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diff --git a/16745-8.txt b/16745-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7c814af --- /dev/null +++ b/16745-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6526 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Matthew Arnold, by G. W. E. Russell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Matthew Arnold + +Author: G. W. E. Russell + +Release Date: September 25, 2005 [EBook #16745] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATTHEW ARNOLD *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Transcriber's note: The inconsistent use of quotation marks in the +original was retained in this etext.] + + +[Illustration: Matthew Arnold + +_From a Photograph by Sarony_] + + + + +Literary Lives + + +MATTHEW ARNOLD + +BY + +G.W.E. RUSSELL + + +_ILLUSTRATED_ + + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1904 + + +COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +Published, March, 1904 + + +TROW DIRECTORY +PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY +NEW YORK + + + + +LITERARY LIVES + +Edited by Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. + +MATTHEW ARNOLD. By G.W.E. Russell. +CARDINAL NEWMAN. By William Barry, D.D. +MRS. GASKELL. By Flora Masson. +JOHN BUNYAN. By W. Hale White. +CHARLOTTE BRONTË. By Clement K. Shorter. +R.M. HUTTON. By W. Robertson Nicoll. +GOETHE. By Edward Dowden. +HAZLITT. By Louise Imogen Guiney. + +Each Volume, Illustrated, $1.00, net + + + + +OFFERED TO + +MATTHEW ARNOLD'S CHILDREN + +WITH AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE + +"OF THAT UNRETURNING DAY" + + + + + "We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless, + yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for something + beyond--_tendentemque manus ripæ ulterioris amore_."--_Essays in + Criticism_. + + + + +PREFACE + + +It may be thought that some apology is needed for the production of yet +another book about Matthew Arnold. If so, that apology is to be found in +the fact that nothing has yet been written which covers exactly the +ground assigned to me in the present volume. + +It was Arnold's express wish that he should not be made the subject of a +Biography. This rendered it impossible to produce the sort of book by +which an eminent man is usually commemorated--at once a history of his +life, an estimate of his work, and an analysis of his character and +opinions. But though a Biography was forbidden, Arnold's family felt +sure that he would not have objected to the publication of a selection +from his correspondence; and it became my happy task to collect, and in +some sense to edit, the two volumes of his Letters which were published +in 1895. Yet in reality my functions were little more than those of the +collector and the annotator. Most of the Letters had been severely +edited before they came into my hands, and the process was repeated when +they were in proof. + +A comparison of the letters addressed to Mr. John Morley and Mr. Wyndham +Slade with those addressed to the older members of the Arnold family +will suggest to a careful reader the nature and extent of the excisions +to which the bulk of the correspondence was subjected. The result was a +curious obscuration of some of Arnold's most characteristic +traits--such, for example, as his over-flowing gaiety, and his love of +what our fathers called Raillery. And, in even more important respects +than these, an erroneous impression was created by the suppression of +what was thought too personal for publication. Thus I remember to have +read, in some one's criticism of the Letters, that Mr. Arnold appeared +to have loved his parents, brothers, sisters, and children, but not to +have cared so much for his wife. To any one who knew the beauty of that +life-long honeymoon, the criticism is almost too absurd to write down. +And yet it not unfairly represents the impression created by a too +liberal use of the effacing pencil. + +But still, the Letters, with all their editorial shortcomings (of which +I willingly take my full share) constitute the nearest approach to a +narrative of Arnold's life which can, consistently with his wishes, be +given to the world; and the ground so covered will not be retraversed +here. All that literary criticism can do for the honour of his prose and +verse has been done already: conscientiously by Mr. Saintsbury, +affectionately and sympathetically by Mr. Herbert Paul, and with varying +competence and skill by a host of minor critics. But in preparing this +book I have been careful not to re-read what more accomplished pens than +mine have written; for I wished my judgment to be, as far as possible, +unbiassed by previous verdicts. + +I do not aim at a criticism of the verbal medium through which a great +Master uttered his heart and mind; but rather at a survey of the effect +which he produced on the thought and action of his age. + +To the late Professor Palgrave, to Monsieur Fontanès, and to Miss Rose +Kingsley my thanks have been already paid for the use of some of +Arnold's letters which are published now for the first time. It may be +well to state that whenever, in the ensuing pages, passages are put in +inverted commas, they are quoted from Arnold, unless some other +authorship is indicated. Here and there I have borrowed from previous +writings of my own, grounding myself on the principle so well enounced +by Mr. John Morley--"that a man may once say a thing as he would have it +said, [Greek: dis de ouk endechetai]--he cannot say it twice." + +G.W.E.R. + +CHRISTMAS, 1903. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +CHAPTER I + +INTRODUCTION 1 + +CHAPTER II + +METHOD 17 + +CHAPTER III + +EDUCATION 48 + +CHAPTER IV + +SOCIETY 111 + +CHAPTER V + +CONDUCT 172 + +CHAPTER VI + +THEOLOGY 210 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Matthew Arnold, 1884 _Frontispiece_ + + FACING PAGE + +Laleham Ferry 16 + +Thomas Arnold, D.D. 32 + +Laleham Church 48 + +Fox How, Ambleside 64 + +The House at Laleham, where Matthew Arnold first +went to School 80 + +Rugby School 96 + +Balliol College, Oxford 112 + +Fisher's Buildings, Balliol College 128 + +Oriel College, Oxford 144 + +Matthew Arnold, 1869 160 + +Pains Hill Cottage, Cobham, Surrey 176 + +The Union Rooms, Oxford 192 + +Matthew Arnold, 1880, from the Painting by +G.F. Watts, R.A. 208 + +Pains Hill Cottage, Cobham, from the Lawn 224 + +Matthew Arnold, 1884 240 + +Matthew Arnold's Grave at Laleham 256 + + + + +MATTHEW ARNOLD + +_Eldest son of Thomas Arnold, D.D., and Mary Penrose_ + + +Born 1822 + +Entered Winchester College 1836 + +Transferred to Rugby School 1837 + +Scholar of Balliol 1840 + +Entered Balliol College 1841 + +Newdigate Prizeman 1843 + +B.A. 1844 + +Fellow of Oriel 1845 + +Private Secretary to Lord Lansdowne 1847 + +Inspector of Schools 1851 + +Married Frances Lucy Wightman 1851 + +Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1857 + +D.C.L. 1870 + +Resigned Inspectorship 1886 + +Died 1888 + + + + +CHAPTER I + +INTRODUCTION + + +This book is intended to deal with substance rather than with form. But, +in estimating the work of a teacher who taught exclusively with the pen, +it would be perverse to disregard entirely the qualities of the writing +which so penetrated and coloured the intellectual life of the Victorian +age. Some cursory estimate of Arnold's powers in prose and verse must +therefore be attempted, before we pass on to consider the practical +effect which those powers enabled him to produce. + +And here it behoves a loyal and grateful disciple to guard himself +sedulously against the peril of overstatement. For to the unerring +taste, the sane and sober judgment, of the Master, unrestrained and +inappropriate praise would have been peculiarly distressing. + +This caution applies with special force to our estimate of his rank in +poetry. That he was a poet, the most exacting, the most paradoxical +criticism will hardly deny; but there is urgent need for moderation and +self-control when we come to consider his place among the poets. Are we +to call him a great poet? The answer must be carefully pondered. + +In the first place, he did not write very much. The total body of his +poetry is small. He wrote in the rare leisure-hours of an exacting +profession, and he wrote only in the early part of his life. In later +years he seemed to feel that the "ancient fount of inspiration"[1] was +dry. He had delivered his message to his generation, and wisely avoided +last words. Then it seems indisputable that he wrote with difficulty. +His poetry has little ease, fluency, or spontaneous movement. In every +line it bears traces of the laborious file. He had the poet's heart and +mind, but they did not readily express themselves in the poetic medium. +He longed for poetic utterance, as his only adequate vent, and sought it +earnestly with tears. Often he achieved it, but not seldom he left the +impression of frustrated and disappointing effort, rather than of easy +mastery and sure attainment. + +Again, if we bear in mind Milton's threefold canon, we must admit that +his poetry lacks three great elements of power. He is not Simple, +Sensuous, or Passionate. He is too essentially modern to be really +simple. He is the product of a high-strung civilization, and all its +complicated crosscurrents of thought and feeling stir and perplex his +verse. Simplicity of style indeed he constantly aims at, and, by the aid +of a fastidious culture, secures. But his simplicity is, to use the +distinction which he himself imported from France, rather akin to +_simplesse_ than to _simplicité_--to the elaborated and artificial +semblance than to the genuine quality. He is not sensuous except in so +far as the most refined and delicate appreciation of nature in all her +forms and phases can be said to constitute a sensuous enjoyment. And +then, again, he is pre-eminently not passionate. He is calm, balanced, +self-controlled, sane, austere. The very qualities which are his +characteristic glory make passion impossible. + +Another hindrance to his title as a great poet, is that he is not, and +never could be, a poet of the multitude. His verse lacks all popular +fibre. It is the delight of scholars, of philosophers, of men who live +by silent introspection or quiet communing with nature. But it is +altogether remote from the stir and stress of popular life and struggle. +Then, again, his tone is profoundly, though not morbidly, melancholy, +and this is fatal to popularity. As he himself said, "The life of the +people is such that in literature they require joy." But not only his +thought, his very style, is anti-popular. Much of his most elaborate +work is in blank verse, and that in itself is a heavy draw-back. Much +also is in exotic and unaccustomed metres, which to the great bulk of +English readers must always be more of a discipline than of a delight. +And, even when he wrote in our indigenous metres, his ear often played +him false. His rhymes are sometimes only true to the eye, and his lines +are over-crowded with jerking monosyllables. Let one glaring instance +suffice-- + + Calm not life's crown, though calm is well. + +The sentiment is true and even profound; but the expression is surely +rugged and jolting to the last degree; and there are many lines nearly +as ineuphonious. Here are some samples, collected by that fastidious +critic, Mr. Frederic Harrison-- + + "The sandy spits, the shore-lock'd lakes." + + "Could'st thou no better keep, O Abbey old?" + + "The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky." + +These Mr. Harrison cites as proof that, "where Nature has withheld the +ear for music, no labour and no art can supply the want." And I think +that even a lover may add to the collection-- + + As the punt's rope chops round. + +But, after all these deductions and qualifications have been made, it +remains true that Arnold was a poet, and that his poetic quality was +pure and rare. His musings "on Man, on Nature, and on Human Life,"[2] +are essentially and profoundly poetical. They have indeed a tragic +inspiration. He is deeply imbued by the sense that human existence, at +its best, is inadequate and disappointing. He feels, and submits to, its +incompleteness and its limitations. With stately resignation he accepts +the common fate, and turns a glance of calm disdain on all endeavours +after a spurious consolation. All round him he sees + + Uno'erleap'd Mountains of Necessity, + Sparing us narrower margin than we deem. + +He dismissed with a rather excessive contempt the idea that the dreams +of childhood may be intimations of immortality; and the inspiration +which poets of all ages have agreed to seek in the hope of endless +renovation, he found in the immediate contemplation of present good. +What his brother-poet called "self-reverence, self-knowledge, +self-control," are the keynotes of that portion of his poetry which +deals with the problems of human existence. When he handles these +themes, he speaks to the innermost consciousness of his hearers, telling +us what we know about ourselves, and have believed hidden from all +others, or else putting into words of perfect suitableness what we have +dimly felt, and have striven in vain to utter. It is then that, to use +his own word, he is most "interpretative." It is this quality which +makes such poems as _Youth's Agitations_, _Youth and Calm_, +_Self-dependence_, and _The Grande Chartreuse_ so precious a part of our +intellectual heritage. + +In 1873 he wrote to his sister: "I have a curious letter from the State +of Maine in America, from a young man who wished to tell me that a +friend of his, lately dead, had been especially fond of my poem, _A +Wish_, and often had it read to him in his last illness. They were both +of a class too poor to buy books, and had met with the poem in a +newspaper." + +It will be remembered that in _A Wish_, the poet, contemptuously +discarding the conventional consolations of a death-bed, entreats his +friends to place him at the open window, that he may see yet once +again-- + + Bathed in the sacred dews of morn + The wide aerial landscape spread-- + The world which was ere I was born, + The world which lasts when I am dead; + + Which never was the friend of _one_, + Nor promised love it could not give. + But lit for all its generous sun, + And lived itself, and made us live. + + There let me gaze, till I become + In soul, with what I gaze on, wed! + To feel the universe my home; + To have before my mind--instead + + Of the sick room, the mortal strife, + The turmoil for a little breath-- + The pure eternal course of life, + Not human combatings with death! + + Thus feeling, gazing, might I grow + Composed, refresh'd, ennobled, clear; + Then willing let my spirit go + To work or wait elsewhere or here! + +This solemn love and reverence for the continuous life of the physical +universe may remind us that Arnold's teaching about humanity, subtle and +searching as it is, has done less to endear him to many of his +disciples, than his feeling for Nature. His is the kind of +Nature-worship which takes nothing at second-hand. He paid "the Mighty +Mother" the only homage which is worthy of her acceptance, a minute and +dutiful study of her moods and methods. He placed himself as a reverent +learner at her feet before he presumed to go forth to the world as an +exponent of her teaching. It is this exactness of observation which +makes his touches of local colouring so vivid and so true. This gives +its winning charm to his landscape-painting, whether the scene is laid +in Kensington Gardens, or the Alps, or the valley of the Thames. This +fills _The Scholar-Gipsy_, and _Thyrsis_, and _Obermann_, and _The +Forsaken Merman_ with flawless gems of natural description, and +felicities of phrase which haunt the grateful memory. + +In brief, it seems to me that he was not a great poet, for he lacked the +gifts which sway the multitude, and compel the attention of mankind. But +he was a true poet, rich in those qualities which make the loved and +trusted teacher of a chosen few--as he himself would have said, of "the +Remnant." Often in point of beauty and effectiveness, always in his +purity and elevation, he is worthy to be associated with the noblest +names of all. Alone among his contemporaries, we can venture to say of +him that he was not only of the school, but of the lineage, of +Wordsworth. His own judgment on his place among the modern poets was +thus given in a letter of 1869: "My poems 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. It might be fairly urged that I have less +poetic sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigour and +abundance than Browning. Yet because I have more perhaps of a fusion of +the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion +to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my +turn, as they have had theirs." + +When we come to consider him as a prose-writer, cautions and +qualifications are much less necessary. Whatever may be thought of the +substance of his writings, it surely must be admitted that he was a +great master of style. And his style was altogether his own. In the last +year of his life he said to the present writer: "People think I can +teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say +it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style." + +Clearness is indeed his own most conspicuous note, and to clearness he +added singular grace, great skill in phrase-making, great aptitude for +beautiful description, perfect naturalness, absolute ease. The very +faults which the lovers of a more pompous rhetoric profess to detect in +his writing are the easy-going fashions of a man who wrote as he talked. +The members of a college which produced Cardinal Newman, Dean Church, +and Matthew Arnold are not without some justification when they boast of +"the Oriel style." + +But style, though a great delight and a great power, is not everything, +and we must not found our claim for him as a prose-writer on style +alone. His style was the worthy and the suitable vehicle of much of the +very best criticism which English literature contains. We take the whole +mass of his critical writing, from the _Lectures on Homer_ and the +_Essays in Criticism_ down to the Preface to Wordsworth and the +Discourse on Milton; and we ask, Is there anything better? + +When he wrote as a critic of books, his taste, his temper, his judgment +were pretty nearly infallible. He combined a loyal and reasonable +submission to literary authority with a free and even daring use of +private judgment. His admiration for the acknowledged masters of human +utterance--Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe--was genuine +and enthusiastic, and incomparably better informed than that of some +more conventional critics. Yet this cordial submission to recognized +authority, this honest loyalty to established reputation, did not blind +him to defects, did not seduce him into indiscriminate praise, did not +deter him from exposing the tendency to verbiage in Burke and Jeremy +Taylor, the excessive blankness of much of Wordsworth's blank verse, the +undercurrent of mediocrity in Macaulay, the absurdities of Ruskin's +etymology. And, as in great matters, so in small. Whatever literary +production was brought under his notice, his judgment was clear, +sympathetic, and independent. He had the readiest appreciation of true +excellence, a quick eye for minor merits of facility and method, a +severe intolerance of turgidity and inflation--of what he called +"desperate endeavours to render a platitude endurable by making it +pompous," and a lively horror of affectation and unreality. These, in +literature as in life, were in his eyes the unpardonable sins. + +On the whole it may be said that, as a critic of books, he had in his +lifetime the reputation, the vogue, which he deserved. But his criticism +in other fields has hardly been appreciated at its proper value. +Certainly his politics were rather fantastic. They were influenced by +his father's fiery but limited Liberalism, by the abstract speculation +which flourishes perennially at Oxford, and by the cultivated Whiggery +which he imbibed as Lord Lansdowne's Private Secretary; and the result +often seemed wayward and whimsical. Of this he was himself in some +degree aware. At any rate he knew perfectly that his politics were +lightly esteemed by politicians, and, half jokingly, half seriously, he +used to account for the fact by that jealousy of an outsider's +interference, which is natural to all professional men. Yet he had the +keenest interest, not only in the deeper problems of politics, but also +in the routine and mechanism of the business. He enjoyed a good debate, +liked political society, and was interested in the personalities, the +trivialities, the individual and domestic ins-and-outs, which make so +large a part of political conversation. + +But, after all, Politics, in the technical sense, did not afford a +suitable field for his peculiar gifts. It was when he came to the +criticism of national life that the hand of the master was felt. In all +questions affecting national character and tendency, the development of +civilization, public manners, morals, habits, idiosyncrasies, the +influence of institutions, of education, of literature, his insight was +penetrating, his point of view perfectly original, and his judgment, if +not always sound, invariably suggestive. These qualities, among others, +gave to such books as _Essays in Criticism_, _Friendship's Garland_, and +_Culture and Anarchy_, an interest and a value quite independent of +their literary merit. And they are displayed in their most serious and +deliberate form, dissociated from all mere fun and vivacity, in his +_Discourses in America_. This, he told the present writer, was the book +by which, of all his prose-writings, he most desired to be remembered. +It was a curious and memorable choice. + +Another point of great importance in his prosewriting is this; if he +had never written prose the world would never have known him as a +humorist. And that would have been an intellectual loss not easily +estimated. How pure, how delicate, yet how natural and spontaneous his +humour was, his friends and associates knew well; and--what is by no +means always the case--the humour of his writing was of exactly the same +tone and quality as the humour of his conversation. It lost nothing in +the process of transplantation. As he himself was fond of saying, he was +not a popular writer, and he was never less popular than in his humorous +vein. In his fun there is no grinning through a horse-collar, no +standing on one's head, none of the guffaws, and antics, and +"full-bodied gaiety of our English Cider-Cellar." But there is a keen +eye for subtle absurdity, a glance which unveils affectation and +penetrates bombast, the most delicate sense of incongruity, the +liveliest disrelish for all the moral and intellectual qualities which +constitute the Bore, and a vein of personal raillery as refined as it is +pungent. Sydney Smith spoke of Sir James Mackintosh as "abating and +dissolving pompous gentlemen with the most successful ridicule." The +words not inaptly describe Arnold's method of handling personal and +literary pretentiousness. + +His praise as a phrase-maker is in all the Churches of literature. It +was his skill in this respect which elicited the liveliest compliments +from a transcendent performer in the same field. In 1881 he wrote to his +sister: "On Friday night I had a long talk with Lord Beaconsfield. He +ended by declaring that I was the only living Englishman who had become +a classic in his own lifetime. The fact is that what I have done in +establishing a number of current phrases, such as _Philistinism, +Sweetness and Light_, and all that is just the thing to strike him." In +1884 he wrote from America about his phrase, _The Remnant_--"That term +is going the round of the United States, and I understand what Dizzy +meant when he said that I had performed 'a great achievement in +launching phrases.'" But his wise epigrams and compendious sentences +about books and life, admirable in themselves, will hardly recall the +true 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: "S---- has written a letter full of shriekings and cursings +about my innocent article; the Americans will get their notion of it +from that, and I shall never be able to enter America again." That +"innocent article" was an estimate, based on his experience in two +recent visits to the United States, of American civilization. "Innocent" +perhaps it was, but it was essentially critical. He began by saying that +in America the "political and social problem" had been well solved; that +there the constitution and government were to the people as well-fitting +clothes to a man; that there was a closer union between classes there +than elsewhere, and a more "homogeneous" nation. But then he went on to +say that, besides the political and social problem, there was a "human +problem," and that in trying to solve this America had been less +successful--indeed, very unsuccessful. The "human problem" was the +problem of civilization, and civilization meant "humanization in +society"--the development of the best in man, in and by a social system. +And here he pronounced America defective. America generally--life, +people, possessions--was not "interesting." Americans lived willingly +in places called by such names as Briggsville, Jacksonville and +Marcellus. The general tendency of public opinion was against +distinction. America offered no satisfaction to the sense for beauty, +the sense for elevation. Tall talk and self-glorification were rampant, +and no criticism was tolerated. In fine, there were many countries, less +free and less prosperous, which were more civilized. + +That "innocent article," written in 1888, shows exactly the same +balanced tone and temper--the same critical attitude towards things with +which in the main he sympathizes--as the letters of 1848. + +And what is true of the beginning and the end is true of the long tract +which lay between. From first to last he was a Critic--a calm and +impartial judge, a serene distributer of praise and blame--never a +zealot, never a prophet, never an advocate, never a dealer in that +"_blague_ and mob-pleasing" of which he truly said that it "is a real +talent and tempts many men to apostasy." + +For some forty years he taught his fellow-men, and all his teaching was +conveyed through the critical medium. He never dogmatized, preached, or +laid down the law. Some great masters have taught by passionate +glorification of favourite personalities or ideals, passionate +denunciation of what they disliked or despised. Not such was Arnold's +method; he himself described it, most happily, as "sinuous, easy, +unpolemical." By his free yet courteous handling of subjects the most +august and conventions the most respectable, he won to his side a band +of disciples who had been repelled by the brutality and cocksureness of +more boisterous teachers. He was as temperate in eulogy as in +condemnation; he could hint a virtue and hesitate a liking.[4] + +It happens, as we have just seen, that his earliest and latest +criticisms were criticisms of Institutions, and a great part of his +critical writing deals with similar topics; but these will be more +conveniently considered when we come to estimate his effect on Society +and Politics. That effect will perhaps be found to have been more +considerable than his contemporaries imagined; for, though it became a +convention to praise his literary performances and judgments, it was no +less a convention to dismiss as visionary and absurd whatever he wrote +about the State and the Community. + +But in the meantime we must say a word about his critical method when +applied to Life, and when applied to Books. When one speaks of +criticism, one is generally thinking of prose. But, when we speak of +Arnold's criticism, it is necessary to widen the scope of one's +observation; for he was never more essentially the critic than when he +concealed the true character of his method in the guise of poetry. Even +if we decline to accept his strange judgment that all poetry "is at +bottom a criticism of life," still we must perceive that, as a matter of +fact, many of his own poems are as essentially critical as his Essays or +his Lectures. + +We all remember that he poked fun at those misguided Wordsworthians who +seek to glorify their master by claiming for him an "ethical system as +distinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler's," and "a +scientific system of thought." But surely we find in his own poetry a +sustained doctrine of self-mastery, duty, and pursuit of truth, which is +essentially ethical, and, in its form, as nearly "scientific" and +systematic as the nature of poetry permits. And this doctrine is +conveyed, not by positive, hortatory, or didactic methods, but by +Criticism--the calm praise of what commends itself to his judgment, the +gentle but decisive rebuke of whatever offends or darkens or misleads. +Of him it may be truly said, as he said of Goethe, that + + He took the suffering human race, + He read each wound, each weakness clear; + And struck his finger on the place, + And said: _Thou ailest here, and here._ + +His deepest conviction about "the suffering human race" would seem to +have been that its worst miseries arise from a too exalted estimate of +its capacities. Men are perpetually disappointed and disillusioned +because they expect too much from human life and human nature, and +persuade themselves that their experience, here and hereafter, will be, +not what they have any reasonable grounds for expecting, but what they +imagine or desire. The true philosophy is that which + + Neither makes man too much a god, + Nor God too much a man. + +Wordsworth thought it a boon to "feel that we are greater than we know": +Arnold thought it a misfortune. Wordsworth drew from the shadowy +impressions of the past the most splendid intimations of the future. +Against such vain imaginings Arnold set, in prose, the "inexorable +sentence" in which Butler warned us to eschew pleasant self-deception; +and, in verse, the persistent question-- + + Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory + Of possessing powers not our share? + +He rebuked + + Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown. + +He taught that there are + + Joys which were not for our use designed. + +He warned discontented youth not to expect greater happiness from +advancing years, because + + one thing only has been lent + To youth and age in common--discontent. + +Friendship is a broken reed, for + + Our vaunted life is one long funeral, + +and even Hope is buried with the "faces that smiled and fled." + +Death, at least in some of its aspects, seemed to him the + + Stern law of every mortal lot, + Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear; + And builds himself I know not what + Of second life I know not where. + +And yet, in gleams of happier insight, he saw the man who "flagged not +in this earthly strife," + + His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, + +mount, though hardly, to eternal life. And, as he mused over his +father's grave, the conviction forced itself upon his mind that +somewhere in the "labour-house of being" there still was employment for +that father's strength, "zealous, beneficent, firm." + +Here indeed is the more cheerful aspect of his "criticism of life." Such +happiness as man is capable of enjoying is conditioned by a frank +recognition of his weaknesses and limitations; but it requires also for +its fulfilment the sedulous and dutiful employment of such powers and +opportunities as he has. + +First and foremost, he must realize the "majestic unity" of his nature, +and not attempt by morbid introspection to dissect himself into + + Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers, + Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control. + +Then he must learn that + + To its own impulse every action stirs. + +He must live by his own light, and let earth live by hers. The forces of +nature are to be in this respect his teachers-- + + But with joy the stars perform their shining, + And the sea its long moon-silvered roll; + For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting + All the fever of some differing soul. + +But, though he is to learn from Nature and love Nature and enjoy Nature, +he is to remember that she + + never was the friend of _one_, + Nor promised love she could not give; + +and so he is not to expect too much from her, or demand impossible +boons. Still less is he to be content with feeling himself "in harmony" +with her; for + + Man covets all which Nature has, but more. + +That "more" is Conscience and the Moral Sense. + + Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends; + Nature and man can never be fast friends. + +And this brings us to the idea of Duty as set forth in his poems, and +Duty resolves itself into three main elements: Truth--Work--Love. Truth +comes first. Man's prime duty is to know things as they are. Truth can +only be attained by light, and light he must cultivate, he must worship. +Arnold's highest praise for a lost friend is that he was "a child of +light"; that he had "truth without alloy," + + And joy in light, and power to spread the joy. + +The saddest part of that friend's death is the fear that it may bring, + + After light's term, a term of cecity: + +the best hope for the future, that light will return and banish the +follies, sophistries, delusions, which have accumulated in the darkness. +"Lucidity of soul" may be--nay, must be, "sad"; but it is not less +imperative. And the truth which light reveals must not only be sought +earnestly and cherished carefully, but even, when the cause demands it, +championed strenuously. The voices of conflict, the joy of battle, the +"garments rolled in blood," the "burning and fuel of fire" have little +place in Arnold's poetry. But once at any rate he bursts into a strain +so passionate, so combatant, that it is difficult for a disciple to +recognize his voice; and then the motive is a summons to a last charge +for Truth and Light-- + + They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee? + Better men fared thus before thee; + Fired their ringing shot and pass'd, + Hotly charged--and sank at last. + + Charge once more, then, and be dumb! + Let the victors, when they come, + When the forts of folly fall, + Find thy body by the wall! + +But the note of battle, even for what he holds dearest and most sacred, +is not a familiar note in his poetry. He had no natural love of + + the throng'd field where winning comes by strife. + +His criticism of life sets a higher value on work than on fighting. +"Toil unsevered from tranquillity," "Labour, accomplish'd in repose"--is +his ideal of happiness and duty. + +Even the Duke of Wellington--surely an unpromising subject for poetic +eulogy--is praised because he was a worker, + + Laborious, persevering, serious, firm. + +Nature, again, is called in to teach us the secret of successful labour. +Her forces are incessantly at work, and in that work they are entirely +concentrated-- + + 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. + +But those who had the happiness of knowing Arnold in the flesh will feel +that they never so clearly recognize his natural voice as when, by his +criticism of life, he is inculcating the great law of Love. Even in the +swirl of Revolution he clings to his fixed idea of love as duty. After +discussing the rise and fall of dynasties, the crimes of diplomacy, the +characteristic defects of rival nations, and all the stirring topics of +the time, he abruptly concludes his criticism with an appeal to Love. +"Be kind to the neighbours--'this is all we can.'" + +And as in his prose, so in his poetry. Love, even in arrest of formal +justice, is the motive of _The Sick King in Bokhara_; love, that wipes +out sin, of _Saint Brandan_-- + + That germ of kindness, in the womb + Of mercy caught, did not expire; + Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom, + And friends me in the pit of fire. + +_The Neckan_ and _The Forsaken Merman_ tell the tale of contemptuous +unkindness and its enduring poison. _A Picture at Newstead_ depicts the +inexpiable evils wrought by violent wrong. _Poor Matthias_ tells in a +parable the cruelty, not less real because unconscious, of imperfect +sympathy-- + + Human longings, human fears, + Miss our eyes and miss our ears. + Little helping, wounding much, + Dull of heart, and hard of touch, + Brother man's despairing sign + Who may trust us to divine? + +In _Geist's Grave_, the "loving heart," the "patient soul" of the +dog-friend are made to "read their homily to man"; and the theme of the +homily is still the same: the preciousness of the love which outlives +the grave. But nowhere perhaps is his doctrine about the true divinity +of love so exquisitely expressed as in _The Good Shepherd with the +Kid_-- + + _He saves the sheep, the goats He doth not save._ + So rang Tertullian's sentence . . . + . . . . . But she sigh'd, + The infant Church! Of love she felt the tide + Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave. + And then she smiled; and in the Catacombs, + With eye suffused but heart inspirèd true, + On those walls subterranean, where she hid + Her head 'mid ignominy, death, and tombs, + She the Good Shepherd's hasty image drew-- + And on His shoulders not a lamb, a kid. + +So much, then, for his Criticism of Life, as applied in and through his +poems. It is not easy to estimate, even approximately, the effect +produced by a loved and gifted poet, who for thirty years taught an +audience, fit though few, that the main concerns of human life were +Truth, Work, and Love. Those "two noblest of things, Sweetness and +Light" (though heaven only knows what they meant to Swift), meant to him +Love and Truth; and to these he added the third great ideal, +Work--patient, persistent, undaunted effort for what a man genuinely +believes to be high and beneficent ends. Such a "Criticism of Life," we +must all admit, is not unworthy of one who seeks to teach his +fellow-men; even though some may doubt whether poetry is the medium best +fitted for conveying it. + +We must now turn our attention to his performances in the field of +literary criticism; and we begin in the year 1853. He had won the prize +for an English poem at Rugby, and again at Oxford. In 1849 he had +published without his name, and had recalled, a thin volume, called _The +Strayed Reveller, and other Poems_. He had done the same with +_Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems_ in 1852. The best contents of +these two volumes were combined in _Poems_, 1853, and to this book he +gave a Preface, which was his first essay in Literary Criticism. In this +essay he enounces a certain doctrine of poetry, and, true to his +lifelong practice, he enounces it mainly by criticism of what other +people had said. A favourite cry of the time was that Poetry, to be +vital and interesting, must "leave the exhausted past, and draw its +subjects from matters of present import." It was the favourite theory of +Middle Class Liberalism. The _Spectator_ uttered it with characteristic +gravity; Kingsley taught it obliquely in _Alton Locke_. Arnold assailed +it as "completely false," as "having a philosophical form and air, but +no real basis in fact." In assailing it, he justified his constant +recourse to Antiquity for subject and method; he exalted Achilles, +Prometheus, Clytemnestra, and Dido as eternally interesting; he asserted +that the most famous poems of the nineteenth century "left the reader +cold in comparison with the effect produced upon him by the latter +books of the _Iliad_, by the _Oresteia_, or by the episode of Dido." He +glorified the Greeks as the "unapproached masters of the _grand style_." +He even ventured to doubt whether the influence of Shakespeare, "the +greatest, perhaps, of all poetical names," had been wholly advantageous +to the writers of poetry. He weighed Keats in the balance against +Sophocles and found him wanting. + +[Illustration: Thomas Arnold, D.D. + +Head Master of Rugby, and father of Matthew Arnold + +_From the Painting in Oriel College_ + +_Photo H.W. Taunt_] + +Of course, this criticism, so hostile to the current cant of the moment, +was endlessly misinterpreted and misunderstood. He thus explained his +doctrine in a Preface to a Second Edition of his Poems: "It has been +said that I wish to limit the poet, in his choice of subjects, to the +period of Greek and Roman antiquity; but it is not so. I only counsel +him to choose for his subjects great actions, without regarding to what +time they belong." A few years later he wrote to a friend (in a letter +hitherto unpublished): "The modern world is the widest and richest +material ever offered to the artist; but the moulding and representing +power of the artist is not, or has not yet become (in my opinion), +commensurate with his material, his _mundus representandus_. This +adequacy of the artist to his world, this command of the latter by him, +seems to me to be what constitutes a first-class poetic epoch, and to +distinguish it from such an epoch as our own; in this sense, the Homeric +and Elizabethan poetry seems to me of a superior class to ours, though +the world represented by it was far less full and significant." + +There is no need to describe in greater detail the two Prefaces, which +can be read, among rather incongruous surroundings, in the volume called +_Irish Essays, and Others_. But they are worth noting, because in them, +at the age of thirty, he first displayed the peculiar temper in literary +criticism which so conspicuously marked him to the end; and that temper +happily infected the critical writing of a whole generation; until the +Iron Age returned, and the bludgeon was taken down from its shelf, and +the scalping-knife refurbished. + +In his critical temper, lucidity, courage, and serenity were equally +blended. In his criticism of books, as in his criticism of life, he +aimed first at Lucidity--at that clear light, uncoloured by +prepossession, which should enable him to see things as they really are. +In a word, he judged for himself; and, however much his judgment might +run counter to prejudice or tradition, he dared to enounce it and +persist in it. He spoke with proper contempt of the "tenth-rate critics, +for whom any violent shock to the public taste would be a temerity not +to be risked"; but that temerity he himself had in rich abundance. Homer +and Sophocles are the only poets of whom, if my memory serves me, he +never wrote a disparaging word. Shakespeare is, and rightly, an object +of national worship; yet Arnold ventured to point out his +"over-curiousness of expression"; and, where he writes-- + + Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapped in proof, + Confronted him with self-comparisons, + +Arnold dared to say that the writing was "detestable." + +Macaulay is, perhaps less rightly, another object of national worship; +yet Arnold denounced the "confident shallowness which makes him so +admired by public speakers and leading-article writers, and so +intolerable to all searchers for truth"; and frankly avowed that to his +mind "a man's power to detect the ring of false metal in the _Lays of +Ancient Rome_ was a good measure of his fitness to give an opinion about +poetical matters at all." According to Macaulay, Burke was "the greatest +man since Shakespeare." Arnold admired Burke, revered him, paid him the +highest compliment by trying to apply his ideas to actual life; but, +when Burke urged his great arguments by obstetrical and pathological +illustrations, Arnold was ready to denounce his extravagances, his +capriciousness, his lapses from good taste. + +The same perfectly courageous criticism, qualifying generous admiration, +he applied in turn to Jeremy Taylor and Addison, to Milton, and Pope, +and Gray, and Keats, and Shelley, and Scott--to all the principal +luminaries of our literary heaven. He went all lengths with Mr. +Swinburne in praising Byron's "sincerity and strength," but he qualified +the praise: "Our soul had _felt_ him like the thunder's roll," but "he +taught us little." Devout Wordsworthian as he is, he does not shrink +from saying that much of Wordsworth's work is "quite uninspired, flat +and dull," and sets himself to the task of "relieving him from a great +deal of the poetical baggage which now encumbers him." + +And so Lucidity, which reveals the Truth, enounces its decisions with +absolute courage; and to Lucidity and Courage is added the crowning +grace of Serenity. However much the subject of his study may offend his +taste or sin against his judgment, he never loses his temper with the +author whom he is criticising. He never bludgeons or scalps or +scarifies; but serenely indicates, with the calm gesture of a superior +authority, the defects and blots which mar perfection, but which the +unthinking multitude ignores, or, at worst, admires. + +The years 1860 and 1861 mark an important stage in the development of +his critical method. He was now Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and he +delivered from the professorial chair his famous lectures _On +Translating Homer_, to which in 1862 he added his "Last Words." As much +as anything which he ever wrote, these lectures have a chance of living +and being enjoyed when we are dust. For Homer is immortal, and he who +interprets Homer to Englishmen may hope at least for a longer life than +most of us. + +Few are those who can still recall the graceful figure in its silken +gown; the gracious address, the slightly supercilious smile, of the +_Milton jeune et voyageant_,[5] just returned from contact with all that +was best in French culture to instruct and astonish his own university; +few who can still catch the cadence of the opening sentence: "It has +more than once been suggested to me that I should translate Homer"; few +that heard the fine tribute of the aged scholar,[6] who, as the young +lecturer closed a later discourse, murmured to himself, "The Angel +ended." + +With his characteristic trick of humorous mock-humility, Arnold wrote to +a friendly reviewer who praised these lectures on translating Homer: "I +am glad any influential person should call attention to the fact that +there was some criticism in the three lectures; most people seem to have +gathered nothing from them except that I abused F.W. Newman, and liked +English hexameters." + +Criticisms of criticism are the most melancholy reading in the world, +and therefore no attempt will here be made to examine in detail the +praise which in these lectures he poured upon the supreme exemplar of +pure art, or the delicious ridicule with which he assailed the most +respectable attempts to render Homer into English. For the praise, let +one quotation suffice--"Homer's grandeur is not the mixed and turbid +grandeur of the great poets of the North, of the authors of _Othello_ +and _Faust_; it is a perfect, a lovely grandeur. Certainly his poetry +has all the energy and power of the poetry of our ruder climates; but it +has, besides, the pure lines of an Ionian horizon, the liquid clearness +of an Ionian sky." + +On the ridicule, we must dwell a little more at length; for this was, in +the modern slang, "a new departure" in his critical method. At the date +when he published his lectures _On Translating Homer_, English criticism +of literature was, and for some time had been, an extremely solemn +business. Much of it had been exceedingly good, for it had been produced +by Johnson and Coleridge, and De Quincey and Hazlitt. Much had been +atrociously bad, resembling all too closely Mr. Girdle's pamphlet "in +sixty-four pages, post octavo, on the character of the Nurse's deceased +husband in _Romeo and Juliet_, with an enquiry whether he had really +been a 'merry man' in his lifetime, or whether it was merely his widow's +affectionate partiality that induced her so to report him."