Matthew Arnold | Page 6

man to the recollection of his friends so effectually as his sketch of
the English Academy, disturbed by a "flight of Corinthian leading
articles, and an irruption of Mr. G.A. Sala;" his comparison of Miss
Cobbe's new religion to the British College of Health; his parallel
between Phidias' statue of the Olympian Zeus and Coles'
truss-manufactory; Sir William Harcourt's attempt to "develop a system
of unsectarian religion from the Life of Mr. Pickwick;" the "portly
jeweller from Cheapside," with his "passionate, absorbing, almost
blood-thirsty clinging to life;" the grandiose war-correspondence of the
Times, and "old Russell's guns getting a little honey-combed;" Lord
Lumpington's subjection to "the grand, old, fortifying, classical
curriculum," and the "feat of mental gymnastics" by which he obtained
his degree; the Rev. Esau Hittall's "longs and shorts about the
Calydonian Boar, which were not bad;" the agitation of the Paris
Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on hearing the word "delicacy";
the "bold, bad men, the haunters of Social Science Congresses," who

declaim "a sweet union of philosophy and poetry" from Wordsworth on
the duty of the State towards education; the impecunious author
"commercing with the stars" in Grub Street, reading "the Star for
wisdom and charity, the Telegraph for taste and style," and looking for
the letter from the Literary Fund, "enclosing half-a-crown, the promise
of my dinner at Christmas, and the kind wishes of Lord Stanhope[3] for
my better success in authorship."
One is tempted to prolong this analysis of literary arts and graces; but
enough has been said to recall some leading characteristics of Arnold's
genius in verse and prose. We turn now to our investigation of what he
accomplished. The field which he included in his purview was
wide--almost as wide as our national life. We will consider, one by one,
the various departments of it in which his influence was most distinctly
felt; but first of all a word must be said about his Method.
[Footnote 1: Tennyson.]
[Footnote 2: Wordsworth.]
[Footnote 3: See p. 207. Philip Henry, 5th Earl Stanhope (1805-1875),
Historian, and Patron of Letters.]
[Illustration: Laleham Ferry
Matthew Arnold was born on Christmas Eve, 1822, at Laleham, near
Staines.
Photo H.W. Taunt]
CHAPTER II
METHOD
The Matthew Arnold whom we know begins in 1848; and, when we
first make his acquaintance, in his earliest letters to his mother and his
eldest sister, he is already a Critic. He is only twenty-five years old, and
he is writing in the year of Revolution. Thrones are going down with a

crash all over Europe; the voices of triumphant freedom are in the air;
the long-deferred millennium of peace and brotherhood seems to be
just on the eve of realization. But, amid all this glorious hurly-burly,
this "joy of eventful living," the young philosopher stands calm and
unshaken; interested indeed, and to some extent sympathetic, but
wholly detached and impartially critical. He thinks that the fall of the
French Monarchy is likely to produce social changes here, for "no one
looks on, seeing his neighbour mending, without asking himself if he
cannot mend in the same way." He is convinced that "the hour of the
hereditary peerage and eldest sonship and immense properties has
struck"; he thinks that a five years' continuance of these institutions is
"long enough, certainly, for patience, already at death's door, to have to
die in." He pities (in a sonnet) "the armies of the homeless and unfed."
But all the time he resents the "hot, dizzy trash which people are
talking" about the Revolution. He sees a torrent of American vulgarity
and "laideur" threatening to overflow Europe. He thinks England, as it
is, "not liveable-in," but is convinced that a Government of Chartists
would not mend matters; and, after telling a Republican friend that
"God knows it, I am with you," he thus qualifies his sympathy--
Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem Rather to patience prompted,
than that proud Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud--
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
In fine, he is critical of his own country, critical of all foreign nations,
critical of existing institutions, critical of well-meant but uninstructed
attempts to set them right. And, as he was in the beginning, so he
continued throughout his life and to its close. It is impossible to
conceive of him as an enthusiastic and unqualified partisan of any
cause, creed, party, society, or system. Admiration he had, for worthy
objects, in abundant store; high appreciation for what was excellent;
sympathy with all sincere and upward-tending endeavour. But few
indeed were the objects which he found wholly admirable, and keen
was his eye for the flaws and foibles which war against absolute
perfection. On the last day of his life he said in a note to the present
writer: