CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Lane Cooper Cornell University Library PR 4023.S32 Matthew Arnold, how to know him, by Stuart 3 1924 013 207 265 Date Due The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013207265 MAITHEW ARNOLD VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES Published and in Preparation Edited by Will D. Howe Arnold Stuart P. Sherman Browning William Lyon Phelps Burns W. A. Neilson Carlyle Bliss Perry Dante Alfred M. Brooks Defoe William P. Trent Dickens Richard Burton Emerson Samuel M. Crothers Hawthorne George E. Woodberry The Bible George Hodges Ibsen ■ , . . . . Archibald Henderson Lamb .Will D. Howe Lowell John H. Finley Stevenson Richard A. Rice Tennyson Ra)miond M. Alden Whitman Brand Whitlock Wordsworth G. T. Winchester Etc., Etc. From the Fainting by G. F. Watts, R. A. Matthew Arnold — 1880 MATTHEW ARNOLD HOW TO KNOW HIM By STUART P. SHERMAN Frofessor of English y University of Illinoh WITH PORTRAIT £23 INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-KlERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS CopvmcHT 1917 Tub Bobbs-Mereili. Company PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLVN. N. Y. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Character and Career 1 Arnold's Main Task — Biographical Sources — His Father and Mother — Influence of Natural Sur- roundings — Education — Attitude toward Oxford — Poetic Ambition — Secretary to Lord Lans- downe — Reading the Classics — Marriage and Domestic Temper — Trials of an Inspector of Schools — Poetry Composed under Difficulties — Secret of His Melancholy and His Serenity — His Religious Temper — ^Habit of Self-Discipline — Cultivation of Purposefulness and Gaiety — Key- notes of Literary Work — Compensations in His Avocation — Friends in France: Sainte-Beuve, Renan, Scherer — Inculcating Intelligence — Fruits of Oxford Professorship — Appetite for Fame and Influence — Acquaintance with English Ce- lebrities — Disraeli's Encouragement — Attitude toward Contemporary Men of Letters in Eng- land — Success of Culture and Anarchy — In Charge of an Italian Prince — Death of Three ~ Sons — Criticism of Church, Theology and Re- ligion — Miscellaneous Political Essays and Re- turn to Literature — First Visit to America — De- fects and Virtues of American Life — Growing Old — Official Business in Germany — Becomes a Grandfather and Revisits America — Death. II Poems of the Personal Life 52 Arnold Compares Himself with Tennyson and Browning — The Main Movement of Mind in His Time — His Personal Reflections of the Time-Spirit — Conflict of Reason and Tradition, Emotion and Intelligence — Disillusion about Love and Human Relationships: "Switzerland," "Faded Leaves"— The Center of His Being: "The Buried Life"— Religious Disillusion : "The Gfand Chartreuse," "Dover Beach," "Empedocles on Etna" — Disillusion about Poetical Powers : "Austerity of Poetry," "Growing Old," "De- COTsiTENTS— Continued CHAPTER PAGE spondency," "The Progress of Poesy"— Center of Indifference — Enduring Life: "Resignation" — Immorality of Nature: "To a Preacher" — Consolations of Nature: "Thyrsis," "Scholar Gipsy" — Lessons of Nature: "A Summer Night," "Quiet Work"— The Law for Man: "Morality," "East London," "The Better Part"— The Sources of Moral Energy : "Rugby Chapel." III Poems of the External Wokld 92 Conception of the True Poet: "Resignation" — "Empedocles" Condemned — Classical Doctrine on the Choice of Poetical Subjects — Classical Intention in the Long Poems — Counter-claims of Reason and Passion in "Tristram and Iseult" — Classical Balance in "Sohrab and Rustum" — Arnold on "Balder Dead;" Defects of the Sub- ject—Sophocles and "Merope" — "The Forsaken Merman." IV Literary Criticism 132 Persistence of Arnold's Critical Force — General Ideas — The Point of View: Literary Cosmo- politanism — Definitions of Criticism — Defects of of Existing English Organs of Opinion — Liter- ary Influence of Academies — The French Acad- emy — Obstacles and Helps in Human Nature to Establishment of Standards — Conscience in In- tellectual Matters — Provinciality of English Lit- erature — Adequacy of the Greeks — Arnold's Classicism — Poetry as Criticism of Life — Art and Morals— Poetry as Religion — The Grand Style — Judicial Criticism-^Impressionistic Criti- cism — Historical Criticism — Arnold's Authorita- tiveness — His Taste Challenged — The Touch- stone Method — His Limitations as Historical Critic — His Distrust of the Historical Method — His Ultimate Object as Critic — Variety of His Subjects — Devotion to the Abiding — His Esthetic Stimulus — His Stimulus to Intellectual Curiosity — His Moral Stimulus. CONTENTS— Co«*WMed CHAPTER PAGE V Education 186 Statesmanlike Outlook — The Political Urgency of Educational Reform — Arnold's Contributions to the Solution of Educational Problems— The English System Compared with the Systems of France and Germany — Arnold's Proposals for the Improvement of Educational Machinery — Compulsory Elementary Education — English Laissez-faire — Arminius on the Prussian Sys- tem — Supervision — Dangers of Individual Initi- ative — Advantages of Public Secondary Schools — ^The Idea of a University — English, French and German Universities Compared — Dangers in American Institutions — The Warfare of the Sci- ences and the. Humanities — Huxley — Herbert Spencer as the Goliath of Science — His Revision of Educational Values — Arnold on the Choice of Studies — Plato on Educational Values — Breadth of Arnold's Humanism — His Regard for the Results of Science — Inefficacy of Science in the Spheres of Conduct and Beauty — The Darwin- ian Ape and the Study of Greek — The Abiding Value of Letters. VI Politics and Society 225 Relation of Arnold's Political and Social Thought — His Political Independence — His In- ternal Equilibrium — ^^Criticism of Whigs and Tories^His Mediation Between Carlyle and J. S. Mill — "Numbers" — Equality and Rights — "Democracy" — The Virtues of an Aristocracy — Escape from Democratic Vulgarity by State Ac- tion — The State in France and Germany: Their Superior Organization of Institutions — Arnold's Master Thought in Politics — Meaning of Civili- zation or Culture — A Social Gospel — Enemies of Culture — English Faith in Machinery — Doing as One Likes — Meaning of the State — Inadequacy of All the Classes — ^The Barbarians — The Philis- tines — The Populace — The Saving Remnant-^ Genius and Humanity — The Dseraonic — Disci- CONTENTS— Continued CHAPTER PAGE pline — Carlyle's John Bull Unsatisfactory— In- adequacy of the Puritan Ideal of Perfection — Hebraism and Hellenism. VII Religion 270 Arnold a Friend to Religion — Adverse Com- ments — His Reluctance to Enter the Field of Religious Controversy — His Conviction that a Revolution Had Been Accomplished — Signs of the Revolution — His Belief in a National Church — Recasting Religion — A Verifiable Basis for the Bible — His Literary Approach — Rejects the God of Miracles — Rejects the God of Meta- physics — Sets up the God of Experience — Prot- estant and Catholic Miracles — Christian and Pagan Miracles — Protestant and Catholic The- ological Doctrine — The Mass and the Three Lords Shaftesbury — The Law of Man's Being — Arnold's Psychology: the Doctrine of the Two Selves — God Defined — Religion Defined — Con- duct Three-Fourths of Life — Illustrations of Morality Touched with Emotion — Value of Old Testament — Desiccation of Judaism — Method and Secret of Jesus — Divinity of Christ — Power of Jesus Founded on Human Nature — Paul and the Theologians — ^The Worth of a Religious Teacher — Paul a Great Realistic Moralist — ^His Religion Psychologically Sound — Resurrection Spiritually Interpreted — Immortality. Index 317 MATTHEW ARNOLD ARNOLD CHAPTER I CHARACTER AND CAREER "The aimless and unsettled, but also open and liberal state of our youth we must perhaps all leave and take refuge in our morality and character; but with most of us it is a melan- choly passage from which we emerge shorn of so many beams that we are almost tempted to quarrel with the law of nature which imposes it on us." — Letters, I, 17.- MATTHEW ARNOLD is a charming but not an altogether conciliatory writer. If you disagree with him, he does not encourage you to believe that you may be in the right. When he was a middle-aged man, his favorite sister said to him that he was "becoming as dogmatic as Ruskin." "I told her," writes Arnold, good-humoredly reporting the incident to his mother, "the difference was that Ruskin was 'dogmatic and wrong.' " This is in the true critical temper — gentle but firm and just a little provocative! In this temper Arnold worked at the main task ,of his life: making aristocratic tastes prevail in a 1 2 ARNOLD world which was becoming rapidly democratic. Rad- ical democrats, bent on extolling middle-class vir- tues, and popular orators who go about persuading the people that the fruits of culture are green grapes sought, and still seek, to thrust him aside as a "high priest of the kid-glove persuasion." But he, in his fashion, was as worldly, as positive, as aggressive, and as progressive as his adversaries. He was bet- ter rooted in the past than they, and he intended to go with them ii^o the future. He had wit to win attention, and cleame2s to profit by it. He held and extended his ground by pertinacity and versa- tility in attack. Where he did not gain assent he ultimately commanded the respect due to a distin- guished, sincere, weighty, and thoroughly organized character. In an unsettled epoch of English thought he found a central position, and sharply defined his attitude toward the important movements in litera- ture, education, society, politics and religion. He said something pertinent and stimulating or irri- tating about everybody's business; so that he re- mains, for all his air of exclusive refinement, one of the unavoidable writers of the nineteenth cen- tury, one of the reconstructive forces in the twen- tieth.