[7] + +But, whether good or bad, criticism had been solemn. Even Arnold's first +performances in the art had been as grave as Burke or Wordsworth. But in +his lectures _On Translating Homer_ he added a new resource to his +critical apparatus. He still pursued Lucidity, Courage, and Serenity; he +still praised temperately and blamed humanely; but now he brought to the +enforcement of his literary judgment the aid of a delicious playfulness. +Cardinal Newman was not ashamed to talk of "chucking" a thing off, or +getting into a "scrape." So perhaps a humble disciple may be permitted +to say that Arnold pointed his criticisms with "chaff." + +This method of depreciating literary performances which one dislikes, +of conveying dissent from literary doctrines which one considers +erroneous, had fallen out of use in our literary criticism. It was least +to be expected from a professorial chair in a venerable +university--least of all from a professor not yet forty, who might have +been expected to be weighed down and solemnized by the greatness of his +function and the awfulness of his surroundings. Hence arose the simple +and amusing wrath of pedestrian poets like Mr. Ichabod Wright, and +ferocious pedants like Professor Francis Newman, and conventional +worshippers of such idols as Scott and Macaulay, when they found him +poking his seraphic fun at the notion that Homer's song was like "an +elegant and simple melody from an African of the Gold Coast," or at +lines so purely prosaic as-- + + All these thy anxious cares are also mine, + Partner beloved; + +or so eccentric as-- + + Nor liefly thee would I advance to man-ennobling battle + +or so painful as-- + + To every man upon this earth + Death cometh soon or late. + +This habit of enlisting playfulness in aid of literary judgment was +carried a step further in _Essays in Criticism_, published in 1865. This +book, of which Mr. Paul justly remarks that it was "a great intellectual +event," was a collection of essays written in the years 1863 and 1864. +The original edition contained a preface dealing very skittishly with +Bishop Colenso's biblical aberrations. The allusions to Colenso were +wisely omitted from later editions, but the preface as it stands +contains (besides the divinely-beautiful eulogy of Oxford) some of +Arnold's most delightful humour. He never wrote anything better than his +apology to the indignant Mr. Ichabod Wright; his disclaimer of the title +of Professor, "which I share with so many distinguished men--Professor +Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor Frickel"; his attempt to comfort +the old gentleman who was afraid of being murdered, by reminding him +that "il n'y a pas d'homme necessaire"; and in all these cases the +humour subserves and advances a serious criticism of books or of life. + +As we have now seen him engaged in the duty of criticising others, it +will not be out of place to cite in this connection, though they belong +to other periods, some criticisms of himself. As far back as 1853, he +had observed, with characteristic lucidity, that the great fault of his +earlier poems was "the absence of charm." "Charm" was indeed the +element in which they were deficient; but, as years advanced, charm was +superadded to thought and feeling. In 1867, he said in a letter to his +friend F.T. Palgrave: "Saint Beuve has written to me with great interest +about the _Obermann poem_, which he is getting translated. Swinburne +fairly took my breath away. I must say the general public praise me in +the dubious style in which old Wordsworth used to praise Bernard Barton, +James Montgomery, and suchlike; and the writers of poetry, on the other +hand--Browning, Swinburne, Lytton--praise me as the general public +praises its favourites. This is a curious reversal of the usual order of +things. Perhaps it is from an exaggerated estimate of my own +unpopularity and obscurity as a poet, but my first impulse is to be +astonished at Swinburne's praising me, and to think it an act of +generosity. Also he picks passages which I myself should have picked, +and which I have not seen other people pick." + +In 1869, when the first Collected Edition of his poems was in the press, +he wrote to Palgrave, who had suggested some alterations, this estimate +of his own merits and defects,-- + +"I am really very much obliged to you for your letter. I think the +printing has made too much progress to allow of dealing with any of the +long things now; I have left 'Merope' aside entirely, but the rest I +have reprinted. In a succeeding edition, however, I am not at all sure +that I shall not leave out the second part of the 'Church of Brou.' With +regard to the others, I think I shall let them stand--but often for +other reasons than because of their intrinsic merit. For instance, I +agree that in the 'Sick King in Bokhara' there is a flatness in parts; +but then it was the first thing of mine dear old Clough thoroughly +liked. Against 'Tristram,' too, many objections may fairly be urged; but +then the subject is a very popular one, and many people will tell you +they like it best of anything I have written. All this has to be taken +into account. 'Balder' perhaps no one cares much for except myself; but +I have always thought, though very likely I am wrong, that it has not +had justice done to it; I consider that it has a natural _propriety_ of +diction and rhythm which is what we all prize so much in Virgil, and +which is not common in English poetry. For instance, Tennyson has in the +_Idylls_ something dainty and _tourmenté_ which excludes this natural +propriety; and I have myself in 'Sohrab' something, not dainty, but +_tourmenté_ and Miltonically _ampoullé_, which excludes it.... We have +enough Scandinavianism in our nature and history to make a short +_conspectus_ of the Scandinavian mythology admissible. As to the shorter +things, the 'Dream' I have struck out. 'One Lesson' I have re-written +and banished from its pre-eminence as an introductory piece. 'To +Marguerite' (I suppose you mean 'We were apart' and not 'Yes! in the +sea') I had paused over, but my instinct was to strike it out, and now +your suggestion comes to confirm this instinct, I shall act upon it. The +same with 'Second Best.' It is quite true there is a horrid falsetto in +some stanzas of the 'Gipsy Child'--it was a very youthful production. I +have re-written those stanzas, but am not quite satisfied with the poem +even now. 'Shakespeare' I have re-written. 'Cruikshank' I have +re-titled, and re-arranged the 'World's Triumphs.' 'Morality' I stick +to--and 'Palladium' also. 'Second Best' I strike out and will try to put +in 'Modern Sappho' instead--though the metre is not right. In the +'Voice' the falsetto rages too furiously; I can do nothing with it; +ditto in 'Stagirius,' which I have struck out. Some half-dozen other +things I either have struck out, or think of striking out. 'Hush, not to +me at this bitter departing' is one of them. The Preface I omit +entirely. 'St. Brandan,' like 'Self-Deception,' is not a piece that at +all satisfies me, but I shall let both of them stand." + +In 1879 he wrote with reference to the edition of his poems in two +volumes-- + +"In beginning with 'early poems' I followed, as I have done throughout, +the chronological arrangement adopted in the last edition, an +arrangement which is, on the whole, I think, the most satisfactory. The +title of 'early' implies an excuse for defective work of which I would +not be supposed blind to the defects--such as the 'Gipsy Child,' which +you suggest for exclusion; but something these early pieces have which +later work has not, and many people--perhaps for what are truth faults +in the poems--have liked them. You have been a good friend to my poems +from the first, one of those whose approbation has been a real source of +pleasure to me. There are things which I should like to do in poetry +before I die, and of which lines and bits have long been done, in +particular Lucretius, St. Alexius, and the journey of Achilles after +death to the Island of Leuce; but we accomplish what we can, not what we +will." + +Enough, perhaps, has now been said about his critical method; and, as +this book proposes to deal with results, it is right to enquire into the +effect of that method upon men who aspired to follow him, at whatever +distance, in the path of criticism. The answer can be easily given. He +taught us, first and foremost, to judge for ourselves; to take nothing +at second hand; to bow the knee to no reputation, however high its +pedestal in the Temple of Fame, unless we were satisfied of its right to +stand where it was. Then he taught us to discriminate, even in what we +loved best, between its excellences and its defects; to swallow nothing +whole, but to chew the cud of disinterested meditation, and accept or +reject, praise or blame, in accordance with our natural and deliberate +taste. He taught us to love Beauty supremely, to ensue it, to be on the +look out for it; and, when we found it--when we found what really and +without convention satisfied our "sense for beauty"--to adore it, and, +as far as we could, to imitate it. Contrariwise, he taught us to shun +and eschew what was hideous, to make war upon it, and to be on our guard +against its contaminating influence. And this teaching he applied alike +to hideousness in character, sight, and sound--to "watchful jealousy" +and rancour and uncleanness; to the "dismal Mapperly Hills," and the +"uncomeliness of Margate," the "squalid streets of Bethnal Green," and +"Coles' Truss Manufactory standing where it ought not, on the finest +site in Europe"; to such poetry as-- + + And scarcely had she begun to wash + When she was aware of the grisly gash, + +to such hymns as-- + + O happy place! + When shall I be + My God with Thee, + To see Thy face? + +"What a touch of grossness!" he exclaimed, "what an original shortcoming +in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural +growth amongst us of such hideous names--Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg! +In Ionia and Attica they were luckier in this respect than "the best +race in the world"; by the Ilissus there was "no Wragg,[8] poor thing!" + +Then he taught us to aim at sincerity in our intercourse with Nature. +Never to describe her as others saw her, never to pretend a knowledge of +her which we did not possess, never to endow her with fanciful +attributes of our own or other people's imagining, never to assume her +sympathy with mortal lots, never to forget that she, like humanity, has +her dark, her awful, her revengeful moods. He taught us not to be +ashamed of our own sense of fun, our own faculty of laughter; but to let +them play freely even round the objects of our reasoned reverence, just +in the spirit of the teacher who said that no man really believed in his +religion till he could venture to joke about it. Above all, he taught +us, even when our feelings were most forcibly aroused, to be serene, +courteous, and humane; never to scold, or storm, or bully; and to avoid +like a pestilence such brutality as that of the _Saturday Review_ when +it said that something or another was "eminently worthy of a great +nation," and to disparage it "eminently worthy of a great fool." He laid +it down as a "precious truth" that one's effectiveness depends upon "the +power of persuasion, of charm; that without this all fury, energy, +reasoning power, acquirement, are thrown away and only render their +owner more miserable." + +In a word, he combined Light with Sweetness, and in the combination lies +his abiding power. + +[Footnote 4: "Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike."--_Pope_.] + +[Footnote 5: He was so described by George Sand.] + +[Footnote 6: Dr. Williams, President of Jesus College.] + +[Footnote 7: _Nicholas Nickleby_.] + +[Footnote 8: "A shocking child-murder has just been committed at +Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse there on Saturday +morning with her young illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards +found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. _Wragg is in +custody._"] + + + + +CHAPTER III + +EDUCATION + + +"Though I am a schoolmaster's son, I confess that school-teaching or +school-inspecting is not the line of life I should naturally have +chosen. I adopted it in order to marry a lady who is here to-night, and +who feels your kindness as warmly and gratefully as I do. My wife and I +had a wandering life of it at first. There were but three lay-inspectors +for all England. My district went right across from Pembroke Dock to +Great Yarmouth. We had no home. One of our children was born in a +lodging at Derby, with a workhouse, if I recollect aright, behind and a +penitentiary in front. But the _irksomeness_ of my new duties was what I +felt most, and during the first year or so it was sometimes +insupportable." + +[Illustration: Laleham Church + +As it was in Matthew Arnold's boyhood + +_Photo H.W. Taunt_] + +The name of Arnold is so inseparably connected with Education[9] that +many of Matthew Arnold's friends were astonished by this frank +confession, which he made in his address to the Westminster Teachers' +Association on the occasion of his retirement from the office of +Inspector. There is reason to believe that the profession on which he +had set his early affections was Diplomacy. It is easy to see how +perfectly, in many respects, diplomatic life would have suited him. The +proceeds of his Fellowship, then considerable and unhampered by any +conditions of residence, would have supplied the lack of private +fortune. He had some of the diplomatist's most necessary gifts--love of +travel, familiarity with European literature, keen interest in foreign +politics and institutions, taste for cultivated society, rich enjoyment +of life, and fascinating manners conspicuously free from English +stiffness and shyness. As to his interest in foreign politics, it is +only necessary to cite _England and the Italian Question_, which he +wrote in 1859, and which deals with the unity and independence of Italy. +It is the first essay which he ever published, but it abounds in +clearness and force, and is entirely free from the whimsicality which in +later years sometimes marred his prose. Above all it shows a sympathetic +insight into foreign aspirations which is rare indeed even among +cultivated Englishmen. In reference to this pamphlet he truly observed: +"The worst of the English is that on foreign politics they search so +very much more for what they like and wish to be true, than for what +_is_ true. In Paris there is certainly a larger body of people than in +London who treat foreign politics as a science, as a matter to _know_ +upon before _feeling_ upon." + +As regards the diplomatic life, it seems certain that he would have +enjoyed it thoroughly, and one would think that he was exactly the man +to conduct a delicate negotiation with tact, good humour, and good +sense. Some glimmering of these gifts seems to have dawned from time to +time on the unimaginative minds of his official chiefs; for three times +he was sent by the Education Office on Foreign Missions, half diplomatic +in their character, to enquire into the condition and methods of Public +Instruction on the Continent. The ever-increasing popularity which +attended him on these Missions, and his excellent judgment in handling +Foreign Ministers and officials, might perhaps suggest the thought that +in renouncing diplomacy he renounced his true vocation. But the thought, +though natural, is superficial, and must give way to the absolute +conviction that he never could have known true happiness--never realized +his own ideal of life--without a wife, a family, and a home. And these +are luxuries which, as a rule, diplomatists cannot attain till + + youth and bloom and this delightful world + +have lost something of their freshness. In renouncing diplomacy he +secured, before he was twenty-nine, the chief boon of human life; but a +vague desire to enjoy that boon amid continental surroundings seems +constantly to have visited him. In 1851 he wrote to his wife: "We can +always look forward to retiring to Italy on £200 a year." In 1853 he +wrote to her again: "All this afternoon I have been haunted by a vision +of living with you at Berne, on a diplomatic appointment, and how +different that would be from this incessant grind in schools." And, +thirty years later, when he was approaching the end of his official +life, he wrote a friend: "I must go once more to America to see my +daughter, who is going to be married to an American, settled in her new +home. Then I 'feel like' retiring to Florence, and rarely moving from it +again." + +But, in spite of all these dreams and longings, he seems to have known +that his lot was cast in England, and that England must be the sphere of +his main activities. "Year slips away after year, and one begins to find +that the Office has really had the main part of one's life, and that +little remains." + +We, who are his disciples, habitually think of him as a poet, or a +critic, or an instructor in national righteousness and intelligence; as +a model of private virtue and of public spirit. We do not habitually +think of him as, in the narrow and technical sense, an Educator. And yet +a man who gives his life to a profession must be in a great measure +judged by what he accomplished in and through that profession, even +though in the first instance he "adopted it in order to marry." + +Though not a born educator, not an educator by natural aptitude or +inclination, he made himself an educator by choice; and, having once +chosen his profession, he gradually developed an interest in it, a pride +in it, a love of it which astonished some of his friends. How irksome it +was to him at the beginning we saw just now in his address to the +Teachers. How irksome in many of its incidents it remained we can see in +his published Letters. + +"I have had a hard day. Thirty pupil-teachers to examine in an +inconvenient room, and nothing to eat except a biscuit which a +charitable lady gave me." + +"This certainly has been one of the most uncomfortable weeks I ever +spent. Battersea is so far off, the roads so execrable, and the rain so +incessant.... There is not a yard of flagging, I believe, in all +Battersea." + +"Here is my programme for this afternoon: Avalanches--The +Steam-Engine--The Thames--India-Rubber--Bricks--The Battle of +Poictiers--Subtraction--The Reindeer--The Gunpowder Plot--The Jordan. +Alluring, is it not? Twenty minutes each, and the days of one's life are +only three score years and ten." + +"About four o'clock I found myself so exhausted, having eaten nothing +since breakfast, that I sent out for a bun, and ate it before the +astonished school." + +"Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I had to be at the Westminster +Training School at ten o'clock; be there till half-past one, and begin +again at two, going on till half-past six; this, with eighty candidates +to look after, and gas burning most of the day, either to give light or +to help to warm the room." + +"One sees a teacher holding up an apple to a gallery of little children, +and saying: 'An apple has a stalk, peel, pulp, core, pips, and juice; it +is odorous and opaque, and is used for making a pleasant drink called +cider.'" + +"I sometimes grow impatient of getting old amid a press of occupation +and labour for which, after all, I was not born.... The work I like is +not very compatible with any other. But we are not here to have +facilities found us for doing the work we like, but to make them." + +Still, his work as an inspector might have been made more interesting +and less irksome, if he had served under chiefs of more enlightened or +more liberal temper, as may be inferred from some words uttered after +his retirement-- + +"To Government I owe nothing. But then I have always remembered that, +under our Parliamentary system, the Government probably takes little +interest in such work, whatever it is, as I have been able to do in the +public service, and even perhaps knows nothing at all about it. But we +must take the evil of our system along with the good. Abroad probably a +Minister might have known more about my performances; but then abroad I +doubt whether I should ever have survived to perform them. Under the +strict bureaucratic system abroad, I feel pretty sure that I should have +been dismissed ten times over for the freedom with which on various +occasions I have exposed myself on matters of Religion and Politics. Our +Government here in England takes a large and liberal view about what it +considers a man's private affairs, and so I have been able to survive as +an Inspector for thirty-five years; and to the Government I at least owe +this--to have been allowed to survive." + +For thirty-five years then he served his country as an Inspector of +Elementary Schools, and the experience which he thus gained, the +interest which was thus awoke in him, suggested to him some large and +far-reaching views about our entire system of National Education. It is +no disparagement to a highly-cultivated and laborious staff of public +servants to say that he was the greatest Inspector of Schools that we +have ever possessed. It is true that he was not, as the manner of some +is, omnidoct and omnidocent. His incapacity to examine little girls in +needlework he frankly confessed; and his incapacity to examine them in +music, if unconfessed, was not less real. "I assure you," he said to the +Westminster Teachers, "I am not at all a harsh judge of myself; but I +know perfectly well that there have been much better inspectors than I." +Once, when a flood of compliments threatened to overwhelm him, he waved +it off with the frank admission--"Nobody can say I am a punctual +Inspector." Why then do we call him the greatest Inspector that we ever +had? Because he had that most precious of all combinations--a genius and +a heart. Trying to account for what he could not ignore--his immense +popularity with the masters and mistresses of the schools which he +inspected--he attributed part of it to the fact that he was Dr. Arnold's +son, part to the fact that he was "more or less known to the public as +an author"; but, of personal qualifications for his office, he +enumerated two only, and both eminently characteristic: "One is that, +having a serious sense of the nature and function of criticism, I from +the first sought to see the schools as they really were; thus it was +felt that I was fair, and that the teachers had not to apprehend from me +crotchets, pedantries, humours, favouritism, and prejudices." The other +was that he had learnt to sympathize with the teachers. "I met daily in +the schools men and women discharging duties akin to mine, duties as +irksome as mine, duties less well paid than mine; and I asked myself: +Are they on roses? Gradually it grew into a habit with me to put myself +into their places, to try and enter into their feelings, to represent to +myself their life." + +It belongs to the very nature of an Inspector's work that it escapes +public notice. Very few are the people who care to inform themselves +about the studies, the discipline, the intellectual and moral atmosphere +of Elementary Schools, except in so far as those schools can be made +battle-grounds for sectarian animosity. And, if they are few now, they +were still fewer during the thirty-five years of Arnold's Inspectorship. +A conspicuous service was rendered both to the cause of Education and to +Arnold's memory when the late Lord Sandford rescued from the entombing +blue-books his friend's nineteen General Reports to the Education +Department on Elementary Schools. In those Reports we read his +deliberate judgment on the merits, defects, needs, possibilities and +ideals of elementary schools; and this not merely as regards the choice +of subjects taught, but as regards cleanliness, healthiness, good order, +good manners, relations between teachers and pupils, selection of models +in prose and verse, and the literary as contrasted with the polemical +use of the Bible. + +Such an enumeration may sound dull enough, but there is no dulness in +the Reports themselves. They are stamped from the first page to the last +with his lightness of touch and perfection of style. They belong as +essentially to literature as his Essays or his Lectures. + +In reading these Reports on Elementary Schools we catch repeated +allusions to his three Missions of enquiry into Education on the +Continent. Those Missions produced separate Reports of their own, and +each Report developed into a volume. "The Popular Education of France" +gave the experience which he acquired in 1859, and its Introduction is +reproduced in _Mixed Essays_ under the title of "Democracy." _A French +Eton_ (not very happily named) was an unofficial product of the same +tour; for, extending his purview from Elementary Education, he there +dealt with the relation between "Middle Class Education and the State." + +"Why," he asked, "cannot we have throughout England as the French have +throughout France, as the Germans have throughout Germany, as the Swiss +have throughout Switzerland, and as the Dutch have throughout Holland, +schools where the middle and professional classes may obtain at the rate +of from £20 to £50 a year if they are boarders, and from £5 to £15 a +year if they are day scholars, an education of as good quality, with as +good guarantees of social character and advantages for a future career +in the world, as the education which French children of the +corresponding class can obtain from institutions like that of Toulouse +or Sorèze?" + +_Schools and Universities of the Continent_ gave the result of the +Mission in 1865 to investigate the Education of the Upper and Middle +Classes in France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Its bearing on +English Education may be inferred from these words of its author, +written in October, 1868: "There is a vicious article in the new +_Quarterly_ on my school-book, by one of the Eton undermasters, who, +like Demetrius the Silversmith, seems alarmed for the gains of his +occupation." + +The "Special Report on Elementary Education Abroad" grew out of his +third Mission in 1885; and, over and above these books, dealing +specifically with educational problems, we meet constant allusions to +the same topics in nearly all his prose-writings. A life-long contact +with Education produced in him a profound dissatisfaction with our +English system, or want of system, and an almost passionate desire to +turn chaos into order by the persistent use of the critical method. + +When one talks about English Education, the subject naturally divides +itself into the Universities, the Public Schools, the Private Schools, +and the Elementary Schools. The classification is not scientifically +accurate, but it will serve. With all these strata of Education, he in +turn concerned himself; but with the two higher strata much less +effectively than with the two lower. It was necessary to the theoretical +completeness of his scheme for organizing National Education, that the +Universities and the Public Schools, as well as the Private and the +Elementary Schools, should be criticised; but, in dealing with the +former, his criticism is far less drastic and insistent than with the +latter. The reason of the difference probably is that, though an +Inspector, a Professor, and a critic, he was frankly human, and shrank +from laying his hand too roughly on institutions to which he himself had +owed so much. + +His feeling for Oxford every one knows. The apostrophe to the "Adorable +Dreamer" is familiar to hundreds who could not, for their life, repeat +another line of his prose or verse. It was "the place he liked best in +the world." When he climbed the hill at Hinksey and looked down on +Oxford, he "could not describe the effect which this landscape always +has upon me--the hillside, with its valleys, and Oxford in the great +Thames Valley below." + +Of the spiritual effect of the place upon hearts nurtured there, he +said: "We in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweetness of that +beautiful place, have not failed to seize one truth--the truth that +beauty and sweetness are essential characters of a complete human +perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradition +of Oxford." + +Of the Honorary Degree conferred on him by Oxford, he said: "Nothing +could more gratify me, I think, than this recognition by my own +University, of which I am so fond, and where, according to their own +established standard of distinction, I did so little." And, after the +Encænia at which the degree was actually given, he wrote: "I felt sure I +should be well received, because there is so much of an Oxford character +about what I have written, and the undergraduates are the last people to +bear one a grudge for having occasionally chaffed them." + +And here let me insert the moving passage in which, speaking in his +last years to an American audience, he did honour to the spiritual +master of his undergraduate days. "Forty years ago Cardinal Newman was +in the very prime of life; he was close at hand to us at Oxford; he was +preaching in St. Mary's pulpit every Sunday; he seemed about to +transform and to renew what was for us the most national and natural +institution in the world, the Church of England. Who could resist the +charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light +through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in +the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and +thoughts which were a religious music--subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem +to hear him still.... Or, if we followed him back to his seclusion at +Littlemore, that dreary village by the London road, and to the house of +retreat and the church which he built there--a mean house such as Paul +might have lived in when he was tent-making at Ephesus, a church plain +and thinly sown with worshippers--who could resist him there either, +welcoming back to the severe joys of Church-fellowship, and of daily +worship and prayer, the firstlings of a generation which had well-nigh +forgotten them?" + +When we bear in mind this devotion to Oxford, it is not surprising that +he dealt very gently with the defects of English Universities. In 1868 +he laid it down that the University ought to provide facilities, after +the general education is finished, for the cultivation of special +aptitudes. "Our great Universities," he said, "Oxford and Cambridge, do +next to nothing towards this end. They are, as Signor Mateucci called +them, _hauts lycées_; and, though invaluable in their way as places +where the youth of the upper class prolong to a very great age, and +under some very valuable influences, their school-education, yet, with +their college and tutor system, nay, with their examination and degree +system, they are still, in fact, _schools_, and do not carry education +beyond the stage of general and school education." This is just in the +spirit of his famous quotation about the Oxford which he loved so well-- + + There are our young barbarians, all at play! + +In 1875 he wrote: "I do not at all like the course for the History +School (at Oxford). Nothing but read, read, read, endless histories in +English, many of them by quite second-rate men; nothing to form the mind +as reading truly great authors forms it, or even to exercise it, as +learning a new language, or mathematics, or one of the natural sciences +exercises it.... The regulation of studies is all-important, and there +is no one to regulate them, and people think that anyone can regulate +them. We shall never do any good till we get a man like Guizot, or W. +von Humboldt to deal with the matter, men who have the highest mental +training themselves, and this we shall probably in this country never +get." + +In the wittiest of all his books, and one of the wisest, _Friendship's +Garland_,[10] he thus summarized the too-usual result of our "grand, +old, fortifying, classical curriculum." To his Prussian friend enquiring +what benefit Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall have derived from +that curriculum, that "course of mental gymnastics," the imaginary +Arnold replied: "Well, during their three years at Oxford, they were so +much occupied with Bullingdon and hunting that there was no great +opportunity to judge. But for my own part, I have always thought that +their both getting their degrees at last with flying colours, after +three weeks of a famous coach for fast men, four nights without going to +bed, and an incredible consumption of wet towels, strong cigars, and +brandy-and-water, was one of the most astonishing feats of mental +gymnastics I ever heard of!" + +It must be admitted that his effect on the Universities was not very +tangible, not very positive. It was not the kind of effect which can be +expressed in figures or reported in Blue Books. One cannot stand in the +High Street of Oxford, or on King's Parade at Cambridge, and point to an +Institute, or a college, or a school of learning, and say: "Matthew +Arnold made that what it is." + +His effect was of a different kind. It was written on the fleshly tables +of the heart. To Oxford men he seemed like an elder brother, brilliant, +playful, lovable, yet profoundly wise; teaching us what to think, to +admire, to avoid. His influence fell upon a thirsty and receptive soil. +We drank it with delight; and it co-operated with all the best +traditions of the place in making us lifelong lovers of romance, and +truth, and beauty. One of the keenest minds produced by Oxford between +1870 and 1880 thus summarized his effect on us: "I think he was almost +the only man who did not disappoint one." + +[Illustration: Fox How, Ambleside + +Dr. Thomas Arnold's holiday home. + +Mrs. Arnold continued to reside at Fox How until her death, in 1873 + +_Photo Herbert Bell_] + +As in dealing with the Universities, so also in dealing with the Public +Schools, Arnold found it difficult to liberate himself from his early +environment and prepossessions. He was the son of a Wykehamist, who had +become the greatest of Head Masters; he himself was both a Wykehamist +and a Rugbeian; he was the brother of three Rugbeians, and the father of +three Harrovians. Thus it was impossible for him to regard the Public +Schools of England with the dispassionate eye of the complete +outsider. It is true that, when he gave rein to his critical instinct, +he could not help observing that Public Schools are "precious +institutions where, for £250 a year, our boys learn gentlemanlike +deportment and cricket"; that with us "the playing-fields are the +school"; and that a Prussian Minister of Education would not permit "the +keepers of those absurd cock-pits" to examine the boys as they choose, +"and send them jogging comfortably off to the University on their lame +longs and shorts about the Calydonian Boar." But, when it came to +practical dealing, he had a tenderness for the "cock-pit"--even for the +playing-fields--almost for the Calydonian Boar--which hindered him from +being a very formidable or effective critic. Rugby, with which he was so +closely connected, and to which he was so much attached, owes nothing, +as far as one knows, to his suggestions or reproaches. At Harrow he +lived for five years, on terms of affectionate intimacy with the Head +Master and the staff; and, though he was keenly alive to the absurdities +of the "catch-scholarship," as he called it, which was cultivated there, +and to the inefficiency of the _Principia_ and _Notabilia_, on which the +Harrovian mind was nourished, his adverse judgment never made itself +felt. Marlborough he praised and admired as "a decided offspring of +Rugby." At Eton his fascinating essay on "Eutrapelia" was given;[11] +and he in turn was fascinated by the Memorials of "An Eton Boy," which +he reviewed in the _Fortnightly_ for June, 1882.[12] That boy, Arthur +Baskerville-Mynors, was certainly a most lovable and attractive +character, and he was thus commemorated in the Eton College Chronicle: +"His life here was always joyous, a fearless, keen boyhood, spent _sans +peur et sans reproche_. Many will remember him as fleet of foot and of +lasting powers, winning the mile and the steeplechase in 1871, and the +walking race in 1875. As master of the Beagles in 1875, he showed +himself to possess all the qualities of a keen sportsman, with an +instinctive knowledge of the craft." On this last sentence Arnold +fastened with his characteristic insistence, and used it to point the +moral which he was always trying to teach. The Barbarian, as "for +shortness we had accustomed ourselves to call" a member of the English +upper classes, even when "adult and rigid," had often "invaluable +qualities." "It is hard for him, no doubt, to enter into the Kingdom of +God--hard for him to believe in the sentiment of the ideal life +transforming the life which now is, to believe in it and even to serve +it--hard, but not impossible. And in the young the qualities take a +brighter colour, and the rich and magical time of youth adds graces of +its own to them; and then, in happy natures, they are irresistible." + +And so he goes on to give a truly appreciative and affectionate sketch +of young Arthur Mynors; and then he quotes the sentence about the Master +of the Beagles, and on this he comments thus: "The aged Barbarian will, +upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story how the battle of Waterloo +was won in the playing-fields of Eton. Alas! disasters have been +prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to +inadequate mental training--to want of application, knowledge, +intelligence, lucidity. The Eton playing-fields have their great charm, +notwithstanding; but with what felicity of unconscious satire does that +stroke of 'the Master of the Beagles' hit off our whole system of +provision of public secondary schools; a provision for the fortunate and +privileged few, but for the many, for the nation, ridiculously +impossible!" This is his last word on the Public Schools, as that title +is conventionally understood. He had a much fuller and more searching +criticism for the schools in which the great Middle Class is educated. + +It may perhaps be fairly questioned whether great humourists much enjoy +the humour of other people. If we apply this question to Arnold's case +and seek to answer it by his published works, we shall probably answer +in the negative. From first to last, he takes little heed of humorous +writers or humorous books. Even in those great authors who are masters +of all moods, it is the grave, rather than the humorous mood, which he +chooses for commendation. He was a devout Shakespearian, but it is +difficult to recall an allusion to Shakespeare's humour, except in the +rather oblique form of Dogberry as the type of German officialdom. Swift +he quoted with admirable effect, but it was Swift the reviler, not Swift +the jester. He says that he made a "wooden Oxford audience laugh aloud +with two pages of Heine's wit"; but the lecture, as we read it, shows +more of mordant sarcasm than of the material for laughter. Scott he knew +by heart, and Carlyle he honestly revered; but he admired the one for +his romance and the other for his philosophy. Thackeray, sad to +remember, he "did not think a great writer," and so Thackeray's humour +disappears, with his pathos and his satire, into the limbo of +common-place. The imaginary spokesman of the _Daily Telegraph_ in +_Friendship's Garland_ reckons as "the great masters of human thought +and human literature, Plato, Shakespeare, Confucius, and Charles +Dickens"; and there, to judge from the great bulk of his writing, +Arnold's acquaintance with Dickens begins and ends. + +But it was one of his amiable traits that, whenever he read a book which +pleased him, he immediately began to share his pleasure with his +friends. In the year 1880, he writes to his colleague, Mr. Fitch, "I +have this year been reading _David Copperfield_ for the first time.