Well, then, what an unsound habit of mind it must be 
 which makes us talk of things like coal or iron as 
 constituting the greatness of England, and how salu- 
 tary a friend is culture, bent on seeing things as they 
 are, and thus dissipating delusions of this kind and 
 fixing standards of perfection that are real ! 
 
 Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious 
 works- for material advantage are directed, — the com- 
 monest of commonplaces tells us how men are always 
 apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself ; and 
 certainly they have never been so apt thus to regard 
 it as they are in England at the present time. Never 
 did people believe anything more firmly than nine 
 Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that 
 our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so 
 very rich. Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, 
 by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to 
 regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say 
 as a matter of words that we regard wealth as bvit 
 machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is 
 so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon 
 our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as 
 well as the present, would inevitably belong to the 
 Philistines. The people who believe most that our 
 greatness and welfare are proved by our being very 
 rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to 
 becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call 
 Philistines. Culture says : " Consider these people, 
 then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the 
 very tones of their voice ; look at them attentively ; 
 observe the literature they read, the things which give 
 them pleasure, the words which come forth out of 
 their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture
 
 252 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of their minds ; would any amount of wealth be worth 
 having with the condition that one was to become just 
 like these people by having it ? " And thus culture 
 begets a dissatisfaction which is of the highest possible 
 value in stemming the common tide of men's thougfhts 
 in a wealthy and industrial community, and which 
 saves the future, as one may hope, from being vulgar- 
 ized, even if it cannot save the present. 
 
 Population, again, and bodily health and vigor, are 
 things which are nowhere treated in such an unintelli- 
 gent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. 
 Both are really machinery ; yet how many people all 
 around us do we see rest in them and fail to look be- 
 yond them! Why, one has heard people, fresh from 
 reading certain articles of the Times on the Regis- 
 trar-General's returns of marriages and births in this 
 country, who would talk of our large English families 
 in quite a solamn strain, as if they had something in 
 itself beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in them ; 
 as if the British Philistine would have only to present 
 himself before the Great Judge with his twelve chil- 
 dren, in order to be received among the sheep as a 
 matter of right! 
 
 But bodily health and vigor, it may be said, are 
 not to be classed with wealth and population as mere 
 machinery ; they have a more real and essential value. 
 True ; but only as they are more intimately connected 
 with a perfect spiritual condition than wealth or popu- 
 lation are. The moment we disjoin them from the idea 
 of a perfect spiritual condition, and pursue them, as we 
 do pursue them, for their own sake and as ends in them- 
 selves, our worship of them becomes as mere worshij) of 
 machinery, as our worship of wealth or population, 
 and as unintelligent and vulgarizing a worship as that 
 is. Every one with anything like an adequate idea of
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 253 
 
 human perfection has distinctly marked this subordina- 
 tion to higher and spii'itual ends of the cultivation of 
 bodily vigor and activity. " Bodily exercise profiteth 
 little ; but godliness is profitable unto all things," ^ 
 says the author of the Epistle to Timothy. And the util- 
 itarian Franklin says just as exj^licitly: — "Eat and 
 drink such an exact quantity as suits the constitution of 
 thy body, in reference to the services of the mind^ ^ 
 But the point of view of culture, keeping the mark of 
 human perfection simply and broadly in view, and not 
 assigning to this perfection, as religion or utilitarian- 
 ism assigns to it, a special and limited character, this 
 point of view, I say, of culture is best given by these 
 words of Epictetus : " It is a sign of a<f)Via" says he, 
 
 — that is, of a nature not finely tempered, — "to give 
 yourselves up to things which relate to the body; to 
 make, for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a great 
 fuss about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great 
 fuss about walking, a great fuss about riding. All 
 these things ought to be done merely by the way : the 
 formation of the spirit and character must be our real 
 concern."^ This is admirable; and, indeed, the Greek 
 word €v(})vta, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly 
 the notion of perfection as culture brings us to con- 
 ceive it: a hai'monious perfection, a perfection in 
 which the characters of beauty and intelligence are 
 both present, which unites " the two noblest of things," 
 
 — as Swift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had 
 himself all too little, most happily calls them in his 
 Battle of the Books, — " the two noblest of things, 
 sweetness and light." * The ev(f)vi]<i is the man who 
 tends towards sweetness and light ; the ck^u?^?, on the 
 other hand, is our Philistine. The immense spiritual 
 significance of the Greeks is due to their having been 
 inspired with this central and happy idea of the essen-
 
 254 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 tial character of human perfection ; and Mr. Bright's 
 misconception of culture, as a smattering of Greek 
 and Latin, comes itself, after all, from this wonderful 
 significance of the Greeks having affected the very 
 machinery of our education, and is in itself a kind of 
 homage to it. 
 
 In thus making sweetness and light to be charac- 
 ters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, 
 follows one law with poetry. Far more than on our 
 freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many 
 amongst us rely upon our religious organizations to 
 save us. I have called religion a yet more important 
 manifestation of human nature than poetry, because 
 it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and 
 with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty 
 and of a human nature perfect on all its sides, which 
 is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invalu- 
 able idea, though it has not yet had the success that 
 the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our ani- 
 mality, and of a human nature perfect on the moral 
 side, — which is the dominant idea of religion, — has 
 been enabled to have ; and it is destined, adding to 
 itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to trans- 
 form and govern the other. 
 
 The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which 
 religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of 
 beauty and of a human nature perfect on all sides 
 adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and works 
 in the strength of that, is on this account of such sur- 
 passing interest and instructiveness for us, though it 
 was, — as, having regard to the human race in general, 
 and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves, 
 we must own, — a premature attempt, an attempt which 
 for success needed the moral and religious fibre in hu- 
 manity to be more braced and developed than it had yet
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 255 
 
 been. But Greece did not err in having the idea of 
 beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, so 
 present and paramount. It is impossible to have this 
 idea too present and paramount ; only, the moral fibre 
 must be braced too. And we, because we have braced 
 the moral fibre, are not on that account in the right 
 way, if at the same time the idea of beauty, harmony, 
 and complete human perfection, is wanting or misap- 
 prehended amongst us ; and evidently it is wanting or 
 misapprehended at present. And when we rely as we 
 do on our religious organizations, which in themselves 
 do not and cannot give us this idea, and think we have 
 done enough if we make them spread and prevail, then, 
 I say, we fall into our common fault of overvaluing 
 machinery. 
 
 Nothing is more common than for people to con- 
 found the inward peace and satisfaction which follows 
 the subduing of the obvious faults of our animality 
 with what I may call absolute inward peace and satis- 
 faction, — the peace and satisfaction which are reached 
 as we draw near to complete spiritual perfection, and 
 not merely to moral perfection, or rather to relative 
 moral perfection. No people in the world have done 
 more and struggled more to attain this relative moral 
 perfection than our English race has. For no people 
 in the world has the command to resist the devil, to 
 overcome the wicked one, in the nearest and most ob- 
 vious sense of those words, had such a pressing force 
 and reality. And we have had our reward, not only in 
 the great worldly prosperity which our obedience to 
 this command has brought us, but also, and far more, 
 in great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me few 
 things are more pathetic than to see people, on the 
 strength of the inward peace and satisfaction which 
 their rudimentary efforts towards perfection have
 
 256 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 brought them, employ, concerning their incomplete 
 perfection and the religious organizations within which 
 they have found it, language which properly applies 
 only to complete perfection, and is a far-off echo of 
 the human soul's prophecy of it. Religion itself, I 
 need hardly say, supplies them in abundance with this 
 grand language. And very freely do they use it ; yet 
 it is really the severest possible criticism of such an 
 incomplete perfection as alone we have yet reached 
 through our religious organizations. 
 
 The impulse of the English race towards moral 
 development and self-conquest has nowhere so power- 
 fully manifested itself as in Puritanism. Nowhere has 
 Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in 
 the religious organization of the Independents.^ The 
 modern Independents have a newspaper, the ]Voiico7i- 
 form ist, written with great sincerity and ability. The 
 motto, the standard, the profession of faith which this 
 organ of theirs carries aloft, is : " The Dissidence of 
 Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant reli- 
 gion." 2 There is sweetness and light, and an ideal 
 of complete harmonious human perfection ! One need 
 not go to cidture and poetry to find language to judge 
 it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, supplies 
 language to judge it, language, too, which is in our 
 mouths every day. " Finally, be of one mind, united 
 in feeling," ^ says St. Peter. There is an ideal which 
 judges the Puritan ideal : " The Dissidence of Dissent 
 and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion ! " 
 And religious organizations like this are what people 
 believe in, rest in, would give tlieir lives for! Such, 
 I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings 
 of perfection, of having conquered even the plain 
 faults of our animality, that the religious organiza- 
 tion which has helped us to do it can seem to us
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 257 
 
 something precious, salutary, and to be propagated, 
 even when it wears such a bi-and of imperfection on 
 its forehead as this. And men have got such a habit 
 of giving to the language of religion a special appli- 
 cation, of making it a mere jargon, that for the 
 condemnation which religion itself passes on the short- 
 comings of their religious organizations they have no 
 ear ; they are sure to cheat themselves and to explain 
 this condemnation away. They can only be reached 
 by the criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking 
 a language not to be sophisticated, and resolutely 
 testing these organizations by the ideal of a human 
 perfection complete on all sides, applies to them. 
 
 But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are 
 again and again failing, and failing consjjicuously, in 
 the necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, 
 in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our 
 animality, which it is the glory of these religious or- 
 ganizations to have helped us to subdue. True, they 
 do often so fail. They have often been without the 
 virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has 
 been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puri- 
 tan's faults that they too much neglected the practice 
 of his virtues. I will not, however, exculpate them at the 
 Puritan's expense. They have often failed in morality, 
 and morality is indispensable. And they have been 
 punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been re- 
 warded for his performance. They have been punished 
 wherein they erred ; but their ideal of beauty, of sweet- 
 ness and light, and a human nature complete on all its 
 sides, remains the true ideal of perfection still ; just as 
 the Puritan's ideal of perfection remains narrow and 
 inadequate, although for what he did well he has been 
 richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results 
 of the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard
 
 258 :MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to 
 ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil, — souls in whom 
 sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is 
 most humane, were eminent, — accompanying them 
 on their voyage, and think what intolerable company 
 Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! In 
 the same way let us judge the religious organizations 
 which we see all aroimd us. Do not let us deny the 
 good and the happiness which they have accomplished ; 
 but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of 
 human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that 
 the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the 
 Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its 
 true goal. As I said with regard to wealth: Let us 
 look at the life of those who live in and for it, — so I 
 say with regard to the religious organizations. Look 
 at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Non- 
 co7iformist, — a life of jealousy of the Establishment, 
 disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons ; 
 and then think of it as an ideal of a human life com- 
 pleting itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its 
 organs after sweetness, light, and perfection ! 
 
 Another newspaper, representing, like the Noncon- 
 Jorynist, one of the religious organizations of this 
 country, was a short time ago giving an account of 
 the crowd at Epsom ^ on the Derby day, and of all 
 the vice and hideousness which was to be seen in that 
 crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly round 
 upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how he pro- 
 posed to cure all this vice and hideousness without 
 religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask the asker 
 this question : and how do you propose to cure it 
 with such a religion as yours? How is the ideal of 
 a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so 
 narrow, so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 259 
 
 of human perfection, as is the life of your religious 
 organization as you yourself reflect it, to conquer and 
 transform all this vice and hideousness ? Indeed, the 
 strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued 
 by culture, the clearest proof of the actual inadequacy 
 of the idea of perfection held by the religious organi- 
 zations, — expressing, as I have said, the most wide- 
 spread effort which the human race has yet made 
 after perfection, — is to be found in the state of our 
 life and society with these in possession of it, and 
 having been in possession of it I know not how many 
 hundred years. We are all of us included in some 
 religious organization or other ; we all call ourselves, 
 in the sublime and aspiring language of religion which 
 I have before noticed, children of God. Children of 
 God ; — it is an immense pretension ! — and how are 
 we to justify it ? By the works which we do, and the 
 words which we speak. And the work which we col- 
 lective children of God do, our grand centre of life, 
 our city which we have builded for us to dwell in, is 
 London ! London, with its unutterable external hide- 
 ousness, and with its internal canker oi puhlice egestaSy 
 privatim opulentia^ — to use the words which Sal- 
 lust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome, — unequalled 
 in the world ! The word, again, which we children of 
 God speak, the voice which most hits our collective 
 thought, the newspaper with the largest circulation in 
 England, nay, with the largest circulation in the whole 
 world, is the Daily Telegraph!'^ I say that when our 
 religious organizations — which I admit to express the 
 most considerable effort after perfection that our race 
 has yet made — land us in no better result than this, 
 it is high time to examine carefully their idea of per- 
 fection, to see whether it does not leave out of account 
 sides and forces of human nature which we might turn
 
 260 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 to great use ; whether it would not be more operative 
 if it were more complete. And I say that the English 
 reliance on our religious organizations and on their 
 ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is like 
 our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, 
 on population, on coal, on wealth, — mere vbelief in 
 machinery, and unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely 
 counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they 
 are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a 
 more complete, a harmonious i)erfection. 
 
 Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of 
 perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the 
 will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by 
 its attitude towards all this machinery, even while it 
 insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mis- 
 chief men do themselves by their blind belief in some 
 machinery or other, — whether it is wealth and in- 
 dustrialism, or whether it is the cultivation of bodily 
 strength and activity, or whether it is a political or- 
 ganization, — or whether it is a religious organization, 
 — oppose with might and main the tendency to this 
 or that political and religious organization, or to games 
 and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrialism, 
 and try violently to stop it. But the flexibility which 
 sweetness and light give, and which is one of the re- 
 wards of culture pursued in good faith, enables a man 
 to see that a tendency may be necessary, and even, as 
 a preparation for something in the future, salutary, 
 and yet that the generations or individuals who obey 
 this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short 
 of the hope of perfection by following it ; and that its 
 mischiefs are to be criticized, lest it should take too 
 firm a hold and last after it has served its purpose. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at 
 Paris, — and others have pointed out the same thing,
 
 SWEETNESb AND LIGHT 261 
 
 — how necessary is the present great movement to- 
 wards wealth and industrialism, in order to lay broad 
 foundations of material well-being for the society of 
 the future. The worst of these justifications is, that 
 they are generally addressed to the very people en- 
 gaged, body and soul, in the movement in question ; 
 at all events, that they are always seized with the 
 greatest avidity by these people, and taken by them 
 as quite justifying their life ; and that thus they tend 
 to harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the 
 necessity of the movement towards fortune-making 
 and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows that the 
 future may derive benefit from it ; but insists, at the 
 same time, that the passing generations of industrial- 
 ists, — forming, for the most part, the stout main body 
 of Philistinism, — are sacrificed to it. In the same way, 
 the result of all the games and sports which occupy 
 the passing generation of boys and young men may 
 be the establishment of a better and sounder physical 
 type for the future to work with. Culture does not 
 set itself against the games and sports ; it congratu- 
 lates the future, and hopes it will make a good use of 
 its improved physical basis ; but it points out that our 
 passing generation of boys and young men is, mean- 
 time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary to 
 develop the moral fibre of the English race, Noncon- 
 formity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination 
 over men's minds and to prepare the way for freedom 
 of thought in the distant future ; still, culture points 
 oat that the harmonious perfection of generations 
 of Puritans and Nonconformists has been, in conse- 
 quence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech may be neces- 
 sary for the society of the future, but the young lions ^ 
 of the Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile are sacri- 
 ficed. A voice for every man in his country's govern-
 
 262 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ment may be necessary for the society of the future, 
 but meanwhile Mr. Beales^ and Mr. Bradlaugh ^ are 
 sacrificed. 
 
 Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ; 
 and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isola- 
 tion, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we 
 in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweet- 
 ness of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize 
 one truth, — the truth that beauty and sweetness are 
 essential characters of a complete human perfection. 
 When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tra- 
 dition of Oxford. I say boldly that this our senti- 
 ment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against 
 hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom of 
 our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our op- 
 position to so many triumphant movements. And the 
 sentiment is true, and has never been wholly defeated, 
 and has shown its power even in its defeat. We have 
 not won our political battles, we have not carried our 
 main points, we have not stojsped 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 communica- 
 tions with the future. Look at the course of the great 
 movement which shook Oxford to its centre some 
 thirty years ago ! It was directed, as any one who 
 reads Dr. Newman's Apology ^ may see, against what 
 in one word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism 
 prevailed ; it was the appointed force to do the work 
 of the hour ; it was necessary, it was inevitable that it 
 should prevail. The Oxford movement was broken, it 
 failed ; our wrecks are scattered on every shore : — 
 " Quae regio in terris iiostri non pleua laboris ? " ^
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 263 
 
 But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw 
 it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement? It 
 was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for 
 the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 
 1832,1 a^jj(j local self-government, in politics ; in the 
 social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, and 
 the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the religious 
 sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestant- 
 ism of the Protestant religion. I do not say that other 
 and more intelligent forces than this were not opposed 
 to the Oxford movement : but this was the force which 
 really beat it ; this was the force which Dr. Newman 
 felt himself fighting with ; this was the force which 
 till only the other day seemed to be the paramount 
 force in this country, and to be in possession of the 
 future ; this was the force whose achievements fill Mr. 
 Lowe 2 with such inexpi'essible admiration, and whose 
 rule he was so horror-struck to see threatened. And 
 where is this great force of Philistinism now ? It is 
 thrust into the second rank, it is become a power of 
 yesterday, it has lost the future. A new power has 
 suddenly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet 
 to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly difPerent 
 force from middle-class liberalism ; different in its 
 cardinal points of belief, different in its tendencies in 
 every sphere. It loves and admires neither the legis- 
 lation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self- 
 government of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted 
 competition of middle-class industrialists, nor the dis- 
 sidence of middle-class Dissent and the Protestantism 
 of middle-class Protestant religion. I am not now prais- 
 ing this new force, or saying that its own ideals are bet- 
 ter ; all I say is, that they are wholly different. And 
 who will estimate how much the currents of feelinar 
 created by Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire
 
 264 ]VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 for beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep 
 aversion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity 
 of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned 
 on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class 
 Protestantism, — who will estimate how much all these 
 contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction 
 which has mined the ground under self-confident liber- 
 alism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the 
 way for its sudden collapse and supersession ? It is in 
 this manner that the sentjment of Oxford for beauty 
 and sweetness conquers, and in this manner long may 
 it continue to conquer! 
 
 In this manner it works to the same end as culture, 
 and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have said 
 that the new and more democratic force which is now 
 superseding our ohl middle-class liberalism cannot yet 
 be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies still to 
 form. We hear promises of its giving us administra^ 
 tive reform, law reform, reform of education, and I 
 know not what ; but those promises come rather from 
 its advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it and 
 to justify it for superseding middle-class liberalism, 
 than from clear tendencies which it has itself yet 
 developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of weU-inten- 
 tioned friends against whom culture may with advan- 
 tage continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human 
 perfection ; that this is an inward spiritual activity^ 
 having for its characters increased siceetness, in- 
 creased light, increased life, increased sympathy. 
 Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the world 
 of midtUe-class liberalism and the world of democracy, 
 but who brings most of his ideas from the world of 
 middle-class liberalism in which he was bred, always 
 inclines to inculcate that faith in machinery to which, 
 as we have seen, Englishmen are so prone, and which
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 265 
 
 has been the bane of middle-class liberalism. He com- 
 plains with a sorrowful indignation of people who 
 " appear to have no proper estimate of the value of 
 the franchise " ; he leads his disciples to believe — 
 what the Englishman is always too ready to believe 
 — that the having a vote, like the having a large 
 family, or a large business, or large muscles, has in 
 itself some edifying and perfecting effect upon human 
 nature. Or else he cries out to the democracy, — " the 
 men," as he calls them, " upon whose shoulders the 
 greatness of England rests," — he cries out to them : 
 " See what you have done ! I look over this country 
 and see the cities you have built, the railroads you 
 have made, the manufactures you have produced, the 
 cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest mer- 
 cantile navy the world has ever seen ! I see that you 
 have converted by your labors what was once a wil- 
 derness, these islands, into a fruitful garden ; I know 
 that you have created this wealth, and are a nation 
 whose name is a word of power throughout all the 
 world." Why, this is just the very style of laudation 
 with which Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Lowe debauches the 
 minds of the middle classes, and makes such Philis- 
 tines of them. It is the same fashion of teaching a 
 man to value himself not on what he is, not on his 
 progress in sweetness and light, but on the number 
 of the railroads he has constructed, or the bigness of 
 the tabernacle he has built. Only the middle classes 
 are told they have done it all with their energy, self- 
 reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they 
 have done it all with their hands and sinews. But 
 teaching the democracy to put its trust in achieve- 
 ments of this kind is merely training them to be Philis- 
 tines to take the place of the Philistines whom they 
 are superseding ; and they, too, like the middle class,
 
 266 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 will be encouraged to sit down at the banquet of the 
 future without having on a wedding garment, and 
 nothing excellent can then come from them. Those 
 who know their besetting faults, those who have 
 watched them and listened to them, or those who will 
 read the instructive account recently given of them by 
 one of themselves, the Journeyman Engineer^ will 
 agree that the idea which culture sets before us of 
 perfection, — an increased spiritual activity, having 
 for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, 
 increased life, increased sympathy, — is an idea which 
 the new democracy needs far more than the idea of 
 the blessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness 
 of its own industrial performances. 
 