^ Various as are his themes, his work as a whole is a remarkably harmonious and symmetrical 1 Interesting tribute is paid by H. G. Wells in Mr Britlina Sees It Through, N. Y., 1916; see pages 256 and 289 where England's difficulties in the European war are attributed tn the fact that "we didn't listen to Matthew Arnold." CHARACTER AND CAREER 3 expression of "general ideas" which will appeal to what he liked in later life to call "the body of quiet, reasonable people" in every age. Whether in the end one accepts or rejects him, he is a suggestive gui|de to a man who is trying to discover what he ought to think on most subjects which concern him. Behind the impeccable front of Arnold's prose works there was a human being with human frail- ties, who attained his definiteness oi outline and finish of surface by processes which are a legitimate subject of our interest. But it is not easy to recover what he discarded when he cut and polished and set his character. Not wishing to amuse posterity with his private affairs, he forbade a formal biography. His published letters^ from which too intimate a nd ■ to o piq uant matters have beenjremoved, begin in i~Eis late twenties when the first ferment of youth I was over, and he was already reflecting that we can 1 "only acquire any solidity of shape and power of 1 acting by narrowing and narrowing our sphere, and ii diminishing the number of affections and int erests !i which continually distract us while young, and hold « us unfixed and without energy to mark our place in 8 the world." One of the rare glimpses of his im- H pressionable early manhood he gives us in "The J French Play in London" : "I remember how in my li youth, after a first sight of the divine Rachel at the Edinburgh Theatre, in the part of Hermione, I fol- ia lowed her to Paris, and for two months never missed 4 ARNOLD one of her representations." To the stream of his instinctive and spontaneous feelings, which was fre- quently of a poignant melancholy, he gave, indeed, some outlet through a portion of his poetry; and there are hints in his letters and note-books of way- ward desires, unsocial moods, and unprofitable im- pulses. After the as[e of thirty-five, h owever, he wr ote very little p oetry, and his critical sense pro- gressively suppressed the melancholy in which the most personal part of it originated. "To make a habitual war on depression and low spirits, which in one's early youth one is apt to indulge and be somewhat interested in," so he writes in his thirty- fourth year, "is one of the things one learns as one gets older. They are noxious alike to body and mind, and already jartake of the nature of deatf i/' The writer of that passage had very deliberately taken his own nature under criticism and cultiva- tion. As he presents himself through his prose to our later time, he is the most rigorously disciplined of men, the most coherently purposeful of writers. For his ability to get himself in hand and to get under way without much preliminary storm and stress he was immensely indebted to parental guid- ance and to the circumstances of his birth and breed- ing. He had not, like Carlyle, for example, to fight his way up from the peasantry and the provinces, but wa s born — ^at Laleham on Christmas E ve, 1 822 — ^near the intellectual center of England, and in the CHARACTER AND CAREER 5 heart of the intellectual upper middle class of which he was to be a conspicuous representative. He was a model son to a mother who followed every step of his career and read every line of his writing with affection and intelligent interest. In Thomas Ar- nold, the Liberal clergyman, the historian of ancient Rome, the famous Master of Rugby, he had a father b y whose reputation he was long proud to be overshadowed, whose achievements kindled his emulation, a nd whose ch arac ter, ideas, purposes, a nd keen sense of duty were a perpetual and gratefully acknowledged^ource of inspiration toliim^_Thomas 'Arnold died in 1842, but his memory is in perennial blossom through the letters of his son, which extend from 1848 to 1888. To his mother he reported with a beautiful filial piety not only his own projects and tritmiphs but also all the good things that he heard or read or felt about his father. Those who have made the acquaintance of the great school- master through Tom Brown at Rugby will think of him, perhaps, as primarily a moral force. His son, though of course fidly conscious of this element in his influence, emphasizes rather his intellectual quali- ties : the energy, breadthiand openness of his mind, his European outlook, his sense of the unity of his- tory. "Whatever talent I have in this direction , [pamphleteering]," he writes to Miss Arnold, "I ■ certainly inherit from him, for his pamphleteering ' talent was one of his very strongest and most pro- 6 ARNOLD nounced literary sides. . . . Even the pos itive style of statement IJuhfirit^ WnHng to hisTnother in 18557Tie"saysT"Papa's greatness consists in his bringing such a torrent of freshness into English religion by placing history and politics in connexion with it." In another letter, also to his mother : "In my notions of the State I am quite papa's son, and his continuator. I often think of this — ^the more so because in this direction he had so few who felt with him. But I inherit from him a deep sense of what, in the Greek and Roman world, was sotmd and ra- tional." In considering his patrimony ;, we myst also, from a merely worldly point of view, reckon ^ in the hosts ofhis jather's friends and disting uished- pupils who readily connected him with the best so- ciety in England. Arnold does not so obviously spring from any locality as Wordsworth springs from the Cumber- land hills or as Hardy springs from f Wessex,'*' yet it is evident that his poetic sensibility was early stim- ulated and permanently impressed by th e mellowed civilitv _and the fresh annual beauty of the ancient towns and gardens of his childhood along the val- ley of the Thames, and especially by the river itself. As a traveler in Italy he complains that "all the water-courses are dry. This is what breaks my heart in the Apennines; for as Dicky used to say at Viel Salm, 'Papa loves rivers.' " Revisiting his birthplace in 1848, he revives his early associations CHARACTER AND CAREER 7 with it, and recalls in a letter to his mother the af- fecting notes in the landscape : "It was nearly dark when I left the Weybridge Station, but I could make out the wide sheet of the gray Thames gleam- ing through the general dusk as I came out on Chert- sey Bridge. I never go along that shelving gravelly road up towards Laleham without interest, from Chertsey Lock to the turn where the drunken man lay. Today, after morning church, I went up to Pentonhook, and found the stream with the old volume, width, shine, rapid fulness, 'kempshott,' and swans, unchanged and unequalled, to my partial and remembering eyes at least. On the Hook itself they have been draining and cutting a little ; but the old paved part of the barge road on the Laleham side of the Lock-house is all as it was, and the cam- panulas, they told me, grow as much as ever there in summer. Yesterday I was at Chertsey, the poetical town of our childhood as opposed to the practical, historical Staines: it is across the river, reached by no bridges and roads, but by the primi- tive ferry; the meadow path, the Abbey river with its wooden bridge and the narrow lane by the old wall ; and, itself the stillest of country towns, backed by St. Ann's, leads nowhere, but to the heaths and pines of Surrey. ... I was yesterday at the old house and under the cedars and by the old pink aca- cia." As this passage ^eril^s suggest^, Arnold was touched less by the "outward shows of sky and 8 ARNOLD earth" than by their human associations, their subtle stirring of the perfume of memory, their symbolical suggestiveness. He called himself a "Wordsworth- ian," and one of his homes was in the Wordsworth country; but if he had written a Prelude, he would have given less credit to nature for the formation of his mind than to books and formal education. His education was of course admirably con- ducted. After some years of elementary instruction under his uncle at Laleham, and a year at Win- chester under the stiff discipline of Doctor, Moberly, later bishop of Salisbury, he entered Rugby School in 1837, where he spent five years under the super- vision of his father. He was a good student in the classics^ and Ji*e distinguished himself in 1840 by winning the school prize for poetry with his "Alaric at Rome." In 1841 he went up to Oxford with a classical scholarship at Balliol. In 1841 he won the T^ewdigate prize wiithhis poem "Cromwell." At the university, the strengthening appeals of poetry, poli- tics, miscellaneous reading, and the delight of ex- changing views with his great friend and brother- poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, somewhat diverted his attention, one infers, from the routine of study; for ^^ was_ graduated in 1844 with respectable rather than first-class standing. Toward Oxford as toward many other ancient: and venerated objects, Arnold's feeling remainedkl interestingly duplex. The poet in him responded CHARACTER AND CAREER 9 instinctively with a strong romantic inclination to the unworldly charm of the place, its idealism, its odor of vanishing sanctity, its shadowy traditions, its old-fashioned undeviating method of molding English gentlemen. The critic in him asked on the other hand what Oxford was doing to prepare young Englishmen to play an effective part in the more urgent modem society which he perceived was com- ing into being on the Continent. Visiting the uni- versity in 1854, after some acquaintance with edu- cational methods abroad, he says, with the touch of superiority inevitable in a worldly young alumnus.,^ "I am much /Strucic^with the apathy of the people ' here, as they^ strike me, and their petty pottering habits compared with the students of Paris, or Ger- many, or even of London." He himself, however, emerged from the "educative process" not merely with a love for the "beauty and sweetness" of the Oxford tradition, but also with alert faculties and a power of co ncentrate d independe nt work which "enabled him to'l:ontinue lus s31^education indefi- nitely. He carried with him, too, a critical admira- tion for the literatures of Greece and Rome which was to be a decisive factor in his career. His ulti- mate loyalty to both the method and the matter of the old classical discipline is half humorously sug- gested in a letter written at the age of sixty- four: "Lxead Jjgg. pages of Gi££k.an tbpl QgX.ev^ry_day;, l ooking out all the words I do not know ; this is 10 ARNOLD what I shall always understand by education, and it does me good, and gives me great pleasure." When Arnold left the university, he undoubtedly desired, above everything else, to be a poet. Why he was less exclusively a poet than Tennyson or Browning, is an engaging question, to which there are many answers. Of these^one of the most ob- vious is that, when he found his dearest ambition in conflict with