[13] +Mr. Creakle's School at Blackheath is the type of our English Middle +Class Schools, and our Middle Class is satisfied that so it should be." + +It would seem that he made this rather belated acquaintance with +Dickens' masterpiece, through reading it aloud to one of his children +who was laid up with a swelled face. But, however introduced to his +notice, the book made a deep impression on him. In the following June he +contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_ an article on Ireland styled +"The Incompatibles." In that article he suggests that the Irish dislike +of England arises in part from the fact that "the Irish do not much come +across our aristocracy, exhibiting that factor of civilization, the +power of manners, which has undoubtedly a strong attraction for them. +What they do come across, and what gives them the idea they have of our +civilization and its promise, is our Middle Class." + +The mention, so frequent in his writings, of "our Middle Class," seems +to demand a definition; and, admitting that in this country the Middle +Class has no naturally defined limits, and that it is difficult to say +who properly belong to it and who do not, he adopts an educational test. +The Middle Class means the people who are brought up at a particular +kind of school, and to illustrate that kind of school he has recourse to +his newly-discovered treasure. "Much as I have published, I do not think +it has ever yet happened to me to comment in print upon any production +of Charles Dickens. What a pleasure to have the opportunity of praising +a work so sound, a work so rich in merit, as _David Copperfield_!... Of +the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plentifully all round us, we +can, indeed, hardly read too little. But to contemporary work so good as +_David Copperfield_ we are in danger of perhaps not paying respect +enough, of reading it (for who could help reading it?) too hastily, and +then putting it aside for something else and forgetting it. What +treasures of gaiety, invention, life, are in that book! what alertness +and resource! what a soul of good nature and kindness governing the +whole! Such is the admirable work which I am now going to call in +evidence. Intimately, indeed, did Dickens know the Middle Class; he was +bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. Intimately he knew its +bringing-up. With the hand of a master he has drawn for us a type of the +teachers and trainers of its youth, a type of its places of education. +Mr. Creakle and Salem House are immortal. The type itself, it is to be +hoped, will perish; but the drawing of it which Dickens has given cannot +die. Mr. Creakle, the stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and +seals, in an armchair, with the fiery face and the thick veins in his +forehead; Mr. Creakle sitting at his breakfast with the cane, and a +newspaper, and the buttered toast before him, will sit on, like Theseus, +for ever. For ever will last the recollection of Salem House, and of the +'daily strife and struggle' there; the recollection 'of the frosty +mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the +dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom +dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which +was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled +beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of +bread and butter, dog's-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted +copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet +puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all.' By the Middle +Class I understand those who are brought up at establishments more or +less like Salem House, and by educators more or less like Mr. Creakle. +And the great mass of the Middle part of our community, the part which +comes between those who labour with their hands, on the one side, and +people of fortune on the other, is brought up at establishments of this +kind, although there is a certain portion broken off at the top which is +educated at better. But the great mass are both badly taught, and are +also brought up on a lower plane than is right, brought up ignobly. And +this deteriorates their standard of life, their civilization." + +It surely must have been Salem House, or an institution very like it, +that produced the delicious letter quoted by Arnold in his General +Report for 1867. Even Mr. Anstey Guthrie never excelled it in the letter +dictated by Dr. Grimstone to his pupils at Crichton House. + + "MY DEAR PARENTS.--The anticipation of our Christmas + vacation abounds in peculiar delights. Not only that its + 'festivities,' its social gatherings and its lively amusements + crown the old year with happiness and mirth, but that I come a + guest commended to your hospitable love by the performance of all + you bade me remember when I left you in the glad season of sun and + flowers. And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my departing + step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and + endearments their temporary loss has taught me to value more and + more. Yet that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as + easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my conduct and + the readiness of my services shall ere long aptly illustrate. It is + with confidence I promise that the close of every year shall find + me advancing in your regard by constantly observing the precepts of + my excellent tutors and the example of my excellent parents. + + "We break up on Thursday, the 11th of December instant, and my + impatience of the short delay will assure my dear parents of the + filial sentiments of + + "Theirs very sincerely, + + "N. + + "P.S. We shall reassemble on the 19th of January. Mr. and Mrs. P. + present their respectful compliments." + +The present writer lately asked a close observer of educational matters +if Arnold had produced any practical effect on Secondary Education, and +the answer was--"He pulled down the strongholds of such as Mr. Creakle." +If he did that, he did much; and it is a eulogy which he would have +greatly appreciated. Let us see how far it was deserved. Let us admit +at the outset that Mr. Squeers is dead; but then he was dead before +Arnold took in hand to reform our system of Education. Mr. Creakle, it +is to be feared, still exists, though his former assistant, the more +benign Mr. Mell, has to some extent supplanted him. Dr. Blimber is, +perhaps, a little superannuated, but still holds his own. Dr. Grimstone +is going strong and well. In a word, the Private School for bigger +boys--(we are not thinking of Preparatory Schools for little +boys)--still exists and even flourishes. Now, if Arnold could have had +his way, the Private School for bigger boys would long since have +disappeared. "Mr. Creakle's stronghold" would have been pulled down, and +Salem House and Crichton House and Lycurgus House Academy would have +crumbled into ruins. + +And what would he have raised in their place? He wrote so often and so +variously about Education--now in official reports, now in popular +essays, now again in private letters, that it is not difficult to detect +some inconsistencies, some contradictions, some changes of view. Indeed, +it needs but the alteration of a single word to justify, at least to +some extent, the "damning sentence," which, according to Arnold, Mr. +Frederic Harrison "launched" against him in 1867. "We seek vainly in Mr. +A. a system of philosophy with principles coherent, interdependent, +subordinate, and derivative." For "Philosophy" read "Education," and the +reproach holds good. For in Education, as in everything else that he +touched, he proceeded rather by criticism than by dogma--by showing +faults in existing things rather than by theoretically constructing +perfection. Yet, after all said and done, his general view of the +subject is quite plain. He had in his mind an idea or scheme of what +National Education ought to be; and, though from time to time he changed +his view about details and methods, the general outline of his scheme is +clear enough. + +One of the most characteristic passages which he ever wrote is that in +which he describes his interview in 1865 with Cardinal Antonelli, then +Secretary of State at Rome. "When he asked me what I thought of the +Roman schools, I said that, for the first time since I came on the +Continent, I was reminded of England. I meant, in real truth, that there +was the same easy-going and absence of system on all sides, the same +powerlessness and indifference of the State, the same independence in +single institutions, the same free course for abuses, the same +confusion, the same lack of all idea of _co-ordering_ things, as the +French say--that is, of making them work fitly together to a fit end; +the same waste of power, therefore the same extravagance, and the same +poverty of result." + +Enlarging on this congenial theme, and applying it to England and +English requirements, he promulged in 1868 a very revolutionary scheme +for Public Education. At the apex of the pyramid there should be a +Minister of Education. "Merely for administrative convenience he is, +indeed, indispensable. But it is even more important to have _a centre +in which to fix responsibility_." In 1886 he said to the teachers at +Westminster, "I know the Duke of Richmond told the House of Lords that, +as Lord President, he was Minister of Education--(laughter)--but really +the Duke of Richmond's sense of humour must have been slumbering when he +told the House of Lords that. A man is not Minister of Education by +taking the name, but by doing the functions. (Cheers.) To do the +functions he must put his mind to the subject of education; and so long +as Lord Presidents are what they are, and education is what it is, a +Lord President will not be a man who puts his mind to the subject of +education. A Vice-President is not, on the Lord President's own showing, +and cannot be, Minister for Education. He cannot be made responsible for +faults and neglects. Now what we want in a Minister for Education is +this--a centre where we can fix the responsibility." This great and +responsible officer, who presumably was to be a Cabinet Minister and +change with the changes of administration, was to preside over the whole +education of the country. The Universities, the Public Schools, the +Middle-Class Schools, and the Elementary Schools were all to be, in +greater or less degree, subject to his sway. The Minister was to be +assisted by a Council of Education, "comprising, without regard to +politics, the personages most proper to be heard on questions of public +education." It was to be, like the Council at the India Office, +consultative only, but the Minister was to be bound to take its opinion +on all important measures. It should be the special duty of this Council +to advise on the graduation of schools, on the organization of +examinations both in the schools and in the Universities, and to adjust +them to one another. The Universities were not to be increased in +number, but all such anomalous institutions as King's College and +University College were to be co-ordinated to the existing Universities; +and the Universities were to establish "faculties" in great centres of +population, supply professors and lecturers, and then examine and confer +degrees. Then the country should be mapped out into eight or ten +districts, and each of these districts should have a Provincial +School-Board, which should "represent the State in the country," keep +the Minister informed of local requirements, and be the organ of +communication between him and the schools in its jurisdiction. The exact +amount of interference, inspection, and control which the Minister, the +Council, and the Boards should exercise should vary in accordance with +the grade of the schools: it should be greater in the elementary +schools, less in the higher. But, in their degree, all, from Eton +downwards, were to be subject to it. Then came the most revolutionary +part of the whole scheme. Mr. Creakle and his congeners were to be +abolished. They were not to be put to a violent death, but they were to +be starved out. The whole face of the country is studded with small +grammar-schools or foundation-schools, like knots in a network; and +these schools, enlarged and reformed, were to be the ordinary +training-places of the Middle Class. Where they did not exist, similar +schools were to be created by the State--"Royal or Public Schools"--and +these, like all the rest, were to be subject to the Minister and to the +Provincial Boards. Arnold contended that ancient schools so revived, and +modern schools so constituted, would have a dignity and a status such as +no private school could attain, and would be free from the +pretentiousness and charlatanism which he regarded as the bane of +private education. The inspection and control of these Public Schools +would be in the hands of competent officers of the State, whereas the +private school is appraised only by the vulgar and uneducated class that +feeds it. + +And so, descending from the Universities through Public Schools of two +grades, we touch the foundation of the whole edifice--the Elementary +Schools. On this all-important topic, he wrote in 1868: "About popular +education I have here but a very few words to say. People are at last +beginning to see in what condition this really is amongst us. Obligatory +instruction is talked of. But what is the capital difficulty in the way +of obligatory instruction, or indeed any national system of instruction, +in this country? It is this: that the moment the working class of this +country have this question of instruction brought home to them, their +self-respect will make them demand, like the working classes of the +Continent, _Public_ Schools, and not schools which the clergyman, or the +squire, or the mill-owner calls "my school." And again: "The object +should be to draw the existing Elementary Schools from their present +private management, and to reconstitute them on a municipal basis." + +That word which he italicized--_public_--is the key to his whole system. +The whole education of the country was to be Public. The Universities, +already "public" in the sense that they are not private ventures, were +to be made public in the sense that they were to be supervised and to +some extent regulated by the State. The Public Schools, traditionally +so-called, were to be made more really public by being brought under the +Minister and the School-Boards. The lesser foundation-schools were to be +made public by a redistribution of their revenues and a reconstruction +of their system; and new schools, public by virtue of their creation, +were to be put alongside of the older ones. So schools of private +venture would be eliminated. And thus the whole elementary education of +the country was to be taken out of the hands of societies or +individuals, and was to be organized and conducted by the officials of +the State. Finally, all four (or three, as you choose to reckon them) +grades of public education were to be co-ordinated with one another and +subordinated to a chief Minister of State presiding over a great +department. + +[Illustration: The House of the Rev. John Buckland, at Laleham + +Where Matthew Arnold went to school from 1830-1836. + +The Rev. John Buckland was his maternal Uncle + +_Photo Ralph Lane_] + +Here was a scheme of National Education, clear enough in its general +outlines, and sufficiently far-reaching in its scope. But its author, +promulging it thirty-five years ago, saw one "capital difficulty" in the +way of realizing it, and he stated the difficulty thus: "The Public +School for the people must rest upon the municipal organization of the +country. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the public +elementary school has, and exists by having, the Commune, and the +Municipal Government of the Commune, as its foundations, and it could +not exist without them. But we in England have our municipal +organization state to get; the country districts, with us, have at +present only the feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle +Ages, or of France before the Revolution.... The real preliminary to an +effective system of popular education is, in fact, to provide the +country with an effective municipal organization." + +It would be impossible, unless one could trace the mental processes of +the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and other +eminent persons who had a hand in constructing the Education Acts of +1892 and 1893, to say how far the system now in existence owes any of +its features to the influence of Matthew Arnold. It is the lot of great +thoughts to fall upon very different kinds of soil; to be trodden under +foot by one set of enemies, and carried away by another; and yet +sometimes to find a congenial lodgment, and after long years to spring +into life and manifest themselves in very unexpected quarters. So it may +well have been with Arnold's educational theories. Certainly during the +last five-and-thirty years people have come to regard Education in all +its branches as far more a matter of public concern, far less a matter +of private venture, than formerly. More and more we have come to see +that the State and the Municipality, in their respective areas, have +something to say on the matter. The idea of the Golden Ladder, having +its base in the Elementary Schools and its top rung in the highest +honours of the University, has taken hold of the public mind, and has +passed out of the region of abstractions into practical life. +Institutions of Local Government have developed themselves on the lines +desiderated by Arnold in 1868. The subordination of education to +municipal authority is a new and a risky experiment, but it is exactly +the experiment which he wished to see. The resuscitation of the +Edwardian and Elizabethan Grammar Schools all over the country has +brought the notion of the Public School to the very door of the Middle +Class, and has shaken, if it has not yet destroyed, Mr. Creakle's +stronghold. Even in the matter of Denominational Education in the +Elementary Schools, where many deem that a retrograde step has been +taken, the State has acted on a hint which Arnold gave to the extreme +reformers of his time. + +"Most English Liberals," he said, "seem persuaded that our Elementary +Schools should be undenominational, and their teaching secular; and that +with a public elementary school it cannot well be otherwise. Let them +clearly understand, however, that on the Continent generally--everywhere +except in Holland--the public elementary school is denominational (of +course with what we should call a 'conscience clause') and its teaching +religious as well as secular." + +In one important respect the State, which has so often adopted his +views, at once outstripped and fell short of his ideal. He was not a +strong or undiscriminating advocate for Compulsory Education. He +believed that, in the foreign countries where compulsion obtained, it +was not the cause, but the effect, of a national feeling for education. +When a people set a high value on knowledge, they would insist that +every child should have a chance of acquiring it. But you could not +create that high value by compelling people to send their children to +school. As late as the end of the year 1869, he seems to have feared +that any legislation which hindered a child from working for its own or +its parents' support would be highly unpopular and would be evaded. "A +law of direct compulsion on the parent and child would probably be +violated every day in practice; and, so long as this is the case, a law +levelled at the employer is preferable." + +But when those words were written, compulsion was near at hand. The +Parliament of 1868-1874--the first elected by a democratic +suffrage--was intent on Reform, and the right of a father to starve his +child's mind was strenuously denied. Forster, then Vice-President of the +Council, was charged with the duty of preparing a Bill to establish +Compulsory Education. Arnold was Forster's brother-in-law, and "heard +the contents" of the Bill in November, 1869. When in the following +February it was brought in, he wrote: "I think William's Bill will do +very well. I am glad it is so little altered"; and, after the Second +Reading, he wrote: "The majority on the Education Bill is a great +relief; it will now, if William has tolerable luck, get through safely +this session." By this time, therefore, he must have become a convert to +the system of compulsion. Perhaps he regarded the demand for the Bill as +a proof that the English people were at length waking up to a sense of +the value of Education. But, while the State thus outstripped his ideal +by establishing compulsion, it fell short of his ideal by severely +limiting the area of the population to which compulsion was to apply. +Again and again he warned his countrymen, then unaccustomed to the +practical working of Compulsory Education, that it would be intolerable, +unjust, and absurd if it were applied only to the children of the poor. +He contended that the Upper and Middle Classes were every bit as much +in need of a compulsory system, if their children were to be properly +educated, as the working classes for whom it was proposed to legislate. +This theme he illustrated, with the most exuberant fun and fancy, in a +letter addressed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in 1867, and afterwards +republished in _Friendship's Garland_. Arminius, the cultivated +Prussian, accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country +town, and is horrified by the degraded plight of an old peasant who is +tried for poaching. The English friend (the imaginary Arnold) says that +for his own part he is not so much concerned about the poacher as about +his children. They are being allowed to grow up anyhow. Really he thinks +the time has come when compulsion must be applied to the education of +children of this class. "The gap between them and our educated and +intelligent classes is really too frightful." + +"_Your educated and intelligent classes_," sneered Arminius, in his most +offensive manner--"where are they? I should like to see them." The +English friend, thus rudely challenged, leads the Prussian into the +justice-room, where they find on the Bench three excellent specimens of +education and intelligence--Lord Lumpington, the Rev. Esau Hittall, and +Mr. Bottles. Arminius insists on knowing their qualifications for the +post of magistrate. He begins by defining the principle of Compulsory +Education. "It means that to ensure, as far as you can, every man's +being fit for his business in life, you put education as a bar, or +condition, between him and what he aims at. The principle is just as +good for one class as another, and it is only by applying it impartially +that you save its application from being insolent and invidious.... You +propose to make old Diggs' boys instruct themselves before they go +bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want to know what you do to make those +three worthies in that justice-room instruct themselves before they may +go acting as magistrates and judges?" + +The imaginary Arnold replies that Lord Lumpington was at Eton, and Mr. +Hittall at Charterhouse, and Mr. Bottles at Lycurgus House Academy, +Peckham. But Arminius insists that to send boys of the wealthy classes +to school is nothing--the natural course of things takes them there. +"Don't suppose that, by doing this, you are applying the principle of +Compulsory Education fairly, and as you apply it to Diggs' boys. You are +not interposing, for the rich, education as a bar or condition between +them and what they aim at. + +"In my country," he went on, "we should have begun to put a pressure on +those future magistrates at school. Before we allowed Lord Lumpington +and Mr. Hittall to go to the University at all, we should have examined +them.... There would have been some Mr. Grote as School Board +Commissary, pitching into them questions about history, and some Mr. +Lowe, as Crown Patronage Commissary, pitching into them questions about +English literature; and these young men would have been kept from the +University, as Diggs' boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till they +had instructed themselves. Then, if, after three years of their +University, they wanted to be magistrates, another pressure!--a great +Civil Service Examination before a Board of Experts, an examination in +English law, Roman law, English history, history of jurisprudence." + +"A most abominable liberty to take with Lumpington and Hittall," says +Arnold. + +"Then your compulsory education is a most abominable liberty to take +with Diggs' boys," retorted Arminius.... "Oh, but," I answered, "to live +at all, even at the lowest stage of human life, a man needs +instruction." "Well," returns Arminius, "and to administer at all, even +at the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs instruction." + +"_We have never found it so_," I said. + +The same argument was urged, in a graver fashion, in _Schools and +Universities of the Continent_. + +"In the view of the English friends of compulsory education, the +educated and intelligent Middle and Upper Classes amongst us are to +confer the boon of compulsory education upon the ignorant lower class, +which needs it while they do not. But, on the Continent, instruction is +obligatory for Lower, Middle, and Upper Class alike. I doubt whether our +educated and intelligent classes are at all prepared for this. I have an +acquaintance in easy circumstances, of distinguished connexions, living +in a fashionable part of London, who, like many other people, deals +rather easily with his son's schooling. Sometimes the boy is at school, +then for months together he is away from school, and taught, so far as +he is taught, by his father and mother at home. He is not the least an +invalid, but it pleases his father and mother to bring him up in this +manner. Now, I imagine, no English friends of compulsory education dream +of dealing with such a defaulter as this, and certainly his father, who +perhaps is himself a friend of compulsory education for the working +classes, would be astounded to find his education of his own son +interfered with. But, if my worthy acquaintance lived in Switzerland or +Germany, he would be dealt with as follows. I speak with the school-law +of Canton Neufchatel, immediately under my eyes, but the regulations on +this matter are substantially the same in all the states of Germany and +of German Switzerland. The Municipal Education Committee of the district +where my acquaintance lived would address a summons to him, informing +him that a comparison of the school-rolls of their district with the +municipal list of children of school-age, showed his son not to be at +school; and requiring him, in consequence, to appear before the +Municipal Committee at a place and time named, and there to satisfy +them, either that his son did attend some public school, or that, if +privately taught, he was taught by duly trained and certificated +teachers. On the back of the summons, my acquaintance would find printed +the penal articles of the School-Law, sentencing him to a fine if he +failed to satisfy the Municipal Committee; and, if he failed to pay the +fine, or was found a second time offending, to imprisonment. In some +Continental States he would be liable, in case of repeated infraction of +the School-Law, to be deprived of his parental rights, and to have the +care of his son transferred to guardians named by the State. It is +indeed terrible to think of the consternation and wrath of our educated +and intelligent classes under a discipline like this; and I should not +like to be the man to try and impose it on them. But I assure them most +emphatically--and if they study the experience of the Continent they +will convince themselves of the truth of what I say--that only on these +conditions of its equal and universal application is any law of +compulsory education possible." + +We have now seen, at least in general outline, the system of National +Education which he would have wished to set up--how he would have +co-ordinated all instruction from the lowest to the highest, and how he +would have compelled all classes alike to submit their children, and in +the higher ranks of life to submit themselves, to the training which +should best equip them for their chosen or appointed work. We must now +enquire what sort of knowledge he would have endeavoured, by his +co-ordinated system, to impart. + +He laid it down, more than once, that the aim of culture was "to know +ourselves and the world," and that, as the means to this end, we ought +"to know the best which has been thought and said in the world." He +recognized, candidly and fully, the claims of the physical sciences, and +their use and value in Education. For example, in advising about the +instruction of a little girl, in whom her teacher wished to arouse +"perception," he said, "You had much better take some science--(botany +is perhaps the best for a girl) and, choosing a good handbook, go +through it regularly with her.... The verification of the laws of +grammar, in the examples furnished by one's reading, is certainly a far +less fruitful stimulus of one's powers of observation and comparison, +than the verification of the laws of a science like botany in the +examples furnished by the world of nature before one's eyes." + +But in spite of this, and of similar concessions, he deliberately held +the opinion that Literature, rather than Science, was the chief agent in +culture. In 1872 he wrote to an enquirer: "A single line of poetry, +working in the mind, may produce more thought and lead to more light, +which is what man wants, than the fullest acquaintance (to take your own +instance) with the processes of digestion." In 1884 he said to his +American audience: "My own studies have been almost wholly in Letters, +and my visits to the field of the natural sciences have been very slight +and inadequate, although those sciences have always strongly moved my +curiosity." In a word, he was, and gloried in being, a Humanist. What +Humanism meant for him is curiously illustrated by his comment on some +speeches which the late[14] Lord Salisbury delivered at Oxford on his +first appearance there as Chancellor of the University. After praising +his skill and courtesy, Arnold says: "He is a dangerous man, through, +and chiefly from, his want of any true sense and experience of +literature and its beneficent function. Religion he knows, and physical +science he knows; but the immense work between the two, which is for +literature to accomplish, he knows nothing of; and all his speeches at +Oxford[15] pointed this way. On the one hand, he was full of the great +future for physical science, and begging his University to make up her +mind to it, and to resign much of her literary studies; on the other +hand, he was full, almost defiantly full, of counsels and resolves for +retaining and upholding the old ecclesiastical and dogmatic form of +religion. From a juxtaposition of this kind, nothing but shocks and +collisions can come." + +_The immense work which is for literature to accomplish._ This work, +lying between the work of Religion and the work of Science, was, in his +view, nothing less than the culture of Humanity. Religion had its +sphere, and Science had its sphere, but culture was to be effected +neither by Religion nor by Science, but by Literature. The literature +which he extolled was literature in its widest sense--ancient and +modern, English and Continental, Occidental and Oriental--whatever +contained "the best which had been thought and said in the world." And, +when we come to the sub-divisions of literature, we note that he was +pre-eminently a classicist. This he was partly by temperament, partly by +training, partly by his matured and deliberate judgment. It can scarcely +be doubted that he had an innate love of perfect form, an innate +"sentiment against hideousness and rawness," and so he was a classicist +by temperament. Then his training was essentially classical. He used to +protest, with amusing earnestness, against the notion that his father +had been a bad scholar. "People talk the greatest nonsense about my +father's scholarship. The Wykehamists of his day were excellent +scholars. Dr. Gabell made them so. My father's Latin verses were not +good; but that was because he was not poetical--not because he was a bad +scholar. But he wrote the most admirable Latin prose; and, as for his +Greek prose, you couldn't tell it from Thucydides." In this kind of +scholarship Matthew Arnold was nurtured; and whatever in this respect +his training had left imperfect, he perfected by close and continuous +study. His Greek and Latin reading was both wide and accurate, perhaps +wider in Greek than in Latin, though the soundness of his Latin +scholarship is proved by the fact that he was _proxime_ for the Hertford +Scholarship at Oxford. He had read Plato in the Sixth Form at Rugby, and +Oxford taught him Aristotle. From first to last his "unapproachable +favourites" were Homer and Sophocles, and Hesiod was "a Greek friend to +whom he turned with excellent effect." But though he was thus +essentially a classicist, a mere classicist he was not. No one had a +wider, a more familiar, a more discriminating knowledge of English +literature; no one--and this is worthy of remark--had the text of the +Bible more perfectly at his fingers' ends. He had read all that was best +in French, German, and Italian;[16] and in French at any rate he was an +exact and judicious critic, as is sufficiently shown by his essay on +_The French Play in London_.[17] Hebrew he mastered sufficiently to +"follow and weigh the reasons offered by others" for a retranslation of +the Old Testament; and into Celtic literature he made at any rate one +memorable incursion.[18] + +A man so equipped was essentially a man of letters: a great deal more +than a classicist, but a classicist first and foremost. And so it was +natural that he should think a classical education the best education +that could be offered to boys, and should desire to see classics, taught +in a literary and not a pedantic spirit, the staple of instruction in +all those Public Schools, whether of ancient or of modern foundation, +to which the Upper and Middle Classes should resort. He was perfectly +ready to make composition in Greek and Latin the luxury of the few who +had a special aptitude for it, therein following the doctrine of Dr. +Whewell, and leading the way to a notable reform in Public Schools. But +to read the best Latin and Greek authors was to be the staple of a boy's +education, and thereto were to be added a full and scholarly knowledge +of English, and a sufficiency, such as modern life demands, of Science +and Mathematics. He "ventured once, in the very Senate-House and heart +of Cambridge, to hazard the opinion that for the majority of mankind a +little of mathematics goes a long way." He thought it no particular gain +for a boy to know that "when a taper burns, the wax is converted into +carbonic acid and water." He thought it a clear loss that he should not +know the last book of the _Iliad_, or the sixth book of the _Æneid_, or +the _Agamemnon_. He encouraged the Eton boys to laugh at "Scientific +lectures, and lessons on the diameter of the sun and moon"; but he was +moved almost to tears when "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" was +offered as a paraphrase of "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" +He listened with amused interest to the teachers who deduced our descent +from "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, +probably arboreal in his habits." But he thought it deplorable that a +leading physicist should never have heard of Bishop Wilson of Sodor and +Man, and that a leading journalist should confound him with Bishop +Wilson of Calcutta. + +To the Public Schools he would have entrusted that thorough drilling in +Greek, Latin and English which was to be the foundation of the pupils' +culture; and, this done, he would have required the University to offer +scope for the fullest development of any special aptitude which the +pupil might display. In brief, the school was to train in general +knowledge; the University was to specialize. In 1868 he wrote: "An +admirable English mathematician told me that he should never recover the +loss of the two years which after his degree he wasted without fit +instruction at an English University, when he ought to have been under +superior instruction, for which the present University course in England +makes no provision. I daresay he _will_ recover it, for a man of genius +counts no worthy effort too hard; but who can estimate the loss to the +mental training and intellectual habits of the country, from the +absence--so complete that it needs genius to be sensible of it, and +costs genius an effort to repair it--of all regular public provision +for the scientific study and teaching of any branch of knowledge?" + +[Illustration: Rugby + +Matthew Arnold entered Rugby School in August, 1837, living under his +father's roof at the School-house. + +He left Rugby for Oxford in June, 1841 + +_Photo H.W. Taunt_] + +But these larger views of education belong, after all, to the region of +theory, and he never had the opportunity, except very indirectly, of +putting them into practice. With the Elementary Schools he dealt +practically, officially, and directly; but even here, as in so many +other departments, his influence was rather critical than constructive. +He had only an imperfect sympathy with "that somewhat terrible +character, the scientific educator." A brother-inspector says that, "if +he saw little children looking good and happy, and under the care of a +kindly and sympathetic teacher, he would give a favourable report, +without enquiring too curiously into the percentage of scholars who +could pass the 'standard' examination." There must be many who still +remember with amused affection his demeanour in an Elementary School. +They see the tall figure, at once graceful and stately; the benign air, +as of an affable archangel; the critical brow and enquiring eyeglass +bent on some very immature performance in penmanship or needlework; and +the frightened children and the anxious teacher, gradually lapsing into +smiles and peace, as the great man tested the proficiency in some such +humble art as spelling. "Well, my little man, and how do you spell +_dog_?" "Please sir, _d-o-g_." "Capital, very good indeed. I couldn't +do it better myself. And now let us go a little further, and see if we +can spell _cat_." (Chorus excitedly.) "C-A-T." "Now, this is +really excellent. (To the teacher.) You have brought them on wonderfully +in spelling since I was here last. You shall have a capital report. +Good-bye." To those who cherish these memories there is nothing +surprising in this tribute by a friend: "His effect on the teachers when +he examined a school was extraordinary. He was sympathetic without being +condescending, and he reconciled the humblest drudge in a London school +to his or her drudgery for the next twelve months." + +As regards the matter of education, he was all for Reality, as against +Pretentiousness, "the stamp of plainness and freedom from charlatanism." +He had no notion that children could be humanized by being made to read +that "the crocodile is oviparous," or that "summer ornaments for grates +are made of wood shavings and of different coloured papers." He wished +that the youngest and poorest children should be nurtured on the +wholesome and delicious food of actual literature, instead of +"skeletons" and "abstracts." He set great store on learning poetry by +heart, for he believed in poetry as the chief instrument of culture. He +poured just contempt upon the wretched doggerel which in school +reading-books too often passed for poetry. "When one thinks how noble +and admirable a thing genuine popular poetry is, it is provoking to +think that such rubbish should be palmed off on a poor child, with any +apparent sanction from the Education Department and its grants." + +With regard to the special evil of teaching poetry by "selections" or +"extracts," he wrote in his Report for 1880: "That the poetry chosen +should have real beauties of expression and feeling, that these beauties +should be such as the children's hearts and minds can lay hold of, and +that a distinct point or centre of beauty and interest should occur +within the limits of the passage learned--all these are conditions to be +insisted on. Some of the short pieces by Mrs. Hemans, such as 'The +Graves of a Household,' 'The Homes of England,' 'The Better Land,' are +to be recommended because they fulfil all three conditions; they have +real merits of expression and sentiment; the merits are such as the +children can feel, and the centre of interest, these pieces being so +short, necessarily occurs within the limits of what is learnt. On the +other hand, in extracts taken from Scott or Shakespeare, the point of +interest is not often reached within the hundred lines which is all that +children in the Fourth Standard learn. The Judgment Scene in the +_Merchant of Venice_ affords me a good example of what I mean.... The +children in the Fourth Standard begin at the beginning and stop at the +end of a hundred lines. Now the children in the Fourth Standard are +often a majority of the children learning poetry, and this is all their +poetry for the year. But within these hundred lines the real interest of +the situation is not reached; neither do they contain any poetry of +signal beauty and effectiveness. How little, therefore, has the +poetry-exercise been made to do for these children, many of whom will +leave school at once, and learn no more poetry!" He greatly favoured all +such exercises as tend to make the mind "creative," and give it "a +native play of its own, as against such exercises as learning strings of +promontories, battles, and minerals." As to the number of subjects +taught, he was in favour of few rather than many. He dreaded for the +children the strain of having to receive a large number of "knowledges" +(as he oddly called them), and "store them up to be reproduced in an +examination." But in spite of this well-founded dread of an undue +multiplication of subjects, he wished to make Latin compulsory in the +upper standards of elementary schools, and he wished to see it taught +through the Vulgate. Perhaps in this particular he showed an effect of +his father's influence; for the late Dean of Westminster[19] used to +imitate the enormous emphasis with which Dr. Arnold replied to some one +who had depreciated the language of the Vulgate as "Dog Latin"--"_Dog +Latin_, indeed! I call it _Lion Latin_!" + +Be that as it may, Matthew Arnold thus gave his judgment on the possible +uses of the Vulgate in elementary schools-- + +"Latin is the foundation of so much in the written and spoken language +of modern Europe, that it is the best language to take as a second +language; in our own written and book language, above all, it fills so +large a part that we perhaps hardly know how much of their reading falls +meaningless upon the eye and ear of children in our elementary schools, +from their total ignorance of either Latin or a modern language derived +from it. For the little of languages that can be taught in our +elementary schools, it is far better to go to the root at once; and +Latin, besides, is the best of all languages to learn grammar by. But it +should by no means be taught as in our classical schools; far less time +should be spent on the grammatical framework, and classical literature +should be left quite out of view. A second language, and a language +coming very largely into the vocabulary of modern nations, is what Latin +should stand for to the teacher of an elementary school. I am convinced +that for his purpose the best way would be to disregard classical Latin +entirely, to use neither Cornelius Nepos, nor Eutropius, nor Cæsar, nor +any _delectus_ from them, but to use the Latin Bible, the Vulgate. A +chapter or two from the story of Joseph, a chapter or two from +Deuteronomy, and the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel would be +the sort of delectus we want; add to them a vocabulary and a simple +grammar of the main forms of the Latin language, and you have a +perfectly compact and cheap school book, and yet all that you need. In +the extracts the child would be at home, instead of, as in extracts from +classical Latin, in an utterly strange land; and the Latin of the +Vulgate, while it is real