Two Essays upon 
 
 Matthew Arnold 
 
 with some of His Letters 
 to the Author 
 
 By 
 
 ARTHUR GALTON 
 
 LONDON: ELKIN MATHEWS 
 
 IN VIGO STREET 
 
 MDCCCXCVII 
 
TO 
 
 MRS. ARNOLD 
 
 NIL SINE TE MEI PROSUNT LABORES. 
 
"Ovroi cur6fi\Y)T iffrl Oewr 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD: *fefe HIS 
 PRACTICE,*^ TEACHING, AND 
 EXAMPLE. A PROSE ESSAY 
 ON CRITICISM 
 
 Nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit ; 
 Nullum, quod tetigit, non ornavit. 
 
 JATTHEW ARNOLD has 
 
 I gone away suddenly from us; 
 and his departure is making 
 I us realize, with bitter sor- 
 ' row, all that we have lost. 
 If it were possible, in a single phrase, to 
 define the work of a great author, that 
 phrase, which I have chosen, out of Gold- 
 smith's epitaph, might define the work 
 of Matthew Arnold : " He laboured in 
 almost every field of literature, and every- 
 
 I 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 thing, which he handled, became fascinat- 
 ing and beautiful/' Definitions, however, 
 cannot be more than weak efforts reach- 
 ing towards the truth ; they are all bound 
 .to fall short, to press unduly upon a single 
 aspect of it, to define it partially ; though, 
 in this case, the first half of Johnson's 
 epigram is, perhaps, entirely true : Matthew 
 Arnold was a labourer " in almost every 
 field of literature ; " it is this width of 
 range, this universality of his, which gives 
 him an unique position among contem- 
 porary men of letters : He " saw life 
 steadily, and saw it whole." 
 
 But, though his touch has always the 
 gifts of beauty, and has always fascina- 
 tion, he can endue things with even 
 higher qualities than these. "Poetry," 
 he says himself, u interprets by expres- 
 sing with magical felicity the physiog- 
 nomy and movement of the outer world, 
 and it interprets by expressing, with in- 
 spired conviction, the ideas and laws of 
 the inward world of man's moral and 
 spiritual nature : " it interprets by having 
 
 2 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 "natural magic" and " moral profundity." 
 If Matthew Arnold's poetry be looked 
 at as a whole, it will not, I think, be 
 found wanting in " moral profundity ; " 
 
 " Tears 
 
 Are in his eyes, and in his ears 
 The murmur of a thousand years." 
 
 His verse is penetrated with a grave and "*' 
 a serious morality ; and, because he is 
 haunted by " the something that infects 
 the world," his verse, when he is de- 
 scribing the outward aspects of Nature, 
 is " drenched," as he would say, " with 
 natural magic : " 
 
 " Not by those hoary Indian hills, 
 Not by this gracious Midland sea 
 Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills, 
 Should our graves be. 
 
 *' So sang I ; but the midnight breeze, 
 Down to the brimm'd, moon-charmed main, 
 Comes softly through the olive trees 
 
 And checks my strain." 
 
 But, in addition to the quality of " natural 
 magic," and to the expression of the 
 beauty and fascination of the outer world, 
 
 3 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 / there is in his verse an ever present sense 
 of the largeness and of the austerity of 
 Nature : 
 
 " Thin, 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 arises, and alone 
 
 Spring the great streams." 
 
 It is this sense of austerity and of large- 
 ness, which gives him his finest inspira- 
 tion ; and I should point to his expression 
 of that sense, and to his application of it 
 to " the ideas and laws of man's moral 
 and spiritual nature," if I were asked to 
 name his most individual and distinguish- 
 ing quality. The following verse is an 
 example of what I mean, and it will 
 serve to mark the difference between 
 Matthew Arnold and Wordsworth, in 
 their treatment of Nature : 
 
 " They 
 
 Which touch thee are unmating things- 
 Ocean and clouds and night and day ; 
 Lorn autumns and triumphant springs." 
 
 4 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Wordsworth's message to us from Nature 
 is, that it is a sympathetic, a companion- 
 able thing ; he says, for instance, in his 
 Tables Turned: 
 
 " Books ! 'tis a dull and endless strife : 
 
 Come, hear the woodland linnet, 
 How sweet his music ! on my life, 
 There's more of wisdom in it. 
 
 " And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings ! 
 
 He, too, is no mean preacher : 
 Come forth into the light of things, 
 
 Let Nature be your teacher. 
 
 " She has a world of ready wealth, 
 Our minds and hearts to bless 
 
 Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, 
 Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 
 Than all the sages can." 
 
 And this impression of the joy that is to 
 be found in Nature, of her living sym- 
 pathy and companionship, is almost every- 
 where present in Wordsworth ; it is the 
 prevailing impression, that he leaves with 
 us. 
 
 5 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 The prevailing impression, which we 
 get from Matthew Arnold, on the other 
 hand, is that Nature is a calming thing : 
 calming from its austerity, from its 
 obedience to unswerving laws, from its 
 infinite patience, and from its " toil un- 
 sever'd from tranquility." 
 
 " And a look of passionate desire 
 
 O'er the sea and to the stars I send : 
 
 Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me, 
 
 Calm me, ah, compose me to the end ! 
 
 "Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters, 
 On my heart your mighty charm renew ! 
 Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, 
 Feel my soul becoming vast like you ! 
 
 " From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, 
 
 Over the lit sea's unquiet way, 
 
 In the rustling night-air came the answer : 
 
 ' Wouldst thoti be as these are ? live as they/ 
 
 " Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 
 Undistracted by the sights they see, 
 These demand not that the things without them 
 Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 
 
 " And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
 And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll ; 
 For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
 All the fever of some differing soul. 
 
 6 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " Bounded by themselves, and unregardful 
 In what state God's other works may be, 
 In their own tasks all their powers pouring, 
 These attain the mighty life you see." 
 
 In thus dealing with Nature, Matthew 
 Arnold has a message, or an inspiration, 
 of his own : up to a certain point, he 
 follows Wordsworth ; and then he goes 
 beyond him, and gives us something that 
 Wordsworth has not given. J do not 
 say something greater, than Wordsworth 
 has given ; I only wish to point out, that 
 it is something different. I do not com- 
 pare the poets, I distinguish their quali- 
 ties ; because one of the most essential, 
 though the most neglected, functions of 
 true criticism, is to seek out these finer 
 shades of difference ; to extract the 
 " peculiar sensation, the peculiar quality 
 of pleasure which a man's work excites 
 in us." And the very fineness of that 
 sense, which can so discriminate, will 
 make its possessor delight in these "pecu- 
 liar qualities," and dwell in them ; but it 
 will, at the same time, restrain him from 
 
 7 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 the common and the lamentable habit, of 
 pointing to a distinction for the sole 
 purpose of establishing a vulgar rivalry. 
 For there is a school of criticism, which 
 is employed continually in " placing the 
 poets," or in " putting writers into the 
 main literary current," whatever that 
 may mean. Those critics, who employ 
 this easy method of comparison have 
 little to say about any individual poet, or 
 about Poetry herself; their remarks, in 
 consequence, are so vague and accommo- 
 dating, that they may be applied with 
 equal fitness to every poet, and to almost 
 every writer. This, no doubt, is a won- 
 derful triumph of ingenuity; but still, 
 it has its disadvantages : the disadvantage 
 for the critic is, that he is apt to lose 
 sight of the fine distinctions between 
 things, he is a little wanting in discern- 
 ment; the disadvantage for the reader 
 is, that he gains nothing definite, his 
 notions are not cleared. The disadvantage 
 for the poet, whom the critic wishes to 
 explain, and the reader to study, is, 
 8 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 that he is not revealed; he is certainly 
 " put into the literary current," but he is 
 overwhelmed in the flood of verbiage, 
 which flows there. And when a writer 
 talks of "placing the poets," there is 
 only one thing to be done ; that is, to 
 place his own writing at once in the waste 
 paper basket : The phrase is offensive, 
 the thing is impossible, the desire for it is 
 absurd. It is most of all absurd, offensive, 
 and impossible in the case of a modern 
 or of a living poet ; for the history of 
 literature tells us, very plainly, that no 
 age has ever been able to estimate its 
 poets with absolute truth and insight. 
 Every age can, indeed, feel its own poets 
 in a more penetrating way, than an alien 
 time can feel them; but it cannot give 
 so true a verdict about them. A poet 
 may commend himself to his own age 
 by some touch of sentiment or of style, 
 which beguiles that age to over-estimate 
 enormously his true poetical quality. He 
 may, in like manner, be under-rated as a 
 poet ; not for any defect in poetry, but 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 because he does not appeal in any special 
 way to the prevailing sentiment of his 
 time. And posterity, which will judge 
 with a cool impartiality far removed 
 from the passing contemporary sentiment, 
 may entirely reverse, and quite justly 
 reverse, the contemporary decision. It 
 is only when an age has passed away, that 
 its real function and its true place can be 
 discerned ; and, until that period arrive, 
 the literature, which reflects any given 
 age, cannot be judged finally. It is, there- 
 fore, premature to form any opinion 
 about Matthew Arnold's relative position 
 among his contemporaries. And we, 
 who are touched ourselves by the same 
 emotions and desires, which move the 
 poets of our time, are as little able to 
 realize the position they will finally take 
 among the English classics ; we cannot 
 settle the order of their precedence in 
 that great list ; we cannot even tell, with 
 infallible certainty, which of them will 
 be found worthy to have a place in it at 
 all. 
 
 TO 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " The epoch ends, the world is still. 
 
 The age has talk'd and work'd its fill 
 
 The famous orators have shone, 
 
 The famous poets sung and gone, 
 
 The famous men of war have fought, 
 
 The famous speculators thought, 
 
 The famous players, sculptors, wrought, 
 
 The famous painters filled their wall, 
 
 The famous critics judged it all. 
 
 The combatants are parted now 
 
 Uphung the spear, unbent the bow, 
 
 The puissant crown'd, the weak laid low. 
 
 And in the after silence sweet, 
 
 Now strifes are hush'd, our ears doth meet, 
 
 Ascending pure, the bell-like fame 
 
 Of this or that down-trodden name, 
 
 Delicate spirits push'd away 
 
 In the hot press of the noon-day, 
 
 And o'er the plain, where the dead age 
 
 Did its now silent warfare wage 
 yCFer that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom, 
 ^ Where many a splendour finds its tomb, 
 
 Many spent fames, and fallen mights 
 
 The one or two immortal lights 
 
 Rise slowly up into the sky, 
 
 To shine there everlastingly." 
 
 But, it may be urged, if the sphere of 
 criticism be thus limited, what do you 
 leave the critic to work upon, when he 
 
 II 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 may desire to form a judgment about 
 contemporary poets ; are a poet's con- 
 temporaries alone to have no definite 
 opinion about his work? There was 
 once a prudent French critic, who was 
 incessantly haunted by " La peur d'etre 
 dupe ; " he was in continual dread lest 
 he should make a fool of himself, and 
 this abiding terror controlled all his 
 utterances. Now there is nothing in 
 which a man can so easily make a fool of 
 himself as in passing hasty and sweeping 
 judgments upon his contemporaries. Of 
 course we can all pass judgments upon 
 them, and we like doing it immensely ; 
 though such judgments can only be use- 
 ful to us, if they avoid all heated, partizan 
 feeling ; and if we clearly recognize how 
 limited and tentative they must be, from 
 the very nature of the case. But I think, 
 decidedly, it would be better to form no 
 judgments at all than to express, dog- 
 matically and with no sense of hesitation, 
 judgments which have every chance of 
 proving false ; like the judgments, effu- 
 12 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 sive and exaggerated, or stinted and in- 
 adequate, which are poured out at the 
 death of every man of letters, almost 
 before he is cold, by the newspaper critics 
 and reviewers. Never to think at all, 
 would be better than to thinklike them ; 
 for they think and write with no healthy 
 dread before their eyes, with no control- 
 ling sense of fear, and they have to en- 
 dure the penalty of being wholly unre- 
 strained : 
 
 " Misericordia e Giustizia gli sdegna ; 
 Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa." 
 
 The serious critic, however, though he 
 sternly limit his operations, and though 
 he guard himself against every tempta- 
 tion to form a relative judgment, is left, 
 after all, with sufficient matter upon 
 which to exercise his intelligence. There 
 are three things, which he can discuss 
 with profit : he can discuss the poet's 
 matter or substance; he can discuss his 
 manner or style ; and he can record that 
 impression, which he makes upon a con- 
 
 13 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 temporary student. The latter judgment, 
 when it is given honestly and with any 
 real insight, will always be valuable and 
 a most interesting legacy to future his- 
 torians of literature ; most interesting 
 and valuable, perhaps, when the contem- 
 porary view differs widely from the final 
 verdict ; most gratifying to the shade of 
 the critic, and the best to his penetration, 
 when it differs but little from the ulti- 
 mate verdict of posterity. 
 