 Other well-meaning friends of this new power are 
 for leading it, not ni the old ruts of middle-class 
 Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring 
 to the feet of democracy, tliough in this country they 
 are novel and untried ways. 1 may call them the ways 
 of Jacobinism. 1 Violent indignation with the past, 
 abstract systems of renovation applied wholesale, a 
 new doctrine drawn up in black and white for elab- 
 orating down to the very smallest details a rational 
 society for the future, — these are the ways of Jaco- 
 binism. Mr. Frederic Harrison ^ and other disciples of 
 Comte, ^ — -one of them, Mr. Congreve,^ is an old 
 friend of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity 
 of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and 
 character, — are among the friends of democracy who 
 are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural 
 enough motive ; for culture is the eternal opponent of 
 the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobin- 
 ism, — its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract 
 system. Culture is always assigning to system-makers
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 267 
 
 and systems a smaller share in the bent of human 
 destiny than their friends like. A current in people's 
 minds sets towards new ideas ; people are dissatisfied 
 with their old narrow stock of Philistine ideas, Anglo- 
 Saxon ideas, or any other ; and some man, some Ben- 
 tham 1 or Comte, who has the real merit of having early 
 and strongly felt and helped the new current, but who 
 brings plenty of narrowness and mistakes of his own 
 into his feeling and help of it, is credited with being 
 the author of the whole current, the fit person to be 
 entrusted with its regulation and to guide the human 
 race. 
 
 The excellent German historian of the mythology 
 of Rome, Preller,^ relating the introduction at Rome 
 under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god 
 of light, healing, and reconciliation, will have us 
 observe that it was not so much the Tarquins who 
 brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a 
 current in the mind of the Roman people which set 
 powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this 
 kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine 
 religious ideas. In a similar way, culture directs our 
 attention to the natural current there is in human 
 affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let 
 us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings. 
 It makes us see not only his good side, but also how 
 much in him was of necessity limited and transient ; 
 nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased 
 freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing. 
 
 I remember, when I was under the influence of a 
 mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the 
 mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity 
 and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems 
 to me, whom America has yet produced, — Benjamin 
 Franklin, — I remember the relief with which, after
 
 268 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable 
 common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new 
 version of the Book of Job,^ to replace the old ver- 
 sion, the style of which, says Franklin, has become 
 obsolete, and thence less agreeable. " I give," he 
 continues, " a few verses, which may serve as a 
 sample of the kind of version I would recommend." 
 We all recollect the famous verse in our translation : 
 " Then Satan answered the Lord and said : ' Doth 
 Job fear God for nought ? ' " Franklin makes this : 
 " Does your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct 
 is the effect of mere personal attachment and affec- 
 tion ? " I well remember how, when first I read that, 
 I drew a deep breath of relief and said to myself : 
 " After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond 
 Franklin's victorious good sense ! " So, after hearing 
 Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern 
 society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as 
 the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology? There 
 I read : " While Xenophon was writing his history 
 and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato 
 were talking nonsense under pretense of talking wis- 
 dom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted 
 in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of 
 matters known to every man's experience." From 
 the moment of reading that, I am delivered from the 
 bondage of Bentham ! the fanaticism of his adherents 
 can touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of his 
 mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human society, 
 for perfection. 
 
 Culture tends alwaj'^s thus to deal with the men of 
 a system, of disciples, of a school; with men like 
 Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle,^ or Mr. Mill.'* How- 
 ever much it may find to admire in these personages, 
 or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers the
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 269 
 
 text : " Be not ye called RaLbi ! " and it soon passes 
 on from any Rabbi, But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi ; 
 it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit 
 of a future and still unreached perfection ; it wants 
 its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, that 
 they may with the more authority recast the world ; 
 and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture, — eternally 
 passing onwards and seeking, — is an impertinence 
 and an offence. But culture, just because it resists 
 this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man 
 with limitations and errors of his own along with the 
 true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the 
 world and Jacobinism itself a service. 
 
 So, too. Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past 
 and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the 
 past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgence 
 proper to culture, the consideration of cii'cumstances, 
 the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful 
 judgment of persons. " The man of culture is in 
 politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, "one of the 
 poorest mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants 
 to be doing business, and he complains that the man 
 of culture stops him with a " turn for small fault- 
 finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action." 
 Of what use is culture, he asks, except for " a critic 
 of new books or a professor of belles-lettres f " ^ Why, 
 it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exasper- 
 ation which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses 
 through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the 
 perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. 
 It is of use, because, like religion, — that other effort 
 after perfection, — it testifies that, where bitter envy- 
 ing and strife are, there is confusion and every evil 
 work.
 
 270 ]VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of 
 sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness 
 and light, works to make reason and the will of God 
 prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works 
 for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks 
 beyond machiner}^ culture hates hatred ; culture has 
 one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. 
 It has one even yet greater I — the passion for making 
 them jJrevail. It is not satisfied till we all come ttTaT 
 perfect man ; it knows that the sweetness and light 
 of the few must be imperfect until the raw and un- 
 kindled masses of humanity are touched with sweet- 
 ness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying 
 that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither 
 have I shi'unk from saying that we must have a broad 
 basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as 
 possible. Again and again I have iilsisted how those 
 are the happ}' moments of humanity, how those are 
 the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are 
 the flowering times for literature and art and all the 
 creative power of genius, when there is a 7iatio>ial glow 
 of life and thought, when the whole of society is in 
 the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to 
 beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real 
 thought and real beauty ; real sweetness and real 
 light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, 
 as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and 
 adapted in the way they think proper for the actual 
 condition of the masses. The ordinary popular litera- 
 ture is an example of this way of working on the 
 masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the 
 masses with the set of ideas and judgments constitut- 
 ing the creed of their own profession or party. Our 
 religious and political organizations give an example 
 of this way of working on the masses. I condemn
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 271 
 
 neither way ; but culture works differently. It does 
 not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes ; 
 it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its 
 own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. 
 It seeks to do away with classes ; to make the best 
 that has been thought and known in the world current 
 everywhere ; to make all men live in an atmosphere 
 of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as 
 it uses them itself, freely, — nourished, and not bound 
 by them. 
 
 This is the social idea ; and the men of culture are 
 the true apostles of equality. The great men of cul- 
 ture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, 
 for making prevail, for carrying from one end of so- 
 ciety to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas 
 of their time ; who have labored to divest knowledge 
 of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, 
 professional, exclusive ; to humanize it, to make it ef- 
 ficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, 
 yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of 
 the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness 
 and light. Such a man was Abelard ^ in the Middle 
 Ages, in spite of all his imperfections ; and thence 
 the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard 
 excited. Such were Lessing^ and Herder ^ in Ger- 
 many, at the end of the last century ; and their serv- 
 ices to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. 
 Generations will pass, and literary monuments will 
 accumulate, and works far more perfect than the 
 works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in 
 Germany ; and yet the names of these two men will 
 fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such 
 as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly 
 awaken. And why? Because they humanized knowl- 
 edge ; because they broadened the basis of life and
 
 272 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 intelligence ; because they worked powerfully to dif- 
 fuse sweetness and liglit, to make reason and the will 
 of God prevail. AVith Saint Augustine they said : 
 " Let us not leave thee alone to make in the secret 
 of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of 
 the firmament, the division of light f rcin darkness ; 
 let the children of thy spirit, placed in their firma- 
 ment, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the 
 division of night and day, and annoimce the revolu- 
 tion of the times ; for the old order is passed, and the 
 new arises ; the night is spent, the day is come forth ; 
 and thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing, when 
 thou shalt send forth laborers into thy harvest sown 
 by other hands than theirs ; when thou shalt send 
 forth new laborers to new seed-times, whereof the 
 harvest shall be not yet." ^
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM i 
 
 This fundamental ground is our preference of doing 
 to thinking. Now this preference is a main element in 
 our nature, and as we study it we find ourselves open- 
 ing up a number of large questions on every side. 
 
 Let me go back for a moment to Bishop Wilson,^ 
 who says : " First, never go against the bes t light you 
 have ; secondly, take care that your light be not dark- 
 ness." We show, as a nation, laudable energy and 
 persistence in walking according to the best light we 
 have, but are not quite careful enough, perhaps, to 
 see that our light be not darkness. This is only an- 
 other version of the old story that energy is our strong 
 point and favorable characteristic, rather than intelli- 
 gence. But we may give to this idea a more general 
 form still, in which it will have a yet larger range of 
 application. We may regard this energy driving at 
 practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of 
 duty, self-control, and work, this earnestness in going 
 manfully with the best light we have, as one force. 
 And we may regard the intelligence driving at those 
 ideas which are, after all,. the basis of right practice, 
 the ardent sense for all the new and changing combi- 
 nations of them which man's development brings with 
 it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them 
 perfectly, as another force. And these two forces we 
 may regard as in some sense rivals, — rivals not by 
 the necessity of their own nature, but as exhibited in 
 man and his history, — and rivals dividing the empire 
 of the world between them. And to give these forces 
 names from the two races of men who have supplied
 
 274 IVIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 the most signal and splendid manifestations of them, 
 we may call them respectively the forces of Hebraism 
 and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellenism, — between 
 these two points of influence moves our world. At 
 one time it feels more powerfully the attraction of one 
 of them, at another time of the other ; and it ought 
 to be, though it never is, evenly and happily balanced 
 between them. 
 
 The final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as 
 of all great spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same : 
 man's perfection or salvation. The very language which 
 they both of them use in schooling us to reach this 
 aim is often identical. Even when their language in- 
 dicates by variation, — sometimes a broad variation, 
 often a but slight and subtle variation, — the difPer- 
 ent courses of thought which are uppermost in each 
 discipline, even then the unity of the final end and 
 aim is still apparent. To employ the actual words of 
 that discipline with which we ourselves are all of us 
 most familiar, and the words of which, therefore, come 
 most home to us, that final end and aim is " that we 
 might be partakers of the divine nature." ^ These are 
 the words of a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism and 
 f Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim. When the two 
 I are confronted, as they very often are confronted, it 
 [ V ( is nearly always with what I may call a rhetorical 
 A ' purpose ; the speaker's whole design is to exalt and 
 enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only 
 as a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to 
 his purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellen- 
 ism which is thus reduced to minister to the triumph 
 of Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and the 
 Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without 
 interest and respect, Frederick Robertson,^ in which 
 this rhetorical use of Greece and the Greek spirit,
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 275 
 
 and the inadequate exhibition of them necessarily con- 
 sequent upon this, is ahnost hidicrous, and would be 
 censurable if it were not to be explained by the exi- 
 gencies of a sermon. On the other hand, Heinrich 
 Heine,! and other writers of his sort give us the spec- 
 tacle of the tables completely turned, and of Hebraism 
 brought in just as a foil and contrast to Hellenism, 
 and to make the superiority of Hellenism more mani- 
 fest. In both these cases there is injustice and misrejD- 
 resentation. The aim and end of both Hebraism and 
 Hellenism is, as I have said, one and the same, and 
 this aim and end is august and admirable. 
 
 Still, they pursue this aim b}' very different courses. 
 The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things 
 as they really are ; the uppermost idea with Hebraism 
 is conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with 
 this ineffaceable difference. The Gi^eek quarrel with 
 the body and its desires is, that they hinder right 
 thinking ; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they 
 hinder right acting. " He that keepeth the law, happy 
 is he " ; 2 u Blessed is the man that feareth the Eternal, 
 that delighteth greatly in his commandments"; — ^ 
 that is the Hebrew notion of felicity ; and, pursued 
 with passion and tenacity, this notion would not let 
 the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had at last 
 got out of the law a network of prescriptions to en- 
 wrap his whole life, to govern every moment of it, every 
 impulse, every action. The Greek notion of felicity, 
 on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words 
 of a great French moralist : " Cest le honheur des 
 hommes" — when? when they abhor that which is 
 evil? — no; when they exercise themselves in the law 
 of the Lord day and night ? — no ; when they die 
 daily? — no; when they walk about the New Jerusa- 
 lem with palms in their hands ? — no ; but when they
 
 276 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 think aright, when their thought hits : " qiiand Us 
 petisent juste.'^ At the bottom of both the Greek and 
 the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man, for 
 reason and the will of God, the feeling after the uni- 
 versal order, — in a word, the love of God. But, while 
 Hebraism seizes upon certain plain, capital intimations 
 of the iiniversal order, and rivets itself, one may say, 
 with unequalled grandeur of earnestness and intensity 
 on the study and observance of them, the bent of Hel- 
 lenism is to follow, with flexible activity, the whole 
 play of the universal order, to be apprehensive of miss- 
 ing any part of it, of sacrificing one part to another, 
 to slip away from resting in this or that intimation of 
 it, however capital. An unclouded clearness of mind, 
 an unimpeded play of thought, is what this bent drives 
 at. The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity 
 of consciousness ; that of Hebraism, strictness of 
 conscience. 
 
 Clu'istianity changed nothing in this essential bent 
 of Hebraism to set doing above knowing. Self-con- 
 quest, self-devotion, the following not our own individ- 
 ual will, but the will of God, oheclience^ is the funda- 
 mental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which 
 we have attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, 
 as the old law and the network of prescriptions with 
 which it enveloped human life were evidently a motive- 
 power not driving and searching enough to produce 
 the result aimed at, — patient continuance in well-do- 
 ing, self -conquest, — Christianity substituted for them 
 boundless devotion to that inspiring and affecting pat- 
 tern of self -conquest offered by Jesus Christ ; and by 
 the new motive-power, of which the essence was this, 
 thousrh the love and admiration of Christian churches 
 have for centuries been emploj-ed in A^arying, amplify- 
 ing, and adorning the plain description of it, Chris-
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 277 
 
 tianity, as St. Paul truly says, " establishes tlie law," ^ 
 and in the strength of the ampler power which she 
 has thus supplied to fulfill it, has accomplished the 
 miracles, which we all see, of her history. 
 
 So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism 
 and Hebraism are profound and admirable manifesta- 
 tions of man's life, tendencies, and powers, and that 
 both of them aim at a like final result, we can hardly 
 insist too strongly on the divergence of line and of 
 operation with which they proceed. It is a divergence 
 so great that it most truly, as the prophet Zechariah 
 says, " has raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy 
 sons, O Greece ! " ^ The difference whether it is by 
 doing or by knowing that we set most store, and the 
 practical consequences which follow from this differ- 
 ence, leave their mark on all the history of our race 
 and of its development. Language may be abundantly 
 quoted from both Hellenism and Hebraism to make it 
 seem that one follows the same current as the other 
 towards the same goal. They are, truly, borne towards 
 the same goal ; but the currents which bear them are 
 infinitely different. It is true, Solomon will praise 
 knowing : " Understanding is a well-spring of life unto 
 him that hath it." ^ And in the New Testament, again, 
 Jesus Christ is a " light," * and " truth makes us free." ^ 
 It is true, Aristotle will undervalue knowing : " In 
 what concerns virtue," says he, " three things are nec- 
 essary — knowledge, deliberate will, and perseverance ; 
 but, whereas the two last are all-important, the first 
 is a matter of little importance." ^ It is true that with 
 the same impatience with which St. James enjoins a 
 man to be not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the 
 work, "* Epictetus ^ exhorts us to do what we have 
 demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do ; or he taunts 
 us with futility, for being armed at all points to prove
 
 278 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 that lying is wrong, yet all the time continuing to lie. 
 It is true, Plato, in words which are almost the words 
 of the New Testament or the Imitation, calls life a 
 learning to die.^ But underneath the superficial agree- 
 ment the fundamental divergence still subsists. The 
 understanding of Solomon is " the walking in the way 
 of the commandments " ; this is " the way of peace," and 
 it is of this that blessedness comes. In the New Tes- 
 tament, the truth which gives us the peace of God and 
 makes us free, is the love of Christ constraining us^ to 
 crucify, as he did, and with a like purpose of moral 
 regeneration, the flesh with its affections and lusts, 
 and thus establishing, as we have seen, the law. The 
 moral virtues, on the other hand, are with Aristotle 
 but the porch ^ and access to the intellectual, and with 
 these last is blessedness. That partaking of the divine 
 life, which both Hellenism and Hebraism, as we have 
 said, fix as their crowning aim, Plato expressly denies 
 to the man of practical virtue merely, of self-conquest 
 with any other motive than that of perfect intellec- 
 tual vision. He reserves it for the lover of pure knowl- 
 edge, of seeing things as they really are, — the (f)i\o- 
 
 Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the 
 wants of human nature, and address themselves to 
 satisfying those wants. But their methods are so dif- 
 ferent, they lay stress on such different points, and 
 call into being by their respective disciplines such dif- 
 ferent activities, that the face which human nature 
 presents when it passes from the hands of one of them 
 to those of the other, is no longer the same. To get 
 rid of one's ignorance, to see things as they are, and 
 by seeing them as they are to see them in their beauty, 
 is the simple and attractive ideal which Hellenism 
 holds out before human nature ; and from the sim-
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 279 
 
 pliclty and charm of this ideal, Hellenism, and human 
 life in the hands of Hellenism, is invested with a kind 
 of aerial ease, clearness, and radiancy ; they are full 
 of what we call sweetness and light. Difficulties are 
 kept out of view, and the beauty and ration alness of 
 the ideal have all our thoughts. " The best man is he 
 who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest 
 man is he who most feels that he is perfecting him- 
 self," 1 — this account of the matter by Socrates, the 
 true Socrates of the Memorabilia, has something so 
 simple, spontaneous, and unsophisticated about it, that 
 it seems to fill us with clearness and hope when we 
 hear it. But there is a saying which I have heard at- 
 tributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates — a very happy 
 saying, whether it is really Mr. Carlyle's or not, — 
 which excellently marks the essential point in which 
 Hebraism differs from Hellenism. " Socrates," this 
 saying goes, " is terribly at ease in Zioii." Hebraism 
 — and here is the source of its wonderful strength — 
 has always been severely preoccupied with an awful 
 sense of the impossibility of being at ease in Zion ; of 
 the difficulties which oppose themselves to man's pur- 
 suit or attainment of that perfection of which Socrates 
 talks so hopefully, and, as from this point of view one 
 might almost say, so glibly. It is all very well to talk 
 of getting rid of one's ignorance, of seeing things in 
 their reality, seeing them in their beauty ; but how is 
 this to be done when there is something which thwarts 
 and spoils all our efforts ? 
 
 This something is sin ; and the space which sin fills 
 in Hebraism, as compared with Hellenism, is indeed 
 prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills the whole 
 scene, and perfection appears remote and rising awaj^ 
 from earth, in the background. Under the name of 
 sin, the difficulties of knowing oneself and conquering
 
 280 I^L\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 oneself which impede man's passage to perfection, 
 become, for Hebraism, a positive, active entity hostile 
 to man, a mj'sterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey i 
 the other day, in one of his impressive sermons, com- 
 pare to a hideous hunchback seated on our shoulders, 
 and which it is the main business of our lives to hate 
 and oppose. The discipline of the Old Testament may 
 be summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor 
 and flee from sin ; the discipline of the New Testa- 
 ment, as a discipline teaching us to die to it. As Hel- 
 lenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in 
 their essence and beauty, as a grand and precious feat 
 for man to achieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming 
 conscious of sin, of awakening to a sense of sin, as a 
 feat of this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence 
 these differing tendencies, aetiveh' followed, must lead. 
 As one passes and repasses from Hellenism to Hebra- 
 ism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined to rub 
 one's eyes and ask oneself whether man is indeed a 
 gentle and simple being, showing the traces of a noble 
 and divine nature ; or an unhappy chained captive, 
 laboring with groanings that cannot be uttered to free 
 himself from the body of this death. 
 
 Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of hu- 
 man nature which was unsound, for the world coiild 
 not live by it. Absolutely to call it unsound, however, 
 is to fall into the common error of its Hebraizing ene- 
 mies ; but it was unsound at that particular moment 
 of man's development, it was premature. The indis- 
 pensable basis of conduct and self-control, the plat- 
 form upon which alone the perfection aimed at by 
 Greece can come into bloom, was not to be reached 
 by our race so easil}^ ; centuries of probation and dis- 
 cipline were needed to bring us to it. Therefore the 
 bright promise of Hellenism faded, and Hebraism
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 281 
 
 ruled the world. Then was seen that astonishing spec- 
 tacle, so well marked by the often-qnoted words of the 
 prophet Zechariah, when men of all languages and 
 nations took hold of the skirt of him that was a Jew, 
 saying: — " We will go with you, for we have heard 
 that God is with you." ^ And the Hebraism which 
 thus received and ruled a world all gone out of the 
 way and altogether become unprofitable, was, and 
 could not but be, the later, the more spiritual, the 
 more attractive development of Hebraism. It was 
 Christianity ; that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self- 
 conquest and rescue from the thrall of vile affections, 
 not by obedience to the letter of a law, but by con- 
 formity to the image of a self-sacrificing example. To 
 a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity 
 offered its spe(;tacle of an inspired self-sacrifice ; to 
 men who refused themselves nothing, it showed one 
 who refused himself everything ; — '•'■my Saviour ba7i- 
 ishedjoy/"^ says George Herbert. When the aZ^n a 
 Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, 
 so fondly cherished by the pagan world, could not save 
 her followers from self-dissatisfaction and ennui, the 
 severe words of the apostle came bracingly and re- 
 freshingly : " Let no man deceive you with vain words, 
 for because of these things cometh the wrath of God 
 upon the children of disobedience." ^ Through age 
 after age and generation after generation, our race, or 
 all that part of our race which was most living and pro- 
 gressive, was baptized into a death; and endeavored, 
 by suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin. Of this 
 endeavor, the animating labors and afflictions of early 
 Christianity, the touching asceticism of mediaeval 
 Christianity, are the great historical manifestations. 
 Literary monuments of it, each in its own way incom- 
 parable, remain in the Bjnstles of St. Paul, in St.
 