and living Latin, is yet, like the Greek of +the New Testament, much nearer to modern idiom, and therefore much +easier for a modern learner than classical idiom can be. True, a child +whose delectus is taken from Cornelius Nepos or Cæsar will be better +prepared perhaps for going on to Virgil and Cicero than a child whose +delectus is taken from the Vulgate. But we do not want to carry our +elementary schools into Virgil or Cicero; one child in five thousand, +with a special talent, may go on to higher schools, and to Virgil, and +he will go on to them all the better for the little we have at any rate +given him. But what we want to give to our Elementary Schools in +general is the vocabulary, to some extent, of a second language, and +that language one which is at the bottom of a great deal of modern life +and modern language. This, I am convinced, we may give in some such +method as the method I have above suggested, but in no other." + +There is, perhaps, no more interesting or more characteristic feature of +his doctrine about elementary schools than his insistence, early and +late, on a close and familiar acquaintance with the Bible. "Chords of +power," he said, "are touched by this instruction which no other part of +the instruction in a popular school reaches, and chords various, not the +single religious chord only. The Bible is for the child in an elementary +school almost his only contact with poetry and philosophy. What a course +of eloquence and poetry (to call it by that name alone) is the Bible in +a school which has and can have but little eloquence and poetry! and how +much do our elementary schools lose by not having any such course as +part of their school programme! All who value the Bible may rest assured +that thus to know and possess the Bible is the most certain way to +extend the power and efficacy of the Bible." + +The spiritual sense, the doctrinal and dogmatic import, of Holy +Scripture lay, in his judgment, quite outside the scope of the School. +"The Bible's application and edification belong to the Church; its +literary and historical substance to the School." He saw clearly the +manifold and conflicting perils to which a simple love and knowledge of +the Bible were exposed the moment that exegesis began to play about it. +He pointed out that Cardinal Newman interpreted the words, _I will lay +thy stones with fair colours and thy foundations with sapphires_, as +authorizing "the sumptuosities of the Church of Rome"; and to +Protestants who said that this was a wrong use of the passage he pointed +out that their similar use of the Beast and the Scarlet Woman and +Antichrist would seem equally wrong to Cardinal Newman; "and in these +cases of application who shall decide"? What he insisted on was the +value of the Bible as a beautiful and ennobling literature, easily +accessible to all. He would have it taught with intelligence, sympathy, +reverence, and, above all, "as a Literature,"--for biblical teaching +ought to show the widely varying elements of which the Bible is +composed: the profound differences, not merely of authorship and style, +but of tone and temper, between one book and another; the historical +circumstances under which each came into being; the section of humanity +and the period of time to which each made its appeal. + +In 1869 he wrote in his Annual Report-- + +"Let the school managers make the main outlines of Bible history, and +the getting by heart a selection of the finest Psalms, the most +interesting passages from the historical and prophetical books of the +Old Testament, and the chief parables, discourses, and exhortations, of +the New, a part of the regular school work, to be submitted to +inspection and to be seen in its strength or weakness like any other. +This could raise no jealousies; or, if it still raises some, let a +sacrifice be made of them for the sake of the end in view. Some will say +that what we propose is but a small use to put the Bible to; yet it is +that on which all higher use of the Bible is to be built, and its +adoption is the only chance for saving the one elevating and inspiring +element in the scanty instruction of our primary schools from being +sacrificed to a politico-religious difficulty. There was no Greek school +in which Homer was not read; cannot our popular schools, with their +narrow range and their jejune alimentation in secular literature, do as +much for the Bible as the Greek schools did for Homer?" + +In 1870 he wrote about a book[20] by two young Jewish ladies: "I am sure +it will be found, as I told them, that their book meets a real want; +there were good books about the Bible for the learned, and there were +bad books about it--that is to say, bad _résumés_ of its history and +literature--for the general public; but anything like a good and sound +_résumé_ for the general public did not exist till this book came." + +It is interesting to observe that to his deep conviction of the ethical +and educational value of the Bible is due his only direct and +constructive effort to enrich the apparatus of the schools which he +inspected. Of improvement by way of criticism and suggestion he gave +them enough and to spare, but to supply them with a new reading-book was +a departure from his usual method. Nevertheless in 1872 he wrote: "An +ounce of practice, they say, is better than a pound of theory; and +certainly one may talk for ever about the wonder-working power of +Letters, and yet produce no good at all, unless one really puts people +in the way of feeling their power. The friends of Physics do not content +themselves with extolling Physics; they put forth school-books by which +the study of Physics may be with proper advantage brought near to those +who before were strangers to it; and they do wisely. For any one who +believes in the civilizing power of Letters, and often talks of this +belief, to think that he has for more than twenty years got his living +by inspecting schools for the people, has gone in and out among them, +has seen that the power of Letters never reaches them at all, and that +the whole study of Letters is thereby discredited, and its power called +in question, and yet has attempted nothing to remedy this state of +things, cannot but be vexing and disquieting. He may truly say, like the +Israel of the prophet, 'We have not wrought any deliverance in the +earth'! and he may well desire to do something to pay his debt to +popular education before he finally departs, and to serve it, if he can, +in that point where its need is sorest, where he has always said its +need was sorest, and where, nevertheless, it is as sore still as when he +began saying this twenty years ago. Even if what he does cannot be of +service at once, owing to special prejudices and difficulties, yet these +prejudices and difficulties years are almost sure to dissipate, and the +work may be of service hereafter." + +These wise, though rather melancholy, words occur in the Preface to a +little book called _A Bible Reading for Schools_, and in its fuller and +alternative title, _The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration, Arranged +and Edited for Young Learners_. Arnold, himself a constant and attentive +student of Holy Writ, "liked reading his Bible without being baffled by +unmeaningnesses." He complained that "the fatal thing about our version +is that it so often spoils a chapter in the Old Testament by making +sheer nonsense out of one or two verses, and so throwing the reader +out." He habitually used a Bible--a present from his godfather, John +Keble--"where the numbers of the chapters are marked at the side and do +not interpose a break between chapter and chapter; and where the +divisions of the verses, being numbered in like manner at the side of +the page, not in the body of the verse, and being numbered in very small +type, do not thrust themselves forcibly on the attention," and these +circumstances suggested the form of his _Bible Reading for Schools_. The +little book consists of the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, +running on continuously, with some twenty pages of notes, and he thus +introduces it-- + +"At the very outset, the humbleness of what is professed in this little +book cannot be set forth too strongly. With the aim of enabling English +school children to read as a connected whole the last twenty-seven +chapters of Isaiah, without being frequently stopped by passages of +which the meaning is almost or quite unintelligible, I have sought to +choose, among the better meanings which have been offered for each of +the passages, that which seemed the best, and to weave it into the +authorized text in such a manner as not to produce any sense of +strangeness or interruption." The attempt was truly laudable, and the +execution admirable for taste and ease. The majestic flow and cadence of +the traditional English are never interrupted. There is no concession to +such pedantries as Professor Robertson Smith's "greaves of the warrior +that stampeth in the fray," or such barbarisms as Professor Cheynes' +"boot of him that trampleth noisily." But here and there a turn is given +to a sentence, which for the first time reveals its true meaning; here +and there a word which really represents the Hebrew is substituted for +one which makes nonsense of the sentence. + +The little book has often been reprinted; but as "A Bible Reading for +Schools" it failed, as, to judge by his own melancholy words about it, +he seems to have foreseen that it would fail. People who have charge of +Elementary Education in England, whether in Church Schools or in Board +Schools, are eminently and rightly suspicious about new views in +religion; and _The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration_ gave currency +to a view which in 1872 was probably new to most School Managers and +School Boards. He carefully disclaimed any intention to decide the +authorship of the chapters which he edited. But the fact that they were +detached from the earlier ones might perhaps raise questions in +enquiring minds; and in the preface he stated his personal belief that +"the author of the earlier part of the Book of Isaiah was not the author +of these last chapters." He most truly added that "there is nothing to +forbid a member of the Church of England, or, for that matter, a member +of the Church of Rome either, or a member of the Jewish Synagogue, from +holding such a belief"; but probably clergymen and Dissenting ministers +and pious laymen of all denominations looked rather askance at it; and +the little book never got itself adopted as "A Bible Reading for +Schools." + +Thus ended his one attempt to improve, positively and by construction, +the curriculum of the Elementary Schools; and we return, at the end of +this study of his Educational doctrine, to the point at which we began. + +"Organize your Elementary, your Secondary, your Superior, Education." +This was the burden of his teaching for five-and-thirty years; and, if +the community has at length really set its hand to that great task, it +is only right that we should remember with honour the Master who first +taught us (when the doctrine was unpopular) that the primary duty of a +civilized State is to educate its children. + +[Footnote 9: Thomas Arnold, D.D., Head Master of Rugby. His eldest son, +Matthew Arnold, Inspector of Schools. His second son, Thomas Arnold, +Professor in University College, Dublin. His third son, Edward Penrose +Arnold, Inspector of Schools. His fourth son, William Delafield Arnold, +Director of Public Instruction in the Punjaub.] + +[Footnote 10: See p. 135.] + +[Footnote 11: Reprinted in _Irish Essays and Others_.] + +[Footnote 12: This essay, unfortunately, was never reprinted.] + +[Footnote 13: It was published in 1850.] + +[Footnote 14: An Oxford man must write this word _late_ with regret. +August 23, 1903.] + +[Footnote 15: In 1870.] + +[Footnote 16: For the width of his reading, see his _Note-Books_, Edited +by his daughter, Mrs. Wodehouse.] + +[Footnote 17: Reprinted in _Irish Essays, and Others_.] + +[Footnote 18: _On the Study of Celtic Literature_, 1867.] + +[Footnote 19: Dr. Bradley.] + +[Footnote 20: _The History and Literature of the Israelites._ By C. and +A. de Rothschild.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SOCIETY + + +"Culture seeks to do away with classes and sects; to make the best that +has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all +men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use +ideas, as it uses them itself, freely; nourished, and not bound, by +them. This is the _social idea_; and the men of culture are the true +apostles of equality." + +The words--_social idea_--which Arnold himself italicized in the +foregoing extract from _Culture and Anarchy_, will indicate the sense in +which "Society" is here intended. We are not thinking of that which +Pennialinus[21] means when he writes about "Society gossip" or "a +Society function." We are concerned with the thoughts and temper and +actions of men, not as isolated units, but as living in an organized +community; and, taking "Society" in this sense, we are to examine +Arnold's influence on the Society of his time. + +[Illustration: Front of Balliol College, Oxford, in Arnold's Time + +In 1840 Matthew Arnold won an open scholarship at Balliol and went into +residence in 1841 + +_Photo H.W. Taunt_] + +Certainly the most obvious and palpable way of affecting Society--and to +many Englishmen the only conceivable way--is by the method of Politics; +by the definite and positive action of human law, and by such endeavours +as we can make towards shaping that action. Now, if indeed the Political +method were the only one, there could be little to be said about his +effect on Society. Politics, in the limited and conventional sense just +now suggested, were not much in his line. He was interested in them; he +had opinions about them; he occasionally intervened in them. But he made +no mark on the political work of his time; nor, so far as one can judge, +did he aspire to do so. Of the man of letters in the field of politics, +he said: "He is in truth not on his own ground there, and is in peculiar +danger of talking at random." In politics, as in all else that he +touched, he was critical rather than constructive; and in politics, +"immersed," as Bacon said, "in matter," a man must be constructive, if +his influence is to be felt and to endure. "Politicians," he said in +1880, "we all of us here in England are and must be, and I too cannot +help being a politician; but a politician of that commonwealth of which +the pattern, as the philosopher says, exists perhaps somewhere in +Heaven, but certainly is at present found nowhere on earth." In 1887, +describing himself as "an aged outsider," he thus stated his own +attitude towards political problems-- + +"The professional politicians are always apt to be impatient of the +intervention in politics of a candid outsider, and he must expect to +provoke contempt and resentment in a good many of them. Still the action +of the regular politicians continues to be, for the most part, so very +far from successful, that the outsider is perpetually tempted to brave +their anger and to offer his observations, with the hope of possibly +doing some little good by saying what many quiet people are thinking and +wishing outside of the strife, phrases, and routine of professional +politics." + +From first to last, he professed himself, and no doubt believed himself, +to be on the Liberal side. At the General Election of 1868 he urbanely +informed a Tory Committee, which asked for the advantage of his name, +that he was "an old Whig," nurtured in the traditions of Lansdowne +House. "Although," he said in 1869, "I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal +tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement." In 1878 he +described himself as a "sincere but ineffectual Liberal": in 1880, as "a +Liberal of the future rather than a Liberal of the present." A year +later, he spoke smilingly of "all good Liberals, of whom I wish to be +considered one"; and as late as 1887 he declared himself "one of the +Liberals of the future, who happen to be grown, alas! rather old." + +But, though he believed himself to be a Liberal, he had the most lively +disrelish for the Liberalism of that great Middle Class which, during +the greater part of his life, played so large a part in Liberal +politics. In 1882, reviewing, in his favourite manner, the various +classes of English Society, and discussing their adequacy to fulfil the +ideal of perfect citizenship, he wrote-- + +"Suppose we take that figure we know so well, the earnest and +non-conforming Liberal of our Middle Classes, as his schools and his +civilization have made him. He is for Disestablishment; he is for +Temperance; he has an eye to his Wife's Sister; he is a member of his +local caucus; he is learning to go up to Birmingham every year to the +feast of Mr. Chamberlain. His inadequacy is but too visible." + +Certainly Arnold's Liberalism had nothing in common with the Liberalism +of the great Middle Class. Indeed, so far as theory is concerned, it had +a democratic basis, inasmuch as he believed that democracy was a product +of natural law, and that our business was to adapt our political and +social institutions to it. "Democracy," he said, "is trying to _affirm +its own essence_: to live, to enjoy, to possess the world, as +aristocracy has tried, and successfully tried, before it." + +The movement of Democracy he regarded as being an "operation of nature," +and, like other operations of nature, it was neither to be praised nor +blamed. He was neither a "partisan" of it, nor an "enemy." His only care +was, if he could, to guide it aright, and to secure that it used its +predominant power in human affairs at least as wisely as the aristocracy +which had preceded it. Of aristocratic rule in foreign countries--of +such rule as preceded the French Revolution--he thought as poorly as +most men think; but for the aristocracy of England he had a singular +esteem. It is true that he gave it a nickname; that he poked fun at its +illiteracy and its inaccessibility to ideas; that he was impatient of +"immense inequalities of condition and property," and huge estates, and +irresponsible landlordism; that he contemned the "hideous English +toadyism" and "immense vulgar-mindedness" of the Middle Class when +confronted with "lords and great people." + +But, for all that, he wrote about the English Aristocracy, as it stood +in 1859: "I desire to speak of it with the most unbounded respect. It is +the most popular of aristocracies; it has avoided faults which have +ruined other aristocracies equally splendid. While the aristocracy of +France was destroying its estates by its extravagance, and itself by +its impertinence, the aristocracy of England was founding English +agriculture, and commanding respect by a personal dignity which made +even its pride forgiven. Historical and political England, the England +of which we are all so proud, is of its making." + +In spite, however, of this high estimate of what Aristocracy had +accomplished in the past, he felt that power was slipping away from it, +and was passing into the hands of the Multitude. But he also felt--and +it was certainly one of his most profound convictions--that the +Multitude could never govern properly, could never regulate its own +affairs, could never present England adequately to the view of the +world, unless it cast aside the Individualism in which it had been +nurtured, and made up its mind to act in and through the State. Perhaps +his ideal of a State can best be described as an Educated Democracy, +working by Collectivism in Government, Religion, and Social order. + +"If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has +established this: that it is well for any great class or description of +men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to +have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, +acting for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and +to provide for them. They do not really understand its wants, they do +not really provide for them. A class of men may often itself not either +fully understand its own wants, or adequately express them; but it has a +nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than any of its +proctors, and therefore a better chance of success." Amid many +fluctuations of opinion on minor points, he was, from first to last, a +thoroughgoing advocate for extending the action of the State. In his +ideal of government, the State was to play in a democratic age the part +which the Aristocracy had played in earlier ages--it was to govern and +administer and control and inspire. And, it was, in one important +respect, a far nobler thing than the best aristocracy could ever be, for +it was the "representative acting-power of the nation"; and so the +relation of the citizen to the State was a much more dignified relation +than that of a citizen to an aristocracy could ever be. "Is it that of a +dependant to a parental benefactor? By no means: it is that of a member +in a partnership to the whole firm." The citizens of a State, the +members of a society, are really "'a _partnership_,' as Burke nobly +says, '_in all science, in all art, in every virtue, in all +perfection_.' Towards this great final design of their connexion, they +apply the aids which co-operative association can give them." We turn +now to the practical application of this doctrine. + +We have seen in the previous chapter how earnestly and consistently +throughout his working life he urged the State to take into its control, +and so far as was needed to subsidize, the Education of the whole +nation. "How vain, how meaningless," he cried, "to tell a man who, for +the instruction of his offspring, receives aid from the State, that he +is humiliated! Humiliated by receiving help for himself as an individual +from himself in his corporate and associated capacity! help to which his +own money, as a tax-payer, contributes, and for which, as a result of +the joint energy and intelligence of the whole community in employing as +powers, he himself deserves some of the praise!... He is no more +humiliated than when he crosses London Bridge or walks down the King's +Road, or visits the British Museum. But it is one of the extraordinary +inconsistencies of some English people in this matter, that they keep +all their cry of humiliation and degradation for help which the State +offers." We shall see in a subsequent chapter that he was as strong for +Established Churches as for State-regulated Schools, and for the same +reason. In Religion, as in Education, he disparaged private institutions +and individual ventures. The State, "the nation in its corporate and +collective capacity," ought to transcend the individual citizen: it +should supply him, to help him as one of its units to supply himself, +with the thing which he wanted--Education or Religion--in the grand +style, on a large scale, with all the authority which comes from +national recognition, with all the dignity of a historical descent. + +Arnold's appeal for State-supplied and State-controlled Education has, +as we have already seen, met with some practical response, and in the +main falls in with the modern drift of Liberal ideas. In upholding +State-supported and State-controlled Religion, he was rather continuing +an old tradition than starting a new idea, and modern Liberalism is +moving away from him. + +But in some important respects, all strictly political, his advocacy of +extended action by the State fell in with the Liberal movement of his +time. The hideous misgovernment of Ireland he had always deplored. It +touched him long before it touched the great majority of Englishmen. +With a view to informing people on the Irish question, he compiled a +book of Burke's most telling utterances on Ireland and her woes. Those +utterances, as he said, "Show at work all the causes which have brought +Ireland to its present state--the tyranny of the grantees of +confiscation; of the English garrison; Protestant ascendancy; the +reliance of the English Government upon this ascendancy and its +instruments as their means of government; the yielding to menaces of +danger and insurrection what was never yielded to considerations of +equity and reason; the recurrence to the old perversity of mismanagement +as soon as ever the danger was passed." To all these evils he would have +applied the remedies which Burke suggested. He would have had the State +endow the religions of Ireland and their ministries, supply Ireland with +good schools, and defend Irish tenants against the extortions of bad +landlords. He was vehemently opposed to Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule, +because, in his view, it tended to disintegration where he specially +desired cohesion: but, in the tumults of 1885-8, he never lost his head, +never forgot his old sympathy with Irish wrongs, never "drew up an +indictment against a whole people."[22] All through these stormy years, +he stood firm for an effective system of Local Government in Ireland. +Irish government, he said, had "been conducted in accordance with the +wishes of the minority, and of the British Philistine." He desired a +system which should accord with the wishes of the majority. He +deprecated Forster's "expression of general objection to Home Rule"; +because, though Home Rule as understood by Parnell was intolerable, +there was another kind of Home Rule which was possible and even +desirable. He was keenly anxious that his friends, the Liberal +Unionists, should not let the opportunity slip, but should bring forward +a "counter scheme to Gladstone's," giving real powers of local +government. In 1887 he again insisted that the "opinion of quiet +reasonable people throughout the country" was bent on giving the Irish +the due control of their own local affairs. He pleaded for a system +"built on sufficiently large lines, not too complicated, not fantastic, +not hesitating and suspicious, not taking back with one hand what it +gives with the other." A similar system he wished to see extended to +England, and he pointed out that it admirably facilitated that national +control of Secondary Education for which he was always pleading. + +Then again, with reference to Irish land, his belief in the action of +the State displayed itself very clearly. In his opinion the remedy for +agrarian trouble in Ireland was that the State should, after rigid and +impartial enquiry, distinguish between good landlords and bad, and then +expropriate the bad ones. This, he thought, would "give the sort of +equity, the sort of moral satisfaction, which the case needed." Once +again he was in harmony with Liberal opinion, when he desired to widen +the basis of the State by extending the suffrage in turn to the Artisans +and the Labourers. In one respect at least he was in harmony rather with +Collectivist Radicalism than with orthodox Liberalism, for he did not in +the least dread the intervention of the State between employer and +employed. He desired to strengthen Parliament, the supreme organ of the +national will, by reforming the House of Lords; though he strongly +dissented from a scheme of reform just then in vogue. "One can hardly +imagine sensible men planning a Second Chamber which should not include +the Archbishop of Canterbury, or which should include the young +gentlemen who flock to the House of Lords when pigeon-shooting is in +question. But our precious Liberal Reformers are for retaining the +pigeon-shooters and for expelling the Archbishop of Canterbury."[23] + +Even in the full flood of Liberal victory which followed the General +Election of 1880, he saw what was coming. "What strikes one is the +insecureness of the Liberals' hold upon office and upon public favour; +the probability of the return, perhaps even more than once, of their +adversaries to office, before that final and happy consummation is +reached--the permanent establishment of Liberalism in power." And, while +he saw what was coming, he thus divined the cause. The official and +commanding part of the Liberal Party was at the best stolidly +indifferent to Social Reform; at the worst, viciously angry with the +idea and those who propagated it. The commercialism of the great Middle +Class had covered the face of England with places like St. Helens, which +the capitalists called "great centres of national enterprise," and +Cobbett called "Hell-Holes." In these places life was lived under +conditions of squalid and hideous misery, and the inhabitants were +beginning to find out, in the words of one of their own class, that +"free political institutions do not guarantee the well-being of the +toiling class." Under these circumstances it was natural that the +toilers, having looked for redress to the Liberal Party and looked in +vain, should, when next they had the chance, try a spell of that +Democratic Toryism which at any rate held out some shadowy hope of +social betterment. Arnold's misgivings about the future of the Liberal +Party were abundantly made good by the General Election of 1885; but +enough has now been said about his contribution to the practical +politics of his time. A much larger space must be given to the influence +which he brought to bear on Society by methods not political--by +criticism, by banter, by literary felicities, by "sinuous, easy, +unpolemical" methods. + +England had known him first as a poet, then as a literary critic. Next +came a rather hazy impression that he was an educational reformer whose +suggestions might be worth attending to. It was not till 1869 that his +countrymen became fully aware of him as a social critic, a commentator +on life and society. Looking back, one seems to see that by that time +his poetical function was fulfilled. As far as the medium of poetry is +concerned, he had said his say; said it incomparably well, said it with +abiding effect. Now it seemed that a new function presented itself to +him; a great door and effectual was opened to him. He found a fresh +sphere of usefulness and influence in applying his critical method to +the ideals and follies of his countrymen; to their scheme of life, ways +of thinking and acting, prejudices, conventions, and limitations. Mr. +Paul said, as we have already seen, that the appearance of _Essays in +Criticism_ was "a great intellectual event." That is perfectly true; and +the appearance of _Culture and Anarchy_ was a great social event. The +book so named was published in 1869; but the ground had been prepared +for it by some earlier writings, and these we must consider before we +come to the book itself. + +In February, 1866, there appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ an essay +called "My Countrymen." In this essay Arnold, fresh from one of his +Continental tours, tried to show English people what the intelligent +mind of Europe was really thinking of them. "'It is not so much that we +dislike England,' a Prussian official, with the graceful tact of his +nation, said to me the other day, 'as that we think little of her.'" +Broadly speaking, European judgment on us came to this--that England had +been great, powerful, and prosperous under an aristocratic government, +at a time when the chief requisite for national greatness was Action, +"for aristocracies, poor in ideas, are rich in energy"; but that England +was rapidly losing ground, was becoming a second-rate power, was falling +from her place in admiration and respect, since the Government had +passed into the hands of the Middle Class. What was now the chief +requisite for national greatness was Intelligence; and in intelligence +the Middle Class had shown itself signally deficient. In foreign +affairs--in its dealings with Russia and Turkey, Germany and America--it +had shown "rash engagement, intemperate threatenings, undignified +retreat, ill-timed cordiality," in short, every quality best calculated +to lower England in the esteem of the civilized world. + +In domestic affairs, the life and mind of the Middle Class were thus +described by the foreign critic. "The fineness and capacity of man's +spirit is shown by his enjoyments; your Middle Class has an enjoyment in +its business, we admit, and gets on well in business, and makes money; +but beyond that? Drugged with business, your Middle Class seems to have +its sense blunted for any stimulus besides, except Religion; it has a +religion, narrow, unintelligent, repulsive.... What other enjoyments +have they? The newspapers, a sort of eating and drinking which are not +to our taste, a literature of books almost entirely religious or +semi-religious, books utterly unreadable by an educated class anywhere, +but which your Middle Class consumes by the hundred thousand, and in +their evenings, for a great treat, a lecture on Teetotalism or +Nunneries. Can any life be imagined more hideous, more dismal, more +unenviable?... Your Middle Class man thinks it the highest pitch of +development and civilization when his letters are carried twelve times a +day from Islington to Camberwell, and from Camberwell to Islington, and +if railway trains run to and fro between them every quarter of an hour. +He thinks it is nothing that the trains only carry him from an +illiberal, dismal life at Islington to an illiberal, dismal life at +Camberwell; and the letters only tell him that such is the life there." +And, as to political and social reform, "Such a spectacle as your Irish +Church Establishment you cannot find in France or Germany. Your Irish +Land Question you dare not face." English Schools, English vestrydom, +English provincialism--all alike stand in the most urgent need of +reform; but with all alike the Middle Class is serenely content. After +reporting these exceedingly frank comments of foreign critics to his +English readers, Arnold thus expresses his own conviction on the matters +in dispute. "All due deductions made for envy, exaggeration, and +injustice, enough stuck by me of these remarks to determine me to go on +trying to keep my mind fixed on these, instead of singing hosannahs to +our actual state of development and civilization. The old recipe, to +think a little more and bustle a little less, seemed to me still to be +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 +suppose I could get some followers, and assemble them, brimming with +affectionate enthusiasm, to a committee-room in 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!' No; to enquire, perhaps too curiously, what +that present state of English development and civilization is, which +according to Mr. Lowe is so perfect that to give votes to the working +class is stark madness; and, on the other hand, to be less sanguine +about the divine and saving effect of a vote on its possessor than my +friends in the committee-room at the _Spotted Dog_--that is my +inevitable portion. To bring things under the light of one's +intelligence, to see how they look there, to accustom oneself simply to +regard the Marylebone Vestry, or the Educational Home, or the Irish +Church Establishment, or our railway management, or our Divorce Court, +or our gin-palaces open on Sunday and the Crystal Palace shut, as +absurdities--that is, I am sure, invaluable exercise for us just at +present. Let all persist in it who can, and steadily set their desires +on introducing, with time, a little more soul and spirit into the too, +too solid flesh of English society." + +[Illustration: Fisher's Buildings, Balliol College, Oxford + +Showing Matthew Arnold's Rooms + +_Photo H.W. Taunt_] + +So much for his first deliberate attempt in the way of social criticism. +It was levelled, we observe, at the thoughts and doings of the great +Middle Class, and it is natural to ask why that class was so specially +the target for his scorn. To that class, as he was fond of declaring, +half in fun and half in earnest, he himself belonged. "I always thought +my marriage," he used to say, "such a perfect marriage of the Middle +Classes--a schoolmaster's son and a judge's daughter." In the preface to +the _Essays in Criticism_, he spoke of "the English Middle Class, of +which I am myself a feeble unit." He used to declare that his feeling +towards his brethren of the Middle Class was that of St. Paul towards +his brethren of Israel: "My heart's desire and prayer for them is that +they may be saved." In _Culture and Anarchy_ he was constrained to admit +that "through circumstances which will perhaps one day be known, if ever +the affecting history of my conversion comes to be written, I have, for +the most part, broken with the ideas and the tea-meetings of my own +class"; but he found that he had not, by that conversion, come much +nearer to the ideas and works of the Aristocracy or the Populace. + +He admired the fine manners, the governing faculty, the reticent and +dignified habit, of the Aristocracy. He deplored its limitations and its +obduracy, its "little culture and no ideas." He made fun of it when its +external manifestations touched the region of the ludicrous--"Everybody +knows Lord Elcho's[24] appearance, and how admirably he looks the part +of our governing classes; to my mind, indeed, the mere cock of his +lordship's hat is one of the finest and most aristocratic things we +have." In a more serious vein he taught--and enraged the _Guardian_ by +teaching--that, "ever since the advent of Christianity, _the prince of +this world is judged_"; and that wealth and rank and dignified ease are +bound to justify themselves for their apparent inconsistency with the +Christian ideal. He pitied the sorrows of the "people who suffer," the +"dim, common populations," the "poor who faint alway"; but he pitied +them from above. He certainly did not enter into their position; did not +share their ideas, or feel their sorrows as part of his own experience. +In an amazing passage he says that, when we snatch up a vehement opinion +in ignorance and passion, when we long to crush an adversary by sheer +violence, when we are envious, when we are brutal, when "we add our +voices to swell a blind clamour against some unpopular personage," when +"we trample savagely on the fallen," then we find in our own bosom "the +eternal spirit of the Populace." That a spirit so hideous, so infernal +as is here described, is the eternal spirit of fallen humanity may be +painfully true; but to say that it is the special or characteristic +spirit of "the Populace" is to show that one has no genuine sympathy and +no real acquaintance with the life and heart of the poor. So far, then, +his account of his own transition is true. He had "broken with the ideas +of his own class, and had not come much nearer to the ideas and works +of Aristocracy or the Populace." But the work of his life had brought +him into close and continuous contact with the great Middle Class, which +practically had the whole management of Elementary Education in its +hands. He knew the members of that class, as he said, "experimentally." +He slept in their houses, and ate at their tables, and observed at close +quarters their books, their amusements, and their social life. Thus he +judged of their civilization by intimate acquaintance, and found it +eminently distasteful and defective. From 1832 to 1867 the Middle Class +had governed England, manipulating the Aristocracy through the medium of +the House of Commons; and the Aristocracy, though still occupying the +place of visible dignity, had its eye nervously fixed on the movement, +actual and impending, of the Middle Class. This system of government by +the predominance of the Middle Class, was not only distasteful to +culture, but was actually a source of danger to the State when it came +to be applied to Foreign Affairs. "That makes the difference between +Lord Grenville and Lord Granville." So it was to the shortcomings of the +Middle Class, from which he professed to be sprung and which he so +intimately knew, that he first addressed his social criticism. The essay +on "My Countrymen" immediately attracted notice. It was fresh, it was +lively, it put forth a new view, it gaily ran counter to the great mass +of current prejudice. He was frankly pleased by the way in which it was +received. It was noticed and quoted and talked about. He reported to his +mother that it was thought "witty and suggestive," "timely and true." +Carlyle "almost wholly approved of it," and Bright was "full of it." He +did not expect it to be liked by people who belonged to "the _old_ +English time, of which the greatness and success was so immense and +indisputable that no one who flourished when it was at its height could +ever lose the impression of it," or realize how far we had fallen in +Continental esteem. His friend Lingen was "indignant" because he thought +the essay exalted the Aristocracy at the expense of the Middle Class; +and the Whig newspapers were "almost all unfavourable, because it tells +disagreeable truths to the class which furnishes the great body of what +is called the Liberal interest." From the foreign side came a criticism +in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, "professing to be by a Frenchman," but "I am +sure it is by a woman I know something of in Paris, a half Russian, half +Englishwoman, married to a Frenchman." The first part of this criticism +"is not good, and perhaps when the second part appears I shall write a +short and light letter by way of reply." That "short and light letter" +appeared in the _Pall Mall_ of March 20, 1866. It dealt with the +respective but not incompatible claims of Culture and Liberty--the +former so defective in England, the latter so abundant--and it contained +this aspiration for Englishmen of the Middle Class. "I do not wish them +to be the café-haunting, dominoes-playing Frenchmen, but some third +thing: neither the Frenchmen nor their present selves." + +He was now fairly launched on the course of social criticism. As time +went on, his essays attracted more and more notice, sometimes friendly, +sometimes hostile, but always interested and not seldom excited. Some of +the comments on the new and daring critic were inconceivably absurd. Of +Mr. Frederic Harrison's retort,[25] Arnold wrote that it was "scarcely +the least vicious, and in parts so amusing that I laughed till I cried." +Mr. Goldwin Smith described him as "a gentleman of a jaunty air, and on +good terms with the world." To the _Times_ he seemed "a sentimentalist +whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy than the strong sense +and sturdy morality of his fellow-Englishmen." One newspaper called him +"a high priest of the kid-glove persuasion"; another, "an elegant +Jeremiah"; and Mr. Lionel Tollemache, combining in one harmonious whole +the absurdities of all the other commentators, says: "When asked my +opinion of this quaint man of genius, I have described him as a _Hebrew +prophet in white kid gloves_." + +The fact is that we are a serious people. The Middle Class, which he +singled out for attack, is quite pre-eminently serious. Philosophers and +critics--the _Spectator_ and the _Edinburgh_--had made seriousness a +religion. Editors, leader-writers, reviewers, the Press generally, were +steeped to their lips in seriousness. They could not understand, and +were greatly inclined to resent, the appearance of this bright, playful, +unconventional spirit, happy and brilliant himself, and loving the +happiness and brilliancy of the world; with not an ounce of pomposity in +his own nature, and with the most irreverent demeanour towards pomposity +in other people. "Our social Polyphemes," as Lord Beaconsfield said, +"have only one eye"; and they could not the least perceive that Arnold's +genius was like the genius of poetry as he himself described it-- + + Radiant, adorn'd outside; a hidden ground + Of thought and of austerity within. + +In a letter to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of July 21, 1866, he first +introduced his friend Arminius,[26] Baron Von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, the +cultivated and enquiring Prussian who had come to England to study our +Politics, Education, Local Government, and social life. A series of +similar letters followed at irregular intervals during the years 1866, +1867, 1869, and 1870. And Arminius' drastic method of questioning and +arguing became the idoneous vehicle for Arnold's criticisms on such +topics as our Foreign Policy, Compulsory Education, the Press, and the +Deceased Wife's Sister. The letters were eventually collected in that +little-read but most fascinating book, _Friendship's Garland_, which was +published in 1871.