 Before a critic is able to discuss with 
 profit the substance or the style of a 
 poet he must shun two faults which, in 
 these days of ours, stultify a great deal 
 of our criticism. He must avoid basing 
 his judgment upon fragments or discon- 
 nected passages ; he must be still more 
 careful that he does not choose those 
 fragments, because they are examples of 
 what he may think, fine descriptions of 
 natural scenery. " Descriptive poetry,'' 
 says Mark Pattison, " is simply a con- 
 tradiction in terms. A landscape can be 
 represented to the eye by imitative 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 colours laid on a flat surface, but it can- 
 not be represented in words which, being 
 necessarily successive, cannot render jux- 
 taposition in space. To exhibit in space 
 is the privilege in the arts of design. 
 Poetry, whose instrument is language, in- 
 volves succession in time, and can only 
 present that which comes to pass under 
 one or other of its two forms, action or 
 passion." Or, as Mr. George Meredith 
 has written, in better language and with 
 finer thought : " The art of the pen (we 
 write on darkness) is to rouse the inward 
 vision, instead of labouring with a drop- 
 scene brush, as if it were to the eye." 
 Yet there are critics now, who will search 
 through a poet for descriptions of scenery, 
 which appeal to their individual senti- 
 ment ; they will isolate these descriptions, 
 and take them from their connexion; 
 they will define them, perhaps, as " beau- 
 tiful cameos of description ; " and then, 
 they will proceed to judge the poet's 
 work by their estimate of these alone. 
 Matthew Arnold himself shall expose this 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 popular delusion, this widespread fallacy. 
 Speaking of the cc beautiful cameo " 
 theory, of the insanity of judging a poem,, 
 or any work of art, by its scattered frag- 
 ments, he says : "A modern critic would 
 have assured him (Menander) that the 
 merit of his piece depended on the bril- 
 liant 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 language about the action, not 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 common- 
 place 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 
 16 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 occasional bursts of fine writing, and 
 with a shower of isolated thoughts and 
 images. That is, they permit him to 
 leave their poetical sense ungratified, 
 provided he gratifies their rhetorical 
 sense and their curiosity.'' A poem, 
 then, if we are to form a satisfactory 
 judgment of it, must be regarded as a 
 whole. It would be an example of un- 
 intelligent criticism, for instance, to 
 select a passage out of Matthew Arnold's 
 Tristram and Iseult, a passage out of 
 Lord Tennyson's Merlin and Vivien, 
 and a passage out of Mr. Swinburne's 
 Tristram in Lyonesse, and then to judge 
 these poems from a mere comparison of 
 three isolated quotations ; such a judg- 
 ment would probably be misleading, and 
 certainly be worthless. And judgments 
 formed on this method are more than 
 ever worthless, when they are based upon 
 descriptive selections, on ' c beautiful cameos 
 of description ; " for, though it may seem 
 a paradox at first sight, a description, 
 which is attractive and striking in itself, 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 may in its connexion be an artistic and 
 poetic blemish. The use of description 
 in literature is a subtile and delicate thing, 
 and the narrow limits of the writer's art 
 are easily violated. A modern writer 
 has every temptation to violate them ; 
 his own sentiment may incline him that 
 way, and the public taste is quite certain 
 to encourage him. Perhaps one of the 
 chief benefits, which a modern author 
 may gain from a constant reading of 
 Dante and Homer, is to impress upon 
 himself the severe way in which they 
 avoid all direct and deliberate "word 
 painting," all elaborate description ; they 
 recognize most perfectly the limitations 
 of their art, and they are rewarded by 
 making their scenes more vivid, their 
 personages more distinct, than most 
 other poets. Matthew Arnold is not 
 a Dante or an Homer, in his matter he 
 challenges no comparison with them ; 
 but in his manner, in his restrained 
 severity of diction, he approaches the 
 effect of the great ancients, and the 
 18 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 great body of his work recalls their 
 style. 
 
 Now, when we have come to some 
 understanding with ourselves, as to whose 
 manner precisely a certain poet recalls to 
 us, we have gone a long way towards real- 
 izing that poet's value. Matthew Arnold 
 says : " There can be no more useful help 
 for discovering 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 great 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 in all other 
 poetry which we may place beside them. 
 Short passages, even single lines, will 
 serve our turn quite sufficiently. Take 
 these two lines from Homer, the poet's 
 
 19 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 comment on Helen's mention of her 
 brothers : 
 
 "QiQ (paro* TOVQ cP ijdr) Kare^ev (j)vffiooG ala 
 'Ev A.dK$UfWi i avdi, (j)i\y iv 
 
 4 So said she ; they long since in Earth's soft 
 
 arms were reposing, 
 
 There in their own dear land, their fatherland, 
 
 Lacedaemon.' 
 
 Take that incomparable line and a half 
 of Dante, Ugolino's tremendous words : 
 
 ' Io non piangeva ; si dentro impietrai ; 
 Piangevan elli.' 
 
 ' I wailed not, so of stone I grew within ; 
 They wailed.' 
 
 Take the lovely words of Beatrice to 
 Virgil : 
 
 ' Io son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, 
 
 Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, 
 
 Ne fiamma d'esto incendio non m'assale.' 
 
 ' I am made such by God in his grace, that 
 your misery does not touch me, nor the flame of 
 this burning assail me.' 
 
 Take of Shakespeare a line or two of 
 20 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Henry the Fourth's expostulation with 
 sleep : 
 
 ' Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
 Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
 In cradle of the rude imperious surge ? 
 
 Take of Milton that Miltonic passage : 
 
 ' Darkened so, yet shone 
 
 Above them all the arch-angel ; but his face 
 Deep scars of thunder had intrench'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 Proserpine, 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. 
 
 21 
 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " The specimens I have quoted differ 
 widely from one another, but they have 
 in common this: the possession 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 them- 
 selves great labour 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 con- 
 crete examples; to take specimens of 
 poetry of the highest, the very highest 
 quality, and to say : The characters of a 
 high quality of poetry are what is ex- 
 pressed there. They are far better recog- 
 nized 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 critical 
 account of them, we may safely, perhaps, 
 venture on laying down not indeed how 
 
 22 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 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 it 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 be thereby dark- 
 ening the question, not clearing it. The 
 mark and accent are as given by the sub- 
 stance and matter of that poetry, and of 
 all other poetry which is akin to it in 
 quality." 
 
 It may be thought, perhaps, that all 
 this opposes what I have remarked, about 
 judging a poem as an whole, and about 
 not judging it from descriptive passages : 
 but these tests or touchstones of Matthew 
 Arnold's differ entirely from descriptive 
 passages, because they are of the very 
 essence of the poetry ; they are not frag- 
 ments, which can be detached or inserted 
 
 23 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 without violating the artistic unity of 
 the poem, without, therefore, altering its 
 nature ; and for this reason, they are satis- 
 factory tests of its quality and style. And 
 the highest use of these tests does not 
 consist, as it appears to me, in choosing 
 lines however excellent, taken from poets 
 however famous, and applying them to 
 chance lines and passages of the author 
 whom we desire to estimate. Their high- 
 est value can only arise from our previous 
 knowledge of those poets, from whom we 
 choose them ; and our application of 
 them should not be restricted to isolated 
 lines, and to single passages, here and 
 there. We must rather bear them in 
 mind, continually, as we go along ; be- 
 cause they will keep the great masters 
 always before us, and they will oblige us 
 to judge the verse, which we are reading, 
 by the standard of their poetry. 
 
 The critic, I said, can discourse with 
 profit about the manner or style of a 
 poet. Now style is one of the most 
 baffling things in the world to define, or 
 
 24 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 to explain ; there is only one thing more 
 baffling, and that is, to attain it. But 
 style can be felt profoundly by those who 
 have the instinct for it : there can be no 
 better test of style, than the test which 
 Matthew Arnold gives ; and if his own 
 poetry be read with these test passages 
 constantly in view, it will be found, I 
 think, to recall the style and the manner 
 of the great masters. Several of those 
 passages, which I have already quoted 
 from him appear to me to recall that 
 style and that manner ; but it is possible 
 to choose lines which recall them even 
 more vividly. Let us choose, as an 
 example, these lines from Sohrah and 
 Rusfum : 
 
 " But Sohrab answer'd him in wrath : for now 
 
 The anguish of the deep-fix'd spear grew fierce, 
 
 And he desired to draw forth the steel, 
 
 And let his blood flow free, and so to die 
 
 But first he would convince his stubborn foe ; 
 
 And rising sternly on one arm he said : 
 
 * Man, who art thou who dost deny my words ? 
 
 Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, 
 
 And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine." 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 or these from Tristram and Iseult: 
 
 " The spirit of the woods was in her face ; 
 She look'd so witching fair." 
 
 or these from Urania : 
 
 " His eyes be like the starry lights 
 His voice like sounds of summer nights 
 In all his lovely mien let pierce 
 The magic of the universe ! " 
 
 or these from Isolation : 
 
 " Yes ! in the sea of life enisled, 
 
 With echoing straits between us thrown, 
 
 Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 
 We mortal millions live alone" 
 
 or these from the Grande Chartreuse : 
 
 " Our fathers watered with their tears 
 This sea of time whereon we sail ; 
 Their voices were in all men's ears 
 Who passed within their puissant hail. 
 Still the same ocean round us raves, 
 But we stand mute, and watch the waves." 
 
 or these from Dover Beach : 
 
 " The sea of faith 
 
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furPd ; 
 
 26 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 But now I only hear 
 
 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
 
 Retreating, to the breath 
 
 Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
 
 And naked shingles of the world." 
 
 It is more convincing to take a few 
 examples and compare them with test 
 passages from the great masters, than to 
 assert that Matthew Arnold's poetry has 
 various abstract qualities of style, such 
 as " restraint," severity," directness," or 
 " simplicity." We can feel his manner 
 in these examples, we have our experience 
 of the manner and of the style of the 
 great poets, and we can make our own 
 comparison between their style and his. 
 The comparison, will not, however, be 
 fully satisfactory ; we shall not realize 
 all the value of Matthew Arnold's man- 
 ner ; until we have applied the test pas- 
 sages to other modern poets. We might 
 apply them to Mr. Browning, for in- 
 stance, as well as to Matthew Arnold ; 
 and then we shall perceive, that there is 
 more than one way of resembling the 
 
 27 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 great masters We may apply them, 
 also, to Lord Tennyson ; and then we 
 shall realize how subtile, and almost im- 
 perceptible, the resemblance can be. And 
 if we apply them, finally, to Mr. Lewis 
 Morris, we shall find how provoking 
 critical rules are, and how, even though 
 our intentions be scrupulously innocent, 
 they may entangle us in the most dis- 
 tressing paradoxes ; because, in this case, 
 we shall be shown that a writer may have 
 an enormous reputation, without resem- 
 bling the great masters at all. I have 
 already deprecated anything like passion- 
 ate and partizan comparisons between 
 contemporary poets, comparisons which 
 are too absolute and hasty, which cannot 
 be final; but a comparison of this in- 
 direct and impersonal nature may be of 
 great assistance to a reader of modern 
 poetry : it will help him to apply a com- 
 mon standard to the work of our con- 
 temporary poets, to regard their work 
 from a fixed and definite point of view ; 
 it will restrain him from passionate and 
 28 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 from partial judgments; it is the only 
 method, which will enable him to over- 
 come, or at least to restrain, his personal 
 feelings, his private sympathies or tastes, 
 and his individual caprice. 
 
 And if we pass from a poet's manner 
 or style to his substance or matter, I 
 believe, again, that a sounder judgment 
 can be obtained by an indirect method of 
 examination, by applying some fixed and 
 classical standard to his poems ; but, if 
 we can get it, a poetical standard. It 
 would be easy, and it would be in har- 
 mony with the usual practice of our re- 
 viewers, to take a certain number of 
 Matthew Arnold's poems, and to declare 
 that they have this or that aim and pur- 
 pose ; that they teach this lesson, or 
 preach that doctrine. But this mode of 
 judgment is arbitrary, inartistic, and ex- 
 ceedingly deceptive : "wide is the range 
 of words ! words may make this way or 
 that way ; " and if a wordy battle arise, 
 who is to decide, which critic really un- 
 derstands the poet's lesson, or doctrine, 
 
 29 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 or purpose? And even though one of 
 them should guess right, he has, surely, 
 not done a fine thing because he has 
 shown how to translate a poem into a 
 sermon ; that cannot be the right way to 
 judge poetry. Voltaire says of a preacher, 
 of course only in a romance : "II devisa 
 en plusieurs parties ce qui n'avait pas 
 besoin d'etre devise ; il prouva methodi- 
 quement tout ce qui etait clair ; il en- 
 seigna tout ce qu'on savait. II se-pas- 
 sionna froidement, et sortit suant et hors 
 d'haleine, Toute Fassemblee alors se 
 reveilla, et crut avoir assiste a une in- 
 struction. Voila un homme qui a fait 
 de son mieux pour ennuyer deux ou trois 
 cents de ces concitoyens ! " The muti- 
 lation, the laborious proving of what is 
 clear, the dismal teaching of what a single 
 flash of right instinct, and that only, can 
 reveal, are all familiar to the readers of 
 sermonising critics, and to the congrega- 
 tions of literary preachers. These critics 
 are less offensive, perhaps, than those 
 " gushing " and unscholarly writers, who 
 
 30 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 drown the poets, and who display their 
 ignorance, in a flood of verbiage ; but 
 they are far more tedious, and equally 
 unprofitable. Matthew Arnold will 
 again show us a better way of judging 
 poetry. " We should conceive of poetry 
 worthily," he says, "and more highly 
 than it has been the custom 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 inter- 
 pret life for us, to console 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 replaced by poetry. 
 Science, I say, will appear incomplete 
 without it. For finely and truly does 
 Wordsworth call poetry ' the impassioned 
 expression of what is the countenance 
 of all science ; ' and what is a countenance 
 without its expression ? Again, Words- 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 worth finely and truly calls poetry ' the 
 breath and finer spirit of all knowledge : ' 
 our religion, parading evidences such as 
 those on which the popular mind relies 
 now; our philosophy, pluming itself 
 on its reasonings about causation and 
 finite and infinite being ; what are they 
 but the shadows and dreams and false 
 shows of knowledge? The day will 
 come when we shall wonder at ourselves 
 for having taken them seriously ; and 
 the more we perceive their hollowness, 
 the more we shall prize ' the breath and 
 finer spirit of knowledge ' offered to us 
 by poetry. 
 