 282 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Augustine's Confessions^ and in the two original and 
 simplest books of the Imitation.^ 
 
 Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the one, 
 on clear intelligence, the other, on firm obedience ; the 
 one, on comprehensively knowing the ground of one's 
 duty, the other, on diligently practising it ; the one, on 
 taking all possible care (to use Bishop Wilson's words 
 again) that the light we have be not darkness, the 
 other, that according to the best light we have we 
 diligently walk, — the priority naturally belongs to 
 that discipline which braces all man's moral powers, 
 and founds for him an indispensable basis of charac- 
 ter. And, therefore, it is justly said of the Jewish peo- 
 ple, who were charged with setting powerfully forth 
 that side of the divine order to which the words con- 
 science and self-conquest point, that they were " en- 
 trusted with the oracles of God " ;2 as it is justly said 
 of Christianity, which followed Judaism and which set 
 forth this side with a much deeper effectiveness and 
 a much wider influence, that the wisdom of the old 
 pagan world was foolishness^ compared to it. No 
 words of devotion and admiration can be too strong to 
 render thanks to these beneficent forces which have 
 so borne forward huujanity in its appointed work of 
 coming to the knowledge and possession of itself ; 
 above all, in those great moments when their action 
 was the wholesomest and the most necessary. 
 
 But^the evolution of these forces, separately and in 
 themselves, is not the whole evolution of humanity, — 
 their single history is not the whole history of man ; 
 whereas their admirers are always apt to make it stand 
 for the whole history. Hebraism and Hellenism are, 
 neither of them, the law of human development, as 
 their admirers are prone to make them ; they are, 
 each of them, contributions to human development, —
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 2S3 
 
 august contributions, invaluable contributions ; and 
 each showing itself to us more august, more invalu- 
 able, more preponderant over the other, according to 
 the moment in which we take them, and the relation 
 in which we stand to them. The nations of our modern 
 world, children of that immense and salutary move- 
 ment which broke up the pagan world, inevitably stand 
 to Hellenism in a relation which dwarfs it, and to 
 Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it. They are 
 inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of human 
 development, and not as simply a contribution to it, 
 however precious. And yet the lesson must perforce be 
 learned, that the human spirit is wider than the most 
 priceless of the forces which bear it onward, and that 
 to the whole development of man Hebraism itself is, 
 like Hellenism, but a contribution. 
 
 Perhaps we may help ourselves to see this clearer by 
 an illustration drawn from the treatment of a single 
 great idea which has profoundly engaged the human 
 spirit, and has given it eminent opportunities for show- 
 ing its nobleness and energy. It surely must be per- 
 ceived that the idea of immortality, as this idea rises 
 in its generality before the human spirit, is something 
 grander, truer, and more satisfying, than it is in the 
 particular forms by which St. Paul, in the famous fif- 
 teenth chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, and 
 Plato, in the PJio&do} endeavor to develop and estab- 
 lish it. Surely we cannot but feel, that the argumen- 
 tation with which the Hebrew apostle goes about to 
 expound this great idea is, after all, confused and in- 
 conclusive ; and that the reasoning, drawn from anal- 
 ogies of likeness and equality, which is employed upon 
 it by the Greek philosopher, is over-subtle and sterile. 
 Above and beyond the inadequate solutions which He- 
 braism and Hellenism here attempt, extends the im-
 
 284 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 mense and angiist problem itself, and the human spirit 
 which gave birth to it. And this single illustration may 
 suggest to us how the same thing happens in other 
 cases also. 
 
 But meanwhile, by alternations of Hebraism and 
 Hellenism, of a man's intellectual and moral impulses, 
 of the effort to see things as they really are, and the 
 effort to win peace by self-conquest, the human spirit 
 proceeds ; and each of these two forces has its ap- 
 pointed hours of culmination and seasons of ride. As 
 the great movement of Christianity was a triumph of 
 Hebraism and man's moral impidses, so the great 
 movement which goes by the name of the Renascence ^ 
 was an uprising and reinstatement of man's intellectual 
 impulses and of Hellenism. We in England, the de- 
 voted children of Protestantism, chiefly know the Re- 
 nascence by its subordinate and secondary side of the 
 Reformation. The Reformation has been often called 
 a Hebraizing revival, a return to the ardor and sin- 
 cereness of primitive Christianity. No one, however, 
 can study the development of Protestantism and of 
 Protestant churches without feeling that into the Re- 
 formation, too, — Hebraizing child of the Renascence 
 and offspring of its fervor, rather than its intelligence, 
 as it undoubtedly was, — the subtle Hellenic leaven of 
 the Renascence found its way, and that the exact re- 
 spective parts, in the Reformation, of Hebraism and of 
 Hellenism, are not easy to separate. But what we may 
 with truth say is, that all which Protestantism was to 
 itself clearly conscious of, all which it succeeded in 
 clearly setting forth in words, had the characters of 
 Hebraism rather than of Hellenism. The Reformation 
 was strong, in that it was an earnest return to the 
 Bible and to doing from the heart the will of God as 
 there written. It was weak, in that it never consciously
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 285 
 
 grasped or applied the central idea of the Renascence, 
 — the Hellenic idea of pursuing, in all lines of activ- 
 ity, the law and science, to use Plato's words, of things 
 as they really are. Whatever direct superiority, there- 
 fore, Protestantism had over Catholicism was a moral 
 superiority, a superiority arising out of its greater sin- 
 cerity and earnestness, — at the moment of its appari- 
 tion at any rate, — in dealing with the heart and con- 
 science. Its pretensions to an intellectual superiority 
 are in general quite illusory. For Hellenism, for the 
 thinking side in man as distinguished from the acting 
 side, the attitude of mind of Protestantism towards 
 the Bible in no respect differs from the attitude of 
 mind of Catholicism towards the Church. The mental 
 habit of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in 
 no respect differs from the mental habit of him who 
 imagines that a Madonna of wood or stone winked ; 
 and the one, who says that God's Church makes him 
 believe what he believes, and the other, who says that 
 God's Word makes him believe what he believes, are 
 for the philosopher perfectly alike in not really and 
 truly knowing, when they say God's Church and God's 
 Word, what it is they say, or whereof they affirm. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, therefore, Hellenism re- 
 entered the world, and again stood in presence of 
 Hebraism, — a Hebraism renewed and purged. Now, 
 it has not been enough observed, how, in the seven- 
 teenth century, a fate befell Hellenism in some respects 
 analogous to that which befell it at the commencement 
 of our era. The Renascence, that great reawakening of 
 Hellenism, that irresistible return of humanity to na- 
 ture and to seeing things as they are, which in art, in 
 literature, and in physics, produced such splendid 
 fruits, had, like the anterior Hellenism of the pagan 
 world, a side of moral weakness and of relaxation or
 
 286 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 insensibility of the moral fibre, which in Italy showed 
 itself with the most startling plainness, but which in 
 Fi-ance, England, and other countries was very ap- 
 parent, too. Again this loss of spiritual balance, this 
 exclusive preponderance given to man's perceiving and 
 knowing side, this unnatural defect of his feeling and 
 acting side, provoked a reaction. Let us trace that 
 reaction where it most nearly concerns us. 
 
 Science has now made visible to everybody the great 
 and pregnant elements of difference which lie in race, 
 and in how signal a manner they make the genius and 
 history of an Indo-European jjeople vary from those 
 of a Semitic people. Hellenism is of Indo-European 
 growth, Hebraism is of Semitic growth ; and we Eng- 
 lish, a nation of Indo-European stock, seem to belong 
 naturally to the movement of Hellenism. But nothing 
 more strongly marks the essential unity of man, than 
 the affinities we can perceive, in this point or that, 
 between members of one family of peoples and mem- 
 bers of another. And no affinity of this kind is more 
 strongly marked than that likeness in the strength and 
 prominence of the moral fibre, which, notwithstanding 
 immense elements of difference, knits in some special 
 sort the genius and history of us English, and our 
 American descendants across the Atlantic, to the genius 
 and history of the Hebrew people. Puritanism, which 
 has been so great a power in the English nation, and 
 in the strongest part of the English nation, was origi- 
 nally the reaction in the seventeenth century of the con- 
 science and moral sense of our race, against the moral 
 indifference and lax rule of conduct which in the six- 
 teenth century came in with the Renascence. It was a 
 reaction of Hebraism against Hellenism ; and it power- 
 fully manifested itself, as was natural, in a people with 
 much of what we call a Hebraizing turn, with a signal
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 287 
 
 afi&nity for the bent which was the master-bent of He- 
 brew life. Eminently Indo-Euroi3ean by its humor, 
 by the power it shows, through this gift, of imagina- 
 tively acknowledging the multiform aspects of the 
 problem of life, and of thus getting itself unfixed from 
 its own over-certainty, of smiling at its own over- 
 tenacity, our race has yet (and a great part of its 
 strength lies here), in matters of practical life and 
 moral conduct, a strong share of the assuredness, the 
 tenacity, the intensity of the Hebrews. This turn man- 
 ifested itself in Puritanism, and has had a great part 
 in shaping our history for the last two hundred years. 
 Undoubtedly it checked and changed amongst us that 
 movement of the Renascence which we see producing 
 in the reign of Elizabeth such wonderful fruits. Un- 
 doubtedly it stopped the prominent rule and direct 
 development of that order of ideas which we call by 
 the name of Hellenism, and gave the first rank to a 
 different order of ideas. Apparently, too, as we said 
 of the former defeat of Hellenism, if Hellenism was 
 defeated, this shows that Hellenism was imperfect, 
 and that its ascendency at that moment would not 
 have been for the world's good. 
 
 Yet there is a very important difference between 
 the defeat inflicted on Hellenism by Christianity eight- 
 een hundred years ago, and the check given to the 
 Renascence by Puritanism. The greatness of the dif- 
 ference is well measured by the difference in force, 
 beauty, significance, and usefulness, between primitive 
 Christianity and Protestantism. Eighteen hundred 
 years ago it was altogether the hour of Hebraism. 
 Primitive Christianity was legitimately and truly the 
 ascendant force in the world at that time, and the way 
 of mankind's progress lay through its full develop- 
 ment. Another hour in man's development began in
 
 288 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 the fifteenth century, and the main road of his progress 
 tlien lay for a time through Hellenism. Puritanism 
 was no longer the central current of the world's prog- 
 ress, it was a side stream crossing the central current 
 and checking it. The cross and the check may have 
 been necessary and salutary, but that does not do away 
 with the essential difference between the main stream 
 of man's advance and a cross or side stream. For more 
 than two hundred years the main stream of man's 
 advance has moved towards knowing himself and the 
 world, seeing things as they are, spontaneity of con- 
 sciousness ; the main impulse of a great part, and that 
 the strongest part, of our nation has been towards 
 strictness of conscience. They have made the secondary 
 the principal at the wrong moment, and the principal 
 they have at the wrong moment treated as secondary. 
 This contravention of the natural order has produced, 
 as such contravention always must produce, a certain 
 confusion and false movement, of which we are now 
 beginning to feel, in almost every direction, the in- 
 convenience. In all directions our habitual causes of 
 action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and con- 
 trol, both with others and even with ourselves. Every- 
 where we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want 
 a clue to some sound order and authority. This we can 
 only get by going back upon the actual instincts and 
 forces which ride our life, seeing them as they really 
 are, connecting them with other instincts and forces, 
 and enlarging our whole view and rule of life.
 
 EQUALITY 1 
 
 When we talk of man's advance towards his full 
 humanity, we think of an advance, not along one line 
 only, but several. Certain races and nations, as we 
 know, are on certain lines preeminent and represent- 
 ative. The Hebrew nation was preeminent on one 
 great line. " What nation," it was justly asked by 
 their lawgiver, " hath statutes and judgments so right- 
 eous as the law which I set before you this day ? Keep 
 therefore and do them ; for this is your wisdom and 
 your understanding in the sight of the nations which 
 shall hear all these statutes and say : Surely this great 
 nation is a wise and understanding people ! " The 
 Hellenic race was preeminent on other lines. Isoc- 
 rates^ could say of Athens: "Our city has left the 
 rest of the world so far behind in philosophy and elo- 
 quence, that those educated by Athens have become the 
 teachers of the rest of mankind ; and so well has she 
 done her part, that the name of Greeks seems no longer 
 to stand for a race but to stand for intelligence itself, 
 and they who share in our culture are called Greeks 
 even before those who are merely of our own blood." 
 The power of intellect and science, the power of beauty, 
 the power of social life and manners, — these are what 
 Greece so felt, and fixed, and may stand for. They are 
 great elements in our humanization. The power of 
 conduct is another great element ; and this was so felt 
 and fixed by Israel that we can never with justice 
 refuse to permit Israel, in spite of all his shortcom- 
 ings, to stand for it. 
 
 So you see that in being humanized we have to move
 
 290 AL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 along several lines, and that on certain lines certain 
 nations find their strength and take a lead. AVe may 
 elucidate the thing yet further. Nations now existing 
 may be said to feel or to have felt the power of this 
 or that element in our humanization so signally that 
 they are characterized by it. No one who knows this 
 country would deny that it is characterized, in a re- 
 markable degree, by a sense of the power of conduct. 
 Our feeling for religion is one part of this ; our in- 
 dustry is another. What foreigners so much remark 
 in us — our public spirit, our love, amidst all our lib- 
 erty, for public order and for stability — are parts of 
 it too. Then the power of beauty was so felt by the 
 Italians that their art revived, as we know, the almost 
 lost idea of beauty, and the serious and successful pur- 
 suit of it. Cardinal Antonelli,^ speaking to me about 
 the education of the common people in Rome, said 
 that they were illiterate, indeed, but whoever mingled 
 with them at any public show, and heard them pass 
 judgment on the beauty or ugliness of what came be- 
 fore them, — " e bi'iitto" " e hello,'''' — would find that 
 their judgment agreed admirably, in general, with 
 just what the most cultivated people would say. Even 
 at the present time, then, the Italians are preeminent 
 in feeling the power of beauty. The power of knowl- 
 edge, in the same way, is eminently an influence with 
 the Germans. This by no means implies, as is some- 
 times supposed, a high and fine general culture. What 
 it implies is a strong sense of the necessity of knowing 
 scientifically, as the expression is, the things which 
 have to be known by us ; of knowing them systemat- 
 ically, by the regular and right process, and in the only 
 real way. And this sense the Germans especially 
 have. Finally, there is the power of social life and 
 manners. And even the Athenians themselves, per-
 
 EQUALITY 291 
 
 haps, have hardly felt this power so much as the 
 French. 
 
 Voltaire, in a famous passage ^ where he extols the 
 age of Louis the Fourteenth and ranks it with the 
 chief epochs in the civilization of our race, has to 
 specify the gift bestowed on us by the age of Louis the 
 Fourteenth, as the age of Pericles, for instance, be- 
 stowed on us its art and literature, and the Italian Re- 
 nascence its revival of art and literature. And Voltaire 
 shows all his acuteness in fixing on the gift to name. 
 It is not the sort of gift which we expect to see named. 
 The great gift of the age of Louis the Fourteenth to 
 the world, says Voltaire, was this : V esprit de societe, 
 the spirit of society, the social spirit. And another 
 French writer, looking for the good points in the old 
 French nobility, remarks that this at any rate is to be 
 said in their favor: they established a high and charm- 
 ing ideal of social intercourse and manners, for a na- 
 tion formed to profit by such an ideal, and which has 
 profited by it ever since. And in America, perhaps, 
 we see the disadvantages of having social equality be- 
 fore there has been any such high standard of social 
 life and manners formed. 
 
 We are not disposed in England, most of us, to at- 
 tach all this importance to social intercourse and man- 
 ners. Yet Burke says : " There ought to be a system 
 of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind 
 would be disposed to relish." And the power of social 
 life and manners is truly, as we have seen, one of the 
 great elements in our humanization. Unless we have 
 cultivated it, we are incomplete. The impulse for cul- 
 tivating it is not, indeed, a moral impulse. It is by no 
 means identical with the moral impulse to help our 
 neighbor and to do him good. Yet in many ways it 
 works to a like end. It brings men together, makes
 
 292 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 them feel the need of one another, be considerate of 
 one another, understand one another. But, above all 
 things, it is a promoter of equality. It is by the hu- 
 manity of their manners that men are made equal. " A 
 man thinks to show himself my equal," says Goethe, 
 " by being groh^ — that is to say, coarse and rude ; he 
 does not show himself my equal, he shows himself 
 grohy But a community having humane manners is 
 a community of equals, and in such a community great 
 social inequalities have really no meaning, while they 
 are at the same time a menace and an embarrassment 
 to pei'fect ease of social intercourse. A community 
 with the spirit of society is eminently, therefore, a 
 community with the spirit of equality. A nation with 
 a genius for society, like the French or the Athenians, 
 is irresistibly drawn towards equality. From the first 
 moment when the French people, with its congenital 
 sense for the power of social intercourse and manners, 
 came into existence, it was on the road to equality. 
 When it had once got a high standard of social man- 
 ners abundantly established, and at the same time the 
 natural, material necessity for the feudal inequality 
 of classes and property pressed upon it no longer, the 
 French people introduced equality and made the French 
 Revolution. "It was not the spirit of philanthropy 
 which mainly impelled the French to that Revolution, 
 neither was it the spirit of envy, neither was it the love 
 of abstract ideas, though all these did something to- 
 wards it ; but what did most was the spirit of society. 
 
 The well-being of the many comes out more and 
 more distinctly, in proportion as time goes on, as the 
 object we must pursue. An individual or a class, con- 
 centrating their efforts upon their own well-being ex- 
 clusively, do but beget troubles both for others and 
 for themselves also. No individual life can be truly
 
 EQUALITY 293 
 
 prosperous, passed, as Obermann says, in the midst 
 of men who suffer ; passee au milieu des generations 
 qui souffrent. To the noble soul, it cannot be happy ; 
 to the ignoble, it cannot be secure. Socialistic and 
 communistic schemes have generally, however, a fatal 
 defect ; they are content with too low and material a 
 standard of well-being. That instinct of perfection, 
 which is the master-power in humanity, always rebels 
 at this, and frustrates the work. Many are to be made 
 partakers of well-being, true ; but the ideal of well- 
 being is not to be, on that account, lowered and coars- 
 ened. M. de Laveleye,^ the political economist, who is 
 a Belgian and a Protestant, and whose testimony, 
 therefore, we may the more readily take about France, 
 says that France, being the country of Europe where 
 the soil is more divided than anywhere except in Switz- 
 erland and Norway, is at the same time the country 
 where material well-being is most widely spread, where 
 wealth has of late years increased most, and where 
 population is least outrunning the limits, which, for 
 the comfort and progress of the working classes them- 
 selves, seem necessary. This may go for a good deal. 
 It supplies an answer to what Sir Erskine May ^ says 
 about the bad effects of equality upon French pros- 
 perity. But I will quote to you from Mr. Hamerton ^ 
 what goes, I think, for yet more. Mr. Hamerton is an 
 excellent observer and reporter, and has lived for 
 many years in France. He says of the French peas- 
 antry that they are exceedingly ignorant. So they are. 
 But he adds : " They are at the same time full of in- 
 telligence ; their manners are excellent, they have 
 delicate perceptions, they have tact, they have a cer- 
 tain refinement which a brutalized peasantry could not 
 possibly have. If you talk to one of them at his own 
 home, or in his field, he will enter into conversation
 
 294 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 with you quite easily, and sustain his part in a per- 
 fectly becoming way, with a pleasant combination of 
 dignity and quiet humor. The interval between him 
 and a Kentish laborer is enormous." 
 
 This is, indeed, worth your attention. Of course all 
 mankind are, as Mr. Gladstone says, of our own flesh 
 and blood. But you know how often it happens in 
 England that a cultivated person, a person of the sort 
 that Mr. Charles Sumner i describes, talking to one of 
 the lower class, or even of the middle class, feels and 
 cannot but feel, that there is somehow a wall of parti- 
 tion between himself and the other, that they seem to 
 belong to two different worlds. Thoughts, feelings, 
 perceptions, susceptibilities, language, manners, — 
 everything is different. Whereas, with a French peas- 
 ant, the most cultivated man may find himself in 
 sympathy, may feel that he is talking to an equal. 
 This is an experience which has been made a thousand 
 times, and which may be made again any day. And it 
 may be carried beyond the range of mere conversation, 
 it may be extended to things like pleasures, recrea- 
 tions, eating and drinking, and so on. In general the 
 pleasures, recreations, eating and drinking of English 
 people, when once you get below that class which Mr. 
 Charles Sumner calls the class of gentlemen, are to 
 one of that class unpalatable and impossible. In 
 France there is not this incompatibility. Whether 
 he mix with high or low, the gentleman feels himself 
 in a world not alien or repulsive, but a world where 
 people make the same sort of demands upon life, in 
 things of this sort, which he himself does. In all these 
 respects France is the country where the people, as 
 distinguished from a wealthy refined class, most lives 
 what we call a humane life, the life of civilized man. 
 