various other desires, he entered a bread-and-butter profession, upon which the Muses frowned, and postponed full literary activity in the expectation of leisure which he never attained. Be- tween the end of his college course, however, and the beginning of his career as inspector of schools, there is a significant interim of three years, from 1847 to 1851, in which he acted as private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, President of the Coimcil. The few but important letters of this period re- veal a young man seriously absorbed in charging his batteries and meditating his course. In his sec- retarial capacity he saw a good deal of aristocratic political society, which afifected his political sym- pathies, and quickened his interest in public afifairs. One infers that his duties allowed him considerable time for poetical composition and for the thought- ful reading of early manhood. In 1849 he published his first volume. The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems. Already the poet and the critic in him are contending for supremacy. One aspect of the poet- CHARACTER AND CAREER 11 secretary is exhibited in a letter addressed to his sister and dated at Lansdowme House in May, 1848, of which the entire burden is a report that "it is be- ginning to grow dusk, but it has been a sweet day, with sun and a playing wind and a softly broken sky. The crocuses, which have long starred the lawn in front of the windows, growing like daisies out of the turf, have nearly vanished . . . but the lilacs that border the court are thrusting out their leaves to make amends." One is reminded of the yoimg Milton watching the "dappled dawn" through his vine-screened window at Horton.^ In the same year, looking beyond the crocuses of Lans- dovTie House at the rising tide of democracy in England, Arnold says : "I see a wave of more than American vulgarity" — ^his private references to America are seldom soothing — "moral, intellectual, and social, preparing to break over us." Political democracy he recognizes as inevitable, and he is al- ready casting about for something to render its so- cial consequences supportable: "You must by this time begin to see what people mean by placing France politically in the van of Europe; it is the intelligence of their idecMnoved masses which makes them, politically, as far superior to the insensible masses of England as to the Russian serfs, and at ^ 'T also heard from Motley yesterday that G. Sand had said to Renan that when she saw me years ago, 'Je lui faisais Veffet d'un Milton jeune et voyageant.' " — Letters, II, 151. 12 ARNOLD the same time they do not threaten the educated world with the intolerable laideur of the well-fed American masses, so deeply anti-pathetic to conti- nental Europe." From the ugliness of America and the stupidity of England, the fastidious young secretary retreats into his books. In this period he finds something consolatory in the Transcendentalists. He has a pleasant interview with Emerson; and "amidst the hot dizzy trash" of contemporary journalism he finds an article of Carlyle's "deeply restful." "The source of repose in Carlyle's article," he observes, "is that he alone puts aside the din and whirl and brutality which envelop a movement of the masses, to fix his thoughts on its ideal invisible character." A noteworthy passage in a letter of 1849 indicates the sort of distillation and concentration that were taking place in him while he was finding his "line" : "I have within this year read through all Homer's works, and all those ascribed to him. But I have done little, though more than most years, though I am getting more of a distinct feeling as to what I want to read; however this, though a great step, is . not enough without strong command over oneself to make oneself follow one's rule; conviction, as the Westminster divines say, must precede conversion, but does not imply it." What he wanted to read is revealed in a letter of January, 1851; "I read his [Goethe's] letters. Bacon, Pindar, Sophocles, Th. a CHARACTER AND CAREER 13 Kempis, and Ecclesiasticus, and retire more and more from the modem world and modem litera- ture, which is all only what has been before and what will be again, and not bracing or edifying in the least." From his quiet communing with the sages, Arnold was withdrawn by his appointment as inspector of 'schools in 1851, which one associates with his mar- riage in the same year to Frances Lucy, daughter of Sir William Wightman, a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench. Of his qualifications as a family man there can be no question. In all his corre- spondence there is not the faintest symptom of the churlish self-absorption and the peevishness by which sundry poets and men of letters have made a purgatory of their domestic circles. There is abundant evidence, on the contrary, that his atti- tude toward his wife and his six children was one of delighted and painstaking devotion. In reply to some careless reviewer who said that "Mr. Arnold appeared to have loved his parents, brothers, sisters, and children, but not to have cared so much for his wife," Mr. G. W. E. Russell declares that "to one who knew the beauty of that life-long honeymoon, the criticism is almost too absurd to write down."' Better thg,n any second-hand testimony to his ad- mirable domestic temper are passages like this in a letter to his sister written in 1859: "You can't s Matthew Arnold, London, 1904, p. 8. 14 ARNOLD think how nicely the two boys go on with Mrs. Querini, their governess. From my little study I can hear all that passes [ ! ] She said to Budge this morning, 'Who do you love best of anybody in the world?' 'Nobody at all,' says Budge. 'Yes,' says Mrs. Querini, 'you love your papa and mamma.' 'Well,' says Budge. 'But,' goes on Mrs. Querini, 'you are to love God more than any one, more even than your papa and mamma.' 'No, I shan't,' says Budge. Jolly little heathen. My love to all. — I am ever your most affectionate M. A." Turning from his family to his work, one feels at first perhaps that the Lansdowne secretaryship and the unworldly reading accomplished in that period were not the most practical preparation pos- sible for the busy career upon which he was about to enter, and for the daily contacts with all sorts of commonplace people, which his tasks necessitated. Yet in the earlier years of his labors he seems to have stood in need of all the consolation that Sophocles and Ecclesiasticus afford. With a strong attachment to his home and family life, he found himself obliged to knock around the country like a commercial traveler, with what physical discomfort a few extracts from his letters will suggest. Derby, October 22, 1852 : "I write this very late at night, with S., a young Derby banker, tres sport, complet- j ing an orgy in the next room." Battersea, Decem- ; ber, 1852: "This certainly has been one of the CHARACTER AND CAREER 15 \ most uncomfortable weeks I ever spent. Battersea I is so far off, the roads so execrable, and the rain so incessant." Cambridge, February 28, 1853: "I have had a long and tiring day, and it certainly will be a relief when I get these Eastern Counties over. The worst of it is that invitations to go and see schools are rained upon me ; and the managers who have held out till now against the Government plan ask me, on my father's account, to come and in- spect them, and to refuse is hard." Sudbury, March 8, 1853: "This is positively the first moment I have had. I am obliged to remain here to-night, having found an immense school and a great num- ber of pupil teachers; however, I shall get on to Ipswich tomorrow morning. ... I did not ar- rive here till just two, as the train was late; went to the school, and found there were three of them. 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." So long as Arnold was trying to make a place for himself among the British Poets — he was working in the first five or six years of his inspectorship at "Empedocles on Etna," "Tristam and Iseult," "Sohrab apd Rustum," and "Balder Dead" — this uneasy and exhausting routine was a grievous in- terruption of his vocation. He managed to bring out the Empedocles volume in 1852; another vol- 16 ARNOLD ume containing "Sohrab and Rustum," later known as the First Series, in 1853 ; Poems, Second Series,^^ 1855; and his classical tragedy, Merope, in 1858. After that there was no volume of poetry added till 1867, when New Poems was issued; this, however, is made up in considerable measure of reprinted pieces. When, in the seventh year of his occupation with the schools, Merope appeared, some of the critics suspected that his poetical vein was drying up; and Arnold himself admitted in an interesting letter to his sister that poetical composition was be- coming almost painfully difficult: "People do not understand what a temptation there is, if you can not bear anything not very good, to transfer your operations to a region where form is everything. Perfection of a certain kind may there be attained, or at least approached, without knocking yourself " to pieces, but to attain or approach perfection in the region of thought and feeling, and to unite with this perfection of form, demands not merely an effort and a labour, but an actual tear- ing of oneself to pieces, which one does not readily consent to (although one is some- times forced to it) unless one can devote one's whole life to poetry. . . . Goethe is the only one, I think, of those who have had an existence assujettie, who has thrown himself with a great result into poetry. And even he felt what I say, for he could, no doubt, have done more, poetically, had he been CHARACTER AND CAREER 17 freer ; but it is not so light a matter, when you have other grave claims on your powers, to submit vol- untarily to the exhaustion of the best poetical pro- duction in a time like this." Even when Arnold had turned almost wholly to prose, which is perhaps a little less dependent than poetry upon continuity of mood, reading examina- tion papers for two or three hours a day year after year must have been a dolorous task. Yet as he gradually relinquished the cherished enterprises for which his circumstances were unfavorable, and en- ergetically applied himself to the undertakings which destiny seemed to have appointed for him, the amount of what he reckoned as actual drudgery diminished; what remained he learned to perform with despatch; and he bowed to the necessities of the hour with an ever more cordial smile. If the first choice was denied