 " But if we conceive thus highly of 
 the destinies of poetry, we must also set 
 our standard for poetry high, since poetry, 
 to be capable of fulfilling such high des- 
 tinies, must be poetry of a high order 
 of excellence. We must accustom our- 
 selves to a high standard and to a strict 
 judgment. Sainte-Beuve relates that 
 Napoleon one day said, when some- 
 body was spoken of in his presence as a 
 
 3 2 ' 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 charlatan : * Charlatan as much as you 
 please ; but where is there not charlatan- 
 ism? ' c Yes/ answers Sainte-Beuve, ' in 
 politics, in the art of governing mankind, 
 that is perhaps true. But in the order 
 of thought, in art, the glory, the eternal 
 honour is that charlatanism shall find no 
 entrance ; herein lies the inviolableness 
 of that noble portion of man's being.' 
 It is admirably said, and let us hold fast 
 to it. In poetry, which is thought and 
 art in one, it is the glory, the eternal 
 honour, that charlatanism shall find no 
 entrance ; that this noble sphere be kept 
 inviolate and inviolable. Charlatanism 
 is for confusing or obliterating the dis- 
 tinctions between excellent and inferior, 
 sound and unsound or only half-sound, 
 true and untrue or only half-true. It is 
 charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, 
 when we obliterate these. And in poetry, 
 more than anywhere else, it is unpermiss- 
 ible to confuse or obliterate them. For 
 in poetry the distinction between excel- 
 lent and inferior, sound and unsound or 
 
 33 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 only half-sound, true and untrue or only 
 half-true, is of paramount importance. 
 It is of paramount importance because 
 of the high destinies of poetry. The 
 best poetry is what we want ; the best 
 poetry will be found to have a power of 
 forming, sustaining, and delighting us, 
 as nothing else can. 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." 
 
 The function of the best poetry is, 
 " to interpret life for us, to console us, 
 to sustain us ; " here, at any rate, a defi- 
 nite aim is placed before a serious reader 
 of poetry ; he is told, what to look for, 
 when he is in search of good poetry. 
 We can all understand the meaning of 
 consolation and of support; we know 
 quite well when we meet with a thing 
 which " forms, delights, and sustains us." 
 It is true, that we may fancy, now and 
 then, we are " delighted " and " consoled " 
 
 34 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 by poetry, with which we ought not to 
 be pleased at all ; we may " form " our- 
 selves on models, which are deplorably 
 vicious : but for that, there is no external 
 remedy ; we must acquire, each of us, 
 our own experience, and we must grow 
 into our taste ! " The way to perfection 
 is through a series of disgusts," as Mr. 
 Pater admirably expresses it ; and, if we 
 once set our face earnestly towards per- 
 fection, we shall soon meet with the dis- 
 gusts, and marvel not a little that we 
 ever admired them. As the only satis- 
 factory method, when we wish to judge 
 of a poet's manner, is to confront him 
 with the great masters of style ; so, in 
 trying to form a judgment about his 
 matter, it is equally indispensable to try 
 to give the reader a test, which he can 
 feel and experience. There can be no 
 absolutely satisfying test except to read 
 the poet's works, with a definite standard 
 in mind, by which to compare them. 
 " Who is able to infuse into me," Car- 
 dinal Newman asks, " or how shall I 
 
 35 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 imbibe, a sense of the peculiarities of 
 the style of Cicero or Virgil, if I have 
 not read their writings? " No one can 
 infuse into a reader adequate ideas about 
 an author, whom that reader has not 
 read; although there is a fashionable 
 school of criticism, which seems to im- 
 agine it can do this, and it tries to do it 
 in the strangest way. It would be in 
 the manner of that school to describe 
 Matthew Arnold as an arum-lily; Mr. 
 Browning, as a cactus in flower; and 
 Lord Tennyson, as a sweet-pea : we all 
 know the kind of discourse that would 
 follow ; it would not be about botany 
 exactly, or about poetry exactly, but it 
 would touch upon every subject that lies 
 between the two. Though we should 
 be fortunate, if the comparison were 
 made between things of the same kind ; 
 for it is made more often between things 
 which are not generally comparable with 
 one another : the Parthenon, Wagner's 
 music, the Divine Comedy, rainbows, 
 the Crusades, and so on. All this may 
 
 36 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 be effective, it is often elegant and pretty; 
 but it is more adapted to reveal the in- 
 genuity of the critic, than the work of 
 that poet, whom it is his business to ex- 
 plain. " No description," says Cardinal 
 Newman once more, " however complete, 
 could convey to my mind an exact likeness 
 of a tune, or an harmony, which I have 
 never heard ; and still less of a scent 
 which I have never smelt ; and if I said 
 that Mozart's melodies were as a summer 
 sky or as the breath of Zephyr, I should 
 be better understood by those who knew 
 Mozart than by those who did not." 
 I would go still further than Cardinal 
 Newman, because I believe that no 
 description, however elaborate, could 
 impress upon another mind the exact 
 likeness of a scent or an harmony, even 
 though he were familiar with the sound 
 or smell described : and, for the same 
 reason, no description and no comparison, 
 even when the images are sane, apposite, 
 and comparable with one another, can 
 adequately express, either to an author 
 
 37 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 or to his readers, what he feels about a 
 poet. If I were to compare a poet to a 
 bird, a shell, or a star, my reader would 
 get a very definite notion, but not of the 
 poet; the definite notion conveyed to 
 him would be, that my theory of criticism 
 was unsound, and my practice insane. 
 But if I say, that Matthew Arnold in his 
 poetry seems to me, " to interpret life 
 for us, to console us, to sustain us," and 
 this in an eminent degree, those who 
 have read him can test my opinion by 
 their own experience ; and those who 
 have not read him will, at least, under- 
 stand the kind of impression he makes 
 upon me, and if they be familiar with 
 poetry at all, they will be able to form 
 some idea of Matthew Arnold's poetry ; 
 they will know to what sphere of poetry 
 it belongs, with what sort of poetry it 
 should be classed, with what order of 
 poets he should be compared. 
 
 I said there were three things which 
 the critic of a modern poet was able to 
 discuss with profit : his manner, or style ; 
 
 38 
 
ARNOLD 
 \ 
 
 his matter, or substance ; and that im- 
 pression, which he makes upon a con- 
 temporary reader. We have discussed 
 two of them, and at some length; be- 
 cause, in Cardinal Newman's words again, 
 " when we assert, we do not argue." 
 To assert, and to be believed without a 
 shadow of additional proof, is the in- 
 alienable prerogative of a theologian. 
 Not to assert, not even to argue, but to 
 try and convince persuasively, is the 
 business of a critic ; and so, with a dread 
 of bare assertion, and with a dislike of 
 argument, I have endeavoured, in an 
 indirect way, to ascertain the truth about 
 the matter and the manner of the poet, 
 whom we are now considering. And at 
 last, perhaps, without incurring the 
 charge of asserting too dogmatically, I 
 may say what I feel about Matthew 
 Arnold. In his style and in his manner 
 he seems, to me, to recall the great 
 masters; and this in a striking and in 
 an abiding way. He recalls them in a 
 striking way ; because to recall them at 
 
 39 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 all is a rare gift, but to recall them 
 naturally and with no strained sense nor 
 jarring note of imitation, is a gift so ex- 
 ceedingly rare, that it is almost enough 
 in itself to place a writer among the 
 great masters, to proclaim that he is one 
 of them. To recall them in any way is 
 a rare gift, though not an unique gift ; 
 a few other modern poets recall them 
 too; but with them, with everyone of 
 them, it is the exception when they re- 
 semble the great masters. They have 
 their own styles, which abide with them; 
 it is only now and then, by a flash of 
 genius, that they break through their 
 own styles and attain the one immortal 
 style. Just the contrary of this is true, 
 with Matthew Arnold : it is his own, 
 his usual, and his most natural style, 
 which recalls the great masters ; and only 
 when he does not write like himself does 
 he cease to resemble them. It is Mr. 
 Swinburne who defines Matthew Arnold 
 as " the most efficient, the surest-footed 
 poet of our time, the most to be relied 
 40 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 on : " who says, that " what he does he 
 is safest to do well ; " who asserts, that 
 " more than any other he unites person- 
 ality and perfection ; " and, that every- 
 where in his poetry " is the one ruling 
 and royal quality of classic work, an as- 
 sured and equal excellence of touch." 
 I only follow Mr. Swinburne, therefore, 
 when I repeat, that Matthew Arnold re- 
 sembles the great masters most, when he 
 is most like himself; he is the most 
 classical when he is most personal. If 
 we consider the whole amount of his 
 work, he seldom falls below himself; 
 for " he is the surest-footed poet of our 
 time ; " and, to return to prose, that is 
 why I think Matthew Arnold resembles 
 the great masters in an abiding way. 
 
 It is more difficult to speak of a poet's 
 matter and substance, than of his style 
 and manner. From the nature of his 
 poetry, Matthew Arnold is to be num- 
 bered among the poets who " interpret 
 life for us, who console and sustain us ; " 
 but as to the degree in which he admin- 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 isters interpretation, comfort, and sup- 
 port, there may be a thousand opinions. 
 So much will depend, for each reader, 
 upon the stage of his own development 
 when he first meets with a poet, and un- 
 dergoes his influence ; so much, again, 
 will depend upon each reader's tempera- 
 ment. A great deal will depend, as well, 
 upon our varying moods : at one time, 
 a certain poet will be everything to us ; 
 at another time, he can give us nothing 
 we want, he will be cold, valueless, and 
 silent. There are, however, a few poets, 
 who interpret life upon so many sides, 
 that they can always give us something 
 we want : poets of wide range, like 
 Shakespeare, or Moliere, or Sophocles ; 
 and there is Dante, who gives us a New 
 Life, as well as a Divine Comedy. 
 Poets of that order can appeal to every 
 temperament, can satisfy every mood, 
 can help us at every stage : they are for 
 ever and ever ; they " speak to time and 
 to eternity." We hold them, therefore, 
 to be supreme poets, and we place them 
 42 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 in an order apart ; although we recognize, 
 within that order, various degrees of 
 worth and power. To this order, I do 
 not think, that Matthew Arnold belongs; 
 and, if I were asked for a reason, I 
 should say it is chiefly because he fails to 
 interpret that large and most engrossing 
 element in man, which Dante interprets 
 in his New Life ; and just because he 
 fails in the sphere of love and passion, 
 his dramatic poems, although they con- 
 tain fine things, are not great dramatic- 
 ally ; they are too meditative and serene. 
 This cannot be said of his narrative 
 poems ; they are, at any rate, brilliantly 
 snccessful in their manner. But, what 
 has been denied to Matthew Arnold in 
 dramatic power, has been bestowed 
 abundantly in personal power ; in stren- 
 uousness, in concentration, in lucidity ; 
 and, therefore, his lyrical poems are ex- 
 ceedingly great. His lucidity and his 
 concentration working upon his tender 
 and emotional nature, and penetrated by 
 his deep, his divine feeling of " the sense 
 
 43 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of tears in mortal things," have made 
 him greatest of all in his Elegies : his 
 real strength is there, and some of his 
 Elegies may rank with the greatest 
 poems in that sort. 
 
 But I conceive that Matthew Arnold 
 has a larger function than this, an higher 
 sphere : his great style points to it ; the 
 distinction and the potency of his work 
 adapt him for it. Only a few months 
 before he died, it was on the thirteenth 
 of February, in 1888, Matthew Arnold 
 gave an address, at Westminister, on 
 Milton ; it was his last public discourse, 
 and it was destined to be his first post- 
 humous essay. He says : " In our race 
 are thousands of readers, presently there 
 will be millions, who know not a word 
 of Greek and Latin, and will never learn 
 those languages. If this host of readers 
 are ever to gain any sense of the power 
 and charm of the great poets of antiquity, 
 their way to gain it is not through trans- 
 lations of the ancients, but through the 
 original poetry of Milton, who has the 
 
 44 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 like power and charm, because he has the 
 like great style. 
 
 " Through Milton they may gain it, 
 for, in conclusion, Milton is English; 
 this master in the great style of the 
 ancients is English. All the Anglo- 
 Saxon contagion, all the flood of Anglo- 
 Saxon commonness, beats vainly against 
 the great style, but cannot shake it, 
 and has to accept its triumph! But it 
 triumphs in Milton, in one of our own 
 race, tongue, faith, and morals. Milton 
 has made the great style no longer an 
 exotic here; he has made it an inmate 
 among us, a leaven, a power. Never- 
 theless, he and his hearers on both sides 
 of the Atlantic are English, and will 
 remain English : 
 
 * Sermonem Ausonii patrium, mores que tenebunt? 
 
 " The English race overspreads the 
 world, and at the same time the ideal of 
 an excellence the most high and the most 
 rare abides with it for ever." 
 