 Of course, fastidious persons can and do pick holes
 
 EQUALITY 295 
 
 in it. There is just now, in France, a noblesse newly- 
 revived, fall of pretension, full of airs and graces and 
 disdains ; but its sphere is narrow, and out of its own 
 sphere no one cares very much for it. There is a gen- 
 eral equality in a humane kind of life. This is the 
 secret of the passionate attachment with which France 
 inspires all Frenchmen, in spite of her fearful trou- 
 bles, her checked jjrosperity, her disconnected units, 
 and the rest of it. There is so much of the goodness 
 and agreeableness of life there, and for so many. It is 
 the secret of her having been able to attach so ar- 
 dently to her the German and Protestant people of 
 Alsace,^ while we have been so little able to attach the 
 Celtic and Catholic people of Ireland. France brings 
 the Alsatians into a social system so full of the good- 
 ness and agreeableness of life ; we offer to the Irish 
 no such attraction. It is the secret, finally, of the prev- 
 alence which we have remarked in other continental 
 countries of a legislation tending, like that of France, 
 to social equality. The social system which equality 
 creates in France is, in the eyes of others, such a giver 
 of the goodness and agreeableness of life, that they 
 seek to get the goodness by getting the equality. 
 
 Yet France has had her fearful troubles, as Sir 
 Erskine May justly says. She suffers too, he adds, 
 from demoralization and intellectual stoppage. Let us 
 admit, if he likes, this to be true also. His error is 
 that he attributes all this to equality. Equality, as we 
 have seen, has brought France to a really admirable 
 and enviable pitch of humanization in one important 
 line. And this, the work of equality, is so much a good 
 in Sir Erskine May's eyes, that he has mistaken it for 
 the whole of which it is a part, frankly identifies it 
 with civilization, and is inclined to pronounce France 
 the most civilized of nations.
 
 Q96 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 But we have seen liow much goes to full huraaniza- 
 tion, to true civilization, besides the power of social 
 life and manners. There is the power of conduct, the 
 power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty. 
 The power of conduct is the greatest of all. And with- 
 out in the least wishing to preach, I must observe, as 
 a mere matter of natural fact and experience, that for 
 the power of conduct France has never had anything 
 like the same sense which she has had for the power of 
 social life and manners. Michelet,^ himself a French- 
 man, gives us the reason why the Reformation did not 
 succeed in France. It did not succeed, he says, be- 
 cause la J^rance ne voidalt pas de reforme morale — 
 moral reform France would not have ; and the Refor- 
 mation was above all a moral movement. The sense in 
 France for the power of conduct has not greatl}^ deep- 
 ened, I think, since. The sense for the power of intel- 
 lect and knowledge has not been adequate either. The 
 sense for beauty has not been adequate. Intelligence 
 and beauty have been, in general, but so far reached, 
 as they can be and are reached by men who, of the 
 elements of perfect humanization, lay thorough hold 
 upon one only, — the power of social intercourse and 
 manners. I speak of France in general ; she has had, 
 and she has, individuals who stand out and who form 
 exceptions, AVell, then,if a nation laying no sufficient 
 hold upon the powers of beauty and knowledge, and 
 a most failing and feeble hold upon the power of con- 
 duct, comes to demoralization and intellectual stop- 
 page and fearful troubles, we need not be inordinately 
 surprised. What we should rather marvel at is the 
 healing and bountiful operation- of Nature, whereby 
 the laying firm hold on one real element in our hu- 
 manization has had for France results so beneficent. 
 
 And thus, when Sir Erskine May gets bewildered
 
 EQUALITY 297 
 
 between France's equality and fearful troubles on the 
 one hand, and the civilization of France on the other, 
 let us suggest to him that perhaps he is bewildered by 
 his data because he combines them ill. France has not 
 exemplary disaster and ruin as the fruits of equality, 
 and at the same time, and independently of this, an 
 exemplary civilization. She has a large measure of 
 happiness and success as the fruits of equality, and she 
 has a very large measure of dangers and troubles as 
 the fruits of something else. 
 
 We have more to do, however, than to help Sir 
 Erskine May out of his scrape about France. We 
 have to see whether the considerations which we have 
 been employing may not be of use to us about Eng- 
 land. 
 
 We shall not have much difficulty in admitting 
 whatever good is to be said of ourselves, and we will 
 try not to be unfair by excluding all that is not so 
 favorable. Indeed, our less favoi-able side is the one 
 which we should be the most anxious to note, in order 
 that we may mend it. But we will begin with the 
 good. Our people has energy and honesty as its good 
 characteristics. We have a strong sense for the chief 
 power in the life and progress of man, — the power of 
 conduct. So far we speak of the English people as a 
 whole. Then we have a rich, refined, and splendid 
 aristocracy. And we have, according to Mr. Charles 
 Sumner's acute and true remark, a class of gentle- 
 men, not of the nobility, but well-bred, cultivated, and 
 refined, larger than is to be found in any other coun- 
 try. For these last we have Mr. Sumner's testimony. 
 As to the splendor of our aristocracy, all the world is 
 agreed. Then we have a middle class and a lower 
 class ; and they, after all, are the immense bulk of the 
 nation.
 
 298 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Let us see how the civilization of these classes ap- 
 pears to a Frenchman, who has witnessed, in his own 
 country, the considerable humanization of these classes 
 by equality. To such an observer our middle class 
 divides itself into a serious portion and a gay or rowdy 
 portion ; both are a marvel to him. With the gay or 
 rowdy portion we need not much concern ourselves ; 
 we shall figure it to our minds sufficiently if we con- 
 ceive it as the source of that war-song produced in 
 these recent days of excitement : — 
 
 " We don't want to fight, but by jingo, if we do, 
 We 've got tlie ships, we 've got the men, and we 've got the 
 money too." ^ 
 
 We may also partly judge its standard of life, and the 
 needs of its nature, by the modern English theatre, 
 perhaps the most contemptible in Europe. But the 
 real strength of the English middle class is in its se- 
 rious portion. And of this a Frenchman, who was here 
 some little time ago as the correspondent, I think, of 
 the Steele newspaper, and whose letters were after- 
 wards published in a volume, writes as follows. He 
 had been attending some of the Moody and Sankey^ 
 meetings, and he says : " To understand the success 
 of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, one must be familiar 
 with English manners, one must know the mind-dead- 
 ening influence of a narrow Biblism, one must have 
 experienced the sense of acute ennui, which the aspect 
 and the frequentation of this great division of Eng- 
 lish society produce in others, the want of elasticity 
 and the chronic ennui which characterize this class it- 
 self, petrified in a narrow Protestantism and in a per- 
 petual reading of the Bible." 
 
 You know the French ; — a little more Biblism, one 
 may take leave to say, would do them no harm. But 
 an audience like this — and here, as I said, is the ad-
 
 EQUALITY 299 
 
 vantage of an audience like this — will have no diffi- 
 culty in admitting the amount of truth which there is 
 in the Frenchman's picture. It is the picture of a class 
 which, driven by its sense for the power of conduct, in 
 the beginning of the seventeenth century entered, — 
 as I have more than once said, and as I may ,more 
 than once have occasion in future to say, — entered the 
 prison of Puritanism, and had the key turned upon 
 its spirit therefor two hundred years} They did not 
 know, good and earnest people as they were, that to 
 the building up of human life there belong all those 
 other powers also, — the power of intellect and knowl- 
 edge, the power of beauty, the power of social life and 
 manners. And something, by what they became, they 
 gained, and the whole nation with them ; they deepened 
 and fixed for this nation the sense of conduct. But 
 they created a type of life and manners, of which they 
 themselves, indeed, are slow to recognize the faults, 
 but which is fatally condemned by its hideousness, its 
 immense ennui, and against which the instinct of self- 
 preservation in humanity rebels. 
 
 Partisans fight against facts in vain. Mr. Gold win 
 Smitli,^ a writer of eloquence and power, although too 
 prone to acerbity, is a partisan of the Puritans, and 
 of the nonconformists who are the special inheritors 
 of the Puritan tradition. He angrily resents the im- 
 putation upon that Puritan type of life, by which the 
 life of our serious middle class has been formed, that 
 it was doomed to hideousness, to immense ennui. He 
 protests that it had beauty, amenity, accomplishment. 
 Let us go to facts. Charles the First, who, with all 
 his faults, had the just idea that art and letters are 
 gr^t civilizers, made, as you know, a famous collec- 
 tion of pictures, — our first National Gallery. It was, 
 I suppose, the best collection at that time north of the
 
 300 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Alps. It contained nine Raphaels, eleven Correggios, 
 twenty-eiglit Titians. What became of that collection ? 
 The journals of the House of Commons will tell you. 
 There you may see the Puritan Parliament disposing 
 of this Whitehall or York House collection as follows : 
 ' Ordered, that all such pictures and statues there as are 
 without any superstition, shall be forthwith sold. . . . 
 Ordered, that all such pictures there as have the rep- 
 resentation of the Second Person in the Trinity upon 
 them, shall be forthwith burnt. Ordered, that all such 
 pictures there as have the representation of the Vir- 
 gin ]Mary upon them, shall be forthwith burnt." There 
 we,- have the weak side of our parliamentary govern- 
 ment and our serious middle class. We are incapable 
 of sending Mr. Gladstone to be tried at the Old 
 Bailey because he proclaims his antipathy to Lord 
 Beaconsfield. A majority in our House of Commons 
 is incapable of hailing, with frantic laughter and a|> 
 plause, a string of indecent jests against Christianity 
 and its Founder. But we are not, or were not inca- 
 pable of producing a Parliament which burns or sells 
 the masterpieces of Italian art. And one may surely 
 say of such a Puritan Parliament, and of those who 
 determine its line for it, that they had not the spirit 
 of beauty. 
 
 What shall we say of amenity? Milton was born a 
 humanist, but the Puritan temper, as we know, mas- 
 tered him. There is nothing more unlovely aud un- 
 amiable than ISIilton the Puritan disputant. Some 
 one answers his Doctrine and Disciplhie of Divorce. 
 " I mean not," rejoins Milton, " to dispute* philoso- 
 phy with this pork, who never read any." However, 
 he does reply to hun, and throughout the reply Mil- 
 ton's great joke is, that his adversary, who was 
 anonymous, is a serving-man. " Finally, he winds up
 
 EQUALITY 301 
 
 his text with much doubt and trepidation ; for it may 
 be his trenchers were not scraped, and that which 
 never yet afforded corn of favor to his noddle — the 
 salt-cellar — was not rubbed; and therefore, in this 
 haste, easily granting that his answers fall foul upon 
 each other, and praying you would not think he writes 
 as a prophet, but as a man, he runs to the black jack, 
 fills his flagon, spreads the table, and serves up din- 
 ner." ^ There you have the same spirit of urbanity and 
 amenity, as much of it, and as little, as generally in- 
 forms the religious controversies of our Puritan mid- 
 dle class to this day. 
 
 But Mr. Goldwin Smith ^ insists, and picks out his 
 own exemplar of the Puritan type of life and manners ; 
 and even here let us follow him. He picks out the 
 most favorable specimen he can find, — Colonel Hutch- 
 inson,^ whose well-known memoirs, written by his 
 widow, we have all read with interest. '* Lucy Hutch- 
 inson," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, " is painting what 
 she thought a perfect Puritan would be ; and her pic- 
 ture presents to us not a coarse, crop-eared, and 
 snuffling fanatic, but a highly accomplished, refined, 
 gallant, and most amiable, though religious and seri- 
 ously minded, gentleman." Let us, I say, in this ex- 
 ample of Mr. Goldwin Smith's own choosing, lay our 
 finger upon the points where this type deflects from 
 the truly humane ideal. 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson relates a story which gives us a 
 good notion of what the amiable and accomplished 
 social intercourse, even of a picked Puritan family, 
 was; Her husband was governor of Nottingham. He 
 had occasion, she said, " to go and break up a private 
 meeting in the cannoneer's chamber " ; and in the 
 cannoneer's chamber " were found some notes con- 
 cerning pasdobaptism,* which, being brought into the
 
 302 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 goA'ernor's lodgings, his wife having perused them and 
 compared them with the Scriptures, found not what to 
 say against the truths they asserted concerning the mis- 
 application of that ordinance to infants." Soon after- 
 wards she expects her confinement, and communicates 
 the cannoneer's doubts about paedobaptism to her hus- 
 band. The fatal cannoneer makes a breach in him too. 
 " Then he bought and read all the eminent treatises 
 on both sides, which at that time came thick from 
 the presses, and still was cleared in the error of the 
 paedobaptists." Finally, Mrs. Hutchinson is confined. 
 Then the governor " invited all the ministers to din- 
 ner, and propounded his doubt and the ground thereof 
 to them. None of them could defend their practice 
 with any satisfactory reason, but the tradition of the 
 Church from the primitive times, and their main 
 buckler of federal holiness, which Tombs and Denne 
 had excellently overthrown. He and his wife then, pro- 
 fessing themselves unsatisfied, desired their opinions." 
 With the opinions I will not trouble you, but hasten to 
 the result : " Whereupon that infant was not baptised." 
 No doubt to a large division of English society at 
 this very day, that sort of dinner and discussion, and 
 indeed, the whole manner of life and conversation 
 here suggested by Mrs. Hutchinson's narrative, will 
 seem both natural and amiable, and such as to meet 
 the needs of man as a religious and social creature. 
 You know the conversation which reigns in thousands 
 of middle-class families at this hour, about nunneries, 
 teetotalism, the confessional, eternal punishment, ritu- 
 alism, disestablishment. It goes wherever the class 
 goes which is moulded on the Puritan type of life. In 
 the long winter evenings of Toronto Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith has had, probably, abundant experience of it. 
 What is its enemy ? The instinct of self-preservation
 
 EQUALITY S03 
 
 in humanity. Men make crude types and try to im- 
 pose them, but to no purpose. " L''homme s'agite^ 
 D'leu le vfiene^'' ^ says Bossuet. " There are many 
 devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of 
 the Eternal, that shall stand." ^ Those who offer us the 
 Puritan type of life offer us a religion not true, 
 the claims of intellect and knowledge not satisfied, the 
 claim of beauty not satisfied, the claim of manners not 
 satisfied. In its strong sense for conduct that life 
 touches truth ; but its other imperfections hinder it 
 from employing even this sense aright. The type mas- 
 tered our nation for a time. Then came the reaction. 
 The nation said : " This type, at any rate, is amiss ; 
 we are not going to be all like that ! " The type re- 
 tired into our middle class, and fortified itself there. 
 It seeks to endure, to emerge, to deny its own imper- 
 fections, to impose itself again ; — impossible ! If we 
 continue to live, we must outgrow it. The very class 
 in which it is rooted, our middle class, will have to ac- 
 knowledge the type's inadequacy, will have to acknowl- 
 edge the hideousness, the immense ennui of the life 
 which this type has created, will have to transform 
 itseK thoroughly. It will have to admit the large part 
 of truth which there is in the criticisms of our French- 
 man, whom we have too long forgotten. 
 
 After our middle class he turns his attention to our 
 lower class. And of the lower and larger portion of 
 this, the portion not bordering on the middle class 
 and sharing its faults, he says : " I consider this mul- 
 titude to be absolutely devoid, not only of political 
 principles, but even of the most simple notions of good 
 and evil. Certainly it does not appeal, this mob, to 
 the principles of '89, which you English make game 
 of ; it does not insist on the rights of man ; what it 
 wants is beer, gin, andy'wri."^
 
 304 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 That is a description of what Mr. Bright^ would 
 call the residuum, only our author seems to think the 
 residuum a very large body. And its condition strikes 
 him with amazement and horror. And surely well it 
 may. Let us recall Mr. Hamerton's account of the 
 most illiterate class in France ; what an amount of 
 civilization they have notwithstanding ! And this is 
 always to be understood, in hearing or reading a 
 Frenchman's praise of England. He envies our liberty, 
 our public spirit, our trade, our stability. But there 
 is always a reserve in his mind. He never means for 
 a moment that he would like to change with us. Life 
 seems to him so much better a thing in France for so 
 many more people, that, in spite of the fearful troubles 
 of France, it is best to be a Frenchman. A French- 
 man might agree with Mr. Cobden,^ that life is good 
 in England for those people who have at least <£5000 
 a year. But the civilization of that immense majority 
 who have not £5000 a year, or £500, or even £100, 
 — of our middle and lower class, — seems to him too 
 deplorable. 
 
 And now what has this condition of our middle 
 and lower class to tell us about equahty? How is it, 
 must we not ask, how is it that, being without fearful 
 troubles, having so many achievements to show and 
 so much success, having as a nation a deep sense for 
 conduct, having signal energy and honesty, having 
 a splendid aristocracy, having an exceptionally large 
 class of gentlemen, we are yet so little civilized? How 
 is it that our middle and lower classes, in spite of the 
 individuals among them who are raised by happy gifts 
 of nature to a more humane life, in spite of the se- 
 riousness of the middle class, in spite of the honesty 
 and power of true work, the virtus veritsque labor^ 
 which are to be found in abundance throughout the
 
 EQUALITY 305 
 
 lower, do yet present, as a whole, the characters which 
 we have seen? 
 
 And really it seems as if the current of our dis- 
 course carried us of itself to but one conclusion. It 
 seems as if we could not avoid concluding, that just as 
 France owes her fearful troubles to other things and 
 her civilizedness to equality, so we owe our immunity 
 from fearful troubles to other things, and our uncivi- 
 lizedness to inequality. " Knowledge is easy," says 
 the wise man, " to him that understandeth" j^ easy, he 
 means, to him who will use his mind simply and ration- 
 ally, and not to make him think he can know what he 
 cannot, or to maintain, per fas et nefas, a false thesis 
 with which he fancies his interests to be bound up. 
 And to him who will use his mind as the wise man 
 recommends, surely it is easy to see that our short- 
 comings in civilization are due to our inequality ; or, 
 in other words, that the great inequality of classes and 
 property, which came to us from the Middle Age and 
 which we maintain because we have the religion of in- 
 equality, that this constitution of things, I say, has 
 the natural and necessary effect, under present cir- 
 cumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgariz- 
 ing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.^ 
 And this is to fail in civilization. 
 
 For only just look how the facts combine them- 
 selves. I have said little as yet about our aristocratic 
 class, except that it is splendid. Yet these, " our often 
 very unhappy brethren," as Burke calls them, are by 
 no means matter for nothing but ecstasy. Our charity 
 ought certainly, Burke says, to " extend a due and 
 anxious sensation of pity to the distresses of the miser- 
 able great." Burke's extremely strong language about 
 their miseries and defects I will not quote. For my 
 part, I am always disposed to marvel that human be-
 
 306 ]VL\TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ings, in a position so false, should be so good as these 
 are. Their reason for existing was to serve as a num- 
 ber of centres in a world disintegrated after the ruin 
 of the Roman Empire, and slowly re-constituting it- 
 self. Numerous centres of material force were needed, 
 and these a feudal aristocracy supplied. Their large 
 and hereditary estates served this public end. The 
 owners had a positive function, for which their estates 
 were essential. In our modern world the function is 
 gone ; and the great estates, with an infinitely multi- 
 plied power of ministering to mere pleasure and in- 
 dulgence, remain. The energy and honesty of our race 
 does not leave itself without witness in this class, and 
 nowhere are there more conspicuous examples of indi- 
 viduals raised by happy gifts of nature far above their 
 fellows and their circumstances. For distinction of all 
 kinds this class has an esteem. Ever}i;hing which suc- 
 ceeds they tend to welcome, to win over, to put on 
 their side ; genius may generally make, if it will, not 
 bad terms for itself with them. But the total result of 
 the class, its effect on society at large and on national 
 progress, are what we must regard. And on the whole, 
 with no necessary function to fulfil, never conversant 
 with life as it really is, tempted, flattered, and spoiled 
 from childhood to old age, our aristocratic class is 
 inevitably materialized, and the more so the more 
 the development of industry and ingenuity augments 
 the means of luxury. Every one can see how bad is the 
 action of such an aristocracy upon the class of newly 
 enriched people, whose great danger is a materialistic 
 ideal, just because it is the ideal they can easiest com- 
 prehend. Nor is the mischief of this action now com- 
 pensated by signal services of a public kind. Turn 
 even to that sphere which aristocracies think specially 
 their own, and where they have under other circum-
 
 EQUALITY 307 
 
 stances been really effective, — the sphere of politics. 
 When there is need, as now, for any large forecast of 
 the course of human affairs, for an acquaintance with 
 the ideas which in the end sway mankind, and for an 
 estimate of their power, aristocracies are out of their 
 element, and materialized aristocracies most of all. In 
 the immense spiritual movement of our day, the Eng- 
 lish aristocracy, as I have elsewhere said, always re- 
 minds me of Pilate confronting the phenomenon of 
 Christianity. Nor can a materialized class have any 
 serious and fruitful sense for the power of beauty. 
 They may imagine themselves to be in pursuit of 
 beauty ; but how often, alas, does the pursuit come to 
 little more than dabbling a little in what they are 
 pleased to call art, and making a great deal of what 
 they are pleased to call love ! 
 
 Let us return to their merits. For the power of 
 manners an aristocratic class, whether materialized or 
 not, will always, from its circumstances, have a strong 
 sense. And although for this power of social life and 
 manners, so important to civilization, our English 
 race has no special natural turn, in our aristocracy 
 this power emerges and marks them. When the day 
 of general humanization comes, they will have fixed 
 the standard of manners. The English simplicity, too, 
 makes the best of the English aristocracy more frank 
 and natural than the best of the like class anywhere 
 else, and even the worst of them it makes free from 
 the incredible fatuities and absurdities of the worst. 
 Then the sense of conduct they share with their coun- 
 trymen at large. In no class has it such trials to un- 
 dergo ; in none is it more often and more grievously 
 overborne. But really the right comment on this is 
 the comment of Pepys^ upon the evil courses of 
 Charles the Second and the Duke of York and the
 
 308 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 court of that day : " At all which I am sorry ; but it 
 is the effect of idleness, and having nothing else to 
 employ their great spirits upon." 
 