him, he had other resources. His philosophy taught him not to waste the energy of his spirit among his regrets, but cheerfully to embrace the "second best," and dance out the meas- ure. There is not a particle of doubt that he was an effective inspector, nor that he became keenly inter- ested in education and its practical problems as soon as he fully grasped their relation to the general changes which he wished to further in the social life of his times. Four months after his marriage he writes to his wife: "I think I shall get interested in the schools after a little time; their effects on the 18 ARNOLD children are so immense, and their future effects in civilising the next generation of the lower classes, who, as things are going, will have most of the po- litical power of the country in their hands, may be so important." We are touching now upon the secret of the serene melancholy of Arnold's inner life and the blitheness of his outward demeanor. He did not without a pang suppress the lyric impulse of his youth — the purely individual passion for self-expression which is the birthright of every poet. But by the wise reading and earnest reflection of his early manhood he had made a clear, still, cool place at the center of his consciousness in which he saw the "realities of life" in their eternal aspects and with their per- manent values. He had mastered the agitation and egotism of youth by meditating on the stream of human existence which keeps its general course and rapid fulness while its constituent elements sparkle, and spend themselves, and pass. From his percep- tion that what is has been and will be again, he had acquired a wholesome tranquillity about the uni- verse, a certain humility about his own function in it, and just that touch of superiority to transitory things— T-to the passing show — which enables a man of his rigorous social sense and fundamental seri- ousness to do his duty lightly and even gaily. f The union of a graceful and debonair manner I with a grave and sustained purpose fulness is not the CHARACTER AND CAREER 19 commonest occurrence, and some of Arnold's con- temporaries who were delighted with his fine ironi- cal wit, his vivacious conversation, and his raillery quite misjudged the depth and steadiness of hiss keel. Since his death, we have been permitted to look rather directly into — not his heart, perhaps — but into the subjects of the "meditations of his heart." For thirty-seven years he kept little mem- orandum books in which he jotted down his engage- ments, lists of the works which he hoped to read in the ensuing year, and short extracts from English, French, German, Italian, Latin and Greek authors. If one dips anywhere into the published portion of the Notebooks, one finds one's self near the center of his intellectual and spiritual life. The passages of his reading there recorded for daily pondering passed into his character and instructed his conduct. We shall form juster notions of the man's activity among the multitude if we look a little now into the occupations of his solitude. It is a special mark of the family of minds to which he belongs that it tends to identify truth not with beauty, as it is identified in the famous line of Keats, but with God, as it is identified in the Gos- pels and in the works of poets of essentially re- ligious rather than esthetic temper. Arnold was a man who used his Bible, and made companions of the Imitation, the Manual of Bishop Wilson, the writings of Marcus Aurelius. When his mother 20 ARNOLD proposed sending him a ring for a birthday keepsake in 1871, he asked her, quite characteristically, to let him substitute for it a Bible, newly issued in Ger- many, containing the text in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and German; and he did not fail to let her know that the gift was in daily service. The religious undercurrent of his thoughts is attested in the Note- books* by the abundance of such memoranda as these : Les religions sortent a leur heure, sur un point donne du globe, du fonds inepuisable de I' esprit hu- main, que I'Etre infini sollicite sans cesse a s'elever graduellement vers lui. (Religions spring up at their hour, upon a given spot of the earth, from the inexhaustible deeps of the human spirit, which the infinite Being continuously invites to rise gradually toward him.) L'ame d'homme est religieuse d'instinct, et dans tous les cultes on trouve un besoin commun de I'in- fini et de la felicite. (The soul of man is instinctively religious, and in all cults one finds a common need of the infinite and of felicity.) People have no conception of the one only solid basis : inward truth, rectitude, and the fear of God. Vera hominis felicitas et beatitude in sola sapi- entia et veri cognitione consistit. (The real happi- * In frequent instances Arnold's quotations in foreign lan- guages are grammatically defective. CHARACTER AND CAREER 21 ness and blessedness of man consists in wisdom alone and knowledge of the truth.) All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant. ' I came, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. From his favorite moralists and devotional writ- ers Arnold acquired the arts and habits of delib- erate self-discipline. He set apart an hour in the busiest day for reading and reflection. He exam- ined himself and took himself to task for his "be- setting sins." He put clearly before his mind some virtue which he felt in need of strengthening. He repeated his vows frequently to keep them fresh on his lips. With respect to his personal conduct and bearing, he seems particularly to have cultivated two not very closely related powers : the power of apply- ing one's self intensely, to sharply defined purposes, and the power of radiating geniality and charm. A reader of Dante, he knew what place in the Pit is reserved for those who are "sullen in the sweet air" (tristi fummo nell'aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra); and he strove not merely to check but quite to rout his temp^amental tendency toward hypochondria. Positive indolence can never much have afflicted him, but his versatility exposed him to temptation to follow subordinate inclinations, and so to dissi- 22 ARNOLD pate his talents. To correct his diffusiveness he took council of men of action : Semper aliquid certi proponendum est. (Always place a definite purpose before thee.) Omai convien che tu cost ti spoltre. (Now it be-i hooveth thee to free thyself from sloth.) Es ist besser das geringste Ding von der Welt zu thun, als eine halbe Stunde fiir gering zu halten. (It is better to do the least thing in the world than to hold one half -hour of little account.) Die Hauptsache ist, dass man lerne sich zu be- herrschen. (The main thing is self-mastery.) Was Friedrichen so gross und einzig gemacht hat, ist dass er jede bedeutende Sache, die er unternahm, so eifrig, so thdtig betrieb als wenn sie die einzige ware die ihn beschdftigte, und als h'dtte er noch nie was anderes zu Stande gebracht. (What made Fred- erick so great and unique is that every important thing which he undertook he carried on as eagerly, as energetically, as if it were his only concern, and as if he had never done anything else.) Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet redire principium. (When you have read and learned many things, always return to your leading idea.) To correct his pensiveness he applied to his heart "tonic" maxims like these: CHARACTER AND CAREER 23 A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones. La gaiete clarifie I'esprit, surtouf la gaieU lit- teraire. (Gaiety clears the mind, especially literary gaiety.) Recherchons tout ce qui donne de la grace, de la gaiete, du bonheur dans la vie. (Let us cultivate everything that can give grace, gaiety, joy in life.) Une ame belle trouve un charme secret a satisfaire son genie bienfaisant et accessible. (A finely touched spirit secretly delights in showing himself gracious and approachable.) Al lungo andare nan piace e nan e fortunata nel commercio degli uomini se non I'allegria. (In the long run one does not please nor prosper in human intercourse without gaiety.) if Ecce labora et noli contristari. (Work and la- ment not.) Among these passages of somewhat intimately personal interest one finds scattered here and there quotations which mark the lines of Arnold's emer- gence from the solitude of individual life into the life of society. Here are the key-notes of his literary criticism, his poetry, his educational theory, his so- cial gospel, his idea of the State : ' It is too true that our own class, the guild of the 24 ARNOLD studious, does too little with the object of working upon the nation. The aim is to understand myself and the age, to apprehend what is the need of each, and to admin- ister according to our ability to that need. La destination de I'homme est d'accroitre le senti- ment de la joie, de feconder I'energie expansive, et de combattre, dans tout ce qui sent, le principe de I'avilissement et des douleurs. (Man's mission is to increase the feeling of joy, to fecundate the ex- pansive energy, and to oppose, in every living thing, the principle of degradation and misery.) Elever et cultiver les esprits, vulgariser les grand resultats des sciences naturelles et philologiques, tel est le seul moyen de faire comprendre et accepter les idees nouvelles de la critique. (To elevate and cultivate minds, to popularize the great results of the natural and philological sciences, such is the only means of gaining understanding and accept- ance for the new critical ideas.) Le hut essentiel de I'art est d'elever I'homme audessus de la vie vulgaire, et de reveiller en lui le sentiment de son origine celeste. (The essential aim of art is to raise man above common life and to waken in him a sense of his celestial origin.) La puissance de I'education consiste a augmenter le nombre des motifs dans I' esprit de I'individu, afin que leur conflit I'iclaire ct le soustraie d la toute-i puissance d'un motif unique. (The power of educa- CHARACTER AND, CAREER 25 tion consists in augmenting the number of motives in the mind of the individual, so that their conflict may enlighten him, and rescue him from the omnip- otence of a single motive.) Tout ce qui multiplie les noeuds qui attachent I'homme a I'homme le rend meilleur et plus heureux. (Whatever multiplies the bonds which unite man to man renders him better and happier.) Un governement doit etre un moteur de progres, un organe de I'opinion publique, un protecteur de tous les