 I make no comparison here between 
 
 45 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Milton and Matthew Arnold ; but these 
 last words of his, about Milton, define 
 what I conceive to be his larger function. 
 No man, who attains to the great style, 
 can fail to have a distinguished function : 
 and Matthew Arnold, like Milton, will 
 be " a leaven and a power ; " because he, 
 too, has made the great style current in 
 English. With his desire for culture 
 and for perfection, there is no destiny 
 he would prefer to this, for which his 
 nature, his training, and his sympathies, 
 all prepared him. To convey the mes- 
 sage of those ancients, whom he loved 
 so well, in that English tongue, which 
 he was taught by them to use so per- 
 fectly, to serve as an eternal protest 
 against charlatanism and vulgarity, is 
 exactly the mission he would have chosen 
 for himself. But in this last speech of 
 his, he enunciates another truth, and we 
 cannot dwell too long upon it. In liter- 
 ature, in the things of the mind, by 
 which alone we truly live, political di- 
 visions do not count ; whether we be 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 subjects or citizens, Americans, Austra- 
 lians, British, does not matter ; we are 
 all equally English, all equally concerned 
 in the purity and in the power of our 
 common language. Since it is an uni- 
 versal speech, its power is enormous ; 
 but, for this very reason, its purity may 
 be the more endangered. The few 
 writers of our language, therefore, who 
 give us " an ideal of excellence the most 
 high and the most rare," have an im- 
 portant function : we should study their 
 works continually ; and it should be a 
 matter of passionate concern with us, 
 that their " ideals ; " that is, their definite 
 and perfect models ; should abide with 
 us for ever. 
 
 In the meanwhile, and as long as this 
 generation of ours is in possession of 
 the earth, as long as its thoughts are 
 current, Matthew Arnold will occupy an 
 unique position ; for he, and he alone in 
 poetry, has given us modern thoughts in 
 a classical form. A reader, who turns 
 to him, will find the problems of our 
 
 47 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 modern life, the troubles of our modern 
 spirit, treated in a noble and a penetrating 
 way, and in the great style. Such a 
 reader will be calmed, consoled, braced ; 
 for Matthew Arnold " gives us so much 
 to rest upon, so much which communi- 
 cates his spirit and engages ours!" So 
 winning and so abiding are these personal 
 qualities in him, that many readers have 
 imagined an old and intimate friend to 
 be speaking to them ; and this intimacy 
 has tempted some of them, it may be, to 
 overlook that power, that beauty, and 
 that perfection, which are seldom absent 
 from his writings. Other readers, it is 
 evident, have been puzzled and offended 
 by the " Distinction " of Arnold's work; 
 by that rare quality, which is undeniable 
 in him. Others, again, have been seduced , 
 from the perfect clearness and simplicity 
 of Mr. Arnold, by the miserable influ- 
 ences of this our day; by the more 
 luxuriant though coarser styles, or by 
 the louder though emptier tones, or by 
 the imposing obscurity of its most fash- 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ionable names in prose and verse. " A 
 test of great poetry," says a fine critic, 
 whose English is a model to me, " is its 
 abiding and unfailing power upon us, 
 because of its indifference to time and 
 place. A line of Virgil, written by the 
 Bay of Naples, in some most private 
 hour of meditation, all those long years 
 ago! comes home to us, as though it 
 were our own thought : upon each repe- 
 tition, experience has made it more true 
 and touching. Or, take some verse of 
 Arnold, written at Oxford or in London, 
 some few years past : it comes home to 
 us as, though a thousand years had pon- 
 dered it, and found it true. 
 
 * Tears 
 
 Are in his eyes, and in his ears 
 The murmur of a thousand years.' 
 
 And in beauty, in power of music and 
 of phrase, the great poets are all con- 
 temporaries: an eternal beauty is upon 
 the great works of art, as though they 
 were from everlasting." 
 
 More and more, as the time goes on, 
 
 49 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 the world will acknowledge that Matthew 
 Arnold speaks thus to it, in the manner 
 and in the style of the great masters ; 
 and his writing will take its true place 
 above the prettinesses, the affectations, 
 the eccentricities, which pass current on all 
 sides of us now, as great and genuine 
 poetry. And, in the still, cool atmos- 
 phere of the future, his voice will be 
 clearer and stronger, than it sounds to 
 us now, amid the heat and the noisy 
 personalities of our contemporary strife. 
 We who read him, and we who write 
 about him, will perish and pass away ; 
 but he will remain, disengaged from all 
 that is low and temporary, a source of 
 strength and joy : 
 
 " But the majestic river floated on, 
 
 Out of the mist and hum of that low land, 
 
 Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, 
 
 Rejoicing." 
 
 It is only when we turn from verse to 
 prose that we can realize the full signifi- 
 cance of Matthew Arnold's loss. Now, 
 that he is gone, we are, all of us, ever so 
 
 50 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 much more at the mercy of stupidity 
 and of imposture and of vulgarity. 
 Who is there left, that can raise common 
 sense above the commonplace? Who 
 can move practical things into the realm 
 of ideas, and handle them with distinct- 
 ion, with lightness, and with simplicity? 
 In prose, his loss is irreparable: in prose, 
 it is most melancholy to contemplate ; 
 for " he furnished to others so much of 
 that which all live by," that he seemed 
 gifted with immortal youth, and destined 
 to criticise innumerable centuries with 
 that same keenness and buoyancy, which 
 he infused into this century of ours. 
 He gave us so much, that we could live 
 by, he understood so fully the life in 
 which he moved, that his departure is 
 like the visible passing away of the sanest 
 manifestation of the soul and intellect of 
 our generation. Nullum fere scrihendi 
 genus non tetigit: It is in his prose 
 that we see the versatility of his mind, 
 and the width of his culture ; but before 
 we can appreciate his work in prose, we 
 
 5 1 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 must try and realize what his aim was. 
 He was a scholar, but not a pedant ; he 
 had no vain delusions about founding a 
 school of thought, giving final opinions 
 about things, establishing a system of 
 criticism. Every one of these projects 
 he abhorred, as detrimental to all fruitful 
 thought, as the very delirium of mis- 
 chievous vanity. " The old recipe, to 
 think a little more and bustle a little less, 
 seems to me still the best recipe to 
 follow. So I take comfort when I find 
 the Guardian reproaching me with having 
 no influence ; for I know what influence 
 means, a party, practical proposals, action; 
 and I say to myself: * Even supposing 
 I could get some followers, and assemble 
 them, brimming with affectionate enthus- 
 iasm, in a committee room at some inn ; 
 what on earth should I say to them? 
 what resolutions could I propose? I 
 could only propose the old Socratic 
 commonplace, know thyself; and how 
 black they would all look at that!'" 
 And so, when I hear him reproached 
 
 5 2 
 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 because his writing, as people of a cer- 
 tain temper think, was not vigorous, or 
 because his opinions were wanting in 
 certainty : I reply, " no doubt it is as 
 you say, but only raw and half educated 
 people, like some divines and many jour- 
 nalists, are gifted with perfect certainty 
 and undaunted vigour : they will always 
 * rush in where angels fear to tread.' ' 
 Matthew Arnold's attitude was rather 
 fc ' to try and approach truth on one side 
 after another, not to strive nor cry, not 
 to persist in pressing forward, on any 
 side, with violence and self-will, it is 
 only thus, it seems to me," he says, 
 " that mortals may hope to gain any 
 vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom 
 we shall never see except in outline, and 
 only thus even in outline. He who 
 will do nothing but fight impetuously 
 towards her or his own, one, favourite, 
 particular line, is inevitably destined to 
 run his head into the folds of the black 
 robe in which she is wrapped." And so 
 critics, with their heads enveloped in that 
 
 53 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 robe, have told us over and over again 
 that " his politics were unpractical." A 
 modern writer, himself a politician, con- 
 fessed not long ago, that " Politics were 
 a continual acceptance of the second 
 best ; " and in saying this he, perhaps, 
 flattered unduly the achievments of our 
 politicians. But that saying accounts 
 for Matthew Arnold's attitude towards 
 politics ; it was his mission, he conceived, 
 to indicate not what was brutally prac- 
 tical, what was most convenient, it may 
 be, to party managers, but was ideally 
 the best. " He brings thought to bear 
 upon politics," as he says himself, of 
 Burke, " he saturates politics with 
 thought. I know nothing mor striking, 
 and I must add that I know nothing un- 
 English ; " and nothing which makes 
 journalists and politicians more uncom- 
 fortable. 
 
 It was Matthew Arnold's fortune to 
 make many people and many classes of 
 people angry and uncomfortable ; he 
 made them, as Dante expresses it, 
 
 54 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 "Guatar Tun Faltro, come al ver si 
 guata," he made them look at one 
 another, as men look when the truth is 
 told them. He also made them feel to- 
 wards him, as men too commonly feel 
 towards the revealer of plain but dis- 
 turbing and uncomfortable truths. In- 
 stead of feeling sorry for themselves at 
 being wrong, they fly into a rage with 
 that person who points out their evil 
 state. As those lost souls, whom Dante 
 celebrates, looked and felt towards him, 
 so have the theologians, perhaps more 
 often than any other class, looked and 
 felt towards Matthew Arnold, though 
 with how much justice I will not presume 
 to decide. But Matthew Arnold says 
 very truly, " the most characteristic 
 thoughts one can quote from any writer 
 are always his thoughts on matters of 
 religion." And if we leave the theolog- 
 ians and the lost to gaze at one another, 
 and turn ourselves to look simply at 
 what Matthew Arnold says on these 
 matters, we shall find many noble, and 
 
 55 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 penetrating, and beautiful things : if we 
 are wise we shall take thankfully those 
 we can accept, and leave the remainder 
 to those who have a taste for them. 
 
 After all, there are few modern writers 
 who have more to give than Matthew 
 Arnold, provided we realise exactly what 
 it is he professes to give. He does not 
 profess to give, I repeat, final opinions, 
 or fixed systems, or dogmatic utterances. 
 But he places things in the light of a 
 clear and lucid intellect, he saturates them 
 with thought, and brings a fresh current 
 of ideas to bear upon them. He bids 
 his readers examine their ingrained 
 notions, and scrutinize their prejudices, 
 and look at things as they really are, and 
 judge them by an high standard of taste, 
 of culture, and of intelligence. His 
 influence is one of the finest intellectual 
 disciplines, simply because he does not 
 set up to be the master ; he gives his 
 readers, not rules, but flexibility of mind, 
 and keenness of perception. About one 
 thing only is he inflexible : he will accept 
 
 56 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 no standard, but the highest and the 
 noblest : nothing else will satisfy him, 
 and no vain appearance of the best, 
 however popular, or ingenious, or im- 
 posing, ever deludes -him. This lofty 
 tone has brought him numerous enemies: 
 just as men get angry, when their faults 
 are pointed out ; and hate, not their 
 errors, but their monitor : so, when their 
 low ideals and their false tastes are ex- 
 posed, they call the critic fastidious. Or 
 they write a criticism on Matthew Arnold, 
 and say that they find in him " so great 
 a measure of delicate subtility that the 
 atmosphere is generally more or less un- 
 congenial." Very likely! for Matthew 
 Arnold reveals everywhere that quality, 
 which is uncongenial to all that is com- 
 mon; Distinction. " Of this quality 
 the world is impatient : it chafes against 
 it, rails at it, insults it, hates it ; it ends 
 by receiving its influence and undergoing 
 its law. This quality at last inexorably 
 corrects the world's blunders and fixes 
 the world's ideals. It procures that the 
 
 57 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 popular poet shall not finally pass for a 
 Pindar, nor the popular historian for a 
 Tacitus, nor the popular preacher for a 
 Bossuet." 
 
 I can only touch in the briefest way 
 upon Matthew Arnold's work in prose ; 
 but how much could be said about prose, 
 now that we have so many rich and lux- 
 uriant masters of it flourishing on all 
 sides of us! I can only say, then, that 
 Matthew Arnold, in the manner and in 
 the style of his prose, give us the same 
 example as in his verse : the example of 
 the plain, simple, unpretentious style of 
 the masters of good prose ; and his irony, 
 his humour, his fine breeding, place him 
 among the masters of the greatest prose. 
 That, which in verse is known as " the 
 beautiful cameo of description," is known 
 in prose as " the prose-poem." " Qu'est 
 ce qu'un poeme en prose," asks Voltaire, 
 " sinon un aveu de son impuissance? " 
 " What is a prose-poem but a thing 
 which testifies to its own and to its 
 author's impotence?" I should reply, 
 
 58 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 " it certainly testifies to these ; but it 
 proclaims no less, that its author is ignor- 
 ant of what prose should be." This age 
 of ours makes many claims upon us, but 
 none so unreasonable as when it bids us 
 accept its mystifications for marvels, its 
 tentative experiments for classical models, 
 its experimental guesses for final truths ; 
 and so an healthy breeze of common 
 sense from the eighteenth century is 
 most invigorating for us now and then : 
 for us, who live in an age which presumes 
 to look down upon the great century of 
 prose. 
 
 " Let us not bewilder our successors," 
 says Matthew Arnold, in conclusion : 
 " let us transmit to them the practice of 
 poetry (and of prose) with its boundaries 
 and wholesome regulative laws, under 
 which excellent works may again, perhaps, 
 at *some future time be produced, not 
 fallen into oblivion through our neglect, 
 not yet condemned and cancelled by the 
 influence of their eternal enemy, caprice. 
 Sanity, that is the great virtue of the 
 
 59 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ancient literature ; the want of it is the 
 great defect of the modern, in spite of 
 all its variety and power." " Docile 
 echoes of the eternal voice," he would 
 say of the great masters in literature, 
 " pliant organs of the infinite will, such 
 workers are going along with the essen- 
 tial movement of the world." I always 
 think that Matthew Arnold, as a prose 
 writer, would wish the future to speak of 
 him as one of the small band of workers 
 who, in his own time and place, " echoed 
 the eternal voice." He would like best 
 to be known as a " pliant organ of the 
 infinite will." That, it seems to me, was 
 above all other things his aim in prose. 
 