 Heaven forbid that I should speak in dispraise of 
 that unique and most English class which Mr. Charles 
 Sumner extols — the large class of gentlemen, not of 
 the landed class or of the nobility, but cultivated and 
 refined. They are a seemly product of the energy and 
 of the power to rise in our race. AYithout, in general, 
 rank and splendor and wealth and luxury to polish 
 them, they have made their own the high standard of 
 life and manners of an aristocratic and refined class. 
 Not having all the dissipations and distractions of this 
 class, they are much more seriously alive to the power 
 of intellect and knowledge, to the power of beauty. 
 The sense of conduct, too, meets with fewer trials in 
 this class. To some extent, however, their contiguous- 
 ness to the aristocratic class has now the effect of ma- 
 terializing them, as it does the class of newly enriched 
 people. The most palpable action is on the young 
 amongst them, and on their standard of life and enjoy- 
 ment. But in general, for this whole class, established 
 facts, the materialism which they see regnant, too 
 much block their mental horizon, and limit the possi- 
 bilities of things to them. They are deficient in open- 
 ness and flexibility of mind, in free play of ideas, in 
 faith and ardor. Civilized they are, but they are not 
 much of a civilizing force ; they are somehow bounded 
 and ineffective. 
 
 So on the middle class they produce singularly little 
 effect. AVhat the middle class sees is that splendid 
 piece of materialism, the aristoQratic class, with a 
 wealth and luxury utterly out of their reach, with a 
 standard of social life and manners, the offspring of 
 that wealth and luxury, seeming utterly out of their
 
 EQUALITY 309 
 
 reach also. And thus they are thrown back upon 
 themselves — upon a defective type of religion, a nar- 
 row range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense 
 of beauty, a low standard of manners. And the lower 
 class see before them the aristocratic class, and its 
 civilization, such as it is, even infinitely more out of 
 their reach than out of that of the middle class ; while 
 the life of the middle class, with its unlovely types of 
 religion, thought, beauty, and manners, has naturally, 
 in general, no great attractions for them either. And 
 so they, too, are thrown back upon themselves ; upon 
 their beer, their gin, and their fun. Now, then, you 
 will understand what I meant by saying that our in- 
 equality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our 
 middle class, brutalizes our lower. 
 
 And the greater the inequality the more marked is 
 its bad action upon the middle and lower classes. In 
 Scotland the landed aristocracy fills the scene, as is 
 well known, still more than in England ; the other 
 classes are more squeezed back and effaced. And the 
 social civilization of the lower middle class and of the 
 poorest class, in Scotland, is an example of the conse- 
 quences. Compared with the same class even in Eng- 
 land, the Scottish lower middle class is most visibly, 
 to vary Mr. Charles Sumner's phrase, less well-bred, 
 less careful in personal habits and in social conven- 
 tions, less refined. Let any one who doubts it go, after 
 issuing from the aristocratic solitudes which possess 
 Loch Lomond, let him go and observe the shopkeepers 
 and the middle class in Dumbarton, and Greenock, 
 and Gourock, and the places along the mouth of the 
 Clyde. And for the poorest class, who that has seen 
 it can ever forget the hardly human horror, the abjec- 
 tion and uncivilizedness of Glasgow? 
 
 What a strange religion, then, is our religion of
 
 310 AL\TTHEW AKNOLD 
 
 inequality ! Romance often helps a religion to hold its 
 ground, and romance is good in its way ; but ours is 
 not even a romantic religion. No doubt our aristoc- 
 racy is an object of very strong public interest. The 
 Times itself bestows a leading article by way of epitha- 
 lamium on the Duke of Norfolk's marriage. And those 
 journals of a new type, full of talent, and which in- 
 terest me particularl}^ because they seem as if they 
 were written by the young lion ^ of our youth, — the 
 young lion grown mellow and, as the French say, viveur^ 
 arrived at his full and ripe knowledge of the world, 
 and minded to enjoy the smooth evening of his days, — 
 those journals, in the main a sort of social gazette of 
 the aristocracy, are apparently not read by that class 
 only which they most concern, but are read with great 
 avidity by other classes also. And the common people, 
 too, have undoubtedly, as Mr. Gladstone says, a won- 
 derful preference for a lord. Yet our aristocracy, from 
 the action upon it of the Wars of the Roses, the 
 Tudors, and the political necessities of George the 
 Third, is for the imagination a singularly modern and 
 uninteresting one. Its splendor of station, its wealth, 
 show, and luxury, is then what the other classes really 
 admire in it ; and this is not an elevating admiration. 
 Such an admiration will never lift us out of our w\- 
 garity and brutality, if we chance to be vulgar and 
 brutal to start with ; it will rather feed them and be 
 fed by them. So that when Mr. Gladstone invites us 
 to call our love of inequality " the complement of the 
 love of freedom or its negative pole, or the shadow 
 which the love of freedom casts, or the reverberation 
 of its voice in the halls of the constitution," we must 
 surely answer that all this mystical eloquence is not 
 in the least necessary to explain so simple a matter ; 
 that our love of inequality is really the vulgarity in
 
 EQUALITY 311 
 
 us, and the brutality, admiring and worshipping the 
 splendid materiality. 
 
 Our present social organization, however, will and 
 must endure until our middle class is provided with 
 some better ideal of life than it has now. Our present 
 organization has been an appointed stage in our 
 growth ; it has been of good use, and has enabled us 
 to do great things. But the use is at an end, and the 
 stage is over. Ask yourselves if you do not sometimes 
 feel in yourselves a sense, that in spite of the stren- 
 uous efforts for good of so many excellent persons 
 amongst us, we begin somehow to flounder and to beat 
 the air ; that we seem to be finding ourselves stopped 
 on this line of advance and on that, and to be threat- 
 ened with a sort of standstill. It is that we are trying 
 to live on with a social organization of which the day 
 is over. Certainly equality will never of itself alone 
 give us a perfect civilization. But, with such inequality 
 as ours, a perfect civilization is impossible. 
 
 To that conclusion, facts, and the stream itself of 
 this discourse, do seem, I think, to carry us irresist- 
 ibly. We arrive at it because they so choose, not be- 
 cause we so choose. Our tendencies are all the other 
 way. We are all of us politicians, and in one of two 
 camps, the Liberal or the Conservative. Liberals tend 
 to accept the middle class as it is, and to praise the 
 nonconformists ; while Conservatives tend to accept 
 the upper class as it is, and to praise the aristocracy. 
 And yet here we are at the conclusion, that whereas 
 one of the great obstacles to our civilization is, as I 
 have often said, British nonconformity, another main 
 obstacle to our civilization is British aristocracy ! And 
 this while we are yet forced to recognize excellent 
 special qualities as well as the general English energy 
 and honesty, and a number of emergent humane indi-
 
 812 AIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 viduals, in both nonconformists and aristocracy. 
 Clearly sucli a conclusion can be none of our own 
 seeking. 
 
 Then again, to remedy our inequality, there must 
 be a change in the law of bequest, as there has been 
 in France ; and the faults and inconveniences of the 
 present French law of bequest are obvious. It tends 
 to ovei'-divide property ; it is unequal in operation, 
 and can be eluded by people limiting their families ; 
 it makes the children, however ill they may behave, 
 independent of the parent. To be sure, Mr. Mill i and 
 others have shown that a law of bequest fixing the 
 maximum, whether of laud or money, which any one 
 individual may take by bequest or inheritance, but in 
 other respects leaving the testator quite fi*ee, has none 
 of the inconveniences of the French law, and is in 
 every way preferable. But evidently these are not 
 questions of practical politics. Just imagine Lord Hart- 
 ington 2 going down to Glasgow, and meeting his Scotch 
 Liberals there, and sa}dng to them : " You are ill at 
 ease, and you are calling for change, and very justly. 
 But the cause of your being ill at ease is not what you 
 suppose. The cause of your being ill at ease is the pro- 
 found imperfectness of your social civilization. Your 
 social civilization is, indeed, such as I forbear to char- 
 acterize. But the remedy is not disestablishment. The 
 remedy is social equality. Let me direct your atten- 
 tion to a reform in the law of bequest and entail." 
 One can hardly speak of such a thing without laugh- 
 ing. No, the matter is at present one for the thoughts 
 of those who think. It is a thinj: to be turned over in 
 the minds of those who, on the one hand, have the 
 spirit of scientific inquirers, bent on seeing things as 
 they really are ; and, on the other hand, the spirit of 
 friends of the humane life, lovers of perfection. To
 
 EQUALITY 313 
 
 your thoughts I commit it. And perhaps, the more 
 you think of it, the more you will be persuaded that 
 Menander ^ showed his wisdom quite as much when he 
 said Choose equality^ as when he assured us that Eml 
 communications corrupt good manners.
 
 NOTES 
 
 POETRY AND THE CLASSICS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 I. Poetry and the Classics. Published as Preface to 
 Poems: 1853 (dated Fox How, Ambleside, October 1, 1853). 
 It was reprinted in Irish Essays, 1882. 
 
 2. the poem. Empedocles on Etna. 
 
 3. the Sophists. " A name given by the Greeks about the 
 middle of the fifth century B.C. to certain teachers of a supe- 
 rior grade who, distinguishing themselves from philosophers 
 on the one hand and from artists and craftsmen on the other, 
 claimed to prepare their pupils, not for any particular study 
 or profession, but for civic life." Encyclo'pcedia Britannica. 
 
 2 I. Poetics, 4. 
 
 2. Theognis, 11. 54-56. 
 
 4 I. " The poet," it is said. In the Spectator of April 2, 
 1853. The words quoted were not used with reference to 
 poems of mine. [Arnold.] 
 
 5 I. Dido. See the Iliad, the Oresteia (Agamemnon, Choe- 
 phoroe, and Eumenides) of iEschylus, and the J^neid. 
 
 2. Hermann and Dorothea, Childe Harold, Jocelyn, the 
 Excursion. Long narrative poems by Goethe, Byron, 
 Lamartine, and Wordsworth. 
 
 6 I. (Edipus. See the (Edipus Tyrannus and CEdipus 
 Coloneus of Sophocles. 
 
 7 I. grand style. Arnold, while admitting that the term 
 grand style, which he repeatedly uses, is incapable of exact 
 verbal definition, describes it most adequately in the essay 
 On Translating Homer : " 1 think it will be found that the 
 grand style arises in poetry when a noble nature, poetically 
 gifted, treats with simplicity or with^severity a serious sub- 
 ject." See On the Study of Celtic Literature and on Translat- 
 ing Homer, ed. 1895, pp. 264-69. 
 
 2. Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmaeon. The story of Orestes 
 was dramatized by jEschylus, by Sophocles, and by Eurip- 
 ides. Merope was the subject of a f lost tragedy by Eurip- 
 ides and of several modern plays, including one by Matthew 
 Arnold himself. The story of Alcmaeon was the subject of 
 several tragedies which have not been preserved. 
 
 8 I. Polybius. A Greek historian (c. 204-122 B.C.). 
 
 9 I. Menander. See Contribution of the Celts, Selections, 
 Note 3, p.^177. 
 
 12 I . rien a dire. He says all that he wishes to, but unfortu- 
 nately he has nothing to say. 
 
 13 I. Boccaccio's Decameron, 4th day, 5th novel.
 
 316 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2. Henry Hallam (1777-1859). English historian. See 
 his Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, 
 
 _ Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, chap. 23, §§ 51, 52. 
 
 14 I. Frangois Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874), his- 
 torian, orator, and statesman of France. 
 
 16 I. Pittacus, of Mytilene in Lesbos (c. 650-569 B.C.), was 
 one of the Seven Sages of Greece. His favorite sayings 
 were: " It is hard to be excellent " (xa^eT6c icrd'Khv (n/ievai), 
 and " Know when to act." 
 
 17 I. Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831) was a German 
 statesman and historian. His Roman History (1827-32) 
 is an epoch-making work. For his opinion of his age see his 
 Life and Letters, London, 1852, ii, 396. 
 
 18 I. Mneid, xii, 894-95. 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT 
 TIME 
 
 20 I. Reprinted from The National Review, November, 
 1864, in the Essays in Criticism, Macmillan & Co., 1865. 
 
 2. In On Translating Homer, ed. 1903, pp. 216-17. 
 
 3. An essay called Wordsworth : The Man and the Poet, 
 published in The North British Review for August, 1864, 
 vol. 41. John Campbell Shairp (1819-85), Scottish critic 
 and man of letters, was professor of poetry at Oxford from 
 1877 to 1884. The best of his lectures from this chair were 
 published in 1881 as Aspects of Poetry. 
 
 4. I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in 
 England during the last century, and still followed in France, 
 of printing a notice of this kind, — a notice by a competent 
 critic, — to serve as an introduction to an eminent author's 
 works, might be revived among us with advantage. To 
 introduce all succeeding editions of Wordsworth, Mr. 
 Shairp 's notice might, it seems to me, excellently serve; it is 
 written from the point of view of an admirer, nay, of a disci- 
 ple, and that is right; but then the disciple must be also, as 
 in this case he is, a critic, a man of letters, not, as too often 
 happens, some relation or friend with no qualification for his 
 task except affection for his author. [Arnold.] 
 
 5. See Memoirs of William Wordsworth, ed. 1851, 11, 151, 
 letter to Bernard Barton. 
 
 21 I. Irene. An unsuccessful play of Dr. Johnson's. 
 
 22 I. Preface. Prefixed to the second edition (1800) of the 
 Lyrical Ballads. 
 
 28 I. The old woman. At the first attempt to read the 
 newly prescribed liturgy in St. Giles.'s Church, Edinburgh, 
 on July 23, 1637, a riot took place, in which the " fauld- 
 stools," or folding stools, of the congregation were hurled 
 as missiles. An untrustworthy tradition attributes the fling- 
 ing of the first stool to a certain Jenny or Janet Geddes. 
 
 29 I. Pensees de J. Joubert, ed. 1850, i, 355, titre 15, 2.
 
 NOTES 317 
 
 PAGE 
 
 30 1. French Revolution. The latter part of Burke's life waa 
 largely devoted to a conflict with the upholders of the French 
 Revolution. Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, 
 and Letters on a Regicide Peace, 1796, are his most famous 
 writings in this cause. 
 
 31 I. Richard Price, D.D. (1723-91), was strongly opposed 
 to the war with America and in sympathy with the French 
 revolutionists. 
 
 2. From Goldsmith's epitaph on Burke in the Retaliation. 
 
 32 I. Num. XXII, 35. 
 
 2. William Eden, First Baron Auckland (1745-1814), 
 English statesman. Among other services he represented 
 English interests in Holland during the critical years 1790- 
 93. 
 
 35 I. Revue des deux Mondes. The best-known of the 
 French magazines devoted to literature, art, and general 
 criticism, founded in Paris in 1831 by Frangois Buloz. 
 
 36 I. Home and Foreign Review. Pubhshed in London 
 1882-64. 
 
 37 I. Charles Bowyer Adderley, First Baron Norton (1814- 
 1905), English politician, inherited valuable estates in 
 Warwickshire. He was a strong churchman and especially 
 interested in education and the colonies. 
 
 2. John Arthur Roebuck (1801-79), a leading radical and 
 utilitarian reformer, conspicuous for his eloquence, honesty, 
 and strong hostility to the government of his day. He held a 
 seat for Sheffield from 1849 until his death. 
 
 38 I From Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, i, ii, 91-92. 
 
 40 I. detachment. In the Buddhistic religion salvation is 
 found through an emancipation from the craving for the 
 gratification of the senses, for a future life, and for pros- 
 perity. 
 
 42 I. John Somers, Baron Somers (1651-1716), was the 
 most trusted minister of William III, and a stanch supporter 
 of the English Constitution. See Addison, The Freeholder, 
 May 14, 1716, and Macauley's History, iv, 53. 
 
 2. William Cobbett (1762-1835). English politician and 
 writer. As a pamphleteer his reputation was injured by his 
 pugnacity, self-esteem, and virulence of language. See 
 Heine, Selections, p. 120, and The Contribution of the Celts, 
 Selections, p. 179. 
 
 3. Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850) contain much 
 violent denunciation of the society of his day. 
 
 4. Ruskin turned to political economy about 1860. In 
 1862, he published U7ito this Last, followed by other works 
 of similar nature. 
 
 5. terrae filii. Sons of Mother Earth; hence, obscure, 
 mean persons. 
 
 6- See Heine, Selections, Note 2, p. 117. 
 
 43 I. To think is so hard. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's 
 Apprenticeship, Book vii, chap. ix.
 
 318 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2. See Senancour's Obermann, letter 90. Arnold was much 
 influenced by this remarkable book. For an account of the 
 author (1770-1846) and the book see Arnold's Stanzas in 
 Memory oj the Author of " Obermann," with note on the 
 poem, and the essay on Obermann in Essays in Criticism, 
 third series. 
 
 3. So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and con- 
 troversy, that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of 
 time from the occasion which called them forth, the essays 
 in which I criticized Dr. Colenso's book; I feel bound, how- 
 ever, after all that has passed, to make here a final declara- 
 tion of my sincere impenitence for having published them. 
 Nay, I cannot forbear repeating j^et once more, for his bene- 
 fit and that of his readers, this sentence from my original 
 remarks upon him; There is truth of science and truth of 
 religion ; truth of science does not become truth of religion till it 
 is made religious. And I will add : Let us have all the science 
 there is from the men of science; from the men of religion 
 let us have religion. [Arnold.] 
 
 John William Colenso (1814-83), Bishop of Natal, pub- 
 lished a series of treatises on the Pentateuch, extending from 
 1862-1879, opposing the traditional views about the literal 
 inspiration of the Scriptures and the actual historical char- 
 acter of the Mosaic story. Arnold's censorious criticism of 
 the first volume of this work is entitled The Bishop and the 
 Philosopher (Macmillan's Magazine, January, 18Q3). As an 
 example of the Bishop's cheap " arithmetical demonstra- 
 tions" he describes him as presenting the case of Leviticus 
 as follows: " '// three priests have to cat 264 pigeons a day, 
 how many rhust each priest eat ? ' That disposes of Leviti- 
 cus." The essay is devoted chiefly to contrasting Bishop 
 Colenso's unedifying methods with those of the philosopher 
 Spinoza. In passing, Arnold refers also to Dr. Stanley's 
 Sinai and Palestine (1856), quotations from which are 
 characterized as " the refreshing spots " in the Bishop's 
 volume. 
 
 4. It has been said 'I make it "a crime against literary 
 criticism and the higher culture to attempt to inform the 
 ignorant." Need I point out that the ignorant are not 
 informed bv being confirmed in a confusion? [Arnold.] 
 
 44 I. Joubert's Pensees, ed. ISoO, 11, 102, titre 23, 54. 
 
 2. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-81), Dean of West- 
 minster. He was the author of a Life of (Thomas) Arnold, 
 1844. In university politics and in religious discussions he 
 was a Liberal and the advocate of toleration and compre- 
 hension. 
 
 3. Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904), a prominent Eng- 
 lish philanthropist and woman of letters. The quotation 
 below is from Broken Lights (1864), p. 134. Her Religious 
 Duty (1857), referred to on p. 46, is a book of religious and 
 ethical instruction written from the Unitarian point of 
 view.
 
 NOTES 319 
 
 PAGE 
 
 4. Ernest Renan. (1823-92), French philosopher and 
 Orientalist. The Vie de Jesus (1863), here referred to, was 
 begun in Syria and is filled with the atmosphere of the East, 
 but is a work of literary rather than of scholarly importance. 
 
 45 I. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74), German theolo- 
 gian and man of letters. The work referred to is the Leben 
 Jesu, 1835. A popular edition was published in 1864. 
 
 2. From " Fleury (Preface) on the Gospel." — Arnold's 
 Note Book. 
 
 46 I. Cicero's Att. 16. 7. 3. 
 
 2. Coleridge's happy phrase. Coleridge's Confessions of 
 an Inquiring Spirit, letter 2. 
 
 49 I. Luther's theory of grace. The question concerning 
 the " means of grace," i.e. whether the efficacy of the 
 sacraments as channels of the divine grace is ex opere operato, 
 or dependent on the faith of the recipient, was the chief 
 subject of controversy between Catholics and Protestants 
 during the period of the Reformation. 
 
 2. Jacques B^nigne Bossuet (1627-1704), French divine, 
 orator, and writer. His Discours sur I'histoire universelle 
 (1681) was an attempt to provide ecclesiastical authority 
 with a rational basis. It is dominated by the conviction that 
 " the establishment of Christianity was the one point of real 
 importance in the whole history of the world." 
 
 50 I. From Virgil's Eclogues, iv, 5. Translated in Shelley's 
 Hellas : "The world's great age begins anew." 
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 
 
 65 I. Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to The 
 English Poets, edited by T. H. Ward. Reprinted in Essays 
 in Criticism, Second Series, Macmillan & Co., 1888. 
 
 2. This quotation is taken, slightly condensed, from the 
 closing paragraph of a short introduction contributed by 
 Arnold to The Hundred Greatest Men, Sampson, Low & Co., 
 London, 1885. 
 
 56 I. From the Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical 
 Ballads, 1800. 
 
 2. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-69), French 
 critic, was looked upon by Arnold as in certain respects his 
 master in the art of criticism. 
 