droits legitimes, un initiateur de toutes les energies qui constituent le genie national. (A gov- ernment should be a progressive mover, an organ of public opinion, a protector of all legitimate rights, an initiator of all the energies which constitute the national spirit.) The slightest reflection upon the foregoing groups of extracts will make clear that Arnold must soon have integrated his "bread-and-butter profession" of inspecting into his most serious life-work. Ulti- mately he not only approved of his own efforts in this direction, but also quite enjoyed many features of them. Despite some disavowals, he undeniably relished a controversy; and few subjects are more fruitful of controversy than education. He had compensation, too, for a good deal of tedious rou- tine in his not infrequent official tours of investiga- tion abroad. His official status as well as his personal reputation and connections obtained him 26 ARNOLD unusual opportunities for becoming acquainted with dignitaries and celebrities in France, Germany, and Italy. His social gifts brightened with use, and he developed a keen zest for distinguished society. He even betrayed in time something of a partiality for the "good living" and the "grand style" which he found in great houses. Above all, he met in Paris the literary men of his.time with whom he had most in common, his real confreres and coadjutors in the field of criticism. With all his hereditary and ac- quired earnestness he profoundly respected their lit- erary conscientiousness; and he had sufficient flex- ibility of temper to savor their personal gaiety and gossip and worldliness. He liked and approved, moreover, the association in the French Academy of men of letters with savants in other realms and with men of rank in state and church. Writing to his mother from Paris on August 16, 1859, he says : "This is my last appearance abroad as 'Monsieur le Professeur Docteur Arnold, Direc- teur-General de toutes les ficoles de la Grand Bre- tagne,' as my French friends will have it that I am. I go to Berri on Sunday to see George Sand. I saw Prosper Merimee this morning, a well-known au- thor here, and a member of the French Academy. He is Private Secretary to the Empress, and a great favourite at Court. He asked me for a copy of my pamphlet to send to M. Fould, the Minister who is gone with the Emperor to Tarbes, that he might CHARACTER AND CAREER 27 read it himself, and give it to the Emperor to read, if he thought fit." Five days later he describes for his wife a mem- orable evening with Sainte-Beuve : "After writing to you on Friday, I strolled out a little, came back and dressed, and drove to Sainte-Beuve's. He had determined to take me to dine chez le Restaurant du Quartier, the only good one, he says, and we dined in the cabinet where G. Sand, when she is in Paris, comes and dines every day. Sainte-Beuve gave me an excellent dinner, and was in full vein of conversation, which, as his conversation is about the best to be heard in France, was charming. After dinner he took me back to his own house, where we had tea; and he showed me a number of letters he had had from G. Sand and Alf. de Musset at the time of their love affair, and then again at the time of their rupture. You may imagine how interest- ing this was after Elle et Lui. As for G. Sand and him, Sainte-Beuve says, 'Tout le mal qu'ils ont dit Vun de I'autre est vrai.' But de Musset's letters were, I must say, those of a gentleman of the very first water. Sainte-Beuve rather advised me to go and see George Sand, but I am still disinclined 'to take so long a journey to see such a fat old Muse,' as M. de Circourt says in his funny English. . . . I stayed with Sainte-Beuve till midnight, and would not have missed my evening for all the world. I think he likes me, and likes my caring so much about 28 ARNOLD his criticisms and appreciating his extraordinary deHcacy of tact and judgment in literature." In December of this same year, 1859, he writes to his sister : "I thought the other day that I would tell you of a Frenchman whom I saw in Paris, Er- nest Renan, between whose line of endeavour and my own I imagine there is considerable resemblance, that you might have a look at some of his books if you liked. The difference is, perhaps, that he tends to inculcate morality, in a high sense of the word, upon the French nation as what they most want, while I tend to inculcate intelligence, also in a high sense of the word, upon the English nation as what they most want; but with respect both to morality and intelligence, I think we are singularly at one in our ideas, and also with respect both to the progress and the established religion of the present day. The best book of his for you to read, in all ways, is his Essais de Morale et de Critique, lately published. I have read few things for a long time with more pleasure than a long essay with which the book con- cludes — *Sur la poesie des race celtiques.' " In order to bring Arnold's chief French friends together we may add here an extract from a letter of slightly later period (1865) : "On Friday I dined with the Scherers at Versailles. He is one of the most interesting men in France, and I think I have told you of him. He called his youngest boy Arnold, CHARACTER AND CAREER 29 after papa. . . . He interests me, from his con- nection with Vinet/ who has been occupying me a good deal lately. ... At his house I met several of the writers in the Journal des Debats. Sainte- Beuve, who is just made a senator, called for me at half-past ten, and took me to the Princess Mathilde. She received me very kindly, and said she knew that in my knowledge of France and the French lan- guage and literature I was a 'Franqais'; to which I replied that I had read the writings of M. Sainte- ' Beuve, he being a great protege of hers. The Prince Napoleon was there, and a quantity of official and diplotnatic people, also several literary notabilities, but none I cared very much for." When Arnold announces in 1859 that his special line of endeavor is to "inculcate intelligence" upon the nation, one must recognize that the educator and the critic are getting the upper hand of the poet. By his election to the professorship of poetry at Oxford in 1857 he had literary criticism thrust upon him at precisely the right moment. His creative impulse was ebbing, but his judgment was ripe, his prin- ciples established. He entered upon his, lectureship with adequate poetic feeling and imagination, with taste cultivated by his own practise and by select but wide reading, with habits of reflection and analysis, 5 Vinet's idea of bringing forward "the rational side of Christianity" appears in our chapter on Religion. 30 ARNOLD and with a high professional seriousness, strength- ened by intercourse with men like Renan, Sainte- Beuve and Scherer. His letters in the decade from 1857 to 1867 are sprinkled with references to the composition and public reception of his lectures and essays. He published On Translating Homer in 1861, Last Words On Translating Homer in 1862, the first series of the Essays in Criticism in 1865, and On the Study of Celtic Literature in 1867. His talent for putting literary ideas in a clear light, his insistence upon their importance, and his pointed and positive manner of statement combined to evoke for nearly everything that he wrote the animated dis- cussion which assures an author that he has not written in vain. It is interesting to observe in his correspondence the sharpening of his appetite for fame and influence in this decade when his prose articles began to stir a public beyond the reach of his verse. He is de- lighted when Sainte-Beuve notices him in print: "I value his praise both in itself, and because it carries one's name through the literary circles of Europe in a way that no English praise can carry it." In a let- ter to his mother of July 30, 1861, he remarks: "I find people are beginning to know something about me myself, but I am still far oftener an object of interest as his [Thomas Arnold's] son than on my own account." Hints of this somewhat acutely per- sonal ambition alternate with exnressinns nf cofic. CHARACTER AND CAREER 31 faction in having at last "got at" the British public for its own good. Speaking of an unfavorable no- tice in the Guardian in 1863, he says : "To an emi- nently dec or oils clerical journal my tendency to say exactly what I think about things and people is thor- oughly distasteful and disquieting. However, one cannot change English ideas so much as, if I live, I hope to change them, without saying impferturbably what one thinks and making a good many people un- comfortable." As his reputation widened he became a desired guest at notable dinner parties. On June 16, 1863, he writes: "On Sunday night I dined with Morfckton Milnes, and met all the advanced liberals in religion and politics, and a Cingalese in full costume ; so that having lunched with the Roths- childs, I seemed to be passing my day among Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics. But the philosophers were fearful! G. Lewes, Herbert Spencer, a sort of pseudo-Shelley called Swinburne, and so on. Froude, however, was there, and Browning, and Ruskin ; the latter and I had some talk, but I should never like him. P — was there, too, tell Edward, screaming away like a mill-wheel in full revolution." Six months later he visits his great friend Lady de Rothschild at Aston Clinton to meet Disraeli and Bishop Wilberforce, with other notables. After dinner "Dizzy" approached him, remarking po- litely that "he thought he had seen me somewhere." "I said," continues Arnold, "Lord Houghton had 32 ARNOLD introduced me to him eight or nine years ago at a Hterary dinner among a crowd of other people. 