 His aim in life, as he said not long 
 ago, was " to be helpful to others, to be 
 sympathetic : " and the affection of those, 
 amongst whom he laboured, testifies to 
 the noble and loving way in which he 
 fulfilled this aim, during a long course of 
 uncongenial employment, in which he 
 was condemned by an hard fate, and by 
 an harder generation, to wear away the 
 
 60 
 
MAttHEVT ARNOLD 
 
 precious years of his maturity. Those, 
 who knew him, will not soon forget the 
 charm of that gracious presence ; 
 
 " That comely face, that clustered brow, 
 That cordial hand, that bearing free ; 
 I see them still, I see them now ; 
 Shall always see ! " 
 
 never can they forget the fascination and 
 the happiness which were communicated 
 by that buoyant though gentle spirit : the 
 fifteenth of April shall come and shall 
 go many times, before it cease to dawn 
 upon a group of mourners, who are in- 
 consolable. 
 
 June, 1888. 
 
 61 
 
THE POETICAL WORKS 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 OF 
 
 A Note upon Literature, considered as a Fine 
 Art, and upon that practice and those theories of 
 writing, which were in favour at one time among 
 our Men of Letters. 
 
 OT many days have passed, 
 since a member was chosen 
 by the French Academy. 
 The accomplishments of this 
 fortunate author were des- 
 cribed by a newspaper, in one of its most 
 ridiculous expressions, as being " not far 
 to seek": after the search, it was dis- 
 covered that " not one of Pierre Loti's 
 books resembled anything previously 
 written by any one else " ; and this 
 
 63 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 judgment was intended, neither as a re- 
 buke to the Academy, nor as a satire 
 upon the new Academician. Now there 
 is a sense in which it is true, that every 
 human being, who comes into the world, 
 is different to the remainder of the species; 
 and in this sense it is also true, that the 
 writings of every human being are dis- 
 tinct and singular ; but it was not in this 
 broad way, that the newspaper spoke of 
 Loti and of his productions; it was 
 more enthusiastic for its hero, it was less 
 cautious for itself; and it wished us to un- 
 derstand, that his works afforded new and 
 unprecedented models in the art of writing. 
 This was the amazing discovery, that 
 was " not far to seek : " a fine discovery 
 indeed, if it were true ; and if it were 
 possible, there could be no higher praise 
 bestowed upon an author. But human 
 nature being what it is, and the laws of 
 thought and language being what they 
 are, is it possible, we may ask, that the 
 writings of any man should " resemble 
 nothing previously written by any one 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 else ; " and, if it were possible, could 
 those writings be pleasing or instructive ? 
 Were the same opinion expressed of any 
 one's behaviour, we should imagine him 
 to be either a primitive wild man, or an 
 harmless disordered person out of Bed- 
 lam ; and, if we pause and meditate, a 
 like opinion will come to us about the 
 exercise of every other human art or 
 calling. What should we think of that 
 painter, that merchant, that architect, 
 that gardener, of whose operations, 
 thoughts, and business it could be said, 
 that they resembled nothing previously 
 composed, imagined, or transacted, by 
 any others of a similar employment? 
 Some of the great architects and painters 
 of this our day have, it is true, shown 
 us productions, which resemble nothing 
 fine, that was painted or built in former 
 Ages ; but it remains to be seen, whether 
 Posterity will consider these productions 
 to be works of genius, or works of 
 eccentricity and pride. The truth is, 
 every Art must be what our ancestors 
 
 65 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 described as a Mystery ; with its own 
 fixed laws and constitution, with its own 
 peculiar methods, and with its fine trad- 
 itions. The novice, who would com- 
 mand the secrets of the Art, must first 
 submit himself to a long apprenticeship, 
 and to the most rigorous training ; and 
 his genius, if he be thus gifted, is to be 
 shown, not by violating or by neglecting 
 these wholesome and necessary laws, but 
 by so mastering their principles as to 
 extend them in a new direction, or to 
 apply them in a more perfect way. If 
 this be true in any one Art, surely it is 
 true in all ; and not less true, in the Art 
 of writing. 
 
 " Those rules of old, discovered not devis'd, 
 
 Are Nature still, but Nature methodized : 
 
 Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained 
 
 By the same laws, which first Herself ordain'd. 
 
 Nature to all things fix'd the limits fit, 
 
 And wisely curb'd proud man's pretending wit." 
 
 In justice to Pierre Loti, however, it 
 may be asserted that his admirer did him 
 wrong when he said, that the manner of 
 
 66 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 his composition was new and strange. 
 " What chiefly moves us to admiration 
 of Loti," says a more knowing critic, 
 " is the very opposite quality; a precision 
 and a lucidity, which give to his work 
 the air of classical excellence. At a time 
 when so much French prose is hideous 
 with laboured phraseology, of science, 
 of archaism, and of slang, Loti writes a 
 * pure and proper ' prose, simple and 
 strong. Where Mr. Saintsbury sees 
 artifice and affectation, we see a curiosa 
 felicitas ; that justifiable search for the 
 right phrase, and the happy word, which 
 only a good writer undertakes. In 
 Loti's recent triumph over M. Zola, 
 The Academy has shown, not its prefer- 
 ence for extravagant beauty over extrava- 
 gant ugliness; but for a beauty, which 
 is classical and true. It is the author's 
 admirable clearness, employed upon un- 
 familiar matters, which yields the effect 
 of strangeness, and of deliberate novelty." 
 Here we come upon a judgment, which 
 is true, and therefore satisfying : Loti's 
 
 6? 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 originality is confessed ; but, in praising 
 him, the laws of his Art are neither 
 contemned nor violated. "The first 
 consideration for us is not whether we 
 are amused and pleased by a work of 
 art or mind, nor is it whether we are 
 touched by it. What we seek above all 
 to learn is, whether we were right in 
 being amused with it, and in applauding 
 it, and being moved by it." 
 
 It may be, that our modern authors 
 and reviewers are all in a conspiracy to 
 disguise their scholarship, as being out 
 of fashion, and to dissemble the true 
 extent of their accomplishments; but, 
 in studying the large volume of their 
 works, we do not seem to find in them 
 a presiding and pervading scholarship, a 
 perpetual recognition, that literature is a 
 fine Art, and that they, the teachers and 
 exponents of it, are the disciples of great 
 masters, the students of great models, 
 the guardians of an old tradition. The 
 perception of this, I repeat, would seem 
 to be as far from the thoughts and 
 
 68 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 methods, as from the works, of a large 
 number of our present authors and of 
 their critics : hence the apparent care- 
 lessness in the writings of the former, 
 and the more evident want of principle 
 in the judgments and opinions of the 
 latter. In futilem quondam ac deformem 
 incidunt loquacitatem, qui, cum copiam 
 sint professi suam produnt inopiam ; part- 
 ner et rem obscurant, et mis eras audit- 
 orum aures onerant. Of this obscurity 
 and want of principle, the words about 
 Loti, with which I opened my disserta- 
 tion, are a fair example. Our critic in- 
 formed us, that his reasons were " not 
 far to seek" and they were not: for he 
 admitted and imprisoned the first wan- 
 dering thought, that stole into the vacancy 
 of his mind, without reflection, without 
 considering whether his visitor were wise 
 or foolish ; and still less without pausing 
 to make any nice distinction, which might 
 explain or vindicate a sweeping and re- 
 volutionary judgment. " Not one of his 
 books resembles anything previously 
 
 69 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 written by any one else : " how purely 
 ridiculous would this criticism be, were 
 it not melancholy, that a professional 
 judge of literature should bring himself 
 to imagine such a fact possible, or such a 
 judgment true. Nonsense is always 
 foolish, and it may be irritating ; but 
 "grand nonsense," as Dr. Johnson has 
 observed, " is insupportable." Every 
 one of our reviewers should profit by 
 the wisdom of that most cautious French- 
 man, who was haunted by a perpetual 
 fear, " La Peur d'etre Dupe : " if he do 
 not imitate this caution, he will be res- 
 ponsible, sooner or later, for the gen- 
 eration and birth of nonsense, perhaps 
 of "grand nonsense." Fortes creantur 
 fortibus et bonis is not always true in 
 common life, though it is always true in 
 literature ; and, in literature, a foolish 
 progeny may be attributed for certain to 
 a foolish sire. But no author should 
 rely upon nature's bounty, however good 
 and' strong his natural gifts may be ; for 
 in the delicate and learned Art of author- 
 
 7 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 ship, whether in the creative sphere of it 
 or in the critical, the finest natural gifts 
 do not exempt their owner from the 
 obligation to read and study. "You 
 can never be wise," Dr. Johnson observes 
 again, " You can never be wise, unless 
 you love reading : " and he says more 
 forcibly in another place, " I never de- 
 sire to converse w r ith a man, who has 
 written more than he has read." It is 
 to be feared, therefore, that among cer- 
 tain of our modern authors Dr. Johnson 
 would be reduced to silence : because, for 
 want of reading, there is evolved by them, 
 not literature, the result of scholarship 
 and thought ; but what Voltaire describes 
 better as " les excrements de la litter a- 
 ture ; " evolved, that is, by the writer's 
 own internal operations, like a spider's 
 web, 
 
 "Who shames a scribbler ? break one cobweb thro'; 
 He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew : 
 Destroy his fib, or sophistry, in vain ; 
 The creature's at his dirty work again, 
 Thron'd on the centre of his thin designs, 
 Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines." 
 
 71 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 " Proud of a vast extent of flimsy 
 lines " is not so bad a description of our 
 current literature, taken in the mass, or 
 of the disposition of its manufacturers. 
 My comparison of it, to a spider's web, 
 might be justified on several grounds; 
 but one reason for the justice of it " is 
 not far to seek" and this reason will show 
 how far were our great authors from 
 desiring to produce books, which " re- 
 sembled nothing previously written by 
 any one else : " for they desired to pro- 
 duce literature, not to throw off the 
 excrements of authorship. As we ex- 
 amine the lives of our men of letters, 
 we find that in every Age, they set be- 
 fore themselves some particular models ; 
 the study of which was their business, 
 and their delight, which they gloried in 
 trying to reproduce; not slavishly nor 
 pedantically, but liberally, in the manner 
 of true genius, and according to the fine 
 laws and traditions of the art of writing. 
 In the first place, there were the Greek 
 and Roman authors; in whose works 
 
 72 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 our old writers were trained religiously, 
 whom they never ceased to frequent, to 
 enjoy, and to revere. They would one 
 and all have supplicated the Ancients, 
 in the words of Pope : 
 
 " O may some spark of your celestial fire 
 The last, the meanest, of your sons inspire ; 
 (That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights ; 
 Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes) 
 To teach vain wits a science little known, 
 T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own." 
 
 But in addition to these, the necessary 
 teachers of all who would practise writing 
 as an art, our own great masters chose 
 deliberately to inform themselves upon 
 some later model. In Chaucer, there is 
 what Primers and Guide Books, those 
 clysters for dyspeptic students, describe 
 as his French manner, and as his Italian 
 manner : by the latter expression we are 
 to understand, that he was a most rever- 
 ent admirer of Dante and Boccaccio; 
 that is to say, he studied the best modern 
 literature he could find; and without 
 depreciating his native genius, we may 
 
 73 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 assert that he and his works were much 
 the better for these liberal pursuits. 
 Spenser, again, was no less diligent in 
 cultivating the Italians. I will not enter 
 upon the vexed question of Shakespeare's 
 reading, except to affirm that it was wide : 
 I only touch upon Ben Jonson's learning, 
 which is even squandered upon the sur- 
 face of his prose ; and thus we pass 
 through the other dramatists, all very 
 much " Italianate," to Milton. In his 
 pages, the classical authors meet us at 
 every turn : but we find in Milton, be- 
 sides a loving intimacy with the classics, 
 and with the great Italians, an acknow- 
 ledgement of his obligations to his two 
 English predecessors. After recording 
 his admiration for Chaucer, he says of 
 Spenser, 
 
 " And if aught else great bards beside 
 In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
 Of turneys and of trophies hung, 
 Of forests, and enchantments drear, 
 Where more is meant than meets the ear.*' 
 
 Milton thus finely inaugurates that 
 74 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 venerable tradition of English letters, 
 by which Spenser is enthroned as " the 
 poets' poet." And so the fair inherit- 
 ance of learning was transmitted, from 
 Milton to Dryden, from Dryden to 
 Addison, to Pope, to Johnson : the taste 
 and the models of these authors changing, 
 their devotion to scholarship unchanged. 
 Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur 
 illis " was the pious wish of Johnson, as 
 he mused with Goldsmith in the Poets' 
 Corner ; and the words express his con- 
 stant attitude towards the great authors 
 of the past. Nor did our Augustan 
 writers hesitate to confess their obliga- 
 tions to Boileau, and to the severe models 
 of the French. The fashion is, to chat- 
 ter about the immorality of France : to 
 purse the lips and look unutterable things 
 over the wickedness of the French 
 authors ; over the lewdness of Boileau 
 and Corneille, that is, of Racine, of 
 Bossuet, of Fenelon ; for these, being 
 the great models at that time in their 
 own country, were after all the masters 
 
 75 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 whose teaching was supreme in ours. To 
 talk of their immorality would be mere 
 cant, with which Art and Letters would 
 have no concern, though the charge were 
 true. It is not only truer, but more 
 profitable, I think, to consider the severity 
 of those great writers, both in their mat- 
 ter and in their style; and to realize, 
 that, without their strait example, we 
 might have had neither an Augustan Age 
 of English prose, nor the polite and fin- 
 ished literature of the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury. : 
 
 " We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's 
 
 charms, 
 
 Her arts victorious triumphed o'er our arms ; 
 Britain to soft refinements less a foe, 
 Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow." 
 