 57 I. a criticism of life. This celebrated phrase was first 
 used by Arnold in the essay on Joubert (1864), though the 
 theory is implied in On Translating Homer, 1861. In Jou- 
 bert it is applied to literature: " The end and aim of all lit- 
 erature, if one considers it attentively, is, in truth, nothing 
 but that." It was much attacked, especially as applied to 
 poetry, and is defended as so applied in the essay on Byron 
 (1881). See also Wordsworth, Selections, p. 230. 
 
 2. Compare Arnold's definition of the function of criti- 
 cism, Selections, p. 52.
 
 320 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 59 I. Paul Pellisson (1624-93). Jrench author, friend of 
 Mile. Scudcry, and historiographer to the king. 
 
 2. Barren and servile civility. 
 
 3. M. Charles d' Hericault was joint editor of the Jannet 
 edition (1868-72) of the poems of Clement Marot (1496- 
 1544). 
 
 62 I. Imitation of Christ, Book iii, chap. 43, 2. 
 
 2. CaBdmon. The first important religious poet in Old 
 English literature. Died about 680 a.d. 
 
 3. Ludovic Vitet (1802-73). French dramatist and poli- 
 tician. 
 
 4. Chanson de Roland. The greatest of the Chansons des 
 Gestes, long narrative poems dealing with warfare and ad- 
 venture, popular in France during the Middle Ages. It was 
 composed in the eleventh century. Taillefer was the sur- 
 name of a bard and warrior of the eleventh century. The 
 tradition concerning him is related by Wace, Roman de 
 Rou, third part, v., 8035-62, ed. Andreson, Heilbronn, 
 1879. The Bodleian Roland ends with the words: " ci folt 
 la geste, que Turoldus declinet." Turold has not been 
 identified. 
 
 63 I. " Then began he to call many things to remembrance, 
 — all the lands which his valor conquered, and pleasant 
 France, and the men of his lineage, and Charlemagne his 
 liege lord who nourished him." — Chanson de Roland, iii, 
 939-42. [Arnold.] 
 
 2. " So said she; they long since in Earth's soft arms were 
 reposing. 
 There, in their own dearland, their fatherland, Lace- 
 daemon." 
 
 Iliad, III, 243, 244 (translated by 
 Dr. Hawtrey). [Arnold.] 
 
 64 I. " Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, 
 to a mortal ? but ye are without old age, and immortal. Was 
 it that with men born to misery ye might have sorrow ? " — 
 Iliad, XVII, 443-445. [Arnold.] 
 
 2. " Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as 
 we hear, happy." — Iliad, xxiv, 543. [Arnold.] 
 
 3. " I wailed not, so of stone grew I within; — they 
 wailed." — Inferno, xxxiii, 39, 40. [Arnold.] 
 
 4. " Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made 
 me, that your misery toucheth me not, neither doth the 
 flame of this fire strike me." — Inferno, 11, 91-93. [Arnold.] 
 
 5. " In His will is our peace." — Paradiso, iii, 85. 
 [Arnold.] 
 
 6. Hetiry IV, part 2, iii, i, 18-20. 
 
 65 I. Hamlet, v, ii, 361-62. 
 
 2. Paradise Lost, 1, 599-602. 
 
 3. Ibid., I, 108-9. 
 
 4. Ibid., TV, 271. 
 
 66 I. Poetics, § 9.
 
 NOTES 321 
 
 PAGE 
 
 67 I. Provengal, the language of southern France, from the 
 southern French oc instead of the northern oil for "yes." 
 
 68 I. Dante acknowledges his debt to Latini (c. 1230-c. 1294), 
 but the latter was probably not his tutor. He is the author 
 of the Tesoretto, a heptasyllabic Italian poem, and the prose 
 Livres dou Tresor, a sort of encyclopedia of medieval lore, 
 written in French because that language " is more delight- 
 ful and more widely known." 
 
 2. Christian of Troyes. A French poet of the second half of 
 the twelfth century, author of numerous narrative poems 
 dealing with legends of the Round Table. The present quo- 
 tation is from the Cliges, 11. 30-39. 
 
 69 I. Chaucer's two favorite stanzas, the seven-line and 
 eight-line stanzas in heroic verse, were imitated from Old 
 French poetry. See B. ten Brink's The Language and Meter 
 of Chaucer, 1901, pp. 353-57. 
 
 2. Wolfram von Eschenbach. A medieval German poet, 
 born in the end of the twelfth century. His best-known 
 poem is the epic Parzival. 
 
 70 I. From Dryden's Preface to the Fables, 1700. 
 
 2. The Confessio Amantis, the single English poem of 
 John Gower (c. 1330-1408), was in existence in 1392-93. 
 
 71 I. souded. The French sonde, soldered, fixed fast. 
 [Arnold.] From the Prioress's Tale, ed. Skeat, 1894, B. 
 1769. The line should read," O martir, souded to virgini- 
 tee." 
 
 73 I. Frangois Villon, born in or near Paris in 1431, thief 
 and poet. His best-known poems are his ballades. See R. L. 
 Stevenson's essay. 
 
 2. The name Heaulmibre is said to be derived from a 
 headdress (helm) worn as a mark by courtesans. In Villon's 
 ballad, a poor old creature of this class laments her days of 
 youth and beauty. The last stanza of the ballad runs thus: 
 
 " Ainai le bon temps regretons 
 Entre nous, pauvres vieilles sottes. 
 Assises bas, 4 croppetons, 
 Tout en ung tas comme pelottes; 
 A petit feu de chenevottes 
 Tost allumfies, tost estainctes. 
 Et jadis fusmes si mignottes ! 
 Ainsi en prend k maintz et maintes." 
 
 _ " Thus amongst ourselves we regret the good time, poor 
 silly old things, low-seated on our heels, all in a heap like so 
 many balls; by a little fire of hemp-stalks, soon lighted, soon 
 spent. And once we were such darlings! So fares it with 
 many and many a one." [Arnold.] 
 
 74 I. From An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1688. 
 
 2. A statement to this effect is made by Dryden in the 
 Preface to the Fables. 
 
 3. From Preface to the Fables. 
 
 75 I. See Wordsworth's Essay, Supplementary to the Preface, 
 1815, and Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.
 
 322 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2. An Apology for Smedymnus, Prose Works, ed. 1843, 
 
 III, 117-18. Milton was thirty-four years old at this time. 
 
 76 I. The opening words of Dryden's Postscript to the Reader 
 in the translation of Virgil, 1697. 
 
 77 I. The opening lines of The Hind and the Panther. 
 2. Imitations of Horace, Book ii, Satire 2, 11. 143-44. 
 
 78 I. From On the Death of Robert Dundas, Esq. 
 
 79 I. Clarinda, A name assumed by Mrs. Maclehose in her 
 sentimental connection with Burns, who corresponded with 
 her under the name of Sylvander. 
 
 2. Burns to Mr. Thomson, October 19, 1794. 
 
 80 I. From The Holy Fair. 
 
 81 I. From Epistle: To a Young Friend. 
 
 2. From Address to the Unco' Guid, or the Rigidly Right- 
 eous. 
 
 3. From Epistle: To Dr. Blacklock. 
 
 4. See his Memorabilia. 
 
 83 I. From Winter: A Dirge. 
 
 84 I. From Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, iii, iv, last line. 
 2. Ibid., II, V. 
 
 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 
 
 87 I. Reprinted (considerably revised) from the Nineteenth 
 Century, August, 1882, vol. xii, in Discourses in America, 
 Macmillan & Co., 1885. It was the most popular of the 
 three lectures given by Arnold during his visit to America in 
 1883-84. 
 
 2. Plato's Republic, 6. 495, Dialogues, ed. Jowett, 1875, 
 vol. 3, p. 194. 
 
 3. working lawyer. Plato's Thecetetus, 172-73, Dialogues, 
 
 IV, 231. 
 
 88 I. majesty. All editions read "majority." What Emer- 
 son said was "majesty," which is therefore substituted here. 
 See Emerson's Literary Ethics, Works, Centenary ed., i, 179. 
 
 89 I. "His whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the ac- 
 quirement of justice and temperance and wisdom. . . . And 
 in the first place, he will honor studies which impress these 
 qualities on his soul and will disregard others." — Republic, 
 IX, 591, Dialogues, iii, 305. 
 
 91 I. See The Fxinction of Criticism, Selections, p. 52. 
 
 2. Delivered October 1, 1880, and printed in Science and 
 Culture and Other Essays, Macmillan & Co., 1881. 
 
 3. See The Function of Criticism, Selections, pp. 52-53. 
 
 92 I. See L' Instruction superieur en France in Renan's 
 Questions Contemporaines, Paris, 1868. 
 
 93 I. Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824), German philolo- 
 gist and critic. 
 
 99 I. See Plato's Symposium, Dialogues, 11, 52-63. 
 100 I. James Joseph Sylvester (1814-97), English mathema- 
 tician. In 1883, the year of Arnold's lecture, he resigned a
 
 NOTES 323 
 
 PAGE 
 
 position as teacher in Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 
 to accept the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford. 
 
 101 I. Darwin's famous proposition. Descent of Man, Fa,Tt in, 
 chap. XXI, ed. 1888, ii, 424. 
 
 103 I. Michael Faraday (1791-1867), English chemist and 
 physicist, and the discoverer of the induction of electrical 
 currents. He belonged to the very small Christian sect 
 called after Robert Sandeman, and his opinion with respect 
 to the relation between his science and his religion is ex- 
 pressed in a lecture on mental education printed at the end 
 of his Researches in Chemistry and Physics. 
 
 105 I. Eccles. VIII, 17. [Arnold.] 
 
 2. Iliad, XXIV, 49. [Arnold.] 
 
 3. Luke IX, 25. 
 107 1. Macbeth, v, iii. 
 
 109 I. A touching account of the devotion of Lady Jane 
 Grey (1537-54) to her studies is to be found in Ascham's 
 Scholemaster, Arber's ed., 46-47. 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 112 I. Reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine, vol. viii, 
 August, 1863, in Essays in Criticism, 1st series, 1865. 
 
 2. Written from Paris, March 30, 1855. See Heine's 
 Memoirs, ed. 1910, 11, 270. 
 
 113 I. The German Romantic school of Tieck (1773-1853), 
 Novalis (1772-1801), and Richter (1763-1825) followed the 
 classical school of Schiller and Goethe. It was characterized 
 by a return to individualism, subjectivity, and the super- 
 natural. Carlyle translated extracts from Tieck and Richter 
 in his German Romance (1827), and his Critical and Miscel- 
 laneous Essays contain essays on Richter and Novalis. 
 
 114 I. From English Fragments; Conclusion, in Pictures of 
 Travel, ed. 1891, Leland's translation, Works, iii, 466-67. 
 
 117 I. Heine's birthplace was not Hamburg, but Diisseldorf. 
 2. Philistinism. In German university slang the term 
 Philister was applied to townsmen by students, and corre- 
 sponded to the English university "snob." Hence it came to 
 mean a person devoid of culture and enlightenment, and is 
 used in this sense by Goethe in 1773. Heine was especially 
 instrumental in popularizing the expression outside of 
 Germany. Carlyle first introduced it into English literature 
 in 1827. In a note to the discussion of Goethe in the second 
 edition of German Romance, he speaks of a Philistine as one 
 who" judged of Brunswick mum, by its utility." He adds: 
 "Stray specimens of the Philistine nation are said to exist 
 in our own Islands; but we have no name for them like the 
 Germans." The term occurs also in Carlyle's essays on The 
 State of German Literature, 1827, and Historic Survey of 
 German Poetry, 1831. Arnold, however, has done most to es- 
 tablish the word in English usage. He applies it especially to
 
 324 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 members of the middle class who are swayed chiefly by ma- 
 terial interests and are blind to the force of ideas and the 
 value of culture. Leslie Stephen, who is always ready to 
 plead the cause of the Philistine, remarks: "As a clergyman 
 always calls every one from whom he differs an atheist, and 
 a bargee has one or two favorite but unmentionable ex- 
 pressions for the same purpose, so a prig always calls his ad- 
 versary a Philistine." Mr. Matthew Arnold and the Church 
 of England, Fraser's Magazine, October, 1870. 
 
 3. The word solecism is derived from 26Xot, in Cilicia, 
 owing to the corruption of the Attic dialect among the 
 Athenian colonists of that place. 
 
 118 I. The " gig " as Carljde's symbol of philistinism takes 
 its origin from a dialogue which took place in Thurtell's 
 trial: "I always thought him a respectable man." " What 
 do you mean by 'respectable '? " " He kept a gig." From 
 this he coins the words " gigman," " gigmanity," " gig- 
 mania," which are of frequent occurrence in his writings. 
 
 119 I. English Fragments, Pictures of Travel, Works, iii, 464. 
 
 120 I. See The Function of Criticism, Selections, Note 2, p. 
 42. 
 
 121 I. English Fragments, chap, ix, in Pictures of Travel, 
 Works, III, 410-11. 
 
 2. Adapted from a line in Wordsworth's Resolution and 
 Independence. 
 
 122 I. Charles the Fifth. Ruler of The Holy Roman Empire, 
 1500-58. 
 
 124 I. English Fragments, Conclusion, in Pictures of Travel, 
 Works, III, 468-70. 
 
 2. A complete edition has at last appeared in Germany. 
 [Arnold.] 
 
 125 I. Augustin Eugene Scribe (1791-1861), French drama- 
 tist, for fifty years the best exponent of the ideas of the 
 French middle class. 
 
 126 I. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III), 
 1808-73, son of Louis Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon I, by 
 the coup d'etat of December, 1851, became Emperor of 
 France. This was accompHshed against the resistance of the 
 Moderate Republicans, partly through the favor of his 
 democratic theories with the mass of the French people. 
 Heine was mistaken, however, in believing that the rule of 
 Louis Napoleon had prepared the way for Communism. An 
 attempt to bring about a Communistic revolution was easily 
 crushed in 1871. 
 
 127 I. J. J. von Goerres (1776-1848), Klemens Brentano 
 (1778-1842), and Ludwig Achim von Arnim (1781-1831) 
 were the leaders of the second German Romantic school and 
 constitute the Heidelberg group of writers. They were much 
 interested in the German past, and strengthened the national 
 and patriotic spirit. Their work, however, is often marred 
 by exaggeration and affectation.
 
 NOTES 325 
 
 PAGE 
 
 128 I. From The Baths of Lucca, chap, x, in Pictures of Travel, 
 Works, III, 199. 
 
 129 I. Cf. Function of Criticism, Selections, p. 26. 
 
 2. Job XII, 23: " He enlargeth the nations and straiteneth 
 them again." 
 
 131 I. Lucan, Pharsalia, hook i, 135: " he stands the shadow 
 of a great name." 
 
 132 I. From Ideas, in Pictures of Travel, Works, ii, 312-13. 
 
 2. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822), 
 as Foreign Secretary under Lord Liverpool, became the soul 
 of the coahtion against Napoleon, which, during the cam- 
 paigns of 1813-14, was kept together by him alone. He com- 
 mitted suicide with a penknife in a fit of insanity in August, 
 1822. 
 
 3. From Ideas, in Pictures of Travel, Works, 11, 324. 
 
 4. From English Fragments, 1828, in Pictures of Travel, 
 Works, III, 340-42. 
 
 133 I. Song in Measure for Measure, iv, i. 
 
 2. From The Dying One: for translation see p. 142. 
 135 I. From Mountain Idyll, Travels in the Hartz Mountains, 
 Book of Songs. Works, ed. 1904, pp. 219-21. 
 
 2. Published 1851. 
 
 3. Rhampsinitus. A Greek corruption of Ra-messu-pa- 
 neter, the popular name of Rameses III, King of Egypt. 
 
 4. Edith with the Swan Neck. A mistress of King Har- 
 old of England. 
 
 5. MeUsanda of Tripoli. Mistress of Geoffrey Rudel, the 
 troubadour. 
 
 6. Pedro the Cruel. King of Castile (1334-69). 
 
 7. Firdusi. A Persian poet, author of the epic poem, the 
 Shahndma, or" Book of Kings," a complete history of Per- 
 sia in nearly sixty thousand verses. 
 
 8. Dr. Dollinger. A German theologian and church his- 
 torian (1799-1890). 
 
 9. Spanish Atrides, Romancero, Works, ed. 1905, pp. 
 200-04). 
 
 ID. Henry of Trastamare. King of Castile (1369-79). 
 
 137 I. garbanzos. A kind of pulse much esteemed in Spain. 
 
 138 I. Adapted from Rom. viii, 26. 
 
 139 I. From The Baths of Lucca, chap, ix, in Pictures of 
 Travel, Works, iii, 184-85. 
 
 2. Romancero, book iii. 
 
 140 I. Laura. The heroine of Petrarch's famous series of love 
 lyrics known as the Canzoniere. 
 
 2, Court of Love. For a discussion of this supposed 
 medieval tribunal see William A. Neilson's The Originsand 
 Sources of the Court of Love, Stiidies and Notes in Philology 
 and Literature, Boston, 1899, chap. viii. 
 
 142 I. Disputation, Romancero, book iii. 
 
 2. The Dying One, Romancero, book 11, quoted entire. 
 
 143 I. Written from Paris, September 30, 1850. See Memoirs, 
 ed. 1910, II, 226-27.
 
 326 NOTES 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 145 I. Reprinted from The Victoria Magazine, ii, 1-9, Novem- 
 ber, 1863, in Essays in Criticism, 1865. 
 
 2. John Stuart Mill (1806-73), English philosopher and 
 economist. On Liberty (1859) is his most finished writing. 
 
 3. The Imitation of Christ (Imitatio Chri^ti), a famous 
 medieval Christian devotional work, is usually ascribed to 
 Thomas h. Kempis (1380-1471), an Augustinian canon of 
 Mont St. Agnes in the diocese of Utrecht. 
 
 146 I. Epictetus. Greek Stoic philosopher (born c. a.d. 60). 
 He is an earnest preacher of righteousness and his philos- 
 ophy is eminently practical. For Arnold's personal debt to 
 him see his sonnet To a Friend. 
 
 147 I. Empedocles. A Greek philosopher and statesman 
 (c. 490-430 B.C.). He is the subject of Arnold's early poetical 
 drama, Empedocles on Etna, which he later suppressed for 
 reasons which he states in the Preface to the Poems of 1853. 
 See Selections, pp. 1-3. 
 
 2. Encheiridion, chap. lii. 
 
 3. Pa. cxLiii, 10; incorrectly quoted. 
 
 4. Is. LX, 19. 
 
 5. Mai. rv', 2. 
 
 6. John I, 13. 
 
 7. John III, 5. 
 
 148 I. I John V, 4. 
 
 2. Matt. XIX, 26. 
 
 3. 2 Cor. V, 17. 
 
 4. Encheiridion, chap. XLiii. 
 
 5. Matt. XVIII, 22. 
 
 6. Matt. XXII, 37-39, etc. 
 
 149 I George Long (1800-79), classical scholar. He pub- 
 lished Selections from Plutarch's Lives, 1862; Thoughts of 
 Marcus Aurelius, 1862; etc. 
 
 2. Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), English clergyman and 
 headmaster of Rugby School, father of Matthew Arnold. 
 
 150 I. Jeremy Collier (1650-1726). His best-known work is 
 his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the 
 English Stage, 1698, a sharp and efficacious attack on the 
 Post-Restoration drama. The Emperor M. Aurelius Antch 
 ninus, his Conversation ivith himself, appeared in 1701. 
 
 151 I. Meditations, 111, 14. 
 
 152 I. Antoninus Pius. Roman Emperor, a.d. 138-161, and 
 foster-father of M. Aurelius. 
 
 2. To become current in men's speech. 
 
 3. The real name of Voltaire was Francois Marie Arouet. 
 The name Voltaire was assumed in 1718 and is supposed to 
 be an anagram of Arouet le j(eune). 
 
 154 I. See Function of Criticism, Selections, p. 36. 
 
 2. Louis IX of France (1215-70), the leader of the crusade 
 of 1248.
 
 NOTES 327 
 
 PAGE 
 
 155 I. The Saturday Review, begun in 1855, was pronoun- 
 cedly conservative in politics. It devoted much space to 
 pure criticism and scholarship, and Arnold's essays are 
 frequently criticized in its columns. 
 
 2. He died on the 17th of March, a.d. 180. [Arnold] 
 
 156 I. Juvenal's sixth satire is a scathing arraignment of the 
 vices and follies of the women of Rome during the reign of 
 Domitian. 
 
 2. See Juvenal, Sat. 3, 76. 
 
 3. Because he lacks an inspired poet (to sing his praises). 
 Horace, Odes, iv, 9, 28. 
 
 157 I. Avidius Cassius, a distinguished general, declared 
 himself Emperor in Syria in 175 a.d. Aurelius proceeded 
 against him, deploring the necessity of taking up arms 
 against a trusted officer. Cassius was slain by his own 
 officers while M. Aurelius was still in Illyria. 
 
 2. Commodus. Emperor of Rome, 180-192 a.d. He was 
 dissolute and tyrannical. 
 
 3. Attalus, a Roman citizen, was put to death with other 
 Christians in a.d. 177. 
 
 4. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, and one of the Apostolic 
 Fathers, suffered martyrdom in 155 a.d. 
 
 159 I. Tacitus, Ab Excessu Augusti, xv, 44. 
 161 I. Claude Fleury (1640-1723), French ecclesiastical his- 
 torian, author of the Histoire Ecdesiastique, 20 vols., 1691. 
 
 163 I. Med., I, 12. 
 
 2. Ibid., I, 14. 
 
 3. Ibid., IV, 24. 
 
 164 I. Ibid., Ill, 4. 
 
 165 I. Ibid., V, 6. 
 
 2. Ibid., IX, 42. 
 
 3. Lucius Annseus Seneca (c. 3 b.c.-a.d. 65), statesman 
 and philosopher. His twelve so-called Dialogues are Stoic 
 sermons of a practical and earnest character. 
 