'Ah, yes, I remember,' he said and then he went on: 'At that time I had a great respect for the name you bore, but you yourself were little known. Now you are well known. You have made a great reputation, but you will go further yet. You have a great future before you, and you deserve it.' " Disrespectfully as Arnold sometimes spoke of this celebrated statesman, he was deeply gratified by his praise, and, as one surmises, he in a certain fashion rather envied him. Disraeli was a "charlatan," perhaps; but he was a charlatan with power, ex- tensive worldly wisdom, ideas and brilliant wit. He had made a sensation both in literature and politics ; and when he compared the rewards of the two professions he stimulated the undeniable love of influence and reputation in Arnold, which as yet was but very imperfectly satisfied. One side of Arnold's nature responded with the most delicate sympathy to the schone Seelen, to the recluses and the sensitive, shrinking souls, to the Jouberts and the Amiels and the Wordsworths. But in the years of his maturity he had himself become a many- sided man; his admiration went out toward the Leopardis, the Goethes, even toward the Disraelis. Strongly developed impulses of his nature found im- perfect expression in "mere literature." CHARACTER AND CAREER 33 formed no dose relationships with the more dis- tinctly literary of his English contemporaries. In- deed his references to living writers of poetry and fiction, though less violent in expression than Car- lyle's, are almost as steadily depreciatory. "I do not think Tennyson a great and powerful spirit in any line." "A sorit of pseudo-Shelley called Swin- burne." Ruskin is "dogmatic and wrong" — "the man and character too febrile, irritable, and weak to allow him to possess the ordo concatenatioque veri." "Macaulay is to me uninteresting, mainly, I think, from a dash of intellectual vulgarity which I find in all his performance." Charlotte Bronte's mind contains nothing but "hunger, rebellion and rage." "I do not think Thackeray a great writer." His interest in Dickens may perhaps be sufficiently indicated, if one notes that he read David Copper- field for the first time in 1880, thirty years after it was published. The explanation of his rather dis- dainful attitude toward his fellow-craftsmen is partly that he had lived very little among the "writing class." His personal association was in- creasingly with members of the governing class. Quite legitimately he wrote at them, for it was pri- marily through them and the institutions controlled by them that he expected to influence the mind of the country. To present his ideas directly to the great middle class of Dickens' novel readers was beyond the scofie of his ambition. The essential 34 ARNOLD thing was to get a hearing among members of Par- liament, the courts, the. army, the church, the uni- versities, and the thoughtful journals. At the age of forty Arnold had pretty well ceased to hug to his heart the injunction of Epicurus, "Hide thy life." It is true that he planned in 1861 to "finish off" his critical writings by 1862, and to give the next ten years "earnestly to poetry." But however much he may have sighed for poetical se- clusion between literary dinners, school inspections and reports, lectures, and articles for the maga- zines, he had, in the vulgar phrase, "too many irons in the fire, and more fish to fry." Having rounded off his poetry professorship by publishing his book On the Study . of Celtic Literature, he began in The Cornhill Magazine the series of social and po- litical essays which appeared in 1869 as Culture and Anarchy. This book went straight to the mark, achieving exactly the sort of success that its author desired. Shortly after its publication the Italian government proposed to Arnold that he "take charge of Prince Thomas of Savoy, the young Duke of Genoa," about whose acceptance of the throne of Spain there was soon an interesting discussion. The prince and the author of the new book were at once the recipients of much distinguished attention,- faithfully chronicled in the letters of 1869. "When I was at the Athenaeum yesterday, in the morning^ fri/-M-n " Via Axrrifpc nn flip +lX7Ar»fi7-CAi7AnfVi /-\-f T?«T . CHARACTER AND CAREER 35 "Alexander, the Bishop of Derry, came up and in- troduced himself to me, and while we were talking up came Magee, the Bishop of Peterborough, and joined us; and there I stood for a long time talk- ing to my two bishops, to the amusement of some people in the room, which was very full." At a dinner of the Geological Society in February, at which the Duke of Argyll and Lord de Grey were present, "Huxley brought in my Culture and An- archy, and my having made game of him in the Preface, very well in one of his speeches. ... I have also had an interesting letter from Lord Lyt- ton about the book." In May, Arnold and the prince are guests at Lord Lytton's place in Her- fordshire. A few days later Arnold enjoys a couple of days of the Duke of Bedford's trout-fish- ing in Buckinghamshire. In June he writes from Harrow : "I heard the other day from Morier, the British Resident at Darmstadt, that the Princess Alice is quite fascinated with my Culture and An- archy, uses all its phrases, and knows long bits by heart. The Crown Princess is reading the book." In July: "The Irish Lord Chancellor O'Hagan asked Sir John Simeon to introduce him to me the other day, and spoke to me in a way which aston- ished me of his interest in my works." In Decem- ber he meets at dinner : "Disraeli and Lady Beacons- field, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Count and Countess d'Apponyi, Lady Ashburton, Colonel Clif- 36 ARNOLD ford, and Henry Cowper; Dizzy was in high force, and it was agreeable. He said to me across the table at dinner, apropos of something that was men- tioned, 'Sweetness and light I call that, Mr. Ar- nold, eh ?' " In the same letter he remarks that "nearly all the new periodicals have something or other about me, which shows how much more what I write is coming into vogue." On December thir- teenth he adds an unconvinced princess to his list of royal readers : "Lady Augusta told me a pendant to the story I told you of Princess Alice. Princess Louise said to her the other day, 'Vicky (the Prin- cess of Prussia) says she has no patience at all with Mr. Arnold.' " In June of 1870 he was presented for the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford by James Bryce (now Viscount Bryce). Lord Sal- isbury, Chancellor of the University, "told me after- - wards it had been suggested to him, that he ought to have addressed me as Vir dulcissime et lucidis- sime." The pleasure of widening celebrity was tempered l for Arnold in these years by a series of bitter per- sonal losses. Between January 4, 1868, and Feb- ruary 16, 1872, he laid to rest in the Laleham churchyard three sons. His reaction to these suc- cessive blows may serve us as a measure of the depth of his feeling and of the perfection of his self-control. On the day of the first bereavement CHARACTER AND CAREER 37 afternoon, a few minutes before one o'clock. I sat up with him till four this morning, looking over my papers, that Flu [Mrs. Arnold] and Mrs. Tiffin might get some sleep, and at the end of every sec- ond paper I went to him, stroked his poor twitching hand and kissed his soft warm cheek, and though he never slept he seemed easy, and hardly moaned at all. . . . And so this loss comes to me just after my forty-fifth birthday, with so much other 'suffering in the flesh' — the departure of youth, cares of many kinds, an almost painful anxiety about public matters — to remind me that the time past of our life may suffice us! — words which have haunted me for the last year or two, and that we 'should no longer live the rest of our time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.' " When in November of this same year his eldest son, Thomas, a boy of sixteen, followed his brother to the grave, he made in his note-book this brief entry : "Tommy died. Leva igitur faciem tuam in coelum !" A week later he describes in a letter to Lady Roths- child his last moments with his boy: "The aston- ishing self-control which he had acquired in suffer- ing was never shown more than in the last words he said to me, when his breath grew shorter and shorter, and from this, and the grieved face of the doctor as he entered the room, he knew, I am sure, that the end was come ; and he turned to me, and — his mamma, who was always with him, and whom he 38 ARNOLD adored, having gone into the next room for a mo- ment — he whispered to me, in his poor labouring 1 voice, 'Don't let mamma come in.' At his age that seems to me heroic self-control ; and it was this pa- tience and fortitude in him, joined to his great fragility and his exquisite turn for music, which in- terested so many people in him, and which bring us a sort of comfort now in all the tender things that are said to us of him." Of the third son, who died rather suddenly at Harrow at the age of eighteen, j Arnold writes, "My main feeling about him is, I am glad to say, what I have put in one of my poems, the 'Fragment of a Dejaneira.' " Mr. G. W. E. Russell, the editor of the Letters, who was with Arnold on the morning after the eldest son's death, says that he found the bereaved father •consoling himself with Marcus Aurelius. A surer so- lace than stoic philosophy he had in the fulness of a mind too closely occupied from day to day with unavoidable labors and self-appointed tasks to give to the departed more than a soldier's farewell — ^aj| breathing space for grief and commemoration. Yet these poignant reminders of human fragility and mortality deepened, one suspects, the interest with which in the 'seventies Arnold turned toward the Eternal. After the publication of Culture and An- archy, he had written to Lady Rothschild that he was "done with social and political essays for a long « fimp tn rnme" Tn 1870 he- pntprpH a tiaijt f.i=.