 "A man, who has not been to Italy, is 
 always conscious of an inferiority ; " and 
 a nation, we may add, that has not been 
 to school in Italy, is always inferior in 
 its Art and in its Literature. If we 
 examine the English literature before 
 Chaucer's time, and after it, we shall 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 realise what Italian influence can do ; the 
 one great master, who came among us 
 before the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, was trained by the Italians. This 
 is not the place to speak at large of the 
 influence of Italy upon English Art : I 
 wish only to record, in passing, how 
 much our language owes to the great 
 masters of Italy and France : 
 
 " Still do thy sleepless ministers move on ", 
 
 we may say of Art, as well as of Nature ; 
 and thus the treasures of civility and 
 language are circulated through the 
 human family. 
 
 " Language is the Sacred Fire in this 
 Temple of Humanity," says Coleridge, 
 " and the Muses are its especial and 
 Vestal Priestesses." The phrase is mag- 
 nificent, the illustration happy; they 
 vindicate the high office of Art and 
 Letters ; they remind us, that the altar 
 of knowledge must be served continually 
 by a succession of initiated ministers, 
 the acolytes and bedes-men of the Muses' 
 
 77 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ritual. It is not necessary to pursue the 
 investigation ; to show that all our great 
 authors were not only men of parts, but 
 men of reading . not one of them learned, 
 perhaps, not Gray, not Milton, as Bentley 
 or Scaliger was learned : that kind of 
 learning in excess may be a dangerous 
 accomplishment in a man of letters ; "a 
 mere antiquarian is a rugged being ; ' ' 
 but they were familiar with books, and 
 proficient in the Art of authorship ; they 
 were learned, that is, in the liberal way, 
 if not in the high degree, of Erasmus. 
 Of him it hath been written eloquently, 
 by an old French translator of 'The 
 Praise of Folly, " Erasme fut d'une vaste 
 Literature, & d'un discernement exquis : 
 il possedoit a fond les Auteurs ; & per- 
 sonne n'a peut-etre, jamais si bien mis 
 en oeuvre le savoir & Terudition. II 
 excelloit dans la connoissance des Livres ; 
 & le principal but de son assiduite a 
 Tetude, etoit de reflechir sur les moeurs." 
 The literature of Erasmus, that is to 
 say, was " at bottom a criticism of life : " 
 
 78 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 but it owed all its unequalled fineness 
 and power to its author's happy inter- 
 course with the ancient writers ; to his 
 firm persuation that writing is an Art ; 
 to his acquaintance with the models of 
 that art, and to his perfect mastery of 
 its laws, of its methods, and of its tra- 
 dition. It may be thought a compli- 
 ment by a modern critic, to say of an 
 author, that " not one of his books re- 
 sembles anything previously written by 
 any one else : " Erasmus would have 
 thought otherwise ; he would have said 
 to our critic, and to many critics, Dicat 
 igitur suae quisque linguae quoties rapitnr 
 ad loquendum : Lingua quo vadis ? utrum 
 prodesse par as , an laedere ? The fami- 
 liars of Erasmus have " not far to seek" 
 if they would know how that great wit 
 and scholar were likely to accept a du- 
 bious compliment, or into what place he 
 would have sent its maker. 
 
 But it was not our great authors alone, 
 who were men of reading; I contend 
 that our little authors, the minor poets, 
 
 79 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 the smaller critics, were also men of 
 reading in their various degree ; and that 
 they, too, held sound views about litera- 
 ture, as an Art, as a tradition. Let us 
 examine the little authors of any period ; 
 the courtiers of Henry VIII. and of 
 Elizabeth, " the wits of either Charles's 
 days," the witlings of Queen Anne or 
 of the early Georges ; think as we may 
 about their work, about its pedantry or 
 its euphuism, about its conceits, about 
 its " artificiality," whatever that may 
 mean, we can trace in it a deliberate 
 effort to be scholarly, and to practise 
 Letters as an Art. The works of all 
 those periods were based on scholarship, 
 they were formed upon some definite 
 plan or school, they rested upon what I 
 call tradition : whereas the great quantity 
 of the minor verse and criticism of to- 
 day seems to be inspired by nothing but 
 emotion, to be formed upon no models, 
 and to rest upon nothing more stable 
 than the transient feelings of its authors, 
 who themselves appear to have no notion 
 80 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 that literature must be viewed, acquired, 
 and practised, like any other of the arts. 
 It seems to me, that in this difference of 
 attitude and of practice, we find some 
 explanation of the present barbarity and 
 wildness of our minor verse and criticism. 
 If a man will be a painter, he must learn 
 to draw ; no easy accomplishment, as I 
 am told. He must be at the pains to 
 master his anatomy and his perspective. 
 Then, having learnt and practised the 
 rudiments of his Art, he must frequent 
 the great masters of it ; he must medi- 
 tate their works, and copy them. If he 
 would be a true scholar, he will read their 
 lives ; he will dwell with them ; he will 
 possess their thoughts and breathe their 
 atmosphere. In addition, he will try to 
 know what they and other skilful persons 
 have recorded about the theory and the 
 practice of his Art : and when he has 
 done this, he will find that he has wan- 
 dered into the broad and shining fields 
 of literature. So it is with the Art of 
 Painting : so it was with the Art of 
 
 81 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Writing. But this is the age of Primers, 
 of Examinations, and of easy ways to 
 knowledge. If the end of education 
 were to gather facts, nothing could be 
 better than a summary ; but the Art of 
 Writing may not be acquired, nor taught, 
 in this barbarous and hurried manner. 
 It was not thus, that the old authors were 
 exercised in literature. " Burke had 
 always a ragged Delphin Virgil not far 
 from his elbow." The old authors, in 
 other words, frequented the great masters 
 of their Art, they breathed their atmo- 
 sphere, and we can see the bounteous 
 effect of it throughout their writings ; 
 but, if we may judge from modern 
 writings, this is just what modern authors 
 neglect to do, and we can see the effects 
 of their negligence in the incivility of 
 their pages. How could he ever paint, 
 who, instead of frequenting the galleries, 
 should study imperfect reproductions 
 from the paintings in them; a hand 
 from one, a vestment from another, a 
 cloud or a prospect from a third, but 
 82 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 nothing as an whole. Instead of possess- 
 ing the mind of Rubens, our student 
 would be content to know, that he was 
 born in one year and died in another, 
 that he married, that he lived in splendour 
 and was something of a public man. To 
 know this, is good ; but the knowledge 
 will not teach you how to paint, nor will 
 a like knowledge about Addison teach 
 you how to write. This kind of educa- 
 tion would be perceived at once to be 
 ridiculous for a painter : yet, with our 
 Primers and Selections, this is precisely 
 the education, which we provide in this 
 our day for a student of literature, for 
 an intending writer ; and the attitude of 
 mind, which tolerates this way of educa- 
 tion, is more sad to contemplate than the 
 literature it produces. Of how many 
 such wasted students must we own, as 
 Johnson owned with truth of Voltaire, 
 Fir esf acerrimi ingenii; of how many 
 more must we add, as Johnson added 
 with less truth, Vir esf paucarum liter- 
 arum ? Not all the gifts of Voltaire 
 
 83 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 can produce good literature, nor all the 
 gifts of Mantegna good painting, with- 
 out study and without practice ; without 
 some rational theory about their several 
 Arts, and some familiarity with the great 
 masters in them. He who has emotions, 
 but not genius, and much zeal, but little 
 training, can only hope at best "to be 
 dull in a new way and therefore to be 
 great." His books will be unscholarly 
 and monstrous, a shame, and not an or- 
 nament, to Art and Letters ; and of them 
 it may be said with truth, in some low 
 sense, that " they resemble nothing pre- 
 viously written by any one else : " such 
 an author will be worthy of our critic, 
 and of his amazing discovery; and, by 
 learned persons, the reasons for his de- 
 ficiency will never be "far to seek" For 
 the purposes of Art, it were better to 
 know one book of Horace and a few 
 essays by Addison or Goldsmith, than to 
 master the facts and dates in all our Pri- 
 mers. Non multa sed multum^ is the true 
 way in literature : it is well to know 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 something of " The Hundred Best 
 Books ; " it is indispensable for an author 
 to be familiar with the half dozen, which 
 are for him the best, to dwell with them, 
 to handle them continually. 
 
 But I would not leave my reader with 
 the impression, that the minor literature 
 of old was all good, and the minor liter- 
 ature of to-day all bad. What I say is, 
 that the old writers, taking the general 
 average of them, had a different concep- 
 tion of literature from ours ; they prac- 
 tised and studied it in a different manner : 
 it is this difference of attitude, upon 
 which I would lay stress, rather than the 
 difference between their literature and 
 the literature of to-day. That they 
 could be bad enough, we have their own 
 works and the witness of The Dunciad 
 to prove : perhaps I can distinguish best 
 by saying, that where they are bad, we 
 are mad; at any rate, there was more 
 method in the madness of those dunces. 
 They had too much education for their 
 wits ; we bestow too little training upon 
 
 85 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 our emotion. Let us hear an old critic, 
 long since forgotten, who wrote thus of 
 Pope's Essay on Criticism : " His pre- 
 cepts are false or trivial, or both; his 
 thoughts are crude and abortive; his 
 expressions absurd, his numbers harsh 
 and unmusical, his rhymes trivial and 
 common. Instead of majesty, we have 
 something that is very mean ; instead of 
 gravity, something that is very boyish ; 
 instead of perspicuity and lucid order, 
 we have but too often obscurity and 
 confusion." Whatever we may think of 
 this judgment, we must own that the 
 critic had something definite to say, and 
 that he knew very well how to say it, 
 and how to punctuate it. Training can 
 but direct and improve a judgment ; it 
 cannot give one : here we have a bad 
 judgment expressed in the terms of good 
 literature ; if I must choose between two 
 sorts of mediocrity, I prefer this to a 
 mad judgment in words unscholarly and 
 loose. Now I will take a good author 
 of to-day, whose works are a striking 
 86 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 illustration of what I wish to prove. 
 Every one, who has a true taste for liter- 
 ature, must delight in the poetry of Mr. 
 Austin Dobson ; in whom he will meet 
 with all the finer qualities, which he ad- 
 mires in the most polished authors. The 
 exquisite verses of Mr. Dobson inform 
 his readers that Horace is never " far 
 from his elbow ; " and that he has con- 
 versed familiarly with the polite scholars 
 of the last Age, both among ourselves 
 and among the French. We cannot but 
 see in him, that he has been a disciple of 
 great masters, a student of great models, 
 that he considers himself to be the 
 guardian of a fine tradition. He has 
 practised literature, as an Art : he has, 
 and will have, an artist's high reward. 
 
 There are many writers, more prac- 
 tised than I shall ever be, who have dis- 
 coursed on style ; of that vexed question 
 I do not wish to speak : but Mr. Austin 
 Dobson has reminded me of the excel- 
 cent way in which the great writers of 
 the last Age pursued their Art ; and I 
 
 8? 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 wish to say something about that, now 
 we have examined their attitude towards 
 the Art itself. I wish to draw attention 
 to their correct vocabulary, to their bold 
 and pregnant language, and to their 
 scholarly punctuation. Among our 
 present authors, the art of punctuation 
 is a lost accomplishment ; and it is usual 
 now to find writings with hardly any- 
 thing but full stops : colons and semi- 
 colons are almost obsolete ; commas are 
 neglected, or misused ; and our slovenly 
 pages are strewn with dashes, the last 
 resources of an untidy thinker, the cer- 
 tain witnesses to a careless and unfinished 
 sentence. How different, and how su- 
 perior, is the way of the great authors 
 of the eighteenth century ; who, though 
 they can be homely and familiar, never 
 lay aside the good breeding and the 
 civility of a polished Age. In their 
 writings, the leading clauses of a sen- 
 tence are distinguished by their colons : 
 the minor clauses, by their semi-colons ; 
 the nice meaning of their detail is ex- 
 88 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 pressed, the pleasure and convenience of 
 their readers are alike increased, by their 
 elegant and proper use of commas. The 
 comma, with us, is used as a loop or 
 bracket, and for little else : by the more 
 accurate scholars of the last Age, it was 
 employed to indicate a finer meaning; 
 to mark an emphasis, an inversion, or 
 an elision ; to introduce a relative clause ; 
 to bring out the value of an happy 
 phrase, or the pretty meaning of an 
 epithet. And thus the authors of the 
 great century of prose, that orderly and 
 spacious time, assembled their words, 
 arranged their sentences, and marshalled 
 them into careful periods: without any 
 diminution from the subtile meaning of 
 their thought, or any sacrifice of their 
 directness and their vigour, they exposed 
 their subject in a dignified procession of 
 stately paragraphs ; and when the end is 
 reached, we look back upon a perfect 
 specimen of the writer's Art. We have 
 grown careless about form, we have little 
 sense for balance and proportion, and we 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 have sacrificed the good manners of liter- 
 ature to an ill-bred liking for haste and 
 noise : it has been decided, that the old 
 way of writing is cumbersome and slow ; 
 as well might some guerilla chieftain 
 have announced to his fellow barbarians, 
 that Caesar's legions were not swift and 
 beautiful in their manoeuvres, nor irre- 
 sistible in their advance. I have spoken 
 of our straggling phrases, with nothing 
 but full stops, or with here and there 
 a solitary and bewildered comma : they 
 are variegated, upon our disordered 
 pages, with shorter sentences, sometimes 
 of two words. This way of writing is 
 common in Lord Macaulay, or in the 
 histories of Mr. Green; and I have 
 found it recommended, as an elegant 
 device, in Manuals and Primers. With 
 the jolting and disconnected fragments 
 of these authorities, I would contrast 
 the musical and flowing periods of 
 Johnson's Poets, or the easy progress of 
 an Addisonian discourse. 
 
 Dr. Birkbeck Hill, in the delightful 
 
 90 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 Preface to his Bo swell, explains how he 
 was turned by an happy chance to the 
 literature of the eighteenth century ; and 
 how he was tempted to read on and on in 
 the enchanting pages of " The Spectator." 
 " From Addison in the course of time 
 I passed on," he continues, "to the other 
 great writers of his and the succeeding 
 age, finding in their exquisitely clear 
 style, their admirable common sense, and 
 their freedom from all the tricks of 
 affectation, a delightful contrast to so 
 many of the eminent authors of our own 
 time." There is no one fit to study 
 literature, who is not impressed by the 
 common sense and the clear style of the 
 eighteenth century ; and the more he is 
 impressed, the more will he resent the 
 too frequent absense of sense and clear- 
 ness, from a large number of the eminent 
 authors of the nineteenth century. In Mr. 
 Ward's selection from the English Poets, 
 there may be read, side by side, a notice 
 of Collins and of Gray : the first, by Mr. 
 Swinburne ; the other, by Mr. Matthew 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Arnold. The essay upon Gray is quiet 
 in tone, it has an unity of treatment and 
 never deserts the principal subject ; it is 
 suffused with light, and is full of the 
 most delicate allusions. The essay upon 
 Collins, by being written in superlatives 
 and vague similes, deafens and perplexes 
 the reader ; and the author, by squander- 
 ing his resourses, has no power to make 
 fine distinctions, nor to exalt one part of 
 his thesis above another. 
 
 Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum. 
 
 The old writers were more restrained 
 in their utterances, and therefore they 
 could be more discriminating in their 
 judgments ; they could be emphatic with- 
 out rtoise and deep without obscurity, 
 ornamental but not gairish, carefully ar- 
 ranged, but not stiff nor artificial. They 
 exhibit the three indispensable gifts of 
 fine authorship, the natural reward of 
 Letters as an Art : simplicitas munditiae, 
 lucidus or do, curiosafelicitas. Then, how 
 92 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 tender were the consciences of these fine 
 scholars towards the smallest questions of 
 their Art : Boswell, in recording one of 
 Dr. Johnson's speeches about the Papists, 
 printed the word laceration in italics ; be- 
 cause it was a term of surgery, it was not 
 properly a term to use in literature. For 
 a similar reason, I too have printed the 
 ridiculous expression " not far to seek " in 
 italic letters ; and that would be the better 
 way of printing our critic's wonderful 
 discovery, his dubious compliment to 
 the unfortunate Loti, that " not one of 
 his books resembles anything previously 
 written by any one else." And now we 
 take our leave of this wandering thought, 
 of this foolish and perfidious visitor, 
 who stole into our critic's mind, and 
 debauched his judgment. We have con- 
 fronted him with the theories and with 
 the practice of the great masters in the 
 Art of writing, and we have brought 
 him out into the healthy light and air of 
 the Eighteenth Century : how ridiculous 
 doth he now appear, as he stands thus 
 
 93 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 exposed before us, all brazen-faced and 
 silly. 
 
 Spectatum admissi, risum teneatis, amici? 
 
 Pope has told us that the last and 
 greatest art for an author is " the art to 
 blot : " M. Renan, one of the most dis- 
 tinguished masters of writing in this Age, 
 has said, that it is the art of making 
 transitions, of passing imperceptibly and 
 naturally from one subject to another. 
 The newspapers are fond of doing this 
 in one more of their improper phrases, 
 the twin brother of their expression, " /'/ 
 is not far to seek ; " and therefore a phrase 
 to distinguish by italics, and to avoid. 
 " // is a far cry" they will inform you, 
 when they can join two irrelevant sub- 
 jects by no other artifice ; and I might 
 elude my difficulty, and delude my reader, 
 by saying " it is a far cry " from the 
 Eighteenth Century to Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold. But I have introduced this low 
 phrase to expose it, not to use it ; and I 
 will enter upon the second portion of my 
 
 94 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 subject in a better way. " The criticism 
 which, throughout Europe, is at the pre- 
 sent day meant, when so much stress is 
 laid on the importance of criticism and 
 the critical spirit, is a criticism which 
 regards Europe as being, for intellectual 
 and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
 federation, bound to a joint action and 
 working to a common result ; and whose 
 members have for their common outfit, 
 a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and 
 Eastern antiquity, and of one another." 
 This is Mr. Arnold's definition of that 
 science in which he is an acknowledged 
 master, the science of criticism : his 
 words show, how large and rigorous a 
 demand he made upon the profession of 
 an author ; and, if we add to this another 
 of his definitions, that culture is knowing 
 the best that has been thought and writ- 
 ten in the world, we shall find ourselves 
 once more considering those views of 
 the Art of Writing, which we saw the 
 great masters held. We followed their 
 tradition, in English literature, until we 
 
 95 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 found ourselves in the company of Pope 
 and Johnson ; and now, after more than 
 a century has elapsed, another great 
 master in the Art of Writing has pre- 
 cisely the same thing to say to us, both 
 in his exhortations and in his models. 
 
 " The thing that hath been, it is that 
 which shall be ; and that which is done, 
 is that which shall be done : and there is 
 no new thing under the sun. Is there 
 anything whereof it may be said, See, 
 this is new ? it hath already been of old 
 time, which was before us." This is a 
 better text, I think, to introduce us to a 
 great writer, than the words with which 
 our unknown critic chose to introduce 
 us to the works of Pierre Loti ; at any 
 rate, it is not a libel upon the subject of 
 my discourse. It was my privilege, some 
 three years ago, to speak of Mr. Arnold's 
 poetry ; and after that lapse of time, 
 there is nothing I can wish unsaid, but 
 nothing either, that I can well repeat. I 
 had then the melancholy office to speak 
 of Mr. Arnold's death, and to review 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 his writings : I have now the easier and 
 pleasanter duty to notice a new edition 
 of his poems. These have been col- 
 lected into one volume, of which the 
 first impression was consumed imme- 
 diately. In a letter, which was published 
 in The Hobby Horse y Mr. Arnold spoke 
 of himself as " a less than half popular 
 author ; " and he said again, " I never 
 have been broadly popular, and I cannot 
 easily bring myself to believe I shall ever 
 become so : " he would, therefore, have 
 been very pleased with the reception of 
 his book ; and the second edition, as I 
 hope, has given place to others already. 
 Mr. Arnold's collected poetry forms one 
 small volume ; and there is nothing new 
 in it, except the early, unfinished poem, 
 which he contributed to The Hobby 
 Horse. Nothing has been added, which 
 he would not have included himself; and 
 his own order, his own arrangement of 
 of the poems, has been preserved : in 
 both of these respects, I hope all future 
 editors will be as careful of his wishes. 
 
 97 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 But there is one change, that I should 
 like to see ; not so much a change, as an 
 addition: an addition, which might 
 perhaps be made now, which it may be 
 impossible to make if this opportunity 
 be lost. Without altering the present 
 order of the poems, I should like, if it 
 be possible, to have the date assigned to 
 each of them. 
 
 "We must confess the faults of our 
 favourite, to gain credit to our praise of 
 his excellence. He that claims, either in 
 himself or for another, the honours of 
 perfection, will surely injure the reputa- 
 tion which he desires to assist." The time 
 has not come for estimating Mr. Arnold's 
 work : but I, much as I admire him, 
 have never contended that he is fault- 
 less ; what I do say is, that his faults are 
 occasional and few, his excellencies con- 
 tinual and many. " If I come to an 
 orchard, and say there's no fruit here, 
 and then comes a poring man, who finds 
 two apples and three pears, and tells me, 
 ' Sir, you are mistaken, I have found 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 both apples and pears/ I should laugh 
 at him : what would that be to the pur- 
 pose ? " And I think when the worst 
 has been said, that Mr, Arnold's ad- 
 mirers may still have the laugh against 
 the " poring man," and his collection of 
 blemishes. 
 
 There is a Latin verse, I think by 
 grave Tibullus, which always seems to 
 me in its propriety to express very well 
 the singular, but easy, refinement of Mr. 
 Arnold : 
 
 Mille habet ornatus mille decenter habet. 
 
 If it require a " poring man " to collect 
 Mr. Arnold's blemishes, it would require 
 a " poring man," too, to collect what it 
 used to be the fashion to describe as his 
 " beauties " ; what the present fashions 
 would call his "striking passages," his 
 " cameos of description." In this general 
 and quiet excellence is his highest praise, 
 among true judges of poetry ; it is in 
 the possession of it, that he most nearly 
 resembles the great masters, and is a 
 
 99 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 worthy representative of those traditions 
 of good literature, which we have been 
 considering. And what, it may be asked > 
 is the end of all this hard training, of this 
 austere tradition of yours, of the infinite 
 labour of those, you call the great masters 
 in literature; what, in short, is the end 
 of your Art of Writing ? To that ques- 
 tion, there might be several answers : I 
 might say, that he, who asks it, does not 
 deserve to know ; that by the very fact 
 of asking it, he proves that he can never 
 know. But, if I might answer shortly 
 and imperfectly, I would say : the end of 
 the Art of Writing is to give pleasure, 
 and to satisfy as many as possible of our 
 highest faculties. "Works of imagina- 
 tion excel by their allurement and de- 
 light ; by their power of attracting and 
 detaining the attention. That book is 
 good in vain, which the reader throws 
 away. He only is the master, who keeps 
 the mind in a pleasing captivity ; whose 
 pages are perused with eagerness, and in 
 hope of new pleasure are perused again ; 
 100 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 and whose conclusion is perceived with 
 an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller 
 casts upon departing day." 
 
 July: 1891. 
 
 101 
 
SOME LETTERS OF MATTHEW 
 ARNOLD. 
 
 [HE second anniversary of 
 Mr. Arnold's death will fall 
 soon after the publication of 
 our April number, which is 
 adorned with a poem about 
 his grave at Laleham : Mr. Arnold was 
 an indulgent reader of our magazine, 
 even in the days of its wayward and in- 
 experienced youth ; he read its maturer 
 productions with constant sympathy and 
 approval; he was always interested in 
 the fortunes of the Hobby Horse ; and, 
 to assist its fortunes, he was obliging 
 enough to become a contributor himself. 
 Alike for the pleasure of my readers, 
 and that they might join with me in 
 
 103 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 celebrating the fifteenth of April, more 
 tenderly, and with a more intimate sense 
 of our irreparable loss, I have desired, 
 for some time, to let them share with 
 me in a few of Mr. Arnold's letters; 
 especially in some of those which refer 
 to the Hobby Horse ; and now, through 
 Mrs. Arnold's kindness, I am enabled to 
 realize my desire : I leave the letters to 
 tell their own story; adding, here and 
 there, a sufficient explanation ; and I 
 have inserted a fac-simile from the man- 
 uscript of the poem, which Mr. Arnold 
 gave to me for our July number, in 
 1887.* 
 
 The first letter, which I desire to pub- 
 lish, refers to some poems in one of our 
 earliest numbers ; the reference is most 
 interesting, becauses it enunciates Mr. 
 Arnold's belief, that poetry should be 
 simple, direct, and plain : it was the 
 theory of the great poets; but not the 
 theory, as it would seem, and certainly 
 not the practice, of the more illustrious 
 
 * Omitted here. 
 
 104 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 writers of verse, in the present day. I 
 had written to Mr. Arnold from Italy ; 
 and I had sent him some ivy from the 
 grave of " Thyrsis." The dogs, whom 
 he mentions, are two dachs hounds, Port 
 and Hock; a representation of Port, 
 which is both decorative and accurate, is 
 given as the tailpiece to this article.* 
 
 Cobham, Surrey. Jan. u/, 1886. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I have been abroad for some time on a 
 school-errand from the Governmnet; and 
 on my return I find your letter ', verses, and 
 ivy also the charming photographs of the 
 two dogs. We ourselves have two, and 
 that must suffice us; but if we outlive 
 either of them, his place could not be better 
 filled than by a child of your fascinating 
 Pair. 
 
 The merit of the verses is in the firm 
 effort to have and express a definite meaning. 
 I like best the Mercury Sonnet because this 
 effort is there ^ perhaps , most successful. It 
 
 * Omitted here. 
 
 105 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 would have been more entirely successful 
 stilly to my thinking^ if you had brought 
 out on what errands you conceived Mercury 
 as visiting both the Under-World and this 
 World of ours. Exercise in verse cannot 
 but be valuable to you if you set yourself 
 to he thus distinct; and if you can really 
 succeed in being distinct^ with your serious 
 -purpose and command of language^ you are 
 sure to interest others. 
 
 I wish you a happy New Tear : I am 
 returning to the Continent almost immedi- 
 ately and shall then have to face a second 
 expedition to America; after that, I hope 
 to have a quiet time, but at present this 
 seems very far off. 
 
 Ever yours truly, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Stockbridge, Mass. July 30^, 1886, 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 The best thing I can do here for the 
 Magazine (in which I am interested for 
 Image's sake as well as yours) is to get my 
 son-in-law to lay it upon the table of the 
 University Cluh in New York, the best 
 
 106 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 centre that I know of for the kind of people 
 likely to he interested in such a publication. 
 What you have written about Assist is 
 full of interest, but for the general public 
 it should have perhaps had more about 
 Assisi itself; although the questions of 
 criticism treated in the middle and latter 
 part of the paper are in themselves highly 
 important, and you have treated them with 
 judgment and insight. 
 
 his climate does not suit me; and, as 
 as far as health and efficiency are concerned, 
 I shall be very glad to be back in England 
 again. I hope to find the state of Nab 
 Scar less afflicting than you say. 
 