 166 I. Med., Ill, 2. 
 
 167 I. Ibid., v, 5. 
 
 2. Ibid., VIII, 34. 
 
 168 I. Ibid., IV, 3. 
 
 169 I. Ibid., I, 17. 
 
 2. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian. Roman Emper- 
 ors, 14-37 A.D., 37-41 A.D., 54-68 a.d., and 81-96 a.d. 
 
 3. Med., IV, 28. 
 
 4. Ibid., V, 11. 
 
 170 I. Ibid., X, 8. 
 
 171 I. Ibid., IV, 32. 
 
 2. Ibid., V, 33. 
 
 3. Ibid., IX, 30. 
 
 4. Ibid., VII, 55. 
 
 172 I. Ibid., VI, 48. 
 2. Ibid., IX, 3. 
 
 173 I. Matt. XVII, 17.
 
 328 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2. Med., X, 15. 
 
 3. Ibid., VI, 45. 
 
 4. Ibid., V, 8. 
 
 5. Ibid., VII, 55. 
 
 174 1. Ibid., IV, 1. f 
 
 2. Ibid., X, 31. 
 
 3. Ibid. 
 
 175 I. Alogi. An ancient sect that rejected the Apocalypse 
 and the Gospel of St. John. 
 
 2. Gnosis. Knowledge of spiritual truth or of matters 
 commonly conceived to pertain to faith alone, such as was 
 claimed by the Gnostics, a heretical Christian sect of the 
 second century. 
 
 3. The correct reading is tendehantque {Mneid, \i, 314), 
 which Arnold has altered to apply to the present case. 
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS TO ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE 
 
 176 I. From On The Study of Celtic Literature, London, 1867> 
 chap. VI. It was previously published in the Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, vols. XIII and xiv, March-July, 1866. In the Introduc- 
 tion to the book Arnold says: " The following remarks on 
 the study of Celtic literature formed the substance of four 
 lectures given by me last year and the year before in the 
 chair of poetry at Oxford." The chapter is slightly abridged 
 in the present selection. 
 
 177 I. Paradise Lost, in, 32-35. 
 
 2. Tasso, I, 2, 304-05. 
 
 3. Menander. The most famous Greek poet of the New 
 Comedy (342-291 B.C.). 
 
 179 I. Gemeinheit. Arnold defines the word five lines below. 
 
 2. See The Function of Criticism, Selections, Note 2, 
 p. 42. 
 
 3. Bossuet. See The Function of Criticism, Selections, 
 Note 2, p. 49. 
 
 4. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), 
 English statesman and man of letters, was author of the 
 Idea of a Patriot King. Arnold is inclined to| overestimate 
 the quality of his stj'le. 
 
 180 I. Taliessin and Llywarch Hen are the names of Welsh 
 bards, supposedly of the late sixth century, whose poems are 
 contained in. the Red Book of Hergest, a manuscript formerly 
 preserved in Jesus College, Oxford, and now in the Bodleian. 
 Nothing further is known of them. Ossian, Ossin, or Oisin, 
 was a legendary Irish third century hero and poet, the son of 
 Finn. In Scotland the Ossianic revival was due to James 
 Macpherson. See Note 1, p. 181. 
 
 2. From the Black Book of Caermarthen, 19. 
 
 181 X. James Macpherson (1736-96) published anonymously 
 in 1760 his Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the
 
 NOTES 329 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Highlands of Scotland and translated from the Gaelic or Erse 
 language. This was followed by an epic Fingal and other 
 poems. Their authenticity was early doubted and a con- 
 troversy followed. They are now generally believed to be 
 forgeries. The passage quoted, as well as references to 
 Selma, "woody Morven," and "echoing Lora" (not Sora), 
 is from Carthon: a Poem. 
 
 182 I. Werther. Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers 
 (1774) was a product of the Sturm und Drang movement 
 in German literature, and responsible for its sentimental 
 excesses. Goethe mentions Ossian in connection with Homer 
 in Werther, book ii, " am 12. October," and translates sev- 
 eral passages of considerable length toward the close of this 
 book. 
 
 2. Prometheus. An unfinished drama of Goethe's, of 
 which a fine fragment remains. 
 
 183 I. For Llywarch Hen, see Note 1, p. 180. The present 
 quotation is from book ii of the Red Book. A translation of 
 the poem differing somewhat from the one quoted by Arnold 
 is contained in W. F. Skene's The Four Ancient Books of 
 Wales, Edinburgh, 1868. 
 
 2. From On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year, 1824. 
 
 3. From Euthanasia, 1812. 
 
 184 I. Manfred, Lara, Cain. Heroes of Byron's poems so 
 named. 
 
 2. From Paradise Lost, i, 105-09. 
 
 185 I. Rhyme, — the most striking characteristic of our mod- 
 ern poetry as distinguished from that of the ancients, and a 
 main source, to our poetry, of its magic and charm, of what 
 we call its rotnantic element — rhyme itself, all the weight 
 of evidence tends to show, comes into our poetry from the 
 Celts. [Arnold.] A different explanation is given by J. Schip- 
 per, A History of English Versification, Oxiord, 1910:" End- 
 rhyme or full-rhyme seems to have arisen independently and 
 without historical connection in several nations. ... Its 
 adoption into all modern literature is due to the extensive 
 use made of it in the hymns of the church." 
 
 2. Lady Guest's Mabinogion, Math the Son of Mathonwy, 
 ed. 1849, III, 239. 
 
 3. Mabinogion, Kilhwch and Olwcn, 11, 275. 
 
 186 I. Mabinogion, Peredur the Son of Evrawc, i, 324. 
 2. Mabinogion, Geraint the Son of Erbin, 11, 112. 
 
 187 *i. Novalis. The pen-name of Friedrich von Hardenberg 
 (1772-1801), sometimes called the " Prophet of Romanti- 
 cism." See Carlyle's essay on Novalis. 
 
 2. For Riickert, see Wordsworth, Selections, Note 4, 
 p. 224. 
 
 3. Take the following attempt to render the natural magic 
 supposed to pervade Tieck's poetry: " In diesen Dichtun- 
 gen herrscht eine geheimnissvoUe Innigkeit, ein sonder- 
 bares Einverstandniss mit der Natur, besonders mit der
 
 330 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pflanzen- und Steinreich. Der Leser fiihlt sich da wie in 
 einem verzauberten Walde; er hort die unterirdischen Quel- 
 len melodisch rauschen ; wildfremde Wunderblumen schauen 
 ihn an mit ihren bunten sehnslichtigen Augen; unsichtbare 
 Lippen ktissen seine Wangen mit neckender Zartlichkeit; 
 hohe Pilze, ivie goldne Glocken, wachsen klingend empor am 
 Fusse der Baume " ; and so on. Now that stroke of the hohe 
 Pilze, the great funguses, would have been impossible to the 
 tact and delicacy of a born lover of nature like the Celt; and 
 could only have come from a German who has hineinstiidirt 
 himself into natural magic. It is a crj'ing false note, which 
 carries us at once out of the world of nature-magic, and the 
 breath of the woods, into the world of theatre-magic and the 
 smell of gas and orange-peel. [Arnold.] 
 
 Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) was one of the most 
 prominent of the German romanticists. He was especially 
 felicitous in the rehandling of the old German fairy tales. 
 The passage quoted above is from Heine's Germany, Part ii, 
 book II, chap. ii. The following is the translation of C. G. 
 Leland, slightly altered: " In these compositions we feel a 
 mj-sterious depth of meaning, a marvellous union with 
 nature, especially with the realm of plants and stones. The 
 reader seems to be in an enchanted forest; he hears subter- 
 ranean springs and streams rustling melodiously, and his own 
 name whispered by the trees. Broad-leaved clinging plants 
 wind vexingh' about his feet, wild and strange wonder- 
 flowers look at him with vari-colored longing eyes, invisible 
 lips kiss his cheeks with mocking tenderness, great funguses 
 like golden bells grow singing about the roots of trees." 
 
 4. Wmtcr's Tale, iv, iii, 118-20. 
 
 5. Arnold doubtless refers to the passage in The Solitary 
 Reaper referred to in a similar connection in the essaj' on 
 Maurice de Guerin, though Wordsworth has written two 
 poems To the Cuckoo. 
 
 6. The passage on the mountain birch-tree, which is 
 quoted in the esi?ay on Maurice de Guerin, is from S^nan- 
 cour's Ohermann, letter 11. For his delicate appreciation of 
 the Easter daisy see Ohermann, letter 91. 
 
 188 I. Pope's Iliad, xiu, 687. 
 
 2. Propertius, Elegies, book i, 20, 21-22: " The band of 
 heroes covered the pleasant beach with leaves and branches 
 woven together." 
 
 3. Idylls, xiii, 34. The present reading of the line gives 
 (KiLTo, iJieya: "A meadow lay before them, very good for 
 beds." 
 
 4. From the Ode to a Grecian Urn. 
 
 189 I. That is, Drdicaliun. 
 
 2. From the Ode to a Nightingale. 
 
 3. Ibid. 
 
 190 I. Virgil, Eclogues, \ai, 45. 
 
 2. Ibid, II, 47-48: " Plucking pale violets and the tallest
 
 NOTES 331 
 
 PAGE 
 
 poppies, she joins with them the narcissus and the flower 
 of the fragrant dill." 
 
 3. Ihid., II, 51-52: "I will gather quinces, white with 
 delicate down, and chestnuts." 
 
 4. Midsummer Night's Dream, 11, i, 249-52. 
 
 5. Merchant of Venice, v, i, 58-59. 
 
 6. Midsummer Night's Dream, 11, i, 83-85. 
 
 191 I. Merchant of Venice, v, i, 1 ff. 
 
 GEORGE SAND 
 
 192 I. Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review for June, 1877, 
 in Mixed Essays, Smith, Elder & Co., 1879. Amandine 
 Lucile Aurora Dudevant, nee Dupin (1804-76), was the most 
 
 H prolific woman writer of France. The pseudonym George 
 Sand was a combination of George, the typical Bcrriclion 
 name, and Sand, abbreviated from (Jules) Sandeau, in col- 
 laboration with whom she began her literary career. 
 
 2. Indiana, George Sand's first novel, 1832. 
 
 3. Nohant is a village of Berry, one of the ancient prov- 
 inces of France, comprising the modern departments of 
 Cher and Indre. The Indre and the Creuse are its chief 
 rivers. Vierzon, Chateauroux, Le Chatre, and Ste. -Severe 
 are towns of the province. Le Puy is in the neighboring 
 department of Haute- Loire, and La Marche is in the depart- 
 ment of Vosges. For the Vallee Noire see Sand's The Miller 
 of Angibaidt, chap, iii, etc. 
 
 4. Jeanne. The first of a series of novels in which the 
 pastoral element prevails. It was published in 1844. 
 
 5. The Pierres Jaunatres (or Jomatres) is a district in the 
 mountains of the Creuse (see Jeanne, Prologue). Toulx 
 Ste.-Croix is a ruined Gallic town (Jeanne, chap. i). For the 
 druidical stones of Mont Barlot see Jeanne, chap. vii. 
 
 193 I. Cassini's great map. A huge folio volume containing 
 183 charts of the various districts of France, published by 
 Mess. Maraldi and Cassini de Thury, Paris, 1744. 
 
 2. For an interesting description of the patache, or rustic 
 carriage, see George Sand's Miller of Angibault, chap. 11. 
 
 3. laades. An infertile moor. 
 
 194 I. Maurice and Solange. See, for example, the Letters of a 
 Traveller. 
 
 2. Chopin. George Sand's friendship for the composer 
 Chopin began in 1837. 
 
 195 I. Jules Michelet (1798-1874), French historian. 
 
 2. her death. George Sand died at Nohant, June 8, 1876. 
 
 196 I. From \he Journal d'un Voyageur, September 15, 1870, 
 ed. 1871, p. 2. 
 
 2. Consuelo (1842-44) is George Sand's best-known 
 novel. 
 
 3. Edm^e, Genevieve, Germain. Characters in the novels 
 Mauprat, Andre, and La Mare au Diable.
 
 332 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 4. Lettres d'un Voyageiir, Mauprat, Frangois le Champi. 
 Published in 1830-36, 1836, and 1848. 
 
 5. F. W. H. Myers (1843-1901), poet and essayist. See 
 his Essays, Modern, ed. 1883, pp. 7(>-103. 
 
 197 I. Valvedre. Publislied in 1861. 
 
 2. Werther. See The Contribution of the Celts, Selections, 
 Note 1, p. 182. 
 
 3. Corinne. An esthetic romance (1807) by Mme. de Stael. 
 
 4. Valentine (1832), George Sand's second novel, pointed 
 out " the dangers and pains of an ill-assorted marriage." 
 L^lia (1833) was a still more outspoken diatribe against 
 society and the marriage law. 
 
 199 I. From Lelia, chap, lxvii. 
 
 2. Jacques (1834), the hero of which is George Sand in 
 man's disguise, sets forth the author's doctrine of free love. 
 
 3. From Jacques, letter 95. 
 
 200 I. From Leltrcs d'un Voyageur, letter 9. 
 2. Ibid., a Rollinat, September, 1834. 
 
 203 I. Hans Holbein, the younger (1497-1543), German 
 artist. 
 
 205 I. From La Mare au Diable, chap. i. 
 2. Ibid., The Author to the Reader. 
 
 206 I. Ibid., chap. i. 
 
 207 I. Ibid., chap. i. 
 
 208 I. From Impressions et Souvenirs, ed. 1873, p. 135. 
 
 2. Ibid., p. 137. 
 
 3. From Wordsworth's Lines Composed a few Miles above 
 Tintern Abbey. 
 
 4. From Itnprcssions et Souvenirs, p. 136. 
 
 209 I. Ibid., p. 139. 
 
 210 I. Ibid., p. 269. 
 2. Ibid., p. 2.53. 
 
 211 I. See The Function of Criticism, Selections, p. 29. 
 
 2. Emile Zola (1840-1902), French novelist, was the 
 apostle of the" realistic " or "naturalistic" school. L' As- 
 sommoir (1877) depicts especially the vice of drunkenness. 
 
 212 I. From Journal d'un Voyageur, February 10, 1871, p. 
 305. , 
 
 2. Emile Louis Victor de Laveleye (1822-92), Belgian 
 economist. He was especially interested in bimetallism, 
 primitive property, and nationalism. 
 
 213 I. From Journal d'un Voyageur, December 21, 1870, 
 p. 202. 
 
 214 I. Ibid., December 21. 1870, p. 220. 
 
 215 I. Ibid., February 7, 1871, p. 228. 
 
 2. Round my House: Notes of Rural Life in France in 
 Peace and War (1876), by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. See 
 especially chapters xi and xii. 
 
 3. Barbarians, Philistines, Populace. Arnold's designa- 
 tions for the aristocratic, middle, and lower classes of Eng- 
 land in Culture and Anarchy.
 
 NOTES 333 
 
 PAGE 
 
 216 I. Paul Amand Challemel-Lacour (1827-96), French 
 statesman and man of letters. 
 
 2. See The Function of Criticism, Selections, Note 4, p. 44. 
 
 3. From Journal (Tun Voyageur, February 10, 1871, p. 
 309. 
 
 217 I. The closing sentence of the Nicene Creed with expecto 
 changed to exspectat. For the English translation see Morn- 
 ing Prayer in the Episcopal Prayer Book; for the Greek and 
 Latin see Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 11, 58, 59. 
 
 WORDSWORTH 
 
 218 I. Published in Macmillan's Magazine, July, 1879, vol. 
 XL ; as Preface to The Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and 
 edited by Arnold in 1879; and in Essays in Criticism, Second 
 Series, 1888. 
 
 219 I. Rydal Mount. Wordsworth's home in the Lake Dis- 
 trict from 1813 until his death in 1850. 
 
 2. 1842. The year of publication of the two-volume edi- 
 tion of Tennyson's poems,;containing Locksley Hall, Ulysses, 
 etc. 
 
 221 I. candid friend. Arnold himself. 
 
 222 I. The Biographic Universelle, ou Dictionnaire historique 
 of F. X. de Feller (1735-1802) was originally published in 
 .1781. 
 
 2. Henry Cochin. A brilliant lawyer and writer of Paris, 
 1687-1747. 
 
 223 I. Amphictyonic Court. An association of Ancient Greek 
 communities centering in a shrine. 
 
 224 I. Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock (1724-1803) was author 
 of Der Messias. 
 
 2. Lessing. See Sweetness and Light, Selections, Note 2, 
 p. 271. 
 
 3. Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862), romantic lyric 
 poet. 
 
 4. Friedrich Riickert (1788-1866) was the author of 
 Liebesfriihling and other poems. 
 
 5. Heine. See Heinrich Heine, Selections, pp. 112-144. 
 
 6. The greatest poems of Vicenzo da Filicaja (1642-1707) 
 are six odes inspired by the victory of Sobieski. 
 
 7. Vittorio, Count Alfieri (1749-1803), ItaUan dramatist. 
 His best-known drama is his Saul. 
 
 8. Manzoni (1785-1873) was a poet and novelist, author 
 of I Promessi Sposi. 
 
 9. Giacomo, Cotint Leopardi (1798-1837), Italian poet. 
 His writings are characterized by deep-seated melancholy. 
 
 ID. Jean Racine (1639-99), tragic dramatist. 
 
 11. Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1711), poet and 
 critic. 
 
 12. Andre de Chenier (1762-94), poet, author of Jeune 
 Captive, etc.
 
 334 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 13. Pierre Jean de Beranger (1780-1857), song-writer. 
 
 14. Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790- 
 1869), poet, historian, and statesman. 
 
 15. Louis Charles Alfred de Musset (1810-57), poet, 
 play-writer, and novelist. 
 
 228 I. From The Recluse, 1. 754. 
 
 229 I. Paradise Lost, 11, 553-54. 
 
 230 I. The Tempest, iv, i, 156-58. 
 
 2. criticism of life. See The Study of Poetry, Selections, 
 Note 1, p. 57. 
 
 231 I. Discourses of Epictetus, trans. Long, 1903, vol. i, book 
 II, chap. XXIII, p. 248. 
 
 232 I. Theophile Gautier. A noted French poet, critic, and 
 novelist, and a leader of the French Romantic Movement 
 (1811-72). 
 
 2. The Recluse, 11. 767-71. 
 
 3. Mneid, vi, 662. 
 
 233 I. Leslie Stephen. English biographer and literary critic 
 (1832-1904). He was the first editor of the Dictionary of 
 National Biography. Arnold quotes from the essay on Words- 
 worth's Ethics in Hours in a Ldbrary (1874-79), vol. iii. 
 
 2. Excursion, iv, 73-76. 
 
 234 I. Ibid., II, 10-17. 
 
 2. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early 
 Childhood. 
 
 235 I. Excursion, ix, 293-302. 
 
 236 I. See p. 232. 
 
 237 I. the "not ourselves." Arnold quotes his own definition 
 of God as "the enduring power, not.ourselves, which makes 
 for righteousness." See Literature and Dogma, chap. i. 
 
 2. The opening sentence of a famous criticism of the 
 Excursion published in the Edinburgh Review for November, 
 1814, no. 47. It was written by Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey 
 (1773-1850), Scottish judge and literary critic, and first 
 editor of the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 238 I. Macbeth, iii, ii. 
 
 2. Paradise Lost, vii, 23-24. 
 
 3. The Recluse, 1. 831. 
 
 239 I. From Burns's A Bard's Epitaph. 
 
 240 I. The correct title is The Solitary Reaper. 
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 
 
 242 I. This selection is the first chapter of Culture and Anar- 
 chy. It originally formed a part of the last lecture delivered 
 by Arnold as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Culture and 
 Anarchy was first printed in The Cornhill Magazine, July 
 1867,- August, 1868, vols, xvi-xviii. It was published as 
 a book in 1869. 
 
 2.. For Sainte-Beuve, see The Study of Poetry, Selections, 
 Note 2, p. 56. The article referred to appeared in the
 
 NOTES 335 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Quarterly Review for January, 1866, vol. cxix, p. 80. It 
 finds fault with Sainte-Beuve's lack of conclusiveness, and 
 describes him as having "spent his life in fitting his mind 
 to be an elaborate receptacle for well-arranged doubts." 
 In this respect a comparison is made with Arnold's ' ' grace- 
 ful but perfectly unsatisfactory essays." 
 
 243 I. From Montesquieu's Discours sur les motifs qui doivent 
 nous encourager aux sciences, prononce le 15 Novembre, 1725. 
 Montesquieu's (Euvres completes, ed. Laboulaye, vii, 78. 
 
 244 I. Thomas Wilson (1663-1755) was consecrated Bishop 
 of Sodor and Man in 1698. His episcopate was marked by a 
 number of reforms in the Isle of Man. The opening pages of 
 Arnold's Preface to Culture and Anarchy are devoted to an 
 appreciation of Wilson. He says: " On a lower range than 
 the Imitation, and awakening in our nature chords less poet- 
 ical and delicate, the Maxims of Bishop Wilson are, as a 
 religious work, far more solid. To the most sincere ardor 
 and unction. Bishop Wilson unites, in these Maxims, that 
 downright honesty and plain good sense which our English 
 race has so powerfully applied to the divine impossibilities 
 of religion; by which it has brought religion so much into 
 practical life, and has done its allotted part in promoting 
 upon earth the kingdom of God." 
 