[27] But before _Friendship's Garland_ came out, +Arnold, who had tested his powers in social criticism by these fugitive +pieces, addressed himself to a more serious and solid effort in the same +field. The essays which eventually formed the book called _Culture and +Anarchy_ began to appear in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for July, 1867, and +were continued in 1868. The book was published in 1869. We saw at the +outset that he himself said of his _Discourses in America_ that they, of +all his prose-writings, were the writings by which he would most wish to +be remembered. Many of his disciples would say that _Essays in +Criticism_ was his most important work in prose. Some people would give +the crown to _Literature and Dogma_. "It has been more in demand," the +author told us in 1883, "than any other of my prose-writings." Respect +is due to what a great master thought of his own work, and to what his +best-qualified disciples think of it. But after all we uphold the right +of private judgment, and the present writer is strongly of opinion that +_Culture and Anarchy_ is Arnold's most important work in prose. It was, +to borrow a phrase used by Mr. Gladstone in another connexion, not a +book, but an event. We must consider it in its proper setting of time +and circumstance. + +The beginning of 1869 was a great moment in our political and social +history. Ever since the enthusiasm which surrounded the Reform Act of +1832 had faded away in disappointment and disillusion, the ardent +friends of freedom and progress had been crying out for a further +extension of the franchise. The next Reform Bill was to give the workmen +a vote; and a Parliament elected by workmen was to bring the Millennium. +The Act of 1867 gave the desired vote, and the workmen used it for the +first time at the General Election of 1868. At the beginning of 1869 the +new Parliament was just assembling, and it was possible to take stock of +it, to analyze its component parts, to form some estimate of its +capacity, some forecast of its intentions. It was a Liberal Parliament. +There was no mistake about that. Bishop Wilberforce wrote just after the +Election: "In a few weeks Gladstone will be in office, at the head of a +majority of something like a hundred, elected on the distinct issue of +'Gladstone and the Irish Church.'" + +Certainly the Election had been fought and won on Irish +Disestablishment, but disestablishment was only part of a larger scheme. +Rather late in the day, the Liberal Party, urged thereto by a statesman +who had never set foot in Ireland, had taken into its head to "govern +Ireland according to Irish ideas," or what was understood by that taking +phrase. We were to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church, reform +the Irish system of land-tenure, and reconstruct the Irish Universities. +Robert Lowe, who was a conspicuous member of the new Cabinet, burst into +rather premature dithyrambics, crying, "The Liberal Ministry resolved to +knit the hearts of the Empire into one harmonious concord, and _knitted +they were accordingly_." And we, of the rank and file, believed this +claptrap; but to us it was not claptrap, for our whole hearts were in +the great enterprise of pacification in which we believed our leaders to +be engaged. But Ireland by no means exhausted our reforming zeal. We had +enough and to spare for many departments of the Constitution. We were +determined to give the workmen the protection of the Ballot, and to +compel them to educate their children. We meant to abolish Purchase in +the Army and Tests at the University; and some of us were beginning to +feel our way to more extensive changes still; to hanker after universal +suffrage, to dream of simultaneous disarmament, to anticipate the +downfall of monarchical institutions, and to listen with complacency to +attacks on the Civil List and Impeachments of the House of Brunswick. In +fine, Reformers were in a triumphant and sanguine mood. We were +constrained to admit that, as regards its personal composition, the new +House of Commons was a little Philistine--not so democratic, not so +redolent of Labour, as we had hoped. But we believed that we had the +promise of the future. We believed that by enfranchising the artisans we +had undertaken a long step towards the ideal perfection of the +Commonwealth. We believed that these new citizens, who had just proved +themselves worthy of their citizenship, would continue to support, with +increasing ardour and devotion, Liberal administrations and Liberal +measures. Above all, we believed that, as our recent achievements were +the direct developments of great principles asserted in the past, so +they would in turn develop into constitutional changes far more +momentous, and that in the fulfilment of those changes lay the only +real prospect of human happiness. + +This is a fair statement of the mental temper in which young and +inexperienced Liberals found themselves in the year 1869.[28] And there +was much to encourage us in our complacency. Gladstone, to whom during +the rather dreary reign of exhausted Whiggery we had looked as to our +rising star--the one man who combined Religion and Poetry and Romance +with the love of Progress and the passion of Freedom--had told us that +"the great social forces were on our side," and that our opponents +"could not fight against the future." Philosophers, like Mill, had told +us that all the intelligence, all the science, all the mental courage of +the world were with us, and that Toryism was the creed of the +intellectually destitute. Morning after morning a vigorous Press sang +its loud hymn of triumph, and assured us that, even if for a moment our +chariot-wheels drave rather heavily, still we were going forth +conquering and to conquer, and that the future of Liberalism was to be +one long series of victories, uninterrupted till the crack of doom. + +And then to us, thus comfortably entrenched in self-esteem, there +entered the figure, unknown to most, only half-known to any, of a new +and most disturbing critic. Here was a man whose very name breathed +Liberalism; for whom speculation had no fears; who had harassed the most +hoary conventions with obstinate questionings; who had accepted +Democracy as the evolution of natural law; who had poked delicious fun +at the most highly-placed impostures, the most solemn plausibilities. In +such a one we might surely have expected to find a friend, an ally, a +comforter, a fellow-worker; a preacher of the smooth things which we +loved to hear, an encourager of the day-dreams which we had learned from +_Locksley Hall_. Instead of all this we found a critic--so gracious that +we could not quarrel with him, so reasonable that we found it hard to +dispute with him; so absolutely free from pomposity that we could not +laugh at him, so genuinely and freshly witty that we could not help +laughing with him--but a critic still. He thought scorn of our pleasant +land, and gave no credence unto our word. He belittled our heroes; he +pooh-poohed our achievements; he cast doubt on our prophecies; he +caricatured our aspirations. He told us that we were the victims of a +profound delusion. He warned us that the great Democracy on which we +relied as our unchangeable foundation would give way under our feet. He +pointed out that Labour had no more reason to expect its salvation from +Liberalism than from Toryism. He insisted that all our political reform +was mere machinery; that the end and object of politics was Social +Reform; and that the promise of the future was for those who should help +us to be better, wiser, and happier; for those who concerned themselves +rather with the product of the machine than with the machine itself; who +were not satisfied by eternally taking it to pieces and putting it +together again, but who wanted to know what sort of stuff it was, when +perfected, to turn out. He suggested that "the present troubled state of +our social life" had at least something to do with "the thirty years' +blind worship of their idols by our Liberal friends," and that it threw +some doubt on "the sufficiency of their worship." "It is not," he said, +"fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for Free Trade, Extension of the +Suffrage, and Abolition of Church Rates, instead of graver social ends; +but it is fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to believe, +with our social condition what it is, that they have performed a great, +a heroic work, by occupying themselves exclusively, for the last thirty +years, with these Liberal nostrums." + +And, while our new critic was thus disdainful of much that we held +sacred, of political machinery and logical government, and individual +liberty of speech and action, he recalled our attention to certain +objects of reverence which we, or at least some of us, had forgotten. He +insisted on the immense value of history and continuity in the political +life of a nation. He extolled (though the words were not his) the +"institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the +dead." He affirmed that external beauty, stateliness, splendour, +gracious manners, were indispensable elements of civilization, and that +these were the contributions which Aristocracy made to the welfare of +the State. He reminded us that the true greatness of a nation was to be +found in its culture, its ideals, its sentiment for beauty, its +performances in the intellectual and moral spheres--not in its supply of +coal, its volume of trade, its accumulated capital, or its +multiplication of railways. Above all--and this was to some of our Party +the unkindest cut--he asserted for Religion the chief place among the +elements of national well-being. We were just then living at the fag-end +of an anti-religious time. The critical, negative, and utilitarian +spirit which had seized on Oxford after the apparent defeat and collapse +of Newman's movement had profoundly affected the Liberal Party. It was +an essential characteristic of the political Liberals to pour scorn on +that "retrograding transcendentalism" which was "the hardheads' nickname +for the Anglo-Catholic Symphony."[29] The fact that Gladstone was so +saturated with the spirit of that symphony was a cause of mistrust which +his genius and courage could barely overcome; and, even when it was +overcome, a good many of his Party followed him as reluctantly and as +mockingly as Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote. The only heaven of which +the political Liberal dreamed was what Arnold called "the glorified and +unending tea-meeting of popular Protestantism." And the portion of the +Party which regarded itself as the intellectual wing, seemed to have +reverted to the temper described by Bishop Butler; "taking for granted +that Christianity is not so much as a subject of enquiry, but that it is +now at length discovered to be fictitious"; and habitually talking as if +"this were an agreed point among all people of discernment." Great was +the vexation of the "old Liberal hacks" who had been repeating these +dismal shibboleths, and ignoring or denying the greatest force in human +life, to find in this new teacher of liberal ideas a convinced and +persistent opponent. He affirmed that Religion was the best, the +sweetest, and the strongest thing in the world; he insisted that without +it there could be no perfect culture, no complete civilization; he +showed a reverent admiration for the historical character and teaching +of Jesus Christ; he urged the example of His "mildness and sweet +reasonableness." He taught that the best way of extending Christ's +kingdom on earth was by sweetening the character and brightening the +lives of the men and women whose nature He shared. + +It belongs to another part of this work to enquire what he meant by +Religion and Christianity, and how far his interpretations accorded +with, or how far they departed from, the traditional creed of +Christendom. But enough, perhaps, has been said to explain why the +appearance of _Culture and Anarchy_ so profoundly disquieted the "old +Liberal hacks" and the popular teachers of irreligion. One of these +called Christianity "that awful plague which has destroyed two +civilizations and but barely failed to slay such promise of good as is +now struggling to live amongst men." Of that teacher, and of others like +him, Arnold wrote in later years: "If the matter were not so serious one +could hardly help smiling at the chagrin and manifest perplexity of such +of one's friends as happen to be philosophical radicals and secularists, +at having to reckon with religion again when they thought its day was +quite gone by, and that they need not study it any more or take account +of it any more; that it was passing out, and a kind of new gospel, half +Bentham, half Cobden, in which they were themselves particularly strong, +was coming in. And perhaps there is no one who more deserves to be +compassionated than an elderly or middle-aged man of this kind, such as +several of their Parliamentary spokesmen and representatives are. For +perhaps the younger men of the Party may take heart of grace, and +acquaint themselves a little with religion, now that they see its day is +by no means over. But, for the older ones, their mental habits are +formed, and it is almost too late for them to begin such new studies. +However, a wave of religious reaction _is_ evidently passing over +Europe, due very much to our revolutionary and philosophical friends +having insisted upon it that religion was gone by and unnecessary, when +it was neither the one nor the other." + +[Illustration: Oriel College, Oxford + +In March, 1845, Matthew Arnold was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel + +_Photo H.W. Taunt_] + +A study of Arnold's work ought to give something more than a sketch of +the prose-book by which he most powerfully affected the thinking of his +time, and we will therefore take the contents of _Culture and Anarchy_ +chapter by chapter. The Preface is only a summary of the book, and may +therefore be disregarded. The Introduction briefly points out the +foolishness of orators and leader-writers who had assumed that Culture +meant "a smattering of Greek and Latin," and then addresses itself to +the task of finding a better definition. "I propose now to try and +enquire, in the simple unsystematic way which best suits both my taste +and my powers, what Culture really is, what good it can do, what is our +own special need of it; and I shall seek to find some plain grounds on +which a faith in Culture--both my own faith in it and the faith of +others--may rest securely." + +The First Chapter bears the memorable heading--"Sweetness and Light"; in +reference to which Lord Salisbury so happily said that, when he +conferred the degree of D.C.L. on Arnold, he ought to have addressed him +as "_Vir dulcissime et lucidissime_." In this chapter Arnold lays it +down that Culture, as he understands the word, is, in part, "a desire +after the things of the mind, simply for their own sakes, and for the +pleasure of seeing them as they are." But he goes on to say that "there +is of Culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, +the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an +intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which +all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and +beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human +confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave +the world better and happier than we found it--motives eminently such as +are called social--come in as part of the grounds of Culture, and the +main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described not as +having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of +perfection; it is a _study of perfection_. It moves by the force, not +merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but +also of the moral and social passion for doing good.... There is no +better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: "To +make reason and the will of God prevail." Thus the true disciple of +Culture will not be content with merely "learning the truth for his own +personal satisfaction"; but will try to make it _prevail_; and in this +endeavour Religion plays a commanding part. It is "the greatest and most +important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its +impulse to perfect itself"; it is "the voice of the deepest human +experience." It teaches that "The Kingdom of God is within you," and +that internal perfection must first be sought; but then it goes on, hand +in hand with Culture, to spread perfection in widest commonalty. +"Perfection is not possible, while the individual remains isolated." "To +promote the Kingdom of God is to increase and hasten one's own +happiness." Finally, Perfection as Culture conceives it, is a harmonious +expansion of _all_ the powers which make the beauty and worth of human +nature: "and here," says Arnold, "Culture goes beyond Religion, as +Religion is generally conceived by us." Stress must be laid upon those +last words; for Religion, according to its full and catholic ideal, is +the perfection and consecration of man's whole nature, intellectual and +physical, as well as moral and spiritual. All that is lovely, splendid, +moving, heroic, even enjoyable, in human life--all health and vigour and +beauty and cleverness and charm--all nature and all art, all science and +all literature--are among the good and perfect gifts which come down +from the Father of Lights. But this is just the conception of Religion +which Puritanism never grasped--nay, rather which Puritanism definitely +rejected." And here probably is the origin of that quarrel with +Puritanism, at least in its more superficial and obvious aspects, which +so coloured and sometimes barbed Arnold's meditations on Religion. "As I +have said with regard to wealth: Let us look at the life of those who +live in and for it--so I say with regard to the religious organizations. +Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the _Nonconformist_--a +life of jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings +of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of human life +completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after +sweetness, light, and perfection!" + +So much then for his definition of Culture; and we must admit that "the +old Liberal hacks," the speakers on Liberal platforms, and the writers +in Liberal papers, were not without excuse when they failed so utterly +to divine what the new Teacher meant by harping on a word which Bacon +and Pope had used in so different a sense. + +Chapter II is headed "Doing as One Likes." And here it was that our new +critic came most sharply into conflict with our cherished beliefs. We +believed in the liberty which Milton loved, "to know, to utter, and to +argue freely, according to conscience," and to frame our action by sole +reference to our conviction. We believed that of such liberty there was +only one endurable limit, and that was the condition that no man should +so use his own liberty as to lessen his brother's--and the liberty thus +conceived we regarded as the supreme boon of human life, for which no +other could conceivably be taken in exchange. And now came the new +Teacher of Liberalism with a doctrine which, while it made us angry, +also set us thinking. "Our familiar praise of the British Constitution +under which we live, is that it is a system of checks--a system which +stops and paralyzes any power in interfering with the free action of +individuals.... As Feudalism, which with its ideas and habits of +subordination was for many centuries behind the British Constitution, +dies out, and we are left with nothing but our system of checks, and +our notion of its being the great right and happiness of an Englishman +to do as far as possible what he likes, we are in danger of drifting +towards Anarchy." Aristocracy, according to Arnold, who strangely +mingled admiration of it with contempt, had been doing what it liked +from time immemorial. It had enjoyed all the good things of life--great +station, great wealth, great power--with a comfortable assurance that +they belonged to it by divine right. It had governed England with credit +to itself and benefit to the country. As Lord Beaconsfield said, it was +only because a Whig Minister wished to curry favour with the populace, +that an Earl who had committed a murder was hanged. + +The Middle Class also, had, at any rate, since the Reform Act of 1832, +"done what it liked," in a style not quite so grand but excessively +comfortable and self-satisfied. It had carried some great reforms on +which it had set its heart. It had established, enormously to its +profit, Free Trade, and it had accumulated vast wealth. Its maxim had +been--"Every man for himself in business, every man for himself in +religion,"--and the devil take the hindmost. + +But _now_, said Arnold, _is the judgment of this world_. The Aristocracy +and the Middle Class had come to an end of their reign. A "tide of +secret dissatisfaction had mined the ground under the self-confident +Liberalism of the last thirty years (1839-1869) and had prepared the way +for its sudden collapse and supersession." So far, the young Liberals +and Radicals of the day did not disagree. They liked this doctrine, and +had preached it; but from this point they and their new Teacher parted +company. The working-man was now enfranchised; and of the +newly-enfranchised working-man, or at least of some of the most +conspicuous representatives of his class, Arnold had a curious dread. +"His apparition is somewhat embarrassing; because, while the +Aristocratic and Middle Classes have long been doing as they like with +great vigour, he has been too undeveloped and too submissive hitherto to +join in the game; and now, when he does come, he comes in immense +numbers, and is rather raw and rough." + +The dread of the working-men, and the apprehension of the bad use which +they might make of their new power, can be traced to certain incidents +which happened just before they were admitted to the Franchise and which +perhaps precipitated their admission. In June, 1866, the Reform Bill, +for which Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone were responsible, was defeated +in the House of Commons, and the Tories came into office. The defeated +Bill would have enfranchised the upper class of artisans, and its +rejection led to considerable riots, in which certain leaders of the +working-men played conspicuous parts. The mob carried all before it, and +the railings of Hyde Park were broken. The Tory Government behaved with +the most incredible feebleness. The Home Secretary shed tears. The whole +business, half scandalous and half ridiculous, furnished Arnold with an +illustration for his sermon on "Doing What One Likes." Reviewing, three +years after their occurrence, the events of July, 1866, he wrote thus: +"Everyone remembers the virtuous Alderman-Colonel or Colonel-Alderman, +who had to lead his militia through the London streets; how the +bystanders gathered to see him pass; how the London roughs, asserting an +Englishman's best and most blissful right of doing what he likes, robbed +and beat the bystanders; and how the blameless warrior-magistrate +refused to let his troops interfere. 'The crowd,' he touchingly said +afterwards, 'was mostly composed of fine, healthy, strong men, bent on +mischief; if he had allowed his soldiers to interfere, they might have +been overpowered, their rifles taken from them and used against them by +the mob; a riot, in fact, might have ensued, and been attended with +bloodshed, compared with which the assaults and loss of property that +actually occurred would have been as nothing.' Honest and affecting +testimony of the English Middle Class to its own inadequacy for the +authoritative part which one's convictions would sometimes incline one +to assign to it! 'Who are we?' they say by the voice of their +Alderman-Colonel, 'that we should not be overpowered if we attempt to +cope with social anarchy, our rifles taken from us and used against us +by the mob, and we, perhaps, robbed and beaten ourselves? Or what light +have we, beyond a freeborn Englishman's impulse to do as he likes, which +would justify us in preventing, at the cost of bloodshed, other freeborn +Englishmen from doing as they like, and robbing and beating as much as +they please?' And again, 'the Rough is just asserting his personal +liberty a little, going where he likes, assembling where he likes, +bawling as he likes, hustling as he likes.... He sees the rich, the +aristocratic class, in occupation of the executive government; and so, +if he is stopped from making Hyde Park a bear-garden or the streets +impassable, he cries out that he is being butchered by the +aristocracy.'" + +Now, in spite of all this banter and sarcasm, these passages express a +real dread which, at the time when Household Suffrage was claimed and +conceded, really possessed Arnold's mind. He came with the lapse of +years to see that it was illusory, and that the working-classes of +England are as steady, as law-abiding, as inaccessible to ideas, as +little in danger of being hurried into revolutionary courses, as +unwilling to jeopardize their national interests and their stake in the +country, as the Aristocracy and the Middle Class. But at the period +which we are considering, when the dread of popular violence had really +laid hold of him, it is interesting to mark the direction in which he +looked for social salvation. He did not turn to our traditional +institutions; to the Church or the Throne or the House of Lords: to a +military despotism, or an established religion, or a governing +Aristocracy: certainly not to the Middle Class with its wealth and +industry--least of all to the Populace, with its "bright powers of +sympathy." In an age which made an idol of individual action, and warred +against all collectivism as tyranny, he looked for salvation to the +State. But the State, if it was to fulfil its high function, must be a +State in which every man felt that he had a place and a share, and the +authority of which he could accept without loss of self-respect. "If +ever," Arnold said in 1866, "there comes a more equal state of society +in England, the power of the State for repression will be a thousand +times stronger." He was for widening the province of the State, and +strengthening its hands, and "stablishing it on behalf of whatever +great changes are needed, just as much as on behalf of order." And, +forasmuch as the State, in its ideal, was "the organ of our collective +best self," our first duty was to cultivate, each man for himself, what +in himself was best--in short, Perfection. "We find no basis for a firm +State-power in our ordinary selves; culture suggests one to us in our +_best self_." And so we come back to the governing idea of the book +before us, that Culture is the foe of Anarchy. + +In the Third Chapter--"Barbarians, Philistines, Populace"--he divided +English Society into three main classes, to which he gave three +well-remembered nicknames. The aristocracy he named (not very happily, +seeing that he so greatly admired their fine manners) the Barbarians; +the Middle Class he had already named the Philistines; and to the great +mass which lies below the Middle Class he gave the name of "Populace." +The name of "Philistine" in its application to the great Middle Class +dates from the Lecture on Heine delivered from the Chair of Poetry at +Oxford in 1863. And it seems to have supplied a want in our system of +nomenclature, for it struck, and it has remained, at least as a name for +a type of mind, if not exactly as a name for a social class. + +When we originally encounter the word in the Lecture[30] on Heine, +Arnold is speaking of Heine's life-long battle--with what? With +Philistinism. "_Philistinism!_ We have not the expression in English. +Perhaps we have not the word, because we have so much of the thing. At +Soli, I imagine, they did not talk of solecisms; and here, at the very +headquarters of Goliath, nobody talks of Philistinism. The French have +adopted the term _épicier_ (grocer) to designate the sort of being whom +the Germans designate by the term Philistine; but the French +term--besides that it casts a slur upon a respectable class, composed of +living and susceptible members, while the original Philistines are dead +and buried long ago--is really, I think, in itself much less apt and +expressive than the German term. Efforts have been made to obtain in +English some term equivalent to _Philister_ or _épicier_; Mr. Carlyle +has made several such efforts: "Respectability with its thousand gigs," +he says; well, the occupant of every one of these gigs is, Mr. Carlyle +means, a Philistine. However, the word _respectable_ is far too valuable +a word to be thus perverted from its proper meaning; if the English are +ever to have a word for the thing we are speaking of--and so prodigious +are the changes which the modern spirit is introducing, that even we +English shall perhaps one day come to want such a word--I think we had +much better take the word _Philistine_ itself. + +"_Philistine_ must have originally meant, in the mind of those who +invented the nickname, a sturdy, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the +Chosen People, of the Children of Light. The party of change, the +would-be remodellers of the old traditional European order, the invokers +of reason against custom, the representatives of the modern spirit in +every sphere where it is applicable, regarded themselves, with the +robust self-confidence natural to reformers, as a chosen people, as +children of the light. They regarded their adversaries as humdrum +people, slaves to routine, enemies to light, stupid and oppressive, but +at the same time very strong.... Philistia has come to be thought by us +the true Land of Promise, and it is anything but that; the born lover of +ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this country that +the sky over his head is of brass and iron. The enthusiast for the idea, +for reason, values reason, the idea, in and for themselves; he values +them, irrespectively of the practical conveniences which their triumphs +may obtain for him, and the man who regards the profession of these +practical conveniences as something sufficient in itself which +compensates for the absence or surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in +his eyes, a Philistine." + +In _Culture and Anarchy_, Arnold thus elaborates the term "Philistine," +and justifies, not without some misgiving, its exclusive appropriation +to the Middle Class. "Philistine gives the notion of something +particularly stiffnecked and perverse in the resistance to light and its +children, and therein it specially suits our Middle Class, who not only +do not pursue Sweetness and Light, but who even prefer to them that sort +of machinery of business, chapels, tea-meetings, and addresses from Mr. +Murphy,[31] which make up the dismal and illiberal life on which I have +so often touched." The force of Philistinism in English life and society +is the force which, from first to last, he set himself most steadily to +fight, and, if possible, transform. That the effort was arduous, and +even perilous, he was fully aware. He must, he said, pursue his object +through literature, "freer perhaps in that sphere than I could be in any +other, but with the risk always before me, if I cannot charm the wild +beast of Philistinism while I am trying to convert him, of being torn in +pieces by him, and, even if I succeed to the utmost and convert him, of +dying in a ditch or a workhouse at the end of it all." + +The nickname of "Barbarians" for the Aristocracy he justified on the +ground that, like the Barbarians of history who reinvigorated and +renewed our worn-out Europe, they had eminent merits, among which were +staunch individualism and a passion for doing what one likes; a love of +field sports; vigour, good looks, fine complexions, care for the body +and all manly exercises; distinguished bearing, high spirit, and +self-confidence--an admirable collection of attributes indeed, but +marred by insufficiency of light, and "needing, for ideal perfection, a +shade more soul." When we have done with the Barbarians at the top of +the social edifice, and the Middle Class half way up, we come to the +Working Class; and of that class the higher portion "looks forward to +the happy day when it will sit on thrones with commercial Members of +Parliament and other Middle Class potentates; and this portion is +naturally akin to the Philistinism just above it. But below this there +is that vast portion of the Working Class which, raw and undeveloped, +has long lain half hidden amidst its poverty and squalor, and is now +issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born +right of doing as he likes. To this vast residuum we give the name of +'Populace.'" In thus dividing the nation, he is careful to point out +that in each class we may from time to time find "aliens"--men free from +the prejudices, the faults, the temptations of the class in which they +were born; elect souls who, unhindered by their antecedents, share the +higher life of intellectual and moral aspiration. + +But, after making this exception, he traces in all three classes the +presence and working of the same besetting sin. All alike, by a dogged +persistence in doing as they like, have come to ignore the existence of +Authority or Right Reason; and this irrecognition of what ought to be +the rule of life operates not only in the political sphere, but also, +and conspicuously, in the spheres of morals, taste, society, and +literature. Self-satisfaction blinds all classes. All alike believe +themselves infallible, and there is no sovereign organ of opinion to set +them right. The fundamental ground of our erroneous habits, and our +unwillingness to be corrected, is "our preference of doing to thinking," +The mention of this preference leads us to the subject of Chapter IV, +"Hebraism and Hellenism." + +[Illustration: Matthew Arnold, 1869 + +_Photo Hills & Saunders_] + +Of all the phrases which Arnold either created or popularized, there is +none more closely associated with his memory than this famous +conjunction of Hebraism and Hellenism; and in this connexion, it is not +out of place to note his abiding interest in, and affection for, the +House of Israel. The present writer once delivered a rather long and +elaborate lecture on Arnold's genius and writings; and next morning a +daily paper gave this masterpiece of condensed and tactful reporting: +"The lecturer stated that Mr. Arnold was of Jewish extraction, and +proceeded to read passages from his works." It might have been more +truly said that the lecturer suggested, as interesting to those who +speculate in race and pedigree, the question whether Arnold's remote +ancestors had belonged to the Ancient Race, and had emigrated from +Germany to Lowestoft, where they dwelt for several generations. There is +certainly no proof that so it was; and genealogical researches would in +any case be out of keeping with the scope of this book. It is enough to +note the fact of his affectionate and grateful feeling towards the +Jewish race, and this can best be done in his own words. The present +Lord Rothschild, formerly Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, is the first +adherent of the Jewish faith who ever was admitted to the House of +Lords, though of course there have been other Peers of Jewish descent. +When Mr. Gladstone created this Jewish peerage,[32] Arnold wrote as +follows to an admirable lady whose name often appears in his published +Letters-- + +"I have received so much kindness from your family, and I have so +sincere a regard for yourself, that I should in any case have been +tempted to send you a word of congratulation on Sir Nathaniel's +peerage; but I really feel also proud and happy for the British public +to have, by this peerage, signally marked the abandonment of its old +policy of exclusion, the final and total abandonment of it. What have we +not learned and gained from the people whom we have been excluding all +these years! And how every one of us will see and say this in the +future!" + +What, in his view, we had "learned and gained" from the Jewish people, +is well expressed in the preface to _Culture and Anarchy_. + +"To walk staunchly by the best light one has, to be strict and sincere +with oneself, not to be of the number of those who say and do not, to be +in earnest--this is the discipline by which alone man is enabled to +rescue his life from thraldom to the passing moment and to his bodily +senses, to ennoble it, and to make it eternal. And this discipline has +been nowhere so effectively taught as in the School of Hebraism. The +intense and convinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and +the New Testament, threw himself upon his ideal of righteousness, and +which inspired the incomparable definition of the great Christian +virtue, Faith--_the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of +things not seen_--this energy of devotion to its ideal has belonged to +Hebraism alone. As our idea of perfection widens beyond the narrow +limits to which the over-rigour of Hebraising has tended to confine it, +we shall yet come again to Hebraism for that devout energy in embracing +our ideal, which alone can give to man the happiness of doing what he +knows. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them!"