\A nt CHARACTER AND CAREER 39 his critical enterprises with St. Paul and Protestant- ism. Church, theology, and religion continued to ' hold the foremost place in his attention for the next six or seven years. The principal fruits of this ex- cursion are preserved in Literature and Dogma, 1873; God and the Bible, 1875 — an answer to the critics of Literature and Dogma; and Last Essays on Church and Religion, 1877. He set a good deal of value also upon his A Bible-Reading for Schools, 1872, which reached a fourth edition in 1875, and was reprinted in that year for general use with the title, The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration. His religious message delivered, he returned to politics in a few essays on Ireland, the future of the Liberals, and related topics ; but the greater part of his writing for the last ten years of his life be- longs to more strictly literary criticism. Included in his Mixed Essays, 1874, are "A French Critic On Milton," "A French Critic On Goethe," and "George Sand" — all three attesting his lifelong interest in literary activity across the Channel. In 1878 he brought out, with a suggestive preface. The Six Chief Lives From Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets.' For the Golden Treasury Series he made con amore a selection of Wordsworth, with prefatory essay, in 1879; and a similar volume of Byron in 1881. For Ward's English Poets, published in 1880, he wrote the important introductory essay, "On The Study Of Poetry," and the essays prefatory to the selections 40 ARNOLD from Gray and Keats. Among his latest produc- tions are an article on Sainte-Beuve in The Encyclo- pedia Britannica, 1886; "Amiel" in Macmillan's Magazine, 1887 ; "Tolstoi" in The Fortnightly Re- view, 1887, and "Shelley" in The Nineteenth Cen- tury, 1888. The Essays in Criticism, Second Series, 1888, is a selection from articles and essays of this decade. In addition to this work in the beaten path of criti- cism, we must record two books which proceeded out of Arnold's great adventure : Discourses in America, 1885, and Civilization in the United States, 1888. Having disdained the inhabitants of the United States for forty odd years, he resolved in his sixty- first year to have a look at them, to see what he could do for their salvation, and, incidentally, like Dickens and other English lecturers who have sniffed at the Yankee "greed for the dollar" at sev- eral hundred dollars a night, to reap the harvest of the American lecture circuit. His first expedition, on which he was accompanied by Mrs. Arnold and his daughter Lucy, extended from October, 1883, to March, 1884. There is something of comic fla- vor in the critic's reports of his travels. One suspects that his impressions of our strange land before his advent in it were derived mainly from the reports of ante-bellum explorers like Har- riet Martineau, Mrs. Trollope, and the dispassionate and "inimitable" Dickens. "I hate o-nino- in CHARACTER AND CAREER 41 America," he declared shortly before his departure ; and it is evident that he expected to be dreadfully uncomfortable and dreadfully bored. He is pleased to learn from a newly published pamphlet that the "real America" is made up of owners and culti- vators of the soil — "one hears so much of the cities, which do not seem tempting, and of the tendency of every American, farmer or not, to turn into a trader, and a trader of the 'cutest' and hardest kind. I do not think the bulk of the American nation at present gives one the impression of being made of fine enough clay to serve the highest purposes of civilization in the way you expect; they are what I call Philistines, I suspect, too many of them." He discovers at about the same time a man who prefers the American landscape to the English ; and this is rather cheering — "I had fancied it quite mo- notonous." His English friends evidently made every effort to' nerve him to face his ordeal smiling. A railway contractor, who had apparently not been across the water in vain, went so far as to assert that "all the railway porters and guides" had read Arnold's books. The only really disquieting infor- mation was this : "They say Lowell only knows at home Boston and Cambridge, and his advice as to social points cannot be followed for America gen- erally." In some respects he was pleasantly disappointed by America ; in others, his experience only confirmed 42 ARNOLD his preconceptions. The first view of New York from the harbor he found not half bad : "We were lying off Staten Island, a beautiful orne landscape with spires, villas, hills, and woods. 'Just like Richmond,' I said to some one by me, 'and not a sin- gle Mohican running about !' This precious speech has got into the newspapers here." He soon dis- covered, too, that the clubs were "capital," and that some of his entertainers, including Mr. Carnegie and members of the Vanderbilt, Astor, and Delano fam- ilies, lived in a fair degree of comfort. Indeed he conceded that one or more of the houses in which he stayed were "as splendid as a house of the Roths- childs." He relished the shock of transition from such an establishment to the household of a Dart- mouth professor "in a small way of life," or from a "great dinner with Phillips Brooks — ^venison and champagne" — to a simple tea with the President of Amherst — "rolls, broiled oysters, and preserved peaches — ^nothing else — ^and iced water or tea to wash it down. For once, this suits me perfectly ■ well." But he is constrained to observe that "what we call a gentleman has a tremendous pull in the old world — or at any rate in England — over the gen- tleman here. ... It is the best country for a Rothschild I ever knew, his superior pull is so mani- fest." In New York City Mr. Carnegie gave him a "mag- nififpnt" rprpntion anH Iia «roc ni-t¥it^t^A i _ii CHARACTER AND CAREER 43 tions from Henry Ward Beecher and General Grant. In Hartford, Connecticut, "we had an immense re- ception" — every one from the governor down. In Boston he was introduced by O. W. Holmes, "a deaf little old man," and "dear old Whittier" came to meet him at luncheon. Writing from the Somer- set Club on December sixth, he describes the customary order of the day terminating with the hand-shaking "function," and adds, "There was no reception last night, however, thank God." In Cam- bridge he was entertained by Charles Eliot Norton, and remembered "a pleasant P rofessor Child." Per- haps the only place in America which much ap- pealed to his literary interest was Concord. From New England he went south as far as Richmond, Virginia, where he was agreeably impressed by ves- tiges of old English customs and "excellent Ma- deira." In Washington he had a pleasant interview with the President, met the "really best men in Con- gress" at a dinner with "dear old Bancroft," no- ticed the "dirt, untidiness, and spitting" in the leg- islative chambers, visited some of the colored schools, and was astonished at the "line of demarca- tion between the white and the negro." Philadelphia he pronounced the most attractive city he had seen over here — "I prefer it to Boston." As he moved westward he thought the newspapers more and more amusing: "A Detroit newspaper compared me, as I stooped now and then to look at my manuscript 44 ARNOLD on a music stool, to 'an elderly bird pecking at grapes on a trellis' — ^that is the style of thing." Colonel John Hay and his wife brightened his stay in Cleve- land. Chicago he describes as "a great uninterest- ing place of 600,(X)0 inhabitants." A Chicago news- paper described him as follows: "He has harsh features, supercilious manners, parts his hair down the middle, wears a single eye-glass and ill-fitting clothes." St. Louis, he reported, had a small group of "wealthy and cultivated people, headed by Gen- eral Sherman, who is quite delightful," and two large groups of Louisiana French and Germans, the latter more interested in their beer-gardens and sing- ing-halls than in culture. In St. Louis, speaking to audiences of only two hundred to three hundred fifty — the poorest since Baltimore ! — he began to recog- nize "the truth of what an American told the Bishop of Rochester, that 'Denver was not ripe for Mr. Arnold.' " It does not appear that as a result of this visit Arnold greatly modified his estimate of the typical American. He came to the country with a precon- ception that an aristocracy and a state church are indispensable training schools of national manners, and that Americans, never having undergone these disciplines, must necessarily be underbred. He de- tected some partial compensations ascribable to their lack of the molding force of an established upper CHARACTER AND CAREER 45 pected to find. Our poor fellow-countrymen's well- meant efforts to give him a "good time" gave him rather a somewhat erroneous impression of a ter- ribly over-agitated social life. "I have seen no American yet," he wrote, a month after his arrival, "except Norton at Cambridge, who does not seem to desire constant publicity and to be on the go all the day long. It is very fatiguing." (If the good man had only known how "fatiguing" it is for the unseasoned American hunters to provide the British lion with the "publicity" which he spurns yet de- sires !) On the bther hand he could not fail to be touched by the general stir he made — by the gra- cious hospitality and genuine admiration of a few individuals, the insatiable curiosity of the newspa- pers, the cordiality and bigness of the audiences. "They are very kind," he reports, "inconceivably kind, and one must have been accustomed to the total want of real popular interest among the Eng- lish at home in anything but politics to feel the full difference of things here." It is creditable to his critical sense that he adds : "It is perfectly astound- ing, but there is not much real depth in it all." More questionable is his notion that the American people are characterized by a temperamental vivacity. "The whole family," he says, speaking of a Quaker house- hold in Connecticut, "have, compared with our mid- dle class at home, that buoyancy, enjoyment, and freedom from constraint which are every- 46 ARNOLD where in America, and which confirmed me in all I have said about the way in which the aristocratic class acts as an incubus upon our middle class at home." The absence of an established church pre- sumably accounts for another American distinction : "The force of mere convention is much less strong here than in England. The dread of seeing and say- ing that what is old has served its time and must be displaced is much less." This was apropos of the reception of Literature and Dogma, which Arnold was a little surprised to discover did not greatly startle or shock educated Americans. Their relative freedom from the restraint of convention he notices in the political as well as in the religious field : "The political sense of the people here seems to be sounder than with us, and the soundest thing they have. To be sure, it is not confused by such a system of make- believes and conventions as ours." Yet despite all these qualifying circumstances, and despite certain sweet and lucid individuals whom he met in his travels, Arnold returned to England confirmed by experience in his conception of the average Ameri- can as a hard uninteresting tj^t. of Philistine. In the letters written in the few remaining years of his life, the sensitive reader will notice with in- terest Arnold's gradual perception that he was growing old. Allowing for the fact that many of these letters are to his wife and children, his tone CHARACTER AND CAREER 47 effusive than in the earlier part of the correspond- ence. He is as full of business and social engage- ments as ever, perhaps, "but he is no longer making plans for work very far ahead. He chats about his fruit trees, the family pets, botanical discoveries, and other trivialities, "forgetting the bright speed he had," and lingering with a certain affectionate- ness over little things. In May of 1885 he writes that he has been having a "horrid pain" across his chest; has been dieted for indigestion, though he had feared the trouble was with his heart ; and that he felt "very unlike lawn-tennis, as going fast or going up hill gives me the sense of having a moun- tain on my chest; luckily in fishing, one goes slow and stands still a great deal." A few days later he writes to his daughter Lucy (who had married Mr. F. W. Whitridge of New York and made her home in America) that he can not get rid of the ache across his chest, and has to stop "half a dozen times in going up to Pains Hill! What a mortifying change. But so one draws to one's end." This feeling that he was entering his "last period" was doubtless accentuated by the fact that in July, 1885, he was especially busy in finishing up his work in the Education Department in preparation for his retirement. 