 2. will of God prevail. Maxim 450 reads: " A prudent 
 Christian will resolve at all times to sacrifice his inclinations 
 to reason, and his reason to the will and word of God." 
 
 247 I. From Bishop Wilson's Sacra Privata, Noon Prayers, 
 Works, ed. 1781, i, 199. 
 
 248 I. John Bright (1811-89) was a leader with Cobden in 
 the agitation for repeal of the Corn Laws and other measures 
 of reform, and was one of England's greatest masters of 
 oratory. 
 
 2. Frederic Harrison (1831- ), English jurist and his- 
 torian, was president of the English Positivist Committee, 
 1880-1905. His Creed of a Layman (1907) is a statement of 
 his religious position. 
 
 249 I. See The Function of Criticism, Selections, Note 2, p. 37. 
 253 I. 1 Tim., iv, 8. 
 
 2. The first of the "Rules of Health and Long Life " in 
 Poor Richard's Almanac for December, 1742. The quota- 
 tion should read: "as the Constitution of thy Body allows 
 of." 
 
 3. Epictetus, Encheiridion, chap. xli. 
 
 4. Sweetness and Light. The phrase is from Swift's The' 
 Battle of the Books, Works, ed. Scott, 1824, x, 240. In 
 the apologue of the Spider and the Bee the superiority of 
 the ancient over the modern writers is thus summarized: 
 " Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chose to fill 
 our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind 
 with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and 
 light."
 
 336 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 256 I. Independents. The name applied in England during 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the denomina- 
 tion now known as Congregationalists. 
 
 2. From Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, 
 Works, ed. 1834, i, 187. 
 
 3. 1 Pet., Ill, 8. 
 
 258 I. Epsom. A market town in Surrey, where are held 
 the famous Derby races, founded in 1780. 
 
 259 I. Sallust's Catiline, chap. Lii, § 22. 
 
 2. The Daily Telegraph was begun in June, 1855, as a 
 twopenny newspaper. It became the great organ of the 
 middle classes and has been distinguished for its enterprise 
 in many fields. Up to 1878 it was consistently Liberal in 
 politics. It is a frequent object of Arnold's irony as the 
 mouthpiece of English philistinism. 
 
 261 I. Young Leo (or Leo Adolescens) is Arnold's name for 
 the typical writer of the Daily Telegraph (see above) . He is 
 a prominent character of Friendship's Garland. 
 
 262 I. Edmond Beales (1803-81), political agitator, was es- 
 pecially identified with the movement for manhood suf- 
 frage and the ballot, and was the leading spirit in two large 
 popular demonstrations in London in 1866. 
 
 2. Charles Bradlaugh (1833-91), freethought advocate 
 and politician. His efforts were especially directed toward 
 maintaining the freedom of the press in issuing criticisms 
 on religious belief and sociological questions. In 1880 he 
 became a Member of Parliament, and began a long and 
 finally succe.ssful struggle for the right to take his seat in 
 Parliament without the customary oath on the Bible. 
 
 3. John Henry Newman (1801-90) was the leader of the 
 Oxford Movement in the English Church. His Apologia 
 pro Vita Sua (1864) was a defense of his religious life and an 
 account of the causes which led him from Anglicanism to 
 Romanism. For his hostility to Liberalism see the Apolo- 
 gia, ed. 1907, pp. 34, 212, and 288. 
 
 4. ^neid, i, 460. 
 
 263 I The Reform Bill of 1832 abolished fifty-six "rotten " 
 boroughs and made other changes in representation to 
 Parliament, thus transferring a large share of political power 
 from the landed aristocracy to the middle classes. 
 
 2. Robert Lowe (1811-92), afterwards Viscount Sher- 
 brooke, held offices in the Board of Education and Board of 
 Trade. He was liberal, but opposed the Reform Bill of that 
 party in 1866-67. His speeches on the subject were printed 
 in 1867. 
 266 I. Jacobinism. The Societe des Jacobins was the most 
 famous of the political clubs of the. French Revolution. 
 Later the term Jacobin was applied to any promulgator of 
 extreme revolutionary or radical opinions. 
 
 2. See ante, Note 2, p. 248. 
 
 3. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), French philosopher and
 
 NOTES 337 
 
 PAGE 
 
 founder of Positivism. This system of thought attempts to 
 base religion on the verifiable facts of existence, opposes 
 devotion to the study of metaphysics, and substitutes the 
 worship of Humanity for supernatural religion. 
 
 4. Richard Congreve (1818-99) resigned a fellowship at 
 Oxford in 1855, and devoted the remainder of his life to the 
 propagation of the Positive philosophy. 
 2G7 I. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), philosopher and jurist, 
 was leader of the English school of Utilitarianism, which 
 recognizes " the greatest happiness of the greatest number " 
 as the proper foundation of morality and legislation. 
 
 2. Ludwig Preller (1809-61), German philologist and 
 antiquarian. 
 
 268 1. Book of Job. Arnold must have read Franklin's piece 
 hastily, since he has mistaken a bit of ironic trifling for a 
 serious attempt to rewrite the Scriptures. The Proposed 
 New Version of the Bible is merely a bit of amusing burlesque 
 in which six verses of the Book of Job are rewritten in the 
 style of modern politics. According to Mr. William Temple 
 Franklin the Bagatelles, of which the Proposed New Version 
 is a part, were "chiefly written by Dr. Franklin for the 
 amusement of his intimate society in London and Paris." 
 See Franklin's Complete Works, ed. 1844, 11, 164. 
 
 2. The Deontology, or The Science of Morality, was 
 arranged and edited by John Bowring, in 1834, two years 
 after Bentham's death, and it is doubtful how far it repre- 
 sents Bentham's thoughts. 
 
 3. Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-62) was the author 'of 
 the History of Civilization in England, a book which, though 
 full of inaccuracies, has had a great influence on the theory 
 and method of historical writing. 
 
 4. Mr. Mill. See Marcus Aurelius, Selections, Note 2, 
 p. 145. 
 
 269 I. The article from which Arnold quotes these extracts is 
 not Frederic Harrison's Culture: A Dialogue, but an* earlier 
 essay in the Fortnightly Review for March 1, 1867, called Our 
 Venetian Constitution. See pages 276-77 of the article. 
 
 271 I. PeterAbelard (1079-1142) was a scholastic philosopher 
 and a leader in the more liberal thought of his day. 
 
 2. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81), German critic 
 and dramatist. His best-known writings are the epoch- 
 making critical work, Laokoon (1766), and the drama 
 Minna von Barnhelm (1767). His ideas were in the highest 
 degree stirnulating and fruitful to the German writers who 
 followed him. 
 
 3. Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), a volumi- 
 nous and influential German writer, was a pioneer of the 
 Romantic Movement. He championed adherence to the 
 national type in literature, and helped to found the histori- 
 cal method in literature and science. 
 
 271 I. Confessions of St. Augustine, xiii, 18, 22, Everyman's 
 ^ Library ed., p. 326. '
 
 338 NOTES 
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 273 I. The present selection comprises chapter iv, of Culture 
 and Anarchy. In the preceding chapter Arnold has been 
 pointing out the imperfection of the various classes of Eng- 
 lish society, which he describes as "Barbarians, Philistines, 
 and Populace." For the correction of this imperfection he 
 pleads for " some public recognition and establishment of 
 our best selfj or right reason." In chapter iii, he has shown 
 how "our habits and practice oppose themselves to such a 
 recognition." He now proposes to find, "beneath our actual 
 habits and practice, the very ground and cause out of which 
 they spring." Then follows the selection here given. 
 
 Professor Gates has pointed out the fact that Arnold 
 probably borrows the terms here contrasted from Heine. 
 In Obcr Ludwig Borne {Werke, ed. Stuttgart, x, 12), Heine 
 says: "All men are either Jews or Hellenes, men ascetic in 
 their instincts, hostile to culture, spiritual fanatics, or men 
 of vigorous good cheer, full of the pride of life. Naturalists." 
 For Heine's own relation to Hebraism and Hellenism, see 
 the present selection, p. 275. 
 
 2. See Sweetness and Light, Selections, Note 1, p. 244. 
 Maxim 452 reads: "Two things a Christian will never do 
 — never go against the best light he has, this will prove his 
 sincerity, and, 2, to take care that his light be not darkness, 
 i.e., that he mistake not his rule by which he ought to 
 go." 
 
 274 I. 2 Pet. I, 4. 
 
 2. Frederick William Robertson (1816-53) began his 
 famous ministry at Brighton in 1847. He was a man of 
 deep spirituality and great sincerity. The latter part of his 
 life was clouded by opposition roused by his sympathy with 
 the revolutionary ideas of the 1848 epoch and by the mental 
 trouble which eventually resulted in his death. The sermon 
 referred to seems to be the first Advent Lecture on The 
 Greek. Arnold objects to Robertson's rather facile sum- 
 marizing. Four characteristics are mentioned as marking 
 Grecian life and religion : restlessness, worldliness, worship of 
 the beautiful, and worship of the human. The second of 
 these has three results, disappointment, degradation, disbe- 
 lief in immortality. 
 
 275 I. Heinrich Heine. See Heine, Selections, pp. 112-144. 
 
 2. Prov. XXIX, 18. 
 
 3. Ps. cxii, 1. 
 277 I. Rom. Ill, 31. 
 
 2. Zech. IX, 13. 
 
 3. Prov. XVI, 22. 
 
 4. John I, 4-9; 8-12; Luke 11, 32, etc. 
 
 5. John VIII, 32. 
 
 6. NichomachcEan Ethics, bk. 11, chap. ill. 
 
 7. Jas. I, 25.
 
 NOTES 339 
 
 PAGE 
 
 8. Discourses of Epidetus, bk. ii, chap, xix, trans. Long, 
 I, 214#. 
 
 278 I. Learning to die. Arnold seems to be thinking of P/icedo, 
 64, Dialogues, ii, 202: "For I deem that the true votary of 
 philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by other men ; they 
 do not perceive that he is always pursuing death and dying; 
 and if this be so, and he has had the desire of death all his 
 life long, why when his time comes should he repine at that 
 which he has been always pursuing and desiring ? " Plato 
 goes on to show that life is best when it is most freed from 
 the concerns of the body. Cf. also Phoedrus {Dialogues, ii, 
 127) and Gorgias (Dialogues, ii, 369). 
 
 2. 2 Cor. V, 14. 
 
 3. See Aristotle, Nichomachoean Ethics, bk. x, chaps, viii, 
 rx. 
 
 4. Phoedo, 82D, Dialogues, 1, 226. 
 
 279 I. Xenophon's Memorabilia, bk. iv, chap, viii, § 6. 
 
 280 I. Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-82), English divine and 
 leader of the High Church party in the Oxford Movement. 
 
 281 I. Zech. VIII, 23. 
 
 2. my Saviour banished joy. The sentence is an incorrect 
 quotation from George Herbert's The Size, the fifth stanza 
 of which begins: — 
 
 " Thy Savior sentenced joy, 
 And in the flesh condemn'd it as unfit, — 
 At least in lump." 
 
 3. Eph. V, 6. 
 
 282 I. The first two books. [Arnold.] 
 
 2. See Rom. in, 2. 
 
 3. See Cor. iii, 19. ''^ 
 
 283 I. Phaedo. In this dialogue Plato attempts to substanti- 
 ate the doctrine of immortality by narrating the last hours 
 of Socrates and his conversation on this subject when his 
 own death was at hand. 
 
 284 I. Renascence. I have ventured to give to the foreign 
 word Renaissance — destined to become of more common 
 use amongst us as the movement which it denotes comes, as 
 it will come, increasingly to interest us, — ^an EngUsh form. 
 [Arnold.] 
 
 EQUALITY 
 
 289 I. This essay, originally an address delivered at the 
 Royal Institution, was published in the Fortnightly Review, 
 for March, 1878, and reprinted in Mixed Essays, 1879. In 
 the present selection the opening pages have been omitted. 
 Arnold begins with a statement of England's tendency to 
 maintain a condition of inequality between classes. This is 
 reiniorced by the English freedom of bequest, a freedom 
 greater than in most of the Continental countries. The ques- 
 tion of the advisability of altering the English law of bequest
 
 340 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 is a matter not of abstract right, but of expediency. That the 
 maintenance of inequaHty is expedient for English civiHza- 
 tion and welfare is generally assumed. Whether or not this 
 assumption is well founded, Arnold proposes to examine in 
 the concluding pages. As a preliminary step he defines 
 civilization as the humanization of man in society. Then 
 follows the selected passage. 
 
 2. Isocrates. An Attic orator (436-338 b.c). He was an 
 ardent advocate of Greek unity. The passage quoted occurs 
 in the Panegyricus, § .50, Orations, ed. 1894, p. 67. 
 
 290 I. Giacomo Antonelli (1806-76), Italian cardinal. From 
 1850 until his death his activity was chiefly devoted to the 
 struggle between the Papacy and the Italian Risorgimento. 
 
 291 I. famous passage. The Introduction to his Age of Louis 
 XIV. 
 
 293 I. Laveleye. See George Sand, Selections, Note 2, p. 212. 
 
 2. Sir Thomas Erskine May, Lord Farnborough (1815- 
 86), constitutional jurist. Arnold in the omitted portion of 
 the present essay has quoted several sentences from his 
 History of Democracy:'^ France has aimed at social equality. 
 The fearful troubles through which she has passed have 
 checked her prosperity, demoralised her society, and arrested 
 the intellectual growth of her people. Yet is she high, if not 
 the first, in the scale of civilised nations." 
 
 3. Hamerton. See George Sand, Selections, Note 2, p. 215. 
 The quotation is from Round My House, chap, xi, ed. 1876, 
 pp. 229-30. 
 
 294 I. Charles Sumner (1811-74), American statesman, was 
 the most brilliant and uncompromising of the anti-slavery 
 leaders. 
 
 295 I. Alsace. The people of Alsace, though German in 
 origin, showed a very strong feeling against Prussian rule 
 in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In September, 
 1872, 45,000 elected to be still French and transferred their 
 domicile to France. 
 
 296 I. Michelet. See George Sand, Selections, Note 1, p. 195. 
 
 298 I. The chorus of a popular music-hall song of the time. 
 From it was derived the word jingoism. For the original 
 application of this term see Webster's Dictionary. 
 
 2. Dwight L. Moody (1837-99) and Ira D. Sankey (1840- 
 1908), the famous American evangelists, held notable re- 
 vival meetings in England in 1873-75. 
 
 299 I. See, e.g., Heine, Selections, p. 129. 
 2. Goldwin Smith, See Note 2, p. 301. 
 
 301 I. See Milton's Colasterion, Works, ed. 1843, in, 445 and 
 452. 
 
 2. Goldwin Smith (1824-1910), British publicist and his- 
 torian, has taken an active part in educational questions 
 both in England and America. The passage quoted below 
 is from an article entitled Falkland and the Puritans, pub- 
 lished in the Contemporary Review as a reply to Arnold's
 
 NOTES 341 
 
 PAGE 
 
 essay on Falkland. See Lectures and Essays, New York, 
 1881. 
 
 3. John Hutchinson (1616-64), Puritan soldier. The 
 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, written by his 
 wife Lucy, but not published until 1806, are remarkable 
 both for the picture which they give of the man and the 
 time, and also for their simple beauty of style. For the 
 passage quoted see Everyman's Library ed., pp. 182-83. 
 
 4. paedobaptism. Infant baptism. 
 
 303 I. Man disquiets himself, but God manages the matter. 
 For Bossuet see The Function of Criticism, Selections, Note 
 2, p. 49. 
 
 2. Prov. XIX, 21. 
 
 3. So in the original. [Arnold.] 
 
 304 I. Bright. See Sweetness and Light, Selections, Note 1, 
 p. 248. 
 
 2. Richard Cobden (1804-65), English manufacturer and 
 Radical politician. He was a leader in the agitation for 
 repeal of the Corn Laws and in advocacy of free trade. 
 
 305 I. Prov. XIV, 6. 
 
 2. Compare Cidture and Anarchy, chaps. 11 and iii, and 
 Ecce Convertivnir ad Gentes, Irish Essays, ed. 1903, p. 115. 
 
 307 I. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), English diarist. 
 
 310 I. young lion. See Sioeetness and Light, Selections, Note 1, 
 p. 261. 
 
 312 I. Mill. See Marcus Aurelius, Selections, Note 2, p. 145. 
 2. Spencer Compton Cavendish (1833-1908), Marquis of 
 
 Hartington (since 1891 Duke of Devonshire), became Lib- 
 eral leader in the House of Commons after the defeat and 
 withdrawal of Gladstone in January, 1875. 
 
 313 I. Menander. See Contribution of the Celts, Selections, 
 Note 3, p. 177.
 
 RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES 
 
 LIBRARY BINDING 
 
 The following volumes in the Riverside Literature Series are now 
 issued in a new attractive library binding in red cloth stamped with 
 a simple artistic design in gilt on the back. This edition is intended 
 especially for college classes, where attractive, inexpensive texts are 
 desired. 
 
 Chaucer's The Prologue, The Knight's Tale, and the Nun's 
 Priest's Tale. 
 
 Edited by Frank Jewett Mather, Jr, Nos. 135-136. 50 cents, 
 net. Postpaid. 
 
 Spenser's Faerie Queene. Book I. 
 
 Edited by Martha Hale Shackford, Ph.D. No. 160. 50 
 cents, net. Postpaid. 
 
 Carlyle's Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History. 
 
 Edited by John Chester Adams, Ph.D. No. 166. 60 cents, 
 net. Postpaid. 
 
 Essays of Francis Bacon. 
 
 Edited by Clark S. Northup, Ph.D. No. 177. 50 cents, net. 
 Postpaid. 
 
 Selections from the Works of John Ruskin. 
 
 Edited by Chauncey B. Tinker, Ph.D. No. 178. 60 cents, 
 net. Postpaid. 
 
 Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man, and She Stoops to 
 Conquer. 
 Edited by Thomas H. Dickinson, Ph.D. Nos. 181-182. 50 
 cents, net. Postpaid. 
 
 English and Scottish Ballads. 
 
 Selected and edited by R. Adelaide Witham. No. 183. 50 
 cents, net. Postpaid. 
 
 Huxley's Autobiography, and Selected Essays. 
 
 Edited by Ada L. F. Snell. Nos. 187-1S8. 50 cents, net. 
 Postpaid. 
 
 Everyman, and Other Early Plays. 
 
 Edited by Clarence Griffin Child, Ph.D. No, igi. 50 cents, 
 net. Postpaid. 
 
 Milton's Of Education, Areopagitica, The Commonwealth. 
 
 Edited by Laura E. Lockwood, No. 2H. 60 cents, net. 
 Postpaid. 
 
 Ralph Roister Doister. 
 
 Edited by Clarence Griffin Child, Ph.D. No. 216. 50 cents, 
 net. Postpaid. 
 
 Olher Volumes in Pieparatioii 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
 
 LITERATURE TEXTS 
 
 American Classics. With suggestions for study, etc 438 psiges, 75 
 
 cents, net. 
 
 American and English Classics. For Grammar Grades. With 
 explanatory notes, etc. 330 pages. 55 cents, net. 
 
 American Poems. Edited by H. E. Scudder. 453 pages, $1.00, «<•/. 
 
 American Prose. Edited by H. E. Scudder. 414 pages, ]fi.oo, net. 
 
 Literary Masterpieces. With explanatory notes, etc. 433 pages. So 
 cents, net. 
 
 Masterpieces of American Literature. Edited by H. E. Scudder. 
 With explanatory notes, etc. 504 pages, $1.00, net. 
 
 Masterpieces of British Literature. Edited by H. E. Scudder. 
 With explanatory notes, etc. 480 pages, 3i.go, net. 
 
 An American Anthology. Edited by E. C. Stedman. 878 pages. 
 Student's Edition. $z.oo, net. 
 
 A Victorian Anthology. Edited by E. C. Stedman. 744 pages. 
 Student's Edition. $1.75, net. 
 
 The Chief American Poets. Edited by C. H. Page, Professor of 
 English Literature in Northwestern University. 713 pages, 3i-75. net. 
 
 Selections from the Riverside Literature Series. For Fifth 
 Grade Reading. (In preparation.) 
 
 Selections from the Riverside Literature Series. For Sixth 
 Grade Reading. With explanatory notes. 222 pages. 40 cents, net. 
 
 Selections from the Riverside Literature Series. For Seventh 
 Grade Reading. With explanatory notes. 256 pages. 40 cents, «^/. 
 
 Selections from the Riverside Literature Series. For Eighth 
 Grade Reading. With explanatory notes. 256 pages. 40 cents, net. 
 
 Riverside Literature Series. 223 volumes, with introductions, notes, 
 biographical sketches, and illustrations. 170 volumes list at 15 cents, 
 paper, or 25 cents, cloth, net. 
 
 Modern Classics. 34 volumes, pocket size, without notes. Theunifornr 
 price is 40 cents, net. 
 
 Rolfe's Students' Series. 1 1 volumes of poems by Scott, Tennyson 
 Byron and Morris. Edited by W. J. RoLFE. Price to teachers, 53 
 cents, each, net. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 813
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED.BELOW. 
 
 fAc~ Novi&aaet 
 
 20m-6,'62(C921Js4)476 
 
 fe 5 _ Wl 
 
 NO]/ 4 m4
 
 "i 3 1205 00278 8493 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 <^.i.-^r 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 liilliliiililill 
 
 A A 001 433 614 
 
 ■i- 
 
 
 I 
 
 7 L'-^ii'^-x 
 
 i.-»~- -y .* 
 
 A