--the last +word for human infirmity will always be that. For this word, reiterated +with a power now sublime, now affecting, but always admirable, our race +will, as long as the world lasts, return to Hebraism." + +Having thus described the function of Hebraism, Arnold goes on to define +Hellenism as "the intelligence driving at those ideas which are, after +all, the basis of right practice, the ardent sense for all the new and +changing combinations of them which man's development brings with it, +the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly." These two +great forces divide the empire of the world between them; and we call +them Hebraism and Hellenism after the two races of men who have most +signally illustrated them. "Hebraism and Hellenism--between these two +points of influence moves our world." The idea of Hellenism is to see +things as they are: the idea of Hebraism is conduct and obedience. Our +aim should be to combine the merits of both ideas, and be "evenly and +happily balanced between them." Enlarging on this text, he traces the +working of the two principles, which ought not to be rivals but have +been made such by the perverseness of men, philosophy and history; and +then, turning to our own day and its doings, he says that Puritanism, +which originally was a reaction of the conscience and moral sense +against the indifference and lax conduct of the Renascence, has gone +counter, during the last two centuries, to the main stream of human +advance; has hindered men from trying to see things as they really are, +and has made strictness of conduct the great aim of human life. "It made +the secondary the principal at the wrong moment, and the principal it at +the wrong moment treated as secondary." Hence have arisen all sorts of +confusion and inefficiency. Everywhere we see the signs of anarchy, and +the need for some sound order and authority. "This we can only get by +going back upon the actual instincts and forces which rule our life, +seeing them as they really are, connecting them with other instincts and +forces, and enlarging our whole view and rule of life." + +From this short chapter, he passes on to Chapter V, which he heads: +"_Porro unum est necessarium_"; and here he pursues his controversy with +modern Puritanism, which imagines that it has, in its special +conception of God and religion, the _unum necessarium_, which can +dispense with Sweetness and Light, self-culture and self-discipline. +"The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines himself in possession of +a rule telling him the _unum necessarium_, or one thing needful, and +that he then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what this +rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he has now knowledge and +henceforth needs only to act, and, in this dangerous state of assurance +and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give full swing to a number of the +instincts of his ordinary self.... What he wants is a larger conception +of human nature, showing him the number of other points at which his +nature must come to its best, besides the points which he himself knows +and thinks of. There is no _unum necessarium_, or one thing needful, +which can free human nature from the obligation of trying to come to its +best at all these points. Instead of our 'one thing needful' justifying +in us vulgarity, hideousness, ignorance, violence--our vulgarity, +hideousness, ignorance, violence are really so many touchstones which +try our one thing needful, and which prove that in the state, at any +rate, in which we ourselves have it, it is not all we want. And, as the +force which encourages us to stand staunch and fast by the rule and +ground we have is Hebraism, so the force which encourages us to go back +upon this rule, and to try the very ground on which we appear to stand, +is Hellenism--a term for giving our consciousness free play, and +enlarging its range." + +In his Sixth Chapter--headed "Our Liberal Practitioners"--he applies his +general doctrine to persons and performances of the year 1869. The +Liberal Party was just then busy disestablishing and disendowing the +Irish Church. He was in favour of Established Churches, and of +Concurrent Endowment. He realized the absurdity of the Irish Church as +it then stood; but, true to his critical character, he rebuked the +"Liberal Practitioners" for the spirit in which they were +disestablishing and disendowing it. They did not approach the subject in +the spirit of Hellenism: they did not appeal to Right Reason: they did +not attempt to see the problem of religious establishment as it really +was. But they Hebraized about it--that is, they took an uncritical +interpretation of biblical words as their absolute rule of conduct. "It +may," he said, "be all very well for born Hebraizers, like Mr. Spurgeon, +to Hebraize; but for Liberal statesmen to Hebraize is surely unsafe, and +to see poor old Liberal hacks Hebraizing, whose real self belongs to a +kind of negative Hellenism--a state of moral indifference, without +intellectual ardour--is even painful." In the same manner he dealt with +the movement to abolish Primogeniture, strongly urged by John Bright; +the movement to legalize marriage with a wife's sister--"the craving for +forbidden fruit" joined with "the craving for legality"; and the +doctrine, then supposed to be incontrovertible, of Free Trade. In all +these cases, he proposed to "Hellenize a little," to "turn the free +stream of our thought" on the Liberal policy of the moment; and to "see +how this is related to the intelligible law of human life, and to +national well-being and happiness." + +And so we were brought to the conclusion of the whole matter. The +stock-beliefs and stock-performances of Liberalism were exhausted, +uninteresting, in some grave respects mischievous. Seekers after truth, +disciples of culture, men bent on trying to see things as they really +are, should lend no hand to these labours of the Philistines. Their +right course was to stand absolutely aloof from the political work which +was going on round them; and to pursue, with undeviating consistency, +"increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased +sympathy." + +It is interesting to recall that Charles Kingsley praised _Culture and +Anarchy_ in a letter which greatly pleased Arnold, as showing "the +generous and affectionate side" of Kingsley's disposition. And this is +his answer to Kingsley's praise: "Of my reception by the general public +I have, perhaps, no cause to boast; but from the men who lead in +literature, from men like you, I have met with nothing but kindness and +generosity. The being thrown so much for the last twenty years with +Dissenters, and the observing their great strength and their great +impenetrability--how they seemed to think that in their 'gospel'--a mere +caricature, in truth, of the real Gospel--they had a secret which +enabled them to judge all literature and all art and to keep aloof from +modern ideas--set me on thinking how they might be got at, and on the +use of this parallel of Hebraism and Hellenism. If I was to think only +of the Dissenters, or if I were in your position, I should press +incessantly for more Hellenism; but, as it is, seeing the tendency of +our _young_ poetical litterateur (Swinburne), and, on the other hand, +seeing much of Huxley (whom I thoroughly liked and admire, but find very +disposed to be tyrannical and unjust), I lean towards Hebraism, and try +to prevent the balance from on this side flying up out of sight." Dean +Church, also, in writing about the book, expressed "his sense of the +importance of the distinction between Hellenism and Hebraism." "This," +said Arnold, "showed his width of mind"; for "it is a distinction on +which more and more will turn, and on dealing wisely with it everything +depends." + +I have dwelt at this rather disproportionate length on the structure and +teaching of _Culture and Anarchy_, partly because it was to men who were +young in 1869 a landmark in their mental life, and partly because it +gives the whole body of Arnold's political and social teaching. He +pursued this line of thought for twenty years; _Friendship's Garland_, +with its inimitable fun, appeared in 1871, and was followed by a long +series of essays and lectures; but the germ of whatever he subsequently +wrote is to be found in _Culture and Anarchy_. And from that memorable +book what did we learn? + +To answer first by negatives, we did not learn to undervalue personal +liberty, or to stand aloof from the practical work of citizenship, or to +despise Parliamentary effort and its bearing on the better life of +England. To these lessons of a fascinating teacher we closed our ears, +charmed he never so wisely. To answer affirmatively, we learned that our +first object must be to attain our own best self, and that only so could +we hope to help others. We learned to discard prepossessions, and try to +see things as they really are. We learned that the Liberty which we +worshipped must be conditioned by Authority--an authority not wielded +by rank or bureaucracy, but by the State acting as a whole through its +accredited representatives, and depending for its existence on the +co-operation of the entire nation. In self-government so founded, +however stringently it might exercise its power, there was no +degradation for the governed, because, in the wider sense, they were +also governors. In brief, Arnold's idea of the State was exactly that +which in later years one of his disciples--Henry Scott +Holland--conceived, when, defending Christian Socialism against the +reproach of "grandmotherly legislation," he said that, in a +well-governed commonwealth, "every man was his own grandmother." But, +while Authority belongs to the State as a whole, it must be exercised +through the agency of officialdom--through the action of officers or +governors designated for the special functions. And here he taught us +that we must not, as Bishop Westcott said, "trust to an uncultivated +notion of duty for an improvised solution of unforeseen difficulties"; +must not, like the Alderman-Colonel, "sit in the hall of judgment or +march at the head of men of war, without some knowledge how to perform +judgment and how to direct men of war." + +Then again we learned from him to value machinery, not for itself, but +for what it could produce. He taught us that all political +reconstruction was at the best mere improvement of machinery; that +political reform was related to social reform as the means to the end: +and that the end was the perfection of the race in all its physical, +mental, and moral attributes. + +Above all we learned--and perhaps it was the most important of our +lessons--to think little of material boons--vulgar wealth and stolid +comfort and ignoble ease; to set our affections on the joys of soul and +spirit; and to recognize in the practice of religion the highest +development and most satisfying use of the powers which belong to man. + +[Footnote 21: A favourite creation of the late Mr. William Cory.] + +[Footnote 22: Burke.] + +[Footnote 23: Mr. Willis' motion to remove the Bishops from the House of +Lords was lost by 11 votes on the 21st of March, 1884.] + +[Footnote 24: Now (1893) Lord Wemyss.] + +[Footnote 25: _Culture: a Dialogue_, 1867.] + +[Footnote 26: See p. 63.] + +[Footnote 27: It contains also "My Countrymen" and "A Courteous +Explanation."] + +[Footnote 28: The writer was then a schoolboy at Harrow, where Arnold +lived from 1868 to 1873.] + +[Footnote 29: William Cory.] + +[Footnote 30: Reprinted in _Essays in Criticism_.] + +[Footnote 31: A Protestant lecturer of the period.] + +[Footnote 32: In 1885.] + + + + +CHAPTER V + +CONDUCT + + +"By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what +it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power +against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with +darkness narrower." + +Whether Lactantius was etymologically right or wrong, there is no doubt +that he was right substantially when he defined Religion as that which +binds the soul to God. And religion thus conceived naturally divides +itself into two parts: duty and doctrine, practice and theory, conduct +and theology. Both elements are presented to us in the Bible. Of the one +it is written: "The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." +Of the other: "Which things the angels desire to look into." Even the +respective functions of the Synoptists and St. John seem to accommodate +themselves to this natural division. Following the line thus indicated, +we shall consider Arnold's influence on Religion under the two heads of +Conduct and Theology. The passage from _Middlemarch_ which stands at +the head of this chapter seems in a way to express his attitude towards +the religious problems of his time. It would be impossible for a +convinced believer in the faith of the Christian Church, as +traditionally received, to profess that Arnold "knew what was perfectly +good" in the domain of religion; but beyond all question he "desired" it +with an even passionate desire, and attained far more closely to it than +many professors of a more orthodox theology. + +Of him it might be truly said, as of his favourite poet, that he "saw +life steadily and saw it whole." And of life he declared that Conduct +was three-fourths. For all the infinite varieties and contradictions of +mere opinion he had the largest tolerance, knowing that no opinion, as +such, is culpable. For people thinking so diversely as Wordsworth, +Bunsen, Clough, and Palgrave; Church and Temple, Lake and Stanley; Lord +Coleridge, William Forster, and John Morley, he had equally warm regard, +and, in some ways, sympathy. It was only when the sphere of conduct was +approached that his judgment became severe and his sympathy dried up. In +Politics--levity, time-serving, mob-pleasing, the spirit which prefers +partisanship to patriotism, were the faults which he could not pardon. +His imperfect sympathy with Mr. Gladstone, a deplorable but undeniable +fact, was due not so much to dissent from Gladstone's theory of the +public good as to disapproval of his character. "Respect is the very +last feeling he excites in me; he has too little solidity and composure +of character or mind for that. He is brilliantly clever, of course, and +he is honest enough, but he is passionate, and in no way great, I +think." In Religion--obscurantism, resistance to the light, the smug +endeavour to make the best of both worlds, offended Arnold as much on +the one hand, as insolence, violence, ignorant negation, "lightly +running amuck at august things," offended him on the other. He loved a +"free handling, _in a becoming spirit_, of religious matters," and did +not always find it in the writings of his Liberal friends. It is true +that he once made a signal lapse from his own canon of religious +criticism, but he withdrew it with genuine regret that "an illustration +likely to be torn from its context, to be improperly used, and to give +pain, should ever have been adopted." In Literature, again, though his +judgment was critical, his charity was unbounded. He could find +something to praise even in the most immature and unpretending efforts; +and he knew how to distinguish what we call "good of its sort," good in +the second order of achievement, from what is simply bad. In +literature, as in opinion, it was only when moral faults were mingled +with intellectual defects that he became censorious. He detested +literary humbug--a pretence of knowledge without the reality, a show of +philosophy masking poverty of thought; the vanity of quaintness, the +"ring of false metal," the glorification of commonplace. + +And so again when we come to Life--the social life of the civilized +community--he was the consistent teacher and the bright example of an +exalted and scrupulous morality. Even the intellectual brilliancy of +authors whom he intensely admired did not often blind him to ethical +defects. It is true that some objects of his literary admiration--Goethe +and Byron and George Sand--could scarcely be regarded as moral +exemplars; but, while he praised the genius, he marked his disapproval +of the moral defect. In writing of George Sand, who had so profoundly +influenced his early life, he did not deny or extenuate "her passions +and her errors." Byron, though he thought him "the greatest natural +force, the greatest elementary power, which has appeared in our +literature since Shakespeare," he roundly accused of "vulgarity and +effrontery," "coarseness and commonness," "affectation and brutal +selfishness." In the case of Goethe, he said that "the moralist and the +man of the world may unite in condemning" his laxity of life; and even +in _Faust_, which he esteemed the "most wonderful work of poetry in our +century," the fact that it is a "seduction-drama" marred his pleasure. +In the same tone he wrote, in the last year of his life, about Renan's +_Abbesse_--"I regret the escapade extremely; he was entirely out of his +role in writing such a book.... Renan descends sensibly in the scale +from having produced his _Abbesse_." Heine, with all his genius, "lacked +the old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliverance": he +left a name blemished by "intemperate susceptibility, unscrupulousness +in passion, inconceivable attacks on his enemies, still more +inconceivable attacks on his friends, want of generosity, sensuality, +incessant mocking." + +[Illustration: Pains Hill Cottage, Cobham, Surrey + +Matthew Arnold's home from 1873 until his death in 1888] + +And, while he thus criticised the defective morality of writers whom he +greatly admired, he was, perhaps naturally, still more severe on the +moral defects of those whom he esteemed less highly. "Burns," he said, +"is a beast, with splendid gleams, and the medium in which he lived, +Scotch peasants, Scotch Presbyterianism, and Scotch drink, is +repulsive." On Coleridge, critic, poet, philosopher, his judgment was +that he "had no morals," and that his character inspired "disesteem, +nay, repugnance." Bulwer-Lytton he thought a consummate novel-writer, +but "his was by no means a perfect nature"--"a strange mixture of +what is really romantic and interesting with what is tawdry and +gimcracky." _Villette_ he pronounced "disagreeable, because the writer's +mind contains nothing but hunger, rebellion, and rage, and therefore +that is all she can put into her book." Of Harriet Martineau, the other +of the "two gifted women," whose exploits he had glorified in _Haworth +Churchyard_, he wrote in later years that she had "undeniable talent, +energy, and merit," but "what an unpleasant life and unpleasant nature!" + +And, so everywhere the moral element--the sense for Conduct--mingles +itself with his literary judgment. But it was in his attack on Shelley, +written within four months of his own death, that he most vigorously +displayed his detestation of moral shortcomings, and his sense of their +poisonous effect on the performances of genius. "In this article on +Shelley," he wrote, "I have spoken of his life, not his poetry. +Professor Dowden was too much for my patience."[33] It can hardly be +questioned that the publication of that biography did a signal +disservice to the memory of the poet whom Professor Dowden idolized. The +lack of taste, judgment, and humour which pervades the book, and its +complete, though of course unintended, condonation of heinous evil, +deserved a severe castigation, and Arnold bestowed it with a vigour and +a thoroughness which show how deeply his moral sense had been shocked. +"What a set! what a world! is the exclamation that breaks from us as we +come to an end of this history of 'the occurrences of Shelley's private +life.' ... Godwin's house of sordid horror, and Godwin preaching and +holding the hat, and the green-spectacled Mrs. Godwin, and Hogg the +faithful friend, and Hunt the Horace of this precious world!" + +Fresh from pursuing, step by step, Professor Dowden's grim narrative of +seduction and suicide, with its ludicrous testimony to Shelley's +"conscientiousness," Arnold says, with honest indignation, "After +reading his book, one feels sickened for ever of the subject of +irregular relations.... I conclude that an entirely human +inflammability, joined to an inhuman want of humour and a super-human +power of self-deception, are the causes which chiefly explain Shelley's +abandonment of Harriet in the first place, and then his behaviour to her +and defence of himself afterwards." + +In spite of all this abomination, which he so clearly saw and so +strongly reprehended, he still stands firm in his admiration of the +"ideal Shelley," "the delightful Shelley," "the friend of the +unfriended poor," the radiant and many-coloured poet, with his mastery +of the medium of sounds, and the "natural magic in his rhythm." But then +he adds this salutary caution: "Let no one suppose that a want of humour +and a self-delusion such as Shelley's have no effect upon a man's +poetry. The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and +Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane either." In poetry, as in life, he +is "a beautiful and ineffectual angel." + +And just as, in Arnold's view, moral defects in an author were apt to +mar the perfection of his work, so an author's moral virtues might +ennoble and enlarge his authorship. Hear him on his friend Arthur +Clough: "He possessed, in an eminent degree, these two invaluable +literary qualities: a true sense for his object of study, and a +single-hearted care for it. He had both; but he had the second even more +eminently than the first. He greatly developed the first through means +of the second. In the study of art, poetry, or philosophy, he had the +most undivided and disinterested love for the object in itself, the +greatest aversion to mixing up with it anything accidental or personal. +His interest was in literature itself; and it was this which gave so +rare a stamp to his character, which kept him so free from all taint of +littleness. In the saturnalia of ignoble personal passions, of which +the struggle for literary success, in old and crowded communities, +offers so sad a spectacle, he never mingled. He had not yet traduced his +friends, nor flattered his enemies, nor disparaged what he admired, nor +praised what he despised. Those who knew him well had the conviction +that, even with time, these literary arts would never be his. His poem, +_The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich_, has some admirable Homeric +qualities--out-of-doors freshness, life, naturalness, buoyant rapidity. +Some of the expressions in that poem ... come back now to my ear with +the true Homeric ring. But that in him of which I think oftenest is the +Homeric simplicity of his literary life." + +We have seen more than once that, according to Arnold, poetry was a +criticism of life; but he always maintained that this was true of poetry +only because poetry is part of literature, and all literature was a +criticism of life. One may demur to the statement as greatly too +unguarded in its terms, but certainly he was true to his own doctrine, +and in practice, from first to last, he used literature as a medium for +criticising the life and conduct of his fellow-men. In the last year of +his life he produced with approbation "a favourite saying of Ptolemy the +astronomer, which Bacon quotes in its Latin version thus:--_Quum fini +appropinquas, bonum cum augmento operare_"--"As you draw near to your +latter end, redouble your efforts to do good." And this redoubled effort +was in his case all of a piece with what had gone before. In 1863 he +wrote to a friend: "In trying to heal the British demoniac, true +doctrine is not enough; one must convey the true doctrine with studied +moderation; for, if one commits the least extravagance, the poor madman +seizes hold of this, tears and rends it, and quite fails to perceive +that you have said anything else." + +All his literary life was spent in trying to convey "true doctrine with +studied moderation." And in his true doctrine nothing was more +conspicuous than his insistence, early and late, on the supreme +importance of character and conduct. The first object of life was to +realize one's best self, and this endeavour required not merely +cleverness or information: even genius would not of itself suffice; +still less would adherence to any particular body of opinions. If a man +was _dis-respectable_, "not even the merit of not being a Philistine +could make up for it." Character issuing in Conduct--this was the true +culture which we must all ensue, if by any means we were to attain to +our predestined perfection; and, if that were once secured, all the +rest--talent, fame, influence, length of days, worldly +prosperity--mattered little. Thus he wrote of his friend Edward +Quillinan-- + + I saw him sensitive in frame, + I knew his spirits low: + And wish'd him health, success, and fame-- + I do not wish it now. + + For these are all their own reward, + And leave no good behind; + They try us, oftenest make us hard, + Less modest, pure, and kind. + + Alas! yet to the suffering man, + In this his mortal state, + Friends could not give what fortune can-- + Health, ease, a heart elate. + + But he is now by fortune foil'd + No more; and we retain + The memory of a man unspoil'd, + Sweet, generous, and humane-- + + With all the fortunate have not, + With gentle voice and brow. + --Alive, we would have changed his lot, + We would not change it now. + +When his eldest boy died he wrote to a friend: "He is gone--and all the +absorption in one's own occupations which prevented one giving to him +more than moments, all one's occasional impatience, all one's taking his +ailments as a matter of course, come back upon one as something +inconceivable and inhuman. And his mother, who has nothing of all this +to reproach herself with, who was everything to him and would have given +herself for him, has lost the occupation of sixteen years, and has to +begin life over again. The one endless comfort to us is the thought of +the _sweet, firm, sterling character_ which the darling child developed +in and by all his sufferings and privations. Of that we can think and +think." + +When his second boy died he said that his "deepest feeling" was best +expressed by his own _Dejaneira_-- + + But him, on whom, in the prime + Of life, with vigour undimm'd, + With unspent mind, and a soul + _Unworn, undebased, undecay'd_, + Mournfully grating, the gates + Of the city of death have for ever closed-- + _Him_, I count _him_ well-starr'd. + +In teaching the high lesson of Character and Conduct, he dealt sparingly +in words, even words of "studied moderation." He taught principally, he +taught conspicuously, he taught all his life long, by Example. In +regarding that example, as it stands clear across the interspace of +fifteen years, we are reminded of Tertullian's doctrine concerning the +_anima naturaliter Christiana_. A more genuinely amiable man never +lived. His sunny temper, his quick sympathy, his inexhaustible fun, +were natural gifts. But something more than nature must have gone to +make his constant unselfishness, his manly endurance of adverse fate, +his noble cheerfulness under discouraging circumstances, his buoyancy in +breasting difficulties, his unremitting solicitude for the welfare and +enjoyment of those who stood nearest to his heart. The secret of his +life was that he had taken pains with his own character. While he was +still quite young we find him bewailing the "worldly element which +enters so largely into his composition," and which threatens to make a +gulf between him and the strict, almost Puritanical, associations of his +youth. "But," he says in writing to his sister, "as Thomas à Kempis +recommended, _frequentur tibi violentiam fac_ ... so I intend not to +give myself the rein in following my natural tendency, but to make war +against it till it ceases to isolate me from you, and leaves me with the +power to discern and adopt the good which you have and I have not." + +The result of this self-discipline and self-culture was to produce in +him all the virtues which are supposed to be specifically and peculiarly +Christian. "Christianity," said Bishop Creighton, "impressed the Roman +world by its power of producing men who were strong in self-control, and +this must always be its contribution to the world." Arnold's +self-control was absolute and unshakable; and to self-control he added +the characteristically Christian virtues of surrender, placability, +readiness to forgive injuries, perfect freedom from envy, hatred, and +malice. He revered the "method and secret of Jesus"; he did all honour +to His "mildness and sweet reasonableness." "Christianity," he said, "is +Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and rescue from the thrall of vile +affections, not by obedience to the letter of a law, but by conformity +to the image of a self-sacrificing example. To a world stricken with +moral enervation Christianity offered its spectacle of an inspired +self-sacrifice; to men who refuse themselves nothing it showed one who +refused himself everything." Following this example, Arnold preached +"Grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self," and what he +preached he practised. "Kindness and Pureness," he said, "Charity and +Chastity. If any virtues could stand for the whole of Christianity, +these might. Let us have them from the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself. +'He that loveth his life shall lose it; a new commandment give I unto +you, that ye love one another.' There is charity. 'Blest are the pure in +heart, for they shall see God.' There is purity." Charity was indeed the +law of Arnold's life. He loved with a passionate and persistent love. He +loved his wife with increasing devotion as years went on, when she had +become "my sweet Granny," and they both felt that "we are too old for +separations." He loved with equal fondness his mother (whom in his +brightness, fun, and elasticity he closely resembled), the sisters who +so keenly shared his intellectual tastes, his children living and +departed. "Dick[34] was a tower of strength." "Lucy[35] is such a +perfect companion." "Nelly[36] is the dearest girl in the world." "That +little darling[4] we have left behind us at Laleham; and he will soon +fade out of people's remembrance, but _we_ shall remember him as long as +we live, and he will be one more bond between us, even more perhaps in +his death than in his sweet little life." "It was exactly a year since +we had driven to Laleham with darling Tommy[38] and the other two boys +to see Basil's[37] grave; and now we went to see _his_ grave, poor +darling." "I cannot write Budge's[39] name without stopping to look at +it in stupefaction at his not being alive." + +Outside the circle of his family, his affection was widely bestowed and +faithfully maintained. He had the true genius of friendship, and when +he signed himself "affectionately" it meant that he really loved. +Enmities he had none. If ever he had suffered injuries they were +forgiven, forgotten, and buried out of sight. Even in the controversies +where his strongest convictions were involved, he steadily abstained +from bitterness, violence, and detraction. "Fiery hatred and malice," he +said, with perfect truth, "are what I detest, and would always allay or +avoid if I could." + +In the preface to his _Last Essays on the Church and Religion_, he takes +those two great lessons of the Christian Gospel--Charity and +Chastity--and goes on to show how they illustrate "the _natural truth_ +of Christianity," as distinct from any considerations of Revelation or +Law. "Now, really," he says, writing in 1877, "if there is a lesson +which in our day has come to force itself upon everybody, in all +quarters and by all channels, it is the lesson of the _solidarity_, as +it is called by modern philosophers, of men. If there was ever a notion +tempting to common human nature, it was the notion that the rule of +'every man for himself' was the rule of happiness. But at last it turns +out as a matter of experience, and so plainly that it is coming to be +even generally admitted--it turns out that the only real happiness is in +a kind of impersonal higher life, where the happiness of others counts +with a man as essential to his own. He that loves his life does really +turn out to lose it, and the new commandment proves its own truth by +experience." + +And then he goes on to what he justly calls "the other great Christian +virtue, Pureness." When he was thirty-two, he had written--"The lives +and deaths of the 'pure in heart' have, perhaps, the privilege of +touching us more deeply than those of others--partly, no doubt, because +with them the disproportion of suffering to deserts seems so unusually +great. However, with them one feels--even I feel--that for their +purity's sake, if for that alone, whatever delusions they may have +wandered in, and whatever impossibilities they may have dreamed of, they +shall undoubtedly, in some sense or other, see God." And now, +twenty-three years later, he returns to the same theme. Science, he +says, is beginning to throw doubts on the "truth and validity of the +Christian idea of Pureness." There can be no more vital question for +human society. On the side of _natural truth_, experience must decide. +"But," he says, "finely-touched souls have a presentiment of a thing's +natural truth, even though it be questioned, and long before the +palpable proof by experience convinces all the world. They have it quite +independently of their attitude towards traditional religion.... All +well-inspired souls will perceive the profound natural truth of the +idea of pureness, and will be sure, therefore, that the more boldly it +is challenged the more sharply and signally will experience mark its +truth. So that of the two great Christian virtues, charity and chastity, +kindness and pureness, the one has at this moment the most signal +testimony from experience to its intrinsic truth and weight, and the +other is expecting it." + +Again, in _God and the Bible_, he has a most instructive passage on the +relation of the sexes. "Here," he says, "we are on ground where to walk +right is of vital concern to men, and where disasters are plentiful." He +speculates on that relation as it may be supposed to have subsisted in +the first ages of the human race, and tries to trace it down to the +point of time "where history and religion begin." "And at this point we +first find the Hebrew people, with polygamy still clinging to it as a +survival from the times of ignorance, but with the marriage-tie solidly +established, strict and sacred, as we see it between Abraham and Sara. +Presently this same Hebrew people, with that aptitude which +characterized it for being profoundly impressed by ideas of moral order, +placed in the Decalogue the marriage-tie under the express and solemn +sanction of the Eternal, by the Seventh Commandment: _Thou shalt not +commit adultery_." And again: "Such was Israel's genius for the ideas +of moral order and of right, such his intuition of the Eternal that +makes for righteousness, that he felt without a shadow of a doubt, and +said with the most impressive solemnity, that Free Love was--to speak, +again, like our modern philosopher--fatal to progress. _He knoweth not +that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of +hell._" + +The fact, already stated, that in the last years of his life, Arnold +declared that his _Discourses in America_ was the book by which, of all +his prose-writings, he most wished to be remembered, gives to whatever +he enounced in those Discourses a special authority, a peculiar weight, +for his disciples; and nowhere is his testimony on behalf of Virtue and +Right Conduct more earnestly delivered. + +When the odious Voltaire urged his followers to "Crush the Infamous," he +had in mind that virtue which is specially characteristic of +Christianity.[40] A century later Renan said: "Nature cares nothing for +chastity." _Les frivoles out peutêtre raison_--"The gay people are +perhaps in the right." Against this doctrine of devils Arnold uttered a +protesting and a warning voice. He was--heaven knows!--no enemy to +France. All that is best in French literature and French life he admired +almost to excess. His sympathy with France was so keen that Sainte-Beuve +wrote to him--"Vous avez traversé notre vie et notre littérature par une +ligne intérieure, profonde, qui fait les initiés, et que vous ne perdrez +jamais." But in spite of, perhaps because of, this sympathy with France, +he felt himself bound to protest and to warn. + +Addressing his American audience in November, 1883, he pointed out the +dangers which England, Ireland, America, and France incur through +habitual disregard, in each case, of some virtue or grace without which +national perfection is impossible. He used, as a kind of text for his +discourse, the famous passage from the Philippians. "Whatsoever things +are true, whatsoever things are elevated, whatsoever things are just, +whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are amiable, whatsoever +things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any +praise, have these in your mind, let your thoughts run upon these." + +_Whatsoever things are pure_. [Greek: osa hagua]--thus the teacher of +Culture moralized on this pregnant phrase. + +[Illustration: The Union Rooms, Oxford + +At the Jubilee of the Union, 1873, Matthew Arnold responded to Dr. +Liddon's speech proposing 'Literature' + +_Photo H.W. Taunt_] + +"The question was once asked by the Town Clerk of Ephesus: 'What man is +there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a +worshipper of the great goddess Diana?' Now really, when one looks at +the popular literature of the French at this moment--their popular +novels, popular stage-plays, popular newspapers--and at the life of +which this literature of theirs is the index, one is tempted to make a +goddess out of a word of their own, and then, like the Town Clerk of +Ephesus, to ask: 'What man is there that knoweth not how that the city +of the French is a worshipper of the great goddess Lubricity?' Or +rather, as Greek is the classic and euphonious language for names of +gods and goddesses, let us take her name from the Greek Testament, and +call her the goddess Aselgeia. That goddess has always been a sufficient +power amongst mankind, and her worship was generally supposed to need +restraining rather than encouraging. But here is now a whole people, +law, literature, nay, and art too, at her service! Stimulations and +suggestions by her and to her meet one in it at every turn.... 'Nature,' +cries M. Renan, 'cares nothing about chastity.' What a slap in the face +to the sticklers for 'Whatsoever things are pure'!... Even though a +gifted man like M. Renan may be so carried away by the tide of opinion +in France where he lives, as to say that Nature cares nothing about +chastity, and to see with amused indulgence the worship of the great +goddess Lubricity, let us stand fast and say that her worship is against +nature--human nature--and that it is ruin. For this is the test of its +being against human nature, that for human societies it is ruin. And the +test is one from which there is no escape, as from the old tests in such +matters there may be. For, if you allege that it is the will of God that +we should be pure, the sceptical Gallo-Latins will tell you that they do +not know any such person. And in like manner, if it is said that those +who serve the goddess Aselgeia shall not inherit the Kingdom of God, the +Gallo-Latin may tell you that he does not believe in any such place. But +that the sure tendency and upshot of things establishes that the service +of the goddess Aselgeia is ruin, that her followers are marred and +stunted by it, and disqualified for the ideal society of the future, is +an infallible test to employ. + +"The saints admonish us to let our thoughts run upon whatsoever things +are pure, if we would inherit the Kingdom of God; and the divine Plato +tells us that we have within us a many-headed beast and a man, and that +by dissoluteness we feed or strengthen the beast in us, and starve the +man; and finally, following the divine Plato among the sages at a humble +distance, comes the prosaic and unfashionable Paley, and says in his +precise way: that 'this vice has a tendency, which other species of vice +have not so directly, to unsettle and weaken the powers of the +understanding; as well as, I think, in a greater degree than other +vices, to render the heart thoroughly corrupt.' True; and, once admitted +and fostered, it eats like a canker, and with difficulty can ever be +brought to let go its hold again, but for ever tightens it. Hardness and +insolence come in its train; an insolence which grows till it ends by +exasperating and alienating everybody; a hardness which grows until the +man can at last scarcely take pleasure in anything, outside the service +of his goddess, except cupidity and greed, and cannot be touched with +emotion by any language except Fustian. Such are the fruits of the +worship of the great goddess Aselgeia. + +"So, instead of saying that Nature cares nothing about chastity, let us +say that human nature, _our_ nature, cares about it a great deal.... The +Eternal has attached to certain moral causes the safety or the ruin of +States, and the present popular literature of France is a sign that she +has a most dangerous moral disease." + +In the following year, he thus commented on the Festival of Christmas +and its spiritual significance: + +"When we are asked, What really is Christmas, and what does it +celebrate? We answer, the birthday of Jesus. What is the miracle of the +Incarnation? A homage to the virtue of Pureness, and to the +manifestation of this virtue in Jesus. What is Lent, and the miracle of +the temptation? A homage to the virtue of self-control, and to the +manifestation of this virtue in Jesus." + +"That on which Christmas, even in its popular acceptation, fixes our +attention, is that to which the popular instinct in attributing to Jesus +His miraculous Incarnation, in believing Him born of a pure virgin, did +homage--pureness. And this, to which the popular instinct thus did +homage, was an essential characteristic of Jesus and an essential virtue +of Christianity, the obligation of which, though apt to be questioned +and discredited in the world, is at the same time nevertheless a +necessary fact of nature and eternal truth of reason." + +So much I have quoted in order to show that, in relation to the most +important department of human conduct, Arnold's influence, to use his +own phrase, "made for righteousness," and made for righteousness +unequivocally and persistently. So keen was his sense of the supreme +value of this characteristically Christian virtue that he framed what +old-fashioned theologians would have called a "hedge of the law."[41] In +season and out of season, whether men would bear or whether they would +forbear, he taught the sacredness of marriage. For the Divorce Court and +all its works and ways he had nothing but detestation. He ranked it, +with our gin-palaces, among the blots on our civilization. From Goethe, +perhaps a curious authority on such a subject, he quotes approvingly a +protest against over-facility in granting divorce, and an acknowledgment +that Christianity has won a "culture-conquest" in establishing the +sacredness of marriage. Man's progress, he says, depends on his keeping +such "culture-conquests" as these; and of all attempts to undo these +conquests, give back what we have won, and accustom the public mind to +laxity, he was the unsparing foe. + +It may help to remind us that, in spite of all our shortcomings, we have +travelled a little way towards virtue, or at least towards decency, if +we recall that in 1863 Lord Palmerston, then in his eightieth year and +Prime Minister of England, figured in a very unseemly affair which had +the Divorce Court for its centre. Arnold writes as follows: "We had ---- +with us one day. He was quite full of the Lord Palmerston scandal, +which your charming newspaper, the _Star_--that true reflection of the +rancour of Protestant Dissent in alliance with all the vulgarity, +meddlesomeness, and grossness of the British multitude--has done all it +could to spread abroad. It was followed yesterday by the _Standard_, and +is followed to-day by the _Telegraph_. Happy people, in spite of our bad +climate and cross tempers, with our penny newspapers!" + +The admirable satire of _Friendship's Garland_ is constantly levelled +against national aberrations in this direction. In the year 1870 there +was a fashionable divorce-case, more than usually scandalous, and the +disgusting narrative had been followed with keen interest by those who +look up at the Aristocracy as men look up at the stars. In reference to +this case, he quotes to his imaginary friend Arminius the noble +sentiment of Barrow: "Men will never be heartily loyal and submissive to +authority till they become really good; nor will they ever be very good +till they see their leaders such." To which Arminius replies, in his +thoughtful manner: "Yes, that is what makes your Lord C----s so +inexpressibly precious!" A certain Lord C----, be it observed, having +figured very conspicuously in the trial. + +With reference to the enormous publicity given in England to such +malefic matter, Arnold says to Arminius: "When a Member of Parliament +wanted to abridge the publicity given to the M---- case, the Government +earnestly reminded him that it had been the solemn decision of the House +of Commons that all the proceedings of the Divorce Court should be as +open as the day. When there was a suggestion to hear the B---- case in +private, the upright magistrate who was appealed to said firmly that he +could never trifle with the public mind in that manner. All this was as +it should be. So far, so good. But was the publicity in these cases +perfectly full and entire? Were there not some places which the details +did not reach? There were few, but there were some. And this, while the +Government has an organ of its own, the _London Gazette_, dull, +high-priced, and of comparatively limited circulation! I say, make the +price of the _London Gazette_ a halfpenny; change its name to the +_London Gazette and Divorce Intelligencer_; let it include besides +divorce news, all cases whatever that have an interest of the same +nature for the public mind; distribute it _gratis_ to mechanics' +institutes, workmen's halls, seminaries for the young (these latter more +especially), and then you will be giving the principle of publicity a +full trial. This is what I often say to Arminius; and, when he looks +astounded, I reassure him with a sentence which, I know very well, the +moment I make it public will be stolen by the Liberal newspapers. But it +is getting near Christmas-time, and I do not mind making them a present +of it. It is this: _The spear of freedom, like that of Achilles, has the +power to heal the wounds which itself makes_." + +In _Friendship's Garland_, from the very structure of the book, his +serious judgments have to be delivered by the mouth of his Prussian +friend; and here is his judgment on our public concessions to +pruriency--"By shooting all this garbage on your public, you are +preparing and assuring for your English people an immorality as deep and +wide as that which destroys the Latin nations." + +But his "hedge of the law" had other thorns besides those with which he +pierced the Divorce Court and its hideous literature. He had shrewd +sarcasms for all who, by whatever method, sought to gratify "that double +craving so characteristic of our Philistine, and so eminently +exemplified in that crowned Philistine, Henry the Eighth--the craving +for forbidden fruit and the craving for legality." He poured scorn on +the newspapers which glorified "the great sexual insurrection of the +Anglo-Teutonic race," and the author who extolled the domestic life of +Mormonism. "Mr. Hepworth Dixon may almost be called the Colenso of Love +and Marriage--such a revolution does he make in our ideas on these +matters, just as Dr. Colenso does in our ideas on religion." He thus +forecasts the doings of a Philistine House of Commons in 1871. "Mr. T. +Chambers will again introduce that enfranchising measure, against which +I have had some prejudices--the Bill for enabling a man to marry his +deceased wife's sister. The devoted adversaries of the Contagious +Diseases Act will spread through the length and breadth of the land a +salutary discussion of this equivocal measure and of all matters +connected with it; and will thus, at the same time that they oppose +immorality, enable the followers of even the very straitest sects of +Puritanism to see life." All these various attempts to break down the +"hedge of the law" received in turn their merited condemnation; but +always we are brought back from the consideration of kindred evils, to +the proposal to legalize marriage with a wife's sister. Thus the +imaginary leader-writer of the _Daily Telegraph_ summarizes the +controversy: "Why, I ask, is Mr. Job Bottles' liberty, his Christian +liberty, as our reverend friend would say, to be abridged in this +manner? And why is Protestant Dissent to be diverted from its great task +of abolishing State Churches for the purpose of removing obstacles to +the 'sexual insurrection' of our race? Why are its poor devoted +ministers to be driven to contract, in the interests of Christian +liberty, illegal unions of this kind themselves, _pour encourager les +autres_? Why is the earnest Liberalism and Nonconformity of Lancashire +and Yorkshire to be agitated on this question by hope deferred? Why is +it to be put incessantly to the inconvenience of going to be married in +Germany or in the United States, that greater and better Britain-- + + Which gives us manners, freedom, virtue, power? + +Why must ideas on this topic have to be incubated for years in that +'nest of spicery,' as the divine Shakespeare says, the mind of Mr. T. +Chambers, before they can rule the world? For my own part, my resolve is +formed. This great question shall henceforth be seriously taken up in +Fleet Street. As a sop to those toothless old Cerberuses the bishops, +who impotently exhibit still the passions of another age, we will accord +the continuance of the prohibition which forbids a man to marry his +grandmother. But in other directions there shall be freedom. Mr. +Chambers' admirable Bill for enabling a woman to marry her sister's +husband will doubtless pass triumphantly through Committee to-night, +amidst the cheers of the Ladies' Gallery. The Liberal Party must +supplement that Bill by two others: one enabling people to marry their +brothers' and sisters' children, the other enabling a man to marry his +brother's wife." + +There is perhaps no social mischief which Arnold attacked so +persistently as the proposal to legalize marriage with a wife's sister. +The most passionate advocates of that "enfranchising measure" will +scarcely think that his hostility was due to what John Bright so +gracefully called "ecclesiastical rubbish." Councils and Synods, Decrees +and Canons, were held by him in the lightest esteem. The formal side of +Religion--the side of dogma and doctrine and rule and definition--had no +attractions for him, and no terrors. He never dreamed that the Table of +Kindred and Affinity was a Third Table of the Divine Law. His appeal in +these matters was neither to Moses nor to Tertullian, but to "the genius +of the race which invented the Muses, and Chivalry, and the Madonna." +And yet he disliked the "enfranchising measure" quite as keenly as the +clergyman who wrote to the _Guardian_ about incest, though indeed he +expressed his dislike in a very different form. Here, as always and +everywhere, he betook himself to his "sinuous, easy, unpolemical" +method, and thereby made his repugnance to the proposed change felt and +understood in quarters which would never have listened to arguments +from Leviticus, or fine distinctions between _malum per se_ and _malum +prohibitum_. The ground of his repugnance was primarily his strong +sense, already illustrated, that the sacredness of marriage, and the +customs that regulate it, were triumphs of culture which had been won, +painfully and with effort, from the unbridled promiscuity of primitive +life. To impair that sacredness, to dislocate those customs, was to take +a step backwards into darkness and anarchy. His keen sense of moral +virtue--that instinctive knowledge of evil which, as Frederick Robertson +said, comes not of contact with evil but of repulsion from it, assured +him that the "great sexual insurrection" was not merely a grotesque +phrase, but a movement of the time which threatened national disaster, +and to which, in its most plausible manifestations, the stoutest +resistance must be offered. Here again his love of coherence and logical +symmetry, his born hatred of an anomaly, his belief in Reason as the +true guide of life, made him intolerant of all the palpably insincere +attempts to say _Thus far and no farther_. He knew that all the laws of +Affinity must stand or fall together, and that no ground in reason can +be alleged against marriage with a husband's brother which does not tell +against marriage with a wife's sister. Yet again he regarded the +proposed changes as betraying the smug viciousness of the more +full-blooded Philistines-- + + Men full of meat whom wholly He abhors,[42]-- + +who, trying to keep a foot in each world of legality and indulgence, +sought patronage from the rich and deceived and exploited the poor. + +Certainly not the least of his objections to the "enfranchising measure" +was that, in breaking down the hedge of the law, it invaded Delicacy; +and whatever invaded delicacy helped to precipitate gross though perhaps +unforeseen evils. Unfortunately there are great masses--whole +classes--of people to whom delicacy, whether in speech or act, means +nothing. To eat, drink, sleep, buy and sell, marry and be given in +marriage, is for those masses the ideal and the law of life. These +things granted, they desire no more: any restriction on them, any +refinement of them, they dislike and resent. In another place[43] we +have cited the mysterious effect produced upon the Paris Correspondent +of the _Daily Telegraph_ by the sudden sound of the word "Delicacy." And +that word was uttered in connexion with the "enfranchising measure." "If +legislation on this subject were impeded by the party of bigotry, if +they chose not to wait for it, if they got married without it, and if +you were to meet them on the boulevard at Paris during their wedding +tour, should you go up to Bottles and say: 'Mr. Bottles, you are a +profligate man!' Poor Mr. Matthew Arnold, upon this, emerged suddenly +from his corner, and asked hesitatingly: 'But will any one dare to call +him a man of delicacy?' The question was so utterly unpractical that I +took no note of it whatever, and should not have mentioned it if it had +not been for its extraordinary effect upon our Paris Correspondent.... +My friend Nick, who has all the sensitive temperament of genius, seemed +inexplicably struck by this word _delicacy_, which he kept repeating to +himself. 