Matthew Arnolds Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems | Page 3

plainness.... Every one must take delight in the mental association
with Arnold in the scenes of his existence ... and in his family
affections. A nature warm to its own, kindly to all, cheerful, fond of
sport and fun, and always fed from pure fountains, and with it a
character so founded upon the rock, so humbly serviceable, so
continuing in power and grace, must wake in all the responses of happy
appreciation and leave the charm of memory.

"He did his duty as naturally as if it required neither resolve nor effort,
nor thought of any kind for the morrow, and he never failed, seemingly,
in act or word of sympathy, in little or great things; and when to this
one adds the clear ether of the intellectual life where he habitually
moved in his own life apart, and the humanity of his home, the gift that
these letters bring may be appreciated. That gift is the man himself, but
set in the atmosphere of home, with sonship and fatherhood, sisters and
brothers, with the bereavements of years fully accomplished, and those
of babyhood and boyhood--a sweet and wholesome English home, with
all the cloud and sunshine of the English world drifting over its
roof-trees, and the soil of England beneath its stones, and English
duties for the breath of its being. To add such a home to the household
rights of English Literature is perhaps something from which Arnold
would have shrunk, but it endears his memory."
"It may be overmuch
He shunned the common stain and smutch,
From soilure of ignoble touch
Too grandly free,
Too loftily secure
in such
Cold purity;
But he preserved from chance control
The
fortress of his established soul,
In all things sought to see the whole;
Brooked no disguise,
And set his heart upon the goal,
Not on the prize."
--MR. WILLIAM WATSON, In Laleham Churchyard.
ARNOLD THE POET
Matthew Arnold was essentially a man of the intellect. No other author
of modern times, perhaps no other English author of any time, appeals
so directly as he to the educated classes. Even a cursory reading of his
pages, prose or verse, reveals the scholar and the critic. He is always
thinking, always brilliant, never lacks for a word or phrase; and on the
whole, his judgments are good. Between his prose and verse, however,
there is a marked difference, both in tone and spiritual quality. True,
each possesses the note of a lofty, though stoical courage; reveals the

same grace of finish and exactness of phrase and manner; and is, in
equal degree, the output of a singularly sane and noble nature; but here
the comparison ends; for, while his prose is often stormy and
contentious, his poetry has always about it an atmosphere of entire
repose. The cause of this difference is not far to seek. His poetry,
written in early manhood, reflects his inner self, the more lovable side
of his nature; while his prose presents the critic and the reformer,
pointing out the good and bad, and permitting at times a spirit of
bitterness to creep in, as he endeavors to arouse men out of their easy
contentment with themselves and their surroundings.
With the exception of occasional verses, Arnold's poetical career began
and ended inside of twenty years. The reason for this can only be
conjectured, and need not be dwelt upon here. But although his poetic
life was brief, it was of a very high order, his poems ranking well up
among the literary productions of the last century. As a popular poet,
however, he will probably never class with Tennyson or Longfellow.
His poems are too coldly classical and too unattractive in subject to
appeal to the casual reader, who is, generally speaking, inclined toward
poetry of the emotions rather than of the
intellect--Arnold's usual
kind. That he recognized this himself, witness the following quiet
statements made in letters to his friends: "My poems are making their
way, I think, though slowly, and are perhaps never to make way very
far. There must always be some people, however, to whom the
literalness and sincerity of them has a charm.... They represent, on the
whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century, and
thus they will probably have their day, as people become conscious to
themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the
literary productions which reflect it." Time has verified the accuracy of
this judgment. In short, Arnold has made a profound rather than a wide
impression. To a few, however, of each generation, he will continue to
be a "voice oracular,"--a poet with a purpose and a message.
=Arnold's Poetic Culture=.--Obviously, the sources of Arnold's culture
were classical. As one critic has tersely said, "He turned over his Greek
models by day and by night." Here