 Ever truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 I had written to Mr. Arnold from 
 Windermere : his letter refers to the 
 July Hobby Horse, for 1886; and, in the 
 summer of that year, the Manchester 
 water works were being carried through 
 the Rydal valley, at the back of Words- 
 worth's house, and above his favourite 
 walk. 
 
 107 
 
ARNOLD 
 
 The next letter refers to a Sonnet on 
 Marcus Aurelius, published in the Hobby 
 Horse for April, 1887. 
 
 Cobham, Surrey. Deer. i6th, 1886. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I like the Sonnet \ and the man who in- 
 spires it is indeed excellent reading. 1 
 have a political article to write which I 
 would fain write in his sense as much as 
 possible: but I know, if I begin to re-read 
 him, I shall go on and on and leave the 
 promised political article unbegun. 
 
 We all send sympathy to Port affect- 
 ionate sympathy. 
 
 Ever yours sincreely, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Pains Hill Cottage, 
 
 Cobham, Surrey. Jan. \*$th, 1887. 
 My dear Gallon, 
 
 When I take up the " Hobby Horse " 
 to look at it, I find myself going right 
 through it; it has so much merit that its 
 restricted publicity is really to be lamented. 
 
 101 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Could not something be done ? What you 
 say of Symonds is true and good. 
 
 Ever yours) Matthew Arnold. 
 I am sorry Port is amiss. 
 
 The mention of Mr. Symonds refers 
 to a notice of his Catholic Reaction, the 
 last part of his collected materials for an 
 history of The Renaissance in Italy. A 
 month or two after receiving this letter, 
 I wrote to Mr. Arnold, to ask him 
 whether the " something to be done " 
 might not include a contribution from 
 himself; and to tell him, that Mr. Ruskin 
 had given us an article. 
 
 Hastings. April 2 1 st, 1887, 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 Tour letter has been forwarded to me 
 here, where I have come to try and get 
 rid of a sharp attack of lumbago. I 
 shall find the " Hobby Horse" no doubt, 
 on my return home. 
 
 I do not like to undertake anything as 
 to contributing, for I have promised as 
 
 109 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 much as I can well perform for this year. 
 But if I can make anything of a little 
 Horatian Echo, in verse, which has lain 
 by me for years, discarded because of an 
 unsatisfactory stanza, you shall have it. 
 But I repeat that I can promise nothing. 
 
 I shall he curious to see what Ruskin 
 has done for you. His is indeed a popular 
 influence; I will not say that a contri- 
 bution from me would do you no service ; 
 but it is not to be compared^ as a help with 
 the great public ', to one from J. Ruskin. 
 
 Hard dry winds, and an aching back I 
 but the sea is always inspiriting. 
 
 Ever truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 In the spring of 1887, I wrote an 
 essay upon Thomas Cromwell; and I 
 asked Mr. Arnold, whether I might dedi- 
 cate my volume to him. 
 
 Pains Hill Cottage^ 
 
 Cobham. April 7 th, 1887. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I liked your paper in " Macmillan" 
 no 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Tou have an excellent subject in Thomas 
 Cromwell: it shows how ignorant I am^ 
 that when my wife said he was Lord 
 Essex , / contradicted her but she proved 
 to be quite right. Do you not think that 
 your dedication is a little strong^ allied to 
 one who could make such a blunder about 
 your subject? I do^ but I will not interfere 
 with your freedom of action , if I have been 
 of use to you and you wish to say so. We 
 have a raging north wind here^ and no 
 flowers yet. We have just lost our dear 
 dear mongrel^ Kaiser \ and we are very 
 sad. 
 
 Ever truly yours^ Matthew Arnold. 
 
 As soon as I heard of Mr. Arnold's 
 bereavement I offered him another dachs 
 hound, Hans, about whom I have several 
 letters, and who is mentioned again in 
 this series. Kaiser died upon the sixth 
 of April ; and he was commemorated, in 
 the following July, in an Elegiac Poem. 
 The next letter refers to a box of fritil- 
 
 iii 
 
MXXTHEfT ARNOLD 
 
 laries ; Oxford fritillaries, consecrated to 
 "Thyrsis" and to Matthew Arnold's 
 " pastoral song." 
 
 Cobham. May 6th, 1887. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 Tou could not have sent me a prettier 
 and pleasanter present. The purple flowers 
 are come out to-day, and I think the white 
 ones will come out to-morrow. "They are 
 all beautiful. 
 
 Ever truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Tou shall hear about Hans as soon as 
 quarters are prepared for him. 
 
 Cobham, Surrey. June ^th, 1887. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I send you the thing I promised a relic 
 of youth. It is quite artificial in sentiment, 
 but has some tolerable lines, perhaps. Let 
 me see a proof of the lines, and believe me, 
 most truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 The poem is entitled Horatian Echo: 
 and as it recalls more than one of Horace' 
 
 112 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Odes, I asked Mr. Arnold, before send- 
 ing a copy of the manuscript to the 
 press, whether he would not like the title 
 to be plural ; or whether, if he preferred 
 the singular, it should not be An Horatian 
 Echo. 
 
 Cobham, Surrey. June 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 Of course you may keep the Manuscript. 
 I think I prefer the singular of Echo to 
 the plural, in this case; but as you please. 
 Will you tell the Editor that 1 received, 
 and thank him for, his kind letter. I shall 
 be interested in seeing your Cromwell. 
 Tou have taken, I repeat, a really excellent 
 subject. 
 
 Ever yours truly, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Athenaeum Club, 
 
 Pall Mall, S.W. June i$th. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I have been looking at your letter again. 
 If you make the title plural, you must not 
 put Echos but Echoes. 'There speaks the~ 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ex-School-Inspector. But speaking as a 
 composer, I really think the singular is 
 preferable. 
 
 Ever yours truly, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Cobham. 'June i%fh. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I am going down into the north next 
 week, and will take Cromwell with me. 
 Tou have so good a subject that it would be 
 a pity you should waste it-, and it would 
 be wasting it, to employ it as a " bomb" 
 However, from turning over the pages I 
 hope that this expression of yours alarmed 
 me unnecessarily. I will write and tell 
 you what I think when I have read you. 
 The dedication makes me a little apprehen- 
 sive, for fear it should injure the book. 
 Strong praise provokes many people; and 
 this praise is strong, too strong. But if 
 the book is good it will be able to stand 
 even this dedication to a less than half 
 popular author. 
 
 Ever truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 114 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Fox How, 
 
 Amble side. June 2yd, 1887. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I have read your book through. It has 
 many errors of the press, and your meaning 
 is not always made quite clear ; but I have 
 been greatly interested, and the summing 
 up in the latter part of the volume I think 
 thoroughly good. If I have done anything 
 to help you to the acquisition of the temper 
 and judgment there shown, I am glad. I 
 still think your dedication may provoke 
 people, and be somewhat of an obstacle; 
 but men like Stubbs, and S. Gardiner, and 
 Freeman are the men whose judgment on 
 the book it is important to have, and I 
 cannot but believe they will be interested by 
 it. I am only here for a day or two, and 
 shall then return to Cobham. 
 
 Ever yours truly, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Athenaeum Club. July ^th, 1887. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 As I expected, Macmillan says he has of 
 course often thought of a single volume, but 
 
 115 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 thinks the time has not yet come. He is of 
 opinion that the sort of people who want my 
 poems are people who do not mind a high 
 price if they get a handsome book. The 
 case of Tennyson, he says, is " somewhat 
 different" I never have been broadly 
 popular, and I cannot easily bring myself 
 to believe I shall ever come so. But I 
 ought none the less to thank you for your 
 interest, and your kind letter. 
 
 The judgment of Stubbs is really prec- 
 ious; and that of Gladstone, if it could be 
 made public, would be the best of adver- 
 tisements. I was sure, after reading the 
 volume through, that you had done a good 
 piece of work. I hear to-day that Hans, 
 to whom I long to pay my respects, has 
 passed two. good days, and seems settling 
 down in his new home. 
 
 Ever truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 The following letter refers to a framed 
 copy of the picture, which Mr. Watts 
 gave to the January Hobby Horse for 
 1887. 
 
 116 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Pains Hill Cottage, 
 
 Cobham, Surrey. July nth. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 Very much thanks to you and to Mr. 
 Home for the picture, which shows all 
 Watts' power. The numbers of the " Hobby 
 Horse " have arrived this morning. 1 
 hope, but can hardly believe, that my little 
 bit of a thing may have been of some ser- 
 vice to you. 
 
 Ever truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Pains Hill Cottage, 
 
 Cobham, Surrey. Septr. 2Oth. 
 My dear Galton, 
 
 I have found your letter and magazines, 
 on my return here. I like both your art- 
 icles, though perhaps you are a little hard 
 on Macaulay I have been a little hard 
 on him myself. Such a wonderful corres- 
 pondence between the man and his medium, 
 as there was between Macaulay and the 
 age in which he lived and worked, has 
 hardly ever been seen; and what is pro- 
 voking in him, his cock sureness, his 
 
 117 
 
MAWHEW ARNOLD 
 
 boundless satisfaction, could hardly have 
 been otherwise under the circumstances. 
 After all, he pays a penalty heavier than 
 any which our disparagement can inflict 
 upon him the penalty that he can hardly 
 be of use to any mortal soul who takes our 
 times and its needs seriously. 
 
 What you say of Gladstone is very inter- 
 esting. I am glad to hear what Gardiner 
 says of your Cromwell; I hope you will 
 make your monograph the nucleus for a 
 large and solid piece of work. 
 
 Ever truly yours, Matthew Arnold. 
 . Hans is a perfect dear. 
 
 And so the letters end, with one of 
 those intimate and delightful touches, 
 which reveal and which endear the writer : 
 
 " Of little threads our life is spun, 
 And he spins ill, who misses one." 
 
 The admirable simplicity of Mr. Arnold's 
 published writings, the urbanity and the 
 kindliness of their manner, the buoyancy 
 of their spirit, and the tenderness, " the 
 118 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 sense of tears," which is always to be 
 found in them, in spite of their buoyancy, 
 have brought him into a close and an in- 
 timate relation with innumerable readers; 
 even with readers, who did not know 
 him personally; for he had the art of 
 giving " so much which communicates 
 his own spirit and engages ours." So 
 winning and so abiding are these per- 
 sonal qualities in him, that many readers 
 have imagined an old and intimate friend 
 to be speaking to them ; and this intim- 
 acy has tempted some of them, it may 
 be, to over-look the power, the beauty, 
 and the perfection, which are never ab- 
 sent from his writings. Other readers, 
 it is evident, have been puzzled and 
 offended by the " Distinction " of Mr. 
 Arnold's work : by that undeniable 
 quality in him, of which " the world is 
 impatient ; it chafes against it, rails at it, 
 insults it, hates it ; it ends by receiving 
 its influence and by undergoing its law." 
 Others, again, have been seduced from 
 the perfect clearness and simplicity of 
 
 119 
 
MAfVHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Mr. Arnold, by the miserable influences 
 of this our Day ; by the more luxuriant 
 though coarser styles, or by the louder 
 though emptier tones, or by the imposing 
 obscurity, of its most fashionable per- 
 formers in prose and verse. Though 
 more and more, as times go on, the 
 power, the beauty, and the perfection, of 
 Mr. Arnold's work will be discerned; 
 if it be true, that " nothing lives but 
 style," then he should be, almost cer- 
 tainly in prose, and certainly in verse, 
 the most living of our Victorian men of 
 letters : and he should be no less per- 
 manent for his matter, than for his style; 
 because the spirit of our time appears to 
 have achieved in him, not only its most 
 perfect, but its most complete, and its 
 most representative expression; in his 
 work, the finer intellectual movements 
 of our Day are reflected in their greatest 
 beauty and truth, and are represented 
 with unequalled power. But although 
 these high questions may be interesting 
 to discuss, they are for the future only 
 120 
 
MAttHEW ARNOLD 
 
 to decide ; an author's contemporaries 
 never have decided them, and never can 
 decide them, finally : what Mr. Arnold's 
 contemporaries can decide, is that they 
 feel in his work those intimate and those 
 endearing qualities, of which I have 
 spoken. Those delightful qualities, if a 
 writer have them, are to be found most 
 perfectly in his letters; and this would 
 be mine apology, were an apology re- 
 quired, for publishing these few letters : 
 they show the kindness, the homeliness, 
 and the unaffected simplicity of Mr. 
 Arnold's bright and happy nature ; and 
 therefore I hope they may serve, in some 
 small degree, to bring him nearer to 
 those, who did not know him; that is, 
 to make him more beloved and more 
 fondly remembered. For those, who 
 did know him, will not soon forget the 
 charm of that gracious presence ; 
 
 " That comely face, that cluster' d brow, 
 That cordial hand, that bearing free, 
 I see them still, I see them now, 
 Shall always see ! " 
 
 121 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 never can they forget the fascination and 
 the happiness, which were communicated 
 by that buoyant though gentle spirit : 
 the fifteenth of April will come and go, 
 many times, before it ceases to dawn 
 upon a group of mourners, who are 
 inconsolable. 
 
 April: 1890. 
 
 [These Essays and Letters were first published 
 in the Century Guild Hobby Horse.] 
 122 
 
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