'Delicacy,' said he--'delicacy--surely I have heard that word +before! Yes, in other days,' he went on dreamily, 'in my fresh +enthusiastic youth; before I knew Sala, before I wrote for that infernal +paper, before I called Dixon's style lithe and sinewy--' 'Collect +yourself, my friend,' laying my hand on his shoulder; 'you are unmanned. +But in mentioning Dixon you redouble my strength; for you bring to my +mind the great sexual insurrection of the Anglo-Teutonic race, and the +master-spirit which guides it.'"[44] + +But in matters far outside the region of marriage, that word +"delicacy," which so powerfully affected the Paris correspondent, is the +key to a great deal of what Arnold felt and wrote. In the sphere of +conduct he set up, as we have seen, two supreme objects for veneration +and attainment: Chastity and Charity. He practised them, he taught them, +and he used them as decisive tests of what was good and what was bad in +national life. But plainly there are large tracts of existence which lie +outside the purview of these two virtues. There is the domain of +honesty, integrity, and fair dealing; there is a loyalty to truth, the +pursuit of conscience at all costs and hazards; there is all that is +contained in the idea of beauty, propriety, and taste. None of these are +touched by charity or chastity. For example, a man may have an +unblemished life and a truly affectionate heart; and yet he may be +incorrigible in money-matters, or be ready to sacrifice principle to +convenience, or, like our great Middle Class generally, may be serenely +content with hideousness and bad manners. + +Now in all these departments of human life, less important indeed than +the two chiefest, but surely not unimportant, Arnold applied the +criterion of delicacy. "A finely-touched nature," he said, "will respect +in itself the sense of delicacy not less than the sense of honesty.... +The worship of sharp bargains is fatal to delicacy; nor is that missing +grace restored by accompanying the sharp bargain with an exhibition of +fine sentiments." Then, again, as regards loyalty to conviction, he knew +full well that, in Newman's phrase, he might "have saved himself many a +scrape, if he had been wise enough to hold his tongue." "The thought of +you," he wrote to Mr. Morley, "and of one or two other friends, was +often present to me in America, and, no doubt, contributed to make me +hold fast to 'the faith once delivered to the Saints.'" The slightest +deviation from the line of clear conviction--the least turning to left +or right in order to cocker a prejudice or please an audience or flatter +a class, showed a want of delicacy--a preference of present popularity +to permanent self-respect--which he could never have indulged in +himself, and with difficulty tolerated in others. He had nothing but +contempt for "philosophical politicians with a turn for swimming with +the stream, and philosophical divines with the same turn." And then, +again, in the whole of that great sphere which belongs to Beauty, +Propriety, and Taste, his sense of delicacy was always at work, and not +seldom in pain. "Ah," he exclaimed, quoting from Rivarol, "no one +considers how much pain any man of taste has to suffer, before ever he +inflicts any." To inflict pain was not, indeed, in his way, but to +suffer it was his too-frequent lot. From first to last he was protesting +against hideousness, rawness, vulgarity, and commonplace; craving for +sweetness, light, beauty and colour, instead of the bitterness, the +ugliness, the gloom and the drab which provided such large portions of +English life. "The [Greek: euphnês] is the man who turns towards +sweetness and light; the [Greek: aphnês] on the other hand is our +Philistine." "I do not much believe in good being done by a man unless +he can give _light_." "Oxford by her ineffable charm keeps ever calling +us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, to +_beauty_." In his constant quest for these glorious things--beauty, +colour, sweetness, and light,--his sense of delicacy had much to +undergo; for, in the class with which he was by the work of his life +brought in contact, they were unknown and unimagined; and the only class +where "elegance and refinement, beauty and grace" were found, was +inaccessible to Light. In both classes he found free scope for his +doctrine of Delicacy, one day remonstrating with a correspondent for +"living in a place with the absurd, and worse, name of 'Marine +Retreat'"; another, preaching that "a piano in a Quaker's drawing-room +is a step for him to more humane life;" and again "liking and respecting +polite tastes in a grandee," when Lord Ravensworth consulted him +about Latin verses. "At present far too many of Lord Ravensworth's class +are mere men of business, or mere farmers, or mere horse-racers, or mere +men of pleasure." That was a consummation which delicacy in the +Aristocratic class would make impossible. To cultivate in oneself, and +apply in one's conduct, this instinct of delicacy, was a lesson which no +one, who fell under Arnold's influence, could fail to learn. He taught +us to "liberate the gentler element in oneself," to eschew what was base +and brutal, unholy and unkind. He taught us to seek in every department +of life for what was "lovely and of good report," tasteful, becoming, +and befitting; to cultivate "man's sense for beauty, and man's instinct +for fit and pleasing forms of social life and manners." He taught us to +plan our lives, as St. Paul taught the Corinthians to plan their +worship, [Greek: euschmnonôs kai kata taxin],"--in right, graceful, or +becoming figure, and by fore-ordered arrangement."[45] Alike his +teaching and his example made us desire (however imperfectly we attained +our object) to perceive in all the contingencies and circumstances of +life exactly the line of conduct which would best consist with Delicacy, +and so to make virtue victorious by practising it attractively. + +[Illustration: Matthew Arnold, 1880 + +_From the Painting by G.F. Watts, R.A._ + +_Photo F. Hollyer_] + +[Footnote 33: _The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley_, by Edward Dowden, +LL.D. 1886.] + +[Footnote 34: His third son.] + +[Footnote 35: His elder daughter.] + +[Footnote 36: His younger daughter.] + +[Footnote 37: His fourth son.] + +[Footnote 38: His eldest son.] + +[Footnote 39: His second son.] + +[Footnote 40: "Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes of the +Church, the mystic key to Christian holiness. Continence was one of the +most sacred pretensions by which the organized preachers of superstition +claimed the reverence of men and women. It was identified, therefore, in +a particular manner with that Infamous, against which the main assault +of the time was directed."--Morley's _Voltaire_.] + +[Footnote 41: "_Rules of Cautions; or, Helps to Obedience_: called by +some the Hedge of the Law."--Bishop Andrews.] + +[Footnote 42: F.W.H. Myers.] + +[Footnote 43: Page 15.] + +[Footnote 44: The allusion is to the late Mr. W. Hepworth Dixon, and his +writings on the Polygamous Sects of America.] + +[Footnote 45: W.E. Gladstone, _The Church of England and Ritualism_.] + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THEOLOGY + + +Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, after hearing a sermon by Dr. +Howson, Dean of Chester, wrote thus in his diary: "One good bit--that +the emptying Christianity of dogma would perish it, like Charlemagne's +face when exhumed." It was a striking simile, and if well worked out by +a rhetorician, say of Dr. Liddon's type, it might have powerfully +clinched some great argument for the necessary place of dogma in +Christian theology. But the sermon has vanished, and we can only +conjecture from the date of the entry--October 5, 1869--that the good +Dean's ire had been excited by Matthew Arnold's first appearance in the +field of theological controversy. Six years before, indeed, Arnold had +touched that field, when in _The Bishop and the Philosopher_ he quizzed +Colenso, "the arithmetical bishop who couldn't forgive Moses for having +written a Book of Numbers,"[46] about his "jejune and technical manner +of dealing with Biblical controversy." "It is," he wrote, "a result of +no little culture to attain to a clear perception that science and +religion are two wholly different things. The multitude will for ever +confuse them.... Dr. Colenso, in his first volume, did all he could to +strengthen the confusion, and to make it dangerous." "Let us have all +the science there is from the men of science; from the men of religion +let us have religion." + +But in that earlier essay he had merely criticised a critic; he had not +originated criticisms of his own. So he had touched the field of +theological controversy, but had not appeared on it as a performer. That +now he so appeared was probably due to the success which attended +_Culture and Anarchy_. The publication of that book had immensely +extended the circle of his audience. Those who care for literature are +few; those who care for politics are many. And, though the politics of +_Culture and Anarchy_ were new and strange, hard to be understood, and +running in all directions off the beaten track, still the professional +politicians, and that class of ordinary citizens which aims at +cultivation and seeks a wider knowledge, took note of _Culture and +Anarchy_ as a book which must be read, and which, though they might not +always understand it, would at least show them which way the wind was +blowing. The present writer perfectly recalls the comfortable figure of +a genial merchant, returned from business to his suburban villa, and +saying: "Well, I shall spend this Saturday afternoon on Mat Arnold's new +book, and I shall not understand one word of it." It had never occurred +to the good man that he was either a Hebraizer or a Hellenizer. He had +always believed that he was a Liberal, a Low Churchman, and a +silk-mercer. + +For Arnold to find that he was in possession of a pulpit--that he had +secured a position from which he could preach his doctrine with a +certainty that it would be heard and pondered, if not accepted--was a +new and an invigorating experience. He at once began to make the most of +his opportunity. While the Press was still teeming with criticisms of +_Culture and Anarchy_, he began to extend his activities from the field +of political and social criticism to that of theological controversy. +The latter experiment seems to have grown spontaneously out of the +former. In _Culture and Anarchy_ he had charged Puritanism with +imagining that in the Bible it had, as its own special possession, a +_unum necessarium_, which made it independent of Sweetness and Light, +and guided it aright without the aid of culture. "The dealings," he +said, "of Puritanism with the writings of St. Paul afford a noteworthy +illustration of this. Nowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, +and in that apostle's greatest work, the Epistle to the Romans, has +Puritanism found what seemed to furnish it with the one thing needful, +and to give it canons of truth absolute and final." + +This reliance of Puritanism on Holy Scripture, or certain portions of +it, seems to have set him on the endeavour to ascertain how far the +Puritans had really mastered the meaning of the writers on whom they +relied; and more particularly of St. Paul. And this particular direction +seems to have been given to his thoughts by a sentence, then recently +published, of Renan: "After having been for three hundred years, thanks +to Protestantism, the Christian doctor _par excellence_, Paul is now +coming to an end of his reign." + +Arnold, as his manner was, fastened on these last words, and made them +the text of his treatise on _St. Paul and Protestantism_, which began to +appear in October, 1869. "_St. Paul is now coming to an end of his +reign._ Precisely the contrary, I venture to think, is the judgment to +which a true criticism of men and of things leads us. The Protestantism +which has so used and abused St. Paul is coming to an end;... but the +real reign of St. Paul is only beginning." + +In _Culture and Anarchy_ he had shown how "the over-Hebraizing of +Puritanism, and its want of a wide culture, so narrow its range and +impair its vision that even the documents which it thinks +all-sufficient, and to the study of which it exclusively rivets itself, +it does not rightly understand, but is apt to make of them something +quite different from what they really are. In short, no man, who knows +nothing else, knows even his Bible." And he showed how readers of the +Bible attached to essential words and ideas of the Bible a sense which +was not the writer's. Now, he said, let us go further on the same path, +and, "instead of lightly disparaging the great name of St. Paul, let us +see if the needful thing is not rather to rescue St. Paul and the Bible +from the perversion of them by mistaken men." Although he calls the +treatise in which he addresses himself to this endeavour _St. Paul and +Protestantism_, therein following Renan's phraseology, in the treatise +itself he speaks rather of St. Paul and _Puritanism_; and this he does +because here in England Puritanism is the strong and special +representation of Protestantism. "The Church of England," he says, +"existed before Protestantism and contains much besides Protestantism." +Remove the Protestant schemes of doctrine, which here and there show +themselves in her documents, "and all which is most valuable in the +Church of England would still remain"; whereas those schemes are the +very life and substance of Puritanism and the Puritan bodies. "It is +the positive Protestantism of Puritanism with which we are here +concerned, as distinguished from the negative Protestantism of the +Church of England." Leaving, then, the Church of England on one side, we +fix our gaze on Puritanism, and we see that "the conception of the ways +of God to man which Puritanism has formed for itself" has for its +cardinal points the terms _Election_ and _Justification_. "Puritanism's +very reason for existing depends on the worth of this its vital +conception"; and, when we are told that St. Paul is a Protestant doctor +whose reign is ending, "we in England can best try the assertion by +fixing our eyes on our own Puritans, and comparing their doctrine and +their hold on vital truth with St. Paul's." + +Entering upon this endeavour, he divides Puritanism into Calvinism, and +Arminianism or Methodism. The foremost place in Calvinistic theology +belongs to Predestination; in Methodist theology to Justification by +Faith. Calvinism relies most on man's fears; Methodism most on his +hopes. Both Calvinism and Methodism appeal to the Bible, and above all +to St. Paul, for the proof of what they teach. Very well then, says +Arnold, we will enquire what Paul's account of God's proceedings with +man really is, and whether it tallies with the various representations +of the same subject which Puritanism, in its two main divisions, has +given. We will also, he says, follow Puritanism's example and take the +Epistle to the Romans as the chief place for finding what Paul really +thought on the points in question. + +He illustrates his argument freely by citations from the other +undoubtedly Pauline epistles, but he characteristically attributes the +Epistle to the Hebrews to Apollos, as being "just such a performance as +might naturally have come from 'an eloquent man and mighty in the +Scriptures,' and in whom the intelligence, and the powers of combining, +type-finding, and expounding somewhat dominated the religious +perceptions." While he thus appeals unreservedly to St. Paul, he is +careful to point out that we must retranslate him for ourselves if we +wish to get rid of the preconceived doctrines of Election and +Justification which the translators have read into him. A strong example +of their method was to be found in the word _atonement_ in Romans v. II, +which has disappeared from our Revised Version, being replaced by +_reconciliation_. The other point to be borne in mind is that Paul wrote +about Religion "in a vivid and figured way"--not with the scientific and +formal method of a theological treatise; and that, being a Jew, "he uses +the Jewish Scriptures in a Jew's arbitrary and uncritical fashion"; +quoting them at haphazard and applying them fantastically. + +With these cautions duly noted, Arnold goes to the order in which Paul's +ideas naturally stand, and the connexion between one and another. Here +the unlikeness between Paul and Puritanism at once appears. "What sets +the Calvinist in motion seems to be the desire to flee from the wrath to +come; and what sets the Methodist in motion, the desire for eternal +bliss. What is it which sets Paul in motion? It is the impulse which we +have elsewhere noted as the master-impulse of Hebraism--_the desire for +righteousness_." How searching and keen and practical was Paul's idea of +righteousness is shown by his long and frequent lists of moral faults to +be avoided and of virtues to be cultivated. This zeal for righteousness +marks the character of Paul both before and after his conversion. Nay, +it explains his conversion. "Into this spirit, so possessed with the +hunger and thirst for righteousness, and precisely because it was so +possessed by it, the characteristic doctrines of Christ, which brought a +new aliment to feed this hunger and thirst--of Christ, whom he had never +seen, but who was in every one's words and thoughts, the Teacher who was +meek and lowly in heart, who said men were brothers and must love one +another, that the last should often be first, that the exercise of +dominion and lordship had nothing in them desirable, and that we must +become as little children--sank down and worked there even before Paul +ceased to persecute, and had no small part in getting him ready for the +crisis of his conversion." As soon as that conversion was accomplished, +as soon as Paul found himself a teacher and a leader in the new +community, he resumed, with all his old vigour, though in an altered +fashion, his labours for righteousness. In all his teaching he harps +upon the same string. If he leaves the enforcement of the law even for a +moment, it is only to establish it more victoriously. "This man, out of +whom an astounding criticism has deduced Antinomianism, is in truth so +possessed with horror of Antinomianism, that he goes to grace for the +sole purpose of extirpating it, and even then cannot rest without +perpetually telling us why he is gone there." + +Righteousness then, as St. Paul conceives it, stands in keeping the law +and so serving God. But to serve God, "to follow that central clue in +our moral being which unites us to the universal order, is no easy +task.... In some way or other, says Bishop Wilson, 'every man is +conscious of an opposition in him between the flesh and the spirit.'" No +one is more keenly conscious of this opposition than St. Paul himself. +How is he to bring the evil and self-seeking tendencies of his +composite nature into conformity with the law and will of God? "Mere +commanding and forbidding is of no avail, and only irritates opposition +in the desires it tries to control.... Neither the law of nature nor the +law of Moses availed to bind men to righteousness. So we come to the +word which is the governing word of the Epistle to the Romans--the word +_all_. As the word _righteousness_ is the governing word of St. Paul's +entire mind and life, so the word _all_ is the governing word of this +his chief epistle. The Gentile with the law of nature, the Jew with the +law of Moses, alike fail to achieve righteousness. '_All_ have sinned, +and come short of the glory of God.' All do what they would not, and do +not what they would; all feel themselves enslaved, impotent, guilty, +miserable. 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body +of this death?' Hitherto we have followed Paul in the sphere of morals; +we have now come with him to the point where he enters the sphere of +religion." Paul is profoundly conscious of his own imperfections, of the +tendencies in his nature which war against righteousness; of his +inability, in common with all the human race, to follow perfectly the +law of God. He has now come to know Christ's mind and life. Christ has, +in his own phrase, apprehended him--laid hold on him; and he is +persuaded that Christ so laid hold upon him in order to lead him into +perfect, not partial, righteousness--into entire conformity with the +will of God. In coming to know Christ, he had come to know perfect +righteousness, and he desired to attain to it himself, believing that +Christ had laid hold on him for that very purpose. + +And when we come to the vision of that perfect Righteousness, and Paul's +desire to attain to it, we are seasonably reminded of the order in which +his ideas come. "For us, who approach Christianity through a scholastic +theology, it is Christ's divinity which establishes His being without +sin. For Paul, who approached Christianity through his personal +experience, it was Christ's being without sin which established His +divinity. The large and complete conception of righteousness to which he +himself had slowly and late, and only by Christ's help, awakened, in +Christ he seemed to see existing absolutely and naturally. The devotion +to this conception which made it meat and drink to carry it into effect, +a devotion of which he himself was strongly and deeply conscious, he saw +in Christ still stronger, by far, and deeper than in himself. But for +attaining the righteousness of God, for reaching an absolute conformity +with the moral order and with God's will, he saw no such impotence +existing in Christ's case as in his own. For Christ, the uncertain +conflict between the law in our members and the law of the spirit did +not appear to exist. Those eternal vicissitudes of victory and defeat, +which drove Paul to despair, in Christ were absent; smoothly and +inevitably He followed the real and eternal order in preference to the +momentary and apparent order. Obstacles outside there were plenty, but +obstacles within Him there were none. He was led by the spirit of God; +He was dead to sin, He lived to God; and in this life to God He +persevered even to His cruel bodily death on the cross. As many as are +led by the spirit of God, says Paul, are the sons of God. If this is so +with even us, who live to God so feebly and who render such an imperfect +obedience, how much more is He who lives to God entirely and who renders +an unalterable obedience, the unique and only son of God?" This, says +Arnold, is undoubtedly the main line of movement which Paul's ideas +respecting Christ follow; and so far we have no quarrel with our guide. +But he hastily goes on to an assertion which seems arbitrary and +controvertible. He is forced to admit that Paul, who saw perfect +righteousness in Christ and believed in His Divinity because of it, also +identified Him with that Eternal Word or Wisdom of God, which, according +to Jewish theology, had been with God from the beginning, and through +which the world was created. He also has to admit that Paul identified +Christ with the Jewish Messiah who will some day appear to terminate the +actual kingdoms of the world and establish His own. But in both these +cases he treats St. Paul's idea as a kind of afterthought, due to his +training in the scholastic theology of Judaism, and quite subsidiary to +his paramount belief. That belief was that, if we would fulfil the law +of God and live in righteousness, we must learn from the All-Holy Christ +to die as He died to all moral faults, all rebellious instincts, and +live with Him in ever-increasing conformity to His high example of moral +perfection. + +For the power which drew men to admire this sanctity and follow this +example Paul had his own name. "The struggling stream of duty, which had +not volume enough to bear man to his goal, was suddenly reinforced by +the immense tidal wave of sympathy and emotion"; and to this new and +potent influence Paul gave the name of _faith_. So vital is this word to +Paul's religious doctrine that all Pauline theology and controversy has +centred in it and battled round it. "To have faith in Christ means to be +attached to Christ, to embrace Christ, to be identified with +Christ"--but how? Paul answers, "By dying with Him." All his teaching +amounts to this, and it is enough. We must die with Christ to the law +of the flesh, live with Christ to the law of the mind. To live with +Christ after death is to rise with Him. It implies Resurrection. Here +again Arnold is constrained to admit the validity of Catholic +interpretation. He cannot deny that Paul believed absolutely in the +physical, literal, and material fact of Christ's bodily Resurrection. +But he insists that, while accepting this fact, Paul lays far more +stress upon the spiritual interpretation of it. For Paul, death is +living after the flesh; life is mortifying the flesh by the spirit; +"resurrection is the rising, within the sphere of our earthly existence, +from death in this sense to life in this sense." + +But, though St. Paul so often uses the word Resurrection in this +spiritual and mystical sense, it cannot be denied that he uses it also, +uses it primarily, in its physical and literal sense. In that sense, it +implies a physical and literal Death of Christ. And on that Death, what +is St. Paul's teaching? Not that it was a substitution, or a +satisfaction, or an appeasement of wrath or an expiation of guilt--but +that in it and by it "Christ parted with what, to men in general, is the +most precious of things--individual self and selfishness; He pleased not +Himself, obeyed the spirit of God, died to sin and to the law in our +members, consummated upon the Cross this death"; in all this seeking to +show His followers that whosoever would cease from sin and follow +Righteousness must be prepared to "suffer in the flesh." + +Arnold thus sums up his general contention: "The three essential terms +of Pauline theology are not, therefore, as popular theology makes +them--_calling_, _justification_, _sanctification_; they are rather +these: _dying with Christ, resurrection from the dead, growing into +Christ_." And thus he concludes his controversy with the theologians who +have misinterpreted their favourite Apostle: "It is to Protestantism, +and its Puritan Gospel, that the reproaches thrown on St. Paul, for +sophisticating religion of the heart into theories of the head about +election and justification, rightly attach. St. Paul himself, as we have +seen, begins with seeking righteousness and ends with finding it; from +first to last the practical religious sense never deserts him. If he +could have seen and heard our preachers of predestination and +justification, they are just the people he would have called 'diseased +about questions and word-battlings.' He would have told Puritanism that +every Sunday when in all its countless chapels it reads him and preaches +from him, the veil is upon its heart. The moment it reads him right, a +veil will seem to have been taken away from its heart; it will feel as +though scales were fallen from its eyes.... The doctrine of Paul will +arise out of the tomb where for centuries it has lain covered; it will +edify the Church of the future; it will have the consent of happier +generations, the applause of less superstitious ages. All, all, will be +too little to pay half the debt which the Church of God owes to this +'least of the apostles, who was not fit to be called an apostle, because +he persecuted the Church of God.'" + +[Illustration: Pains Hill Cottage, Cobham, from the Lawn] + +The articles of which the foregoing pages give the substance were +published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for October and November, 1869. On +November 13, Arnold wrote with glee that the organs of the Independent +and the Baptist Churches showed that he had "entirely reached the +special Puritan class he meant to reach." "Whether," he said, "I have +rendered St. Paul's ideas with perfect correctness or not, there is no +doubt that the confidence with which these people regarded their +conventional rendering of them was quite baseless, made them narrow and +intolerant, and prevented all progress. I shall have a last paper at +Christmas, called _Puritanism and the Church of England_, to show how +the Church, though holding certain doctrines like justification in +common with Puritanism, has gained by not pinning itself to those +doctrines and nothing else, but by resting on Catholic antiquity, +historic Christianity, development, and so on, which open to it an +escape from all single doctrines as they are outgrown." + +That "last paper" appeared in due course, and it stated the position of +the Church of England as the historical and continuous Church in this +land, with an uncompromising directness which would have satisfied +Bishop Stubbs or Professor Freeman. With equal directness, it affirmed +that Protestantism, "with its three notable tenets of predestination, +original sin, and justification, has been pounding away for three +centuries at St. Paul's wrong words, and missing his essential +doctrine." It traced, briefly but very clearly, the history and +development of the Universal Church, justified the Church of England in +separating from Rome on account of Rome's moral corruptions, condemned +the Nonconformists for separating on the mere ground of opinion, +extolled the comprehensiveness and simplicity of Anglican formularies, +and suggested to the Dissenters that, if they would only swallow their +objections to Episcopacy and rejoin the Church of England, they might +greatly strengthen the national organization for promoting Religion. In +doing this they would only obey the natural instinct which bids all +Christians worship together. "_Securus colit orbis terrarum_"--those +pursue the purpose best who pursue it together. For, unless prevented by +extraneous causes, they manifestly tend, as the history of the Church's +growth shows, to pursue it together." + +The two papers on _St. Paul and Protestantism_ together with that on +_Puritanism and the Church of England_ were published in 1870 in a +single volume bearing the former title, and to this volume Arnold +prefixed a preface, enforcing his doctrine with some vigorous hits at a +dissenting Member of Parliament called Winterbotham, for glorying in an +attitude of "watchful jealousy"; at Mill for his "almost feminine +vehemence of irritation" against the Church of England, at Fawcett for +his "mere blatancy and truculent hardness." He concluded by re-affirming +his main object in this theological controversy. "To disengage the +religion of England from unscriptural Protestantism, political Dissent, +and a spirit of watchful jealousy, may be an aim not in our day +reachable, and still it is well to level at it." + +The book produced a strong and immediate effect. As _Culture and +Anarchy_ first obtained for its author a hearing from politicians and +social reformers, so _St. Paul and Protestantism_ obtained him a hearing +from clergymen, religious teachers, and amateurs of theology. Dr. +Vaughan, then just appointed Master of the Temple, was moved to preach a +sermon,[47] pointing out--what indeed was true enough--that Arnold +omitted from St. Paul's teaching all reference to the Divine Pardon of +Sin, or, as theologians would say, to the Atonement. But on the other +hand, Bishop Fraser seems to have approved. "The question is," wrote +Arnold, "is the view propounded _true_? I believe it is, and that it is +important, because it places our use of the Bible and our employment of +its language on a basis indestructibly solid. The Bishop of Manchester +told me it had been startlingly new to him, but the more he thought of +it, the more he thought it was true."[48] + +He himself was delighted with this success. He hoped to exercise a +"healing and reconciling influence" in the troubled times which he saw +ahead; "and it is this which makes me glad to find--what I find more and +more--that I _have_ influence." He delighted in finding that the "May +Meetings" abounded in comments on _St. Paul and Protestantism_. "We +shall see," he exclaims gleefully, "great changes in the Dissenters +before long." "The two things--the position of the Dissenters and the +right reading of St. Paul and the New Testament--are closely connected; +and I am convinced the general line I have taken as to the latter has a +lucidity and inevitableness about it which will make it more and more +prevail." The book soon reached a second edition, and he wrote thus +about it to his friend Charles Kingsley: "I must have the pleasure of +sending you, as soon as it is reprinted, a little book called _St. Paul +and Protestantism_, which the Liberals and physicists thoroughly +dislike, but which I had great pleasure and profit in thinking out and +writing." + +And now he was fairly embarked, for good or for evil, on his theological +career. He had exalted the Church of England as the historic Church in +this land: he had poured scorn on "hole-and-corner religions" of +separatism; he had advised the Dissenters to submit to Episcopal +government and return to the Church and strengthen its preaching power: +and he had re-stated, in terminology of his own, what he conceived to be +St. Paul's teaching on Religion. This work was completed in 1870, and in +1871 he began to publish instalments of a book which appeared in 1873 +under the title _Literature and Dogma_. The scope and purpose of this +book may best be given in his own words. It deals with "the relation of +Letters to Religion: their effect upon dogma, and the consequences of +this to religion." His object is "to reassure those who feel attachment +to Christianity, to the Bible, and who recognize the growing discredit +befalling miracles and the super-natural." + +"If the people are to receive a religion of the Bible, we must find for +the Bible some other basis than that which the Churches assign to it, a +verifiable basis and not an assumption. This new religion of the Bible +the people may receive; the version now current of the religion of the +Bible they will not receive." + +He sets out on this enterprise by repeating what he had said in _St. +Paul and Protestantism_ about the misunderstandings which had arisen +from affixing to certain phrases such as _grace, new birth_, and +_justification_, a fixed, rigid, and quasi-scientific meaning. "Terms +which with St. Paul are _literary_ terms, theologians have employed as +if they were _scientific_ terms." In saying this he goes no further than +several of his predecessors and contemporaries on the Liberal side in +theology. Even so orthodox a divine as Dr. Vaughan laid it down that +"Nothing in the Church's history has been more fertile in discord and +error than the tendency of theologians to stereotype metaphor."[49] +Bishop Hampden's much-criticised Bampton Lectures had merely aimed at +stating the accepted doctrines in terms other than those derived from +schoolmen and mataphysicians. Dean Stanley's unrivalled powers of +literary exposition were consistently employed in the same endeavour. To +call Abraham a Sheikh was only an ingenious attempt at naturalizing +Genesis. But in _Literature and Dogma_ Arnold applies this method far +more fundamentally. According to him, even "God" is a literary term to +which a scientific sense has been arbitrarily applied. He pronounces, +without waiting to prove, that there is absolutely no foundation in +reason for the idea that God is a "Person, the First Great Cause, the +moral and intelligent Governor of the Universe." We are not to dream +that He is a "Being who thinks and loves"; or that we can love Him or +address our prayers to Him with any chance of being heard. What then, +according to Arnold, is God? and here he answers with his celebrated +definition. God is a "stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for +Righteousness," or good conduct. Because this power works eternally and +unchangeably, it is called "The Eternal," which thus becomes a sort of +nickname for God. And as for our relations with God, called by most +people Religion, well--"Religion is morality touched by Emotion." This, +and nothing more. + +For the beginnings of religious history, he goes to the House of Israel. +The Israelites, as he was always insisting, had a strong sense for +Righteousness, or Conduct; and they found happiness in pursuing it. The +idea of Righteousness was their God, and the enjoyment of Righteousness +their religion. This simple conception held its own for generations; +but, by the time of the Maccabees, the Israelites had become familiar +with the idea of a resurrection from the dead and a final judgment. "The +phantasmagories of more prodigal and wild imaginations have mingled with +the product of Israel's austere spirit." + +"Israel, who originally followed righteousness because he felt that it +tended to life, might and did naturally come at last to follow it +because it would enable him to stand before the Son of Man at His +coming, and to share in the triumph of the Saints of the Most High." +This, says Arnold, was _Extra-belief_, "Aberglaube," belief beyond what +is certain and veritable. "_Extra-belief_ is the poetry of life." The +Messianic ideas were the poetry of life to Israel in the age when Jesus +Christ came. When He came, Israel was looking for a Messiah; and, when +He began to preach, the better conscience of Judaism recognized in His +teaching a new aspect of religion which it had desired. National +Righteousness had been the idea of the older Judaism. Personal +righteousness was the idea of the New Teaching. "Jesus took the +individual Israelite by himself apart, made him listen for the voice of +his conscience, and said to him in effect: 'If every _one_ would mend +_one_, we should have a new world.'" A Teacher so winning, so +acceptable, so in unison with Israel's higher aspirations must surely be +the Messiah whom earlier generations had expected; and so, in virtue of +the purity and nobility of His teaching, Jesus Christ attained His +unique position. He became, in popular acceptance, the Great, the Unique +Man, in some sense the Son of God, Prophet and Teacher of the new and +nobler morality. So there grew up "a personal devotion to Jesus Christ, +who brought the doctrine to His disciples and made a passage for it into +their hearts." And almost immediately after "Aberglaube" regathered; and +devotion to Jesus took the form of an _Extra-belief_ of some future +advent in splendour and terror, the destruction of His enemies, and the +triumphs of His followers. And this process of development, begun while +Christ was still on earth, extended with great rapidity after His death. +"As time went on, and Christianity spread wider and wider among the +multitude, and with less and less of control from the personal influence +of Jesus, Christianity developed more and more its side of miracle and +legend; until to believe Jesus to be the Son of God meant to believe +other points of the legend--His preternatural conception and birth, His +miracles, His bodily resurrection, His ascent into heaven, and His +future triumphant return to judgment. And these and like matters are +what popular religion drew forth from the records of Jesus as the +essentials of belief." + +From this account, strangely inadequate indeed, but not positively +offensive, of the origin and development of Christianity, he passes on +to the attempts made by current theology to prove the truth of +Christianity from Prophecy and Miracle. With regard to prophecy, he has +little difficulty in showing that predictions have often miscarried, and +that passages in the Old Testament have been interpreted as relating to +Christ, which probably had no such reference. Thus the first disciples +clearly expected the Second Advent to occur in their own life-time; and +it has not occurred yet. "The Lord said unto my Lord" is better rendered +"The Eternal said unto my lord the King"; and is "a simple promise of +victory to a royal leader." So, in something less than four pages, he +dismisses the proof from Prophecy, and goes on to the proof from +Miracles. "Whether we attack them or whether we defend them, does not +much matter. The human mind, as its experience widens, is turning away +from them. And for this reason: _it sees, as its experience widens, how +they arise_." Our duty, then, if we love Jesus Christ and value the New +Testament, is to make men see that the claim of Christianity to our +allegiance is not based upon Miracles, but rests on quite other grounds, +substantial and indestructible. The good faith of the writers of the New +Testament--the "reporters of Jesus," as Arnold oddly calls them--is +admitted; but, if we are to read their narratives to any profit, we must +convince ourselves of their "liability to mistake." Excited, +impassioned, wonder-loving disciples surrounded the simplest acts and +words of Christ with a thaumaturgical atmosphere, and, when He merely +exercised His power of moral help and healing, the "reporters" declared +that He cured the sick and drove out evil spirits. In brief, when the +"reporters" narrated miracles wrought by Christ, they were deceived; +but, in spite of that, they were excellent men, and our obligations to +them are great. "Reverence for all who, in those first dubious days of +Christianity, chose the better part, and resolutely cast in their lot +with 'the despised and rejected of men'! Gratitude to all who, while the +tradition was yet fresh, helped by their writings to preserve and set +clear the precious record of the words and life of Jesus!" + +And yet that record, as they wrote it, is, according to Arnold, brimful +of errors, both in fact and in interpretation; and the Church, which has +preserved their written tradition, and kept it concurrently with her +own oral tradition, has fallen into enormous and fundamental delusion +about those "words" and that "life." "Christianity is immortal; it has +eternal truth, inexhaustible value, a boundless future. But our popular +religion at present conceives the birth, ministry, and death of Christ +as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of miracles--and _miracles do +not happen_." + +The fact that, in the preface to the popular edition of _Literature and +Dogma_, he italicized those last words would appear to show that he +attached some special, almost "thaumaturgical," value to them. _Miracles +do not happen._ It has been justly observed that any man, woman, or +child that ever lived might have said this, and have caused no startling +sensation. But when Arnold uttered these words, emphasized them, and +seemed to base his case against the Catholic creed upon them, it behoved +his disciples to ponder them, and to enquire if, and how far, they were +true. + +As far as we know, there never was but one human being to whom they +proved overwhelming, and he is a character in a popular work of fiction. +"Miracles do not happen" broke the bruised reed of the Rev. Robert +Elsmere's faith. That long-legged weakling, with his auburn hair and +"boyish innocence of mood," and sweet ignorance of the wicked world, +went down, it will be remembered, like a ninepin before the assaults of +a sceptical squire who had studied in Germany. "A great creed, with the +testimony of eighteen centuries at its back, could not find an +articulate word to say in its defence.... What weapons the Rector +wielded for it, what strokes he struck, has not even in a single line +been recorded."[50] + +A happily-conceived picture--was it in _Punch_?--represented the Rector +on his knees before the Squire, ejaculating, with clasped hands, "Pray, +pray, don't mention another German author, or I shall be obliged to +resign my living." However, the ruthless Squire persisted; and Elsmere +apparently read _Literature and Dogma_, and, when he came to "Miracles +do not happen" he resigned; threw up his Orders, and founded what Arnold +would have called "a hole-and-corner" religion of his own. + +Well, but, it may be urged, Elsmere is after all only a fictitious +character, taken from a novel purporting, as Bishop Creighton said, to +describe a man who once was a Christian and ceased to be one, but really +describing a man who never was a Christian, and eventually found it out. +This, of course, is true, but it must be presumed that the Reverend +Robert is not absolutely the creature of a vivid imagination, but stands +for some real men and women who, in actual life, came under the +author's observation. If that be so, we must admit that Arnold's dogma +about Miracles had a practical effect upon certain minds. An Elsmere of +a different type--a flippant Elsmere, if such a portent could be +conceived--might have answered that, if miracles happened, they would +not be miracles; in other words, that events of frequent occurrence are +not called miracles; and that it belongs to the idea of a miracle that +it is a special and signal suspension of the Divine Law, for a great +purpose and a great occasion. If, again, Robert, eschewing flippancy, +had retired on abstract theory, he might have said that an event so +unique and so transcendent as the assumption of human nature by Eternal +God seems to demand, in the fitness of things, a method of entry into +the material world, and a method of departure from it, wholly and +strikingly dissimilar to the established order--in common parlance, +miraculous. Answers conceived in these two senses--some rough and +popular and declamatory, some learned and argumentative and +scientific--appeared in great numbers. "Grave objections are alleged +against the book.... Its conclusions about the meaning of the term +_God_, and about man's knowledge of God, are severely condemned; strong +objections are taken to our view of the Bible-documents in general, to +our account of the Canon of the Gospels, to our estimate of the Fourth +Gospel." To these criticisms Arnold might have added one yet more +cogent. It was felt by many of his readers, and even by some of his most +attached disciples, that the "sinuous, easy, unpolemical method" which +he vaunted, and which he applied so happily to criticism of books and +life, was not grave enough, or cogent enough, when applied to the +criticism of Religion. From first to last his method was arbitrary. +[Greek: Hantos hepha]--the Master said it. This was excellent when he +criticised literature. To say that a verse of Macaulay's was painful, or +a line of Francis Newman's hideous, was well within his province. To say +that one author wrote in the Grand Style and that another showed the +Note of Provinciality--that also was his right. To pronounce that a +passage from Sophocles was religious poetry of the highest and most +edifying type,[51] whereas the Eternal Power was displeased by "such +doggerel hymns as + + _Sing Glory, Glory, Glory, to the Great God Triune,_" + +this again was all very well; for matters of this kind do not admit of +argument and proof. But, when it comes to handling Religion, this +arbitrary method--this innate and unquestioning claim to settle what is +good or bad, true or false--provokes rebellion. No one was more severe +than Arnold on the folly of Puritanism in founding its doctrine of +Justification on isolated texts borrowed from St. Paul; yet no one was +more confident than he that man's whole conception of God could be +safely based on the fact that at a certain period of their history the +Jews took to expressing God by a word which signifies "Eternal." +"Rejoice and give thanks," "Rejoice evermore," are certainly texts of +Holy Writ; but he seems to think that, by merely quoting them, he has +abrogated all the sterner side of the Bible's teaching about human life +and destiny. An even more curious instance of literary self-confidence +may be cited from his treatment of the Lord's commission to the +Apostles. "It is extremely improbable that Jesus should ever have +charged his Apostles to 'baptize all nations in the name of the Father, +the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'" But "He may perfectly well have said: +'Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; whosesoever sins ye +retain, they are retained.'" The one formula seems to Arnold +anachronistic and unlikely, the other perfectly natural. This is all +very interesting and may be very true; but it is too dogmatic to be +convincing. In such a case one may respectfully cry out that Letters are +overstepping their province; and that one man's sense of fitness, +style, and literary likelihood is not sufficient warrant for +discrediting a well-tested and established document. + +[Illustration: Matthew Arnold, 1884 + +_Photo Elliott & Fry_] + +Yet, after all, documents, however well-tested and established, are not +the backbone of the Christian religion. It may well be that to minds +inured from infancy to the worship of the letter; to believers in "the +Bible and the Bible only" as the ground of their religion; Arnold's +solvent methods and free handling of the sacred text were alarming and +revolutionary. But they fell harmless on the minds which had long +schooled themselves in the Christian tradition; which took the Bible +from the Church, not the Church from the Bible; and which realized that +what had sufficed for the life of Christians before the Canon was +contemplated would suffice again, even if every book contained in the +Canon were resolved into mere literature. + +Yet again, a criticism brought freely and justly against his biblical +disputations was that in his appeal to Letters and to what he conceived +to be human nature, he overlooked the at least equally important appeal +to History. He seems indeed to have avoided coming to close quarters +with the historical defenders of the Christian Creed. It was easy enough +to poke fun at Archbishop Thomson, Bishop Wilberforce, and Bishop +Ellicott; Mr. Moody, and the Rev. W. Cattle, and the clergymen who +write to the _Guardian_. But Bishop Lightfoot he left severely alone, +with Bishop Westcott and Dr. Sanday and students of the same authority; +and he would probably have justified his neglect of their contentions by +saying, as he had said twenty years before, in his light and airy +fashion, that "it was not possible for a clergyman to treat these +matters satisfactorily." + +But, though clergymen are thus put quietly out of court, a layman may +still be heard; and one could almost wish that he had lived to handle, +in some fresh preface to _Literature and Dogma_, such a confession of +faith as that which Lord Salisbury gave in 1894-- + +"To me, the central point is the Resurrection of Christ, which I +believe. Firstly, because it is testified by men who had every +opportunity of seeing and knowing, and whose veracity was tested by the +most tremendous trials, both of energy and endurance, during long lives. +Secondly, because of the marvellous effect it had upon the world. As a +moral phenomenon, the spread and mastery of Christianity is without a +parallel. I can no more believe that colossal moral effects can be +without a cause, than I can believe that the various motions of the +magnet are without a cause, though I cannot wholly explain them. To any +one who believes the Resurrection of Christ, the rest presents little +difficulty. No one who has that belief will doubt that those who were +commissioned by Him to speak--Paul, Peter, Mark, John--carried a Divine +message. St. Matthew falls into the same category. St. Luke has the +warrant of the generation of Christians who saw and heard the others." + +So far the testimony of a layman. Arnold, as we know, loved and elegized +one Dean of Westminster. Would he have tolerated the testimony of +another? + +"The Church believes to-day in the Resurrection of Christ, because she +has always believed in it. If all the documents which tell the story of +the first Easter Day should disappear, the Church would still shout her +Easter praises, and offer her Easter sacrifice of thanksgiving; for she +is older than the oldest of her documents, and from father to son all +through the centuries she has passed on the message of the first Easter +morning--'The Lord is risen indeed.' The Church believes in the +Resurrection because she is the product of the Resurrection."[52] + +But, in spite of varied criticism, _Literature and Dogma_ was well +received. Three editions were published in 1873; a fourth in 1874; a +fifth in 1876, and the "popular edition" in 1883. As usual, he was +serenely pleased with his handiwork. In 1874 he wrote to his sister: "It +will more and more become evident how entirely religious is the work +which I have done in _Literature and Dogma_. The enemies of religion see +this well enough already." Ten years later, he wrote from Cincinnati: +"What strikes me in America is the number of friends _Literature and +Dogma_ has made me, amongst ministers of religion especially--and how +the effect of the book here is conservative." + +To the various criticisms of the book he began replying in the +_Contemporary Review_ for October, 1874. In November of that year he +wrote to Lady de Rothschild: "You must read my metaphysics in this last +_Contemporary_. My first and last appearance in the field of +metaphysics, where you, I know, are no stranger." The completed reply +was published as _God and the Bible_ in 1875. This reply, which +contained, as he thought, "the best prose he had ever succeeded in +writing," was a reassertion and development of the previous work, and +was written, as the preface said, "for a reader who is more or less +conversant with the Bible, who can feel the attraction of the Christian +religion, but who has acquired habits of intellectual seriousness, has +been revolted by having things presented solemnly to him for his use +which will not hold water, and who will start with none of such things +even to reach what he values. Come what may, he will deal with this +great matter of religion fairly. It is the aim of the present volume, as +it was the aim of _Literature and Dogma_, to show to such a man that his +honesty will be rewarded.... I write to convince the lover of religion +that by following habits of intellectual seriousness he need not, so far +as religion is concerned, lose anything." + +It was, we must suppose, with the same benign intention that in 1877 he +addressed himself to the task of persuading the Edinburgh Philosophical +Institution that Bishop Butler was an untrustworthy guide in that +mysterious region which lies between Philosophy and Religion. For this +task, as Mr. Gladstone justly observed: he "was placed, by his own +peculiar opinions, in a position far from auspicious with respect to +this particular undertaking. He combined a fervent zeal for the +Christian religion with a not less boldly avowed determination to +transform it beyond the possibility of recognition by friend or foe. He +was thus placed under a sort of necessity to condemn the handiwork of +Bishop Butler, who in a certain sense gives it a new charter." Over +Butler's grave stands a magnificent inscription, from the pen of +Southey, which well illustrates the estimation in which for upwards of +a century he was held by the serious mind of England-- + + Others had established +the Historical and Prophetical grounds + of the Christian Religion, + and that sure testimony of its truth +which is found in its perfect adaptation + to the heart of man. + It was reserved for him to develop + its analogy to the Constitution + and Course of Nature; + and, laying his strong foundations +in the depth of that great argument, + there to construct + another and irrefragable proof: + thus rendering Philosophy + subservient to Faith, +and finding in outward and visible things + the type and evidence + of those within the veil. + +In his lectures on Butler, Arnold set out to prove that the Philosophy +was as unsound as the Faith to which it was subservient; and that it +could not hold its own against Atheism or Agnosticism, but only against +a system which conceded a Personal Governor of the Universe. This is the +argument against the Deists which he puts into Butler's mouth: "You all +concede a Supreme Personal First Cause, the almighty and intelligent +Governor of the Universe; this, you and I both agree, is the system and +order of nature. But you are offended at certain things in +revelation.... Well, I will show you that in your and my admitted system +of nature there are just as many difficulties as in the system of +revelation." And on this, says Arnold, he does show it, "and by +adversaries such as his, who grant what the Deist or Socinian grants, he +never has been answered, he never will be answered. The spear of +Butler's reasoning will even follow and transfix the Duke of +Somerset,[53] who finds so much to condemn in the Bible, but 'retires +into one unassailable fortress--faith in God.'"[54] Butler's method, +then, is allowed to be potent enough to crush all such half-believers as +still clung to the idea of a Personal God and Intelligent Ruler; but it +had no force or cogency against such as, following Arnold, attenuated +the idea of God into a Stream of Tendency. This theme he elaborated with +great ingenuity and characteristic dogmatism in his _Bishop Butler and +the Zeitgeist_; and, inasmuch as no task can be more distasteful than to +attack the teaching of a man whose genius and character one recognizes +among the formative influences of one's life, I will leave the upshot +of this ill-starred endeavour to be summarized by Butler's great +champion, Mr. Gladstone-- + +"Various objections have been taken from various quarters to this point +and that in the argument of Butler; but Mr. Arnold's criticisms, as a +whole, remain wholly isolated and unsupported. It is impossible to +acquit him of the charge of a carelessness implying levity, and of an +ungovernable bias towards finding fault.... Mr. Arnold himself will +probably suffer more from his own censures than the great Christian +philosopher who is the object of them. And it is well for him that all +they can do is to effect some deduction from the fame which has been +earned by him in other fields, as a true man, a searching and sagacious +literary critic, and a poet of genuine creative genius."[55] + +It is now time to enquire what practical effect he produced by all this +writing (and a good deal which followed it in the same sense) on the +religious thought of his time. This is a question which, in the absence +of any clear or general testimony, one can only answer by the light of +one's own experience. The present writer can aver that, so far as his +own personal knowledge goes, the strange case of Robert Elsmere was a +unique instance. He has, of course, known plenty of people to whom, +alas! revealed Religion--the accepted Faith of the Church and the +Gospel--was a tale of no meaning, which they regarded either with blank +indifference or with bitter and furious hostility. But, in all these +cases, dissent from the Christian creed depended upon negations far +deeper than "Miracles do not happen." It depended on a stark incapacity +to conceive the ideas of God, of permitted evil, of sin, its +consequences and its remedy, and of life after death. Where there was +the capacity to conceive these mysteries, men were not troubled by the +minor questions of miracle, prophecy, and textual research. To use an +illustration which the present writer has used elsewhere, they were not +shaken by _Robert Elsmere_, not confirmed by _Lux Mundi_. Still less +were they agitated by the literary dogmaticism of Matthew Arnold. Many +people disliked his style, his methods, his illustrations; and, not +knowing the man, disliked him also. But, as he justly observed, if he +had written as these objectors wished him to write, no one would have +read him; so he went on in his "sinuous, easy, unpolemical" way; and the +people who disliked him closed their ears, and "flocked all the more +eagerly to Messrs. Moody and Sankey." + +Mr. Gladstone wrote in 1895--"It is very difficult to keep one's temper +in dealing with M. Arnold when he touches on religious matters. His +patronage of a Christianity fashioned by himself is to me more offensive +and trying than rank unbelief." + +But then again there were those--and we should hope the great +majority--who, whether they knew the man or not, loved his temper, +admired his methods, and found no more difficulty in detaching what was +good from what was bad in his teaching, than he himself found in the +case of his master, Wordsworth. A Catholic priest, ministering formerly +in the Roman and now in the English Church, thus describes the help +which he gained from Arnold at a time of distress and transition. "That +I held to any sort of Christianity, and continued to use and enjoy the +Bible, I owe entirely to Matthew Arnold. I began to read him in 1882; +first his prose, and then his verse. For several years I read him over, +and over, and over again with growing delight and profit; until, so far +as I was able, I understood something of his mind and methods. He taught +me how to think, and how to write. He undoubtedly saved me from leaving +the Papal Church a dulled and blank materialist, thoroughly and +violently anti-Christian; and his gentle influence tended me through +the next few years, until I was mellowed for the process of +reconstruction."[56] + +This is a fine tribute to all that was best and most characteristic in +his teaching. Beyond doubt, by his insistence on the relation of Letters +to Religion, he helped many young men to read their Bibles with better +understanding and keener appreciation; and enabled them that are without +to enter for the first time into the spirit and attractiveness of the +Christian ideal. Not only so, but men established in age, position, and +orthodoxy, felt and acknowledged his helpfulness. When he delivered an +address on "The Church of England" to a gathering of clergy at Sion +College, he tells us that "Clergyman on clergyman turned on the +Chairman" (who had scented heresy), "and said they agreed with me far +more than with him." A divine so profoundly Evangelical as Bishop +Thorold larded his sermons and charges with extracts from Arnold's prose +and verse. In 1893 Arnold dined with Archbishop Benson, and "thought it +a gratifying marvel, considering what things I have published"; but the +marvel was of such frequent occurrence that it had almost ceased to be +marvellous. That this was so was due, no doubt, in great measure to the +charm of his character and conversation. It was not easy for any one +who knew him to take serious offence at what he wrote. Just as +Coleridge's metaphysics were said by a friend to be "only his fun," so +Arnold's theology was regarded by his admirers as part of his +playfulness. It was difficult to disentangle what he really wished to +teach from his jokes about the hangings of the Celestial +Council-Chamber; "Willesden beyond Trent"; "Change Alley and Alley +Change"; Professor Birks, "his brows crowned with myrtle," going in +procession to the Temple of Aphrodite; the Duke of Somerset "running +into the strong tower" of Deism, and thinking himself "safe" there from +further questionings. This method of illustration threw an air of comedy +over the theme which it illustrated; and, if the criticism failed to +disturb faith in Biblical theology, the critic had only himself to +thank. + +Another element in the satisfaction with which dignitaries and clergymen +came to regard him was the fact that he was so definitely a supporter of +the Church of England. To the principle of Established Churches, as part +of the wider principle of extending everywhere the scope of the State, +he was always friendly; but he felt the difficulty of maintaining them +where, as in Scotland, they had nothing to show except "a religious +service which is perhaps the most dismal performance ever invented by +man," and a theology shared by all the non-established bodies round +about. No such difficulty appeared in the case of the Church of England, +with its historic claim, its seemly worship, its distinctive doctrine; +so of that Church as by law established he was the consistent defender. +Towards ugliness, hideousness, rawness, whether manifested in life or in +letters, he was always implacable; and this sentiment no doubt accounts +for much of his hostility to Dissent. Margate was, in his eyes, a +"brick-and-mortar image of English Protestantism, representing it in all +its prose, all its uncomeliness--let me add, all its salubrity." When +criticising the proposal to let Dissenters bury their dead with their +own rites in the National Church-yards, he likened the dissenting +Service to a reading from Eliza Cook, and the Church's Service to a +reading from Milton, and protested against the Liberal attempt to +"import Eliza Cook into a public rite." He even was bold enough to cite +his friend Mr. John Morley as secretly sharing this repugnance to Eliza +Cook in a public rite. "_Scio, rex Agrippa, quia credis._ He is keeping +company with his Festus Chamberlain and his Drusilla Collings, and +cannot openly avow the truth; but in his heart he consents to it." + +For the beauty, the poetry, the winningness of Catholic worship and +Catholic life Arnold had the keenest admiration. "The need for beauty is +a real and ever rapidly growing need in man; Puritanism cannot satisfy +it, Catholicism and the Church of England can." He dwelt with delighted +interest on Eugénie de Guerin's devotional practices, her happy +Christmas in the soft air of Languedoc, her midnight Mass, her beloved +Confession. On the Mass itself no one has written more sympathetically, +although he disavowed the fundamental doctrine on which the Mass is +founded. "Once admit the miracle of the 'atoning sacrifice,' once move +in this order of ideas, and what can be more natural and beautiful than +to imagine this miracle every day repeated, Christ offered in thousands +of places, everywhere the believer enabled to enact the work of +redemption and unite himself with the Body whose sacrifice saves him?" + +In truth he had a strong sense, uncommon in Protestants, of Worship as +distinct from Prayer--of Worship as the special object of a religious +assembly. When he gave a Prayer-book to a child, he wrote on the +flyleaf: "We have seen His star in the East, and are come to worship +Him." "In religion," he said, "there are two parts: the part of thought +and speculation, and the part of worship and devotion.... It does not +help me to think a thing more clearly, that thousands of other people +are thinking the same; but it does help me to worship with more +devotion, that thousands of other people are worshipping with me. The +connexion of common consent, antiquity, public establishment, long-used +rites, national edifices, is everything for religious worship." He +quotes with admiration his favourite Joubert: "Just what makes worship +impressive is its publicity, its external manifestation, its sound, its +splendour, its observance, universally and visibly holding its sway +through all the details both of our outward and of our inward life." + +"Worship," he says, "should have in it as little as possible of what +divides us, and should be as much as possible a common and public act." + +Again he quotes Joubert: "The best prayers are those which have nothing +distinct about them, and which are thus of the nature of simple +adoration." + +"Catholic worship," he said, "is likely, however modified, to survive as +the general worship of Christians, because it is the worship which, in a +sphere where poetry is permissible and natural, unites most of the +elements of poetry." And again, "Unity and continuity in public +religious worship are a need of human nature, an eternal aspiration of +Christendom. A Catholic Church transformed is, I believe, the Church of +the future." + +His speculations on that future are interesting and, naturally, not +always consistent. In 1879 he writes to Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff: +"Perhaps we shall end our days in the tail of a return-current of +popular religion, both ritual and dogmatic." In 1880 he sees a great +future for Catholicism, which, by virtue of its superior charm and +poetry, will "endure while all the Protestant sects (amongst which I do +not include the Church of England) dissolve and perish." In 1881 he +seemed to apprehend the return to Westminster Abbey, after "Wisdom's too +short reign," of-- + + Folly revived, re-furbish'd sophistries, + And pullulating rites externe and vain. + +In the last autumn of his life he wrote to M. Fontanès--a friend whose +acquaintance he first made over _St. Paul and Protestantism_-- + +"Your letter has reached me here (Ottery St. Mary), where I am staying +with Lord Coleridge, the Lord Chief Justice, who is a grand-nephew of +the poet. He loves literature, and, being a great deal richer than his +grand-uncle, or than poets in general, has built a library from which I +now write, and on which I wish that you could feast your eyes with +me.... The Church Congress has just been held, and shows as usual +that the clergy have no idea of the real situation; but indeed the +conservatism and routine in religion are such in England that the line +taken by the clergy cannot be wondered at. Nor are the conservatism and +routine a bad thing, perhaps, in such a matter; but the awakening will +one day come, and there will be much confusion. Have you looked at +Tolstoi's books on religion: in French they have the titles _Ma +Religion, Ma Confession, Que Faire?_ The first of these has been well +translated, and has excited much attention over here; perhaps it is from +this side, the socialist side that the change is likely to come: the +Bible will be retained, but it will be said, as Tolstoi says, that its +true, socialistic teaching has been overlooked, and attention has been +fixed on metaphysical dogmas deduced from it, which are at any rate, +says Tolstoi, secondary. He does not provoke discussion by denying or +combating them; he merely relegates them to a secondary position. + +[Illustration: The Grave in Laleham Churchyard + +Where Matthew Arnold, his wife, and three sons are buried + +_Photo Ralph Lane_] + +And now that we have enquired into Arnold's influence on theology, it +is, perhaps, proper to ask what he himself believed. His faith seems to +have been, by a curious paradox, far stronger on the Christian than on +the Theistic side. "A Stream of Tendency" can never satisfy the idea of +God, as ordinary humanity conceives it. It is not in human nature to +love a stream of tendency, or worship it, or ask boons of it; or to +credit it with powers of design, volition, or creation. A prayer +beginning "Stream" would sound as odd as Wordsworth's ode beginning +"Spade."[57] + +But he had, as we have already seen, an unending admiration--a homage +which did not stop far short of worship--for the character and teaching +of Jesus Christ; and he placed salvation in conformity to that teaching, +as it is explained by St. Paul. And this meant death to sin; the +abrogation and annulment of bad habits and tendencies; resurrection with +Christ to the higher life which He taught us to pursue. _The law was +given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ._ He would have +allowed no antithesis between the two halves of the text, but would have +taught that the eternal welfare of man consisted in obeying the Law, +receiving the Grace, and pursuing the Truth. + +Nothing more dogmatic than this could safely be put forward as +representing his theology; but, though not dogmatic, his mind was +intensely ecclesiastical. His contempt for individual whims and fancies, +his love of corporate action and collective control, operated as +powerfully in the religious as in the social sphere. He admired and +clave to the Church of England because it was not, like Miss Cobbe's new +religion and the British College of Health, the product of an individual +fancy, setting out to make all things new on a plan of its own. The +Church of England, whether it could theologically be called "Catholic" +or not, was certainly "the continuous and historical Church of this +country." In 1869 he praised his friend Temple, afterwards Archbishop, +for "showing his strong Church feeling, and sense of the value and +greatness of the historic development of Christianity, of which the +Church is the expression." It was the National organ for promoting +Righteousness and Perfection by means of Culture and for diffusing +Sweetness and Light. In the last year of his life he wrote to Mr. Lionel +Tollemache: "I consider myself, to adopt your very good expression, a +Liberal Anglican; and I think the times are in favour of our being +allowed so to call ourselves." + +As regards differences of opinion inside the Church, he saw no harm in +them. He held that the Church must maintain Episcopacy as a matter of +historical development, and as "its link with the past--its share in the +beauty and the poetry and the charm for the imagination," which belong +to Catholicism. This being so, the "latitudinarianism of the Broad +Churchmen" who wished to entice the Dissenters into the Church was +"quite illusory" so long as opposition to Episcopacy was one of the main +tenets of Nonconformity. But he thought that the Church was likely +before long to get rid of the Athanasian Creed and the Thirty-nine +Articles; and he urged that, as no one could enforce belief in such +doctrines as the Real Presence, Apostolic Succession, and Priestly +Absolution, Churchmen who rejected these could quite comfortably remain +in the Church, side by side with others who accepted them. + +The Church, then, as historically descended and legally established, +ought to be maintained, honoured, and frequented; and, so far, his +practice accorded with his belief. He had indeed no more sympathy with +hysterical devotions than with fanatical faiths. He saw with amused eye +the gestures and behaviour of the "Energumens" during the celebration of +Holy Communion in a Ritualistic church--"the floor of the church strewn +with what seem to be the dying and the dead, progress to the altar +almost barred by forms suddenly dropping as if they were shot in battle, +the delighted adoption of vehement rites, till yesterday unknown, +adopted and practised now with all that absence of tact, measure, and +correct perception in things of form and manner, all that slowness to +see when they are making themselves ridiculous, which belongs to the +people of our English race." + +This was a perfectly just criticism on the nascent ritualism of thirty +years ago. Time and study have pruned this devotional exuberance, but he +rightly described what he saw. With such performances he had no +sympathy; but he loved what he had been accustomed to--the grave and +reverend method of worship which was traditional in our cathedrals and +college chapels. He communicated by preference at an early service. He +revelled in the architecture of our great churches, and enjoyed, though +he did not understand, their fine music. And he added one or two little +mannerisms of his own, which were clearly intended to mark his love of +ecclesiastical proprieties. Thus the present writer remembers that he +used, with great solemnity and deliberation, to turn to the east at the +Creed in Harrow School Chapel, where the clergy neglected to do so. It +was the traditional mode of the Church of England, and that was enough +for him. Again, we all know that he described the Athanasian Creed as +"Learned science with a strong dash of temper"; yet I remember him +saying, with an air of stately admiration, after Service on Ascension +Day, "I always like to hear the Athanasian Creed sung. BUT ONE +GOD sounds so magnificently, with that full swell of the organ. It +seems to come with the whole authority of the Church." + +Then again the list of his favourite writers on religious subjects shows +exactly the same taste and temper as was shown by his devotional +practices--St. Augustine, that "glorious father of the Catholic Church"; +"the nameless author of the _Imitatio_"; Bishop Thomas Wilson, whose +_Maxims_ and _Sacra_ he so constantly quoted; Isaac Barrow, whose +sermons he used to read to his family on Sunday evenings; Cardinal +Newman, to whom he had listened so delightedly in undergraduate +days.[58] + +To pass from an account of a man's religious sentiment to that of his +daily life would in too many cases be an abrupt and even a painful +transition; but in the case of Arnold, it is the easiest and most +natural in the world. That which he professed he practised, and, as he +taught, so he lived. From first to last he was true to his own doctrine +that we must cultivate our best self in every department of our being, +and be content with nothing less than our predestined perfection. In his +character and life, "whatsoever things are lovely" were harmoniously +blent. + +Before all else he was a worshipper of nature, watching all her +changing aspects with a lover-like assiduity, and never happy in a +long-continued separation from her. Then his manifold culture and fine +taste enabled him to appreciate at its proper value all that is good in +high civilization, and yet the unspoilt naturalness of his character +found a zest in the most commonplace pleasures of daily existence. +Probably Art, whether in music or painting, affected him less than most +men of equal cultivation; but there never lived a human being to whom +Literature and Society--books and people--taking each word in its most +comprehensive sense, yielded a livelier or more constant joy. "Never," +as Mr. John Morley said, "shall we know again so blithe and friendly a +spirit." As we think of him, the endearing traits come crowding on the +memory--his gracious presence, his joy in fresh air and bodily exercise, +his merry interest in his friends' concerns, his love of children, his +kindness to animals, his absolute freedom from bitterness, rancour, or +envy; his unstinted admiration of beauty, or cleverness, his frank +enjoyment of light and colour, of a happy phrase, an apt quotation, a +pretty room, a well-arranged dinner, a fine vintage; his childlike +pleasure in his own performances--"Did I say that? How good that was!" + +But all these trifling touches of character-painting, perhaps, tend to +overlay and obscure the true portraiture of Matthew Arnold. He was +pre-eminently a good man, gentle, generous, enduring, laborious, a +devoted husband, a most tender father, an unfailing friend. Qualified by +nature and training for the highest honours and successes which the +world can give, he spent his life in a long round of unremunerative +drudgery, working even beyond the limits of his strength for those whom +he loved, and never by word or gesture betraying even a consciousness of +that harsh indifference to his gifts and services which stirred the +fruitless indignation of his friends. His theology, once the subject of +such animated criticism, seems now a matter of little moment; for, +indeed, his nature was essentially religious. He was loyal to truth as +he knew it, loved the light and sought it earnestly, and by his daily +and hourly practice gave sweet and winning illustration of his own +doctrine that conduct is three-fourths of human life. + +We who were happy enough to fall under his personal influence can never +overstate what we owe to his genius and his sympathy. He showed us the +highest ideal of character and conduct. He taught us the science of good +citizenship. He so interpreted nature that we knew her as we had never +known her before. He was our fascinating and unfailing guide in the +tangled paradise of literature. And, while for all this we bless his +memory, we claim for him the praise of having enlarged the boundaries of +the Christian Kingdom by making the lives of men sweeter, brighter, and +more humane. + +[Footnote 46: A saying attributed to Bishop Wilberforce.] + +[Footnote 47: See the Introduction to his _Romans_, 3rd edition, 1870.] + +[Footnote 48: See the Introduction to his _Romans_, 3rd edition, 1870.] + +[Footnote 49: University and other Sermons, p. 175.] + +[Footnote 50: W.E. Gladstone: _Later Gleanings_.] + +[Footnote 51: _Essays in Criticism_. "Pagan and Mediæval Religious +Sentiment."] + +[Footnote 52: J. Armitage Robinson, D.D., Easter Day, 1903.] + +[Footnote 53: Edward, 12th Duke of Somerset (1804-1885). Author of +_Christian Theology and Modern Scepticism_.] + +[Footnote 54: _Literature and Dogma_.] + +[Footnote 55: _Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler_, pt. i. +ch. iii.] + +[Footnote 56: _Rome and Romanizing_. By Arthur Galton.] + +[Footnote 57: "Spade! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands," etc.] + +[Footnote 58: See p. 61.] + + + + +_LITERARY LIVES_ + +Edited by W. ROBERTSON NICOLL + + * * * * * + +Matthew Arnold + +By G.W.E. RUSSELL + + * * * * * + +_Extract from Preface:_ + +"It was Arnold's express wish that he should not be made the subject of +a Biography. This rendered it impossible to produce the sort of book by +which an eminent man is usually commemorated--at once a history of his +life, an estimate of his work, and an analysis of his character and +opinions. But, though a biography was forbidden, Arnold's family felt +sure he would not have objected to the publication of a selection from +his correspondence; and it became my happy task to collect, and in some +sense to edit, the two volumes of his letters which were published in +1895. The letters, with all their editorial shortcomings (of which I +willingly take my full share), constitute the nearest approach to a +narrative of Arnold's life which can, consistently with his wishes, be +given to the world; and the ground so covered will not be retraversed +here. All that literary criticism can do for the honor of his prose and +verse has been done already, conscientiously by Mr. Saintsbury, +affectionately and sympathetically by Mr. Paul, and with varying +competence and skill by a host of minor critics. But in preparing this +book I have been careful not to re-read what more accomplished pens than +mine have written, for I wished my judgment to be unbiased by previous +verdicts. + +"I do not aim at a criticism of the verbal medium through which a great +master uttered his heart and mind, but rather at a survey of the effect +which he produced on the thought and action of his age." + + * * * * * + +_With photogravure frontispiece and 16 illustrations_ + +$1.00 net (postage, 10 cents) + + * * * * * + + +_LITERARY LIVES_ + + * * * * * + +Cardinal Newman + +By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D. + +_Author of "The New Antigone," etc._ + +With photogravure frontispiece and 16 full-page illustrations, $1.00 net +(postage, 10 cents) + + * * * * * + +CONTENTS + + I. Early Years. + II. The Tractarians. + III. First Catholic Period. + IV. Apologia pro Vita Sua. + V. The Logic of Belief. + VI. Dream of Gerontius. + VII. The Man of Letters. +VIII. Newman's Place in History. + + * * * * * + +EXTRACT + +"In one thing Newman far surpassed Wesley: he was a man of letters equal +to the greatest writers of prose his native country had brought forth. +The Catholic Reaction of the Nineteenth Century claims its place in +literature, thanks to this incomparable talent, side by side with the +German mysticism of Carlyle, the devout liberalism of Tennyson, the +lyric Utopias of Shelley, and the robust optimism of Browning. Newman is +an English classic." + + * * * * * + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Matthew Arnold, by G. W. E. Russell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATTHEW ARNOLD *** + +***** This file should be named 16745-8.txt or 16745-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/7/4/16745/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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