'In October, however, his superannua- tion was pleasantly postponed by a request from the Education Office that he go to Berlin and Paris to get information for them with regard to free 48 ARNOLD schools. He liked these official tours — "one has the opportunity of learning so much" ; and he had not been in Germany for twenty years. This mission gave him five or six weeks on the Continent in No- vember and December, and a couple of months early in 1886. Besides attending to official business, he improved the opportunity to hear Wagnerian opera ; went to the theater every night when not otherwise engaged ; had a pleasant talk with the old historian Mommsen, who impressed him as a blend of Vol- taire with Newman; heard Bismarck speak for an hour in the Reichsrath; and was presented to the King of Prussia, with whom he conversed in French. "His Majesty and I," he reports to his daughter, "talked it in much the same manner, neither of us like Frenchmen, but with perfect fluency and solidity of grammar." He also had several conversations with the crown prince and princess. The conferences with the princess seem to have been especially delightful; for, as he tells his younger daughter, "I kissed her hand this time both on coming and going, and really she is so nice that to kiss her hand is a pleasure." Unquestionably Arnold had a way with princesses. In April, 1886, soon after his return from the Continent, he became the grandfather of an Ameri- can girl. It is a pleasure to record that he accepted the little Philistine radiantly. On hearing the news CHARACTER AND CAREER 49 he addressed Mrs. Arnold, who had gone to her daughter in New York, as "My Sweet Granny." With all despatch he finished up his report on for- eign schools, and on May . 22 sailed for the sec- ond time to America. His behavior as a grand- father was exemplary. When he was staying with his daughter at Stockbridge, he made a visit to the "dear baby" the first thing in the morning : "At that time she is lying awake in her little crib, enchanted to see visitors, and always receives me with a smile or two. The other day she snatched a five dollar note out of my hand, and waved it in triumph like a true little Yankee." Arnold's idea that the Ameri- can has a turn for accumulating money was perhaps reenforced in the course of this summer by a three days' stay at the cottage of Mr. Carnegie and an inspection of his works at Pittsburg. He says noth- ing about the steel works, but reports that he made the "magnate" stop the team, when they were driv- ing through the Alleghanies, while he got out and gathered rhododendrons. To Sir Mountstuart Grant DufT he writes : "You should read Carnegie's book Triumphant Democracy. He and most Ameri- cans are simply unaware that nothing in the book touches the capital defect of life over here: namely, thatcomparedwithlifein England it is so uninterest- ing, so without savour and without depth." Arnold spent July and August in the Berkshires, and found so ARNOLD some pleasant things to say of the hills and the wild flowers, but by the end of August he was sighing for his home in Surrey and civilization : "The great relief will be to cease seeing the American news- papers. . . . Their badness and ignobleness are beyond belief." To an American friend he wrote on January 29, 1887, some months after his return to England: "One should try to bring oneself to regard death as a quite natural event, and surely in the case of the old it is not difficult to do this. For my part, since I was sixty I have regarded each year, as it ended, as something to the good beyond what I could nat- urally have expected. This summer in America I began to think that my time was really coming to an end, I had so much pain in my chest, the sign of a malady which had suddenly struck down in mid- dle life, long before they came to my present age, both my father and grandfather." The next year in April he was looking eagerly forward to a visit from his American granddaughter and her mother, and on the fourteenth of the month went to Liver- pool to meet them. The family malady struck him down suddenly before the meeting took place. He died on the fifteenth of April, 1888, in his sixty- sixth year. In his note-book under that date he had written: "Weep bitterly over the dead, as he is worthy, and then comfort thyself; drive heaviness away: thou shalt not do him good, but hurt CHARACTER AND CAREER 51 thyself." He had also written in a sentence for the following Sunday: "When the dead is at rest, let his remembrance rest ; and be comforted for him when his spirit is departed from him." / CHAPTER II POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE "The fact is, however, that the state of mind expressed in many of the poems is one that is becoming more common." —Letters, I, 59. ARNOLD himself, in a much quoted letter to his mother of June 5, 1869, made an extraor- dinarily high claim in behalf of his own poems. "They represent," he said, "on the whole, the main movement of mind in the last quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that move- ment of mind is, and interested in the literary pro- ductions which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet, because I have perhaps more 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." If Arnold had written an essay on his own poetry, it would prob- ably have been an expansion of this passage. 52 POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 53 As we look back now over the quarter of a cen- tury, or a little more, previous to 1869, "the main movement of mind" through the period is not diffi- cult to trace. In all phases of human activity we discern the forward pressure of reason, flushed still with the excitement of the French Revolution, tem- porarily checked and thwarted in some quarters, but steadily besieging and underminixig the position held by tradition, prescription, and the deep inarticulate powers of feeling. In the political field the Reform Bills, the Chartist Movement, the European revolu- tions of 1848 were signs of its advance. In science Darwin's Origin of Species, published in 1859, was its most conspicuous monument. In religion and phil- osophy the Utilitarians, the Positivists, the "higher criticism" of the Bible, Strauss's Lehen Jesu, 1835, and Renan's Vie de Jesus, 1863, were various mani- festations of the same spirit. In literature the dis- placement of the romanticism of Godwin and Sir Walter Scott by the Victorian realism of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope at- tested the popularity of the desire to see the "facts of life." [The main movement of mind, then, was democratic, scientific, critical, realistic^directed, in short, toward the extension of the sway of reason over all things. Arnold's poems reflect that movement in a pe- culiarly fascinating because in an intimately per- 'sonal way. The conflict of aristocratic with demo- 54 ARNOLD cratic impulses, of traditional belief and dogma with scientific knowledge, of romantic inclination with classical discipline and conviction, of emotion with intelligence, he not only perceived in the world around him but also felt very sharply within him- self. He felt these conflicts and he expressed them poetically. He betrays thus a somewhat unhappily divided personality, yet a personality very reso- lutely divided. His reason commands him to march in the "main movement of mind"; and he obeys with undeviating loyalty what he is constrained to accept as the supreme authority. But as he ad- vances toward the Truth, keeping step with his con- victions, his innermost self turns again and again, like the homesick heart of a soldier, to bid a reluc- tant farewell to his sympathies. With most of the finest spirits of his time he felt the pathos and the melancholy of disillusion. In his youth, as we have noted, he was somewhat prone to indulge his low spirits, to be interested in them, and even to seek food for them in the outpour- ings of other disillusioned souls — Rousseau, Cha- teaubriand, Senancour, Byron, Leopardi; and a sense of kinship drew him late in life to the world- weary Amiel. From this state of depression he emerged, however, by deliberate self-discipline, by a happy marriage, and by the manifold activities of his maturity; and took refuge from his feelings in his "morality and character." Without any special POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 55 reference to chronology, we can find the record in his poems of a gradual spiritual pilgrimage through disillusions to ennui and despair, thence to resigna- tion and stoical endurance, and ultimately to a new- kind of courage and hope, denoting a pretty com- plete moral recovery. His disillusionment had, as is commonly enough 'the~-Gase- with young men crossing the threshold of manhood, three distinct phases: a disillusionment about love and human relationships; a disillusion- ment about his powers and his career ; and a disillu- sionment about God and the universe. Of the three failures of reality to correspond with desire, the first was for him apparently the least important, and the poems commemorating it are not the best of his work. They throw a certain light, nevertheless, upon an otherwise unilluminated aspect of his inner life, and two or three of them lift the theme to the level of universal feelings. We need not pry into the biographical background of the series of seven poems entitled "Switzerland" or the shorter series called "Faded Leaves." What appears on the surface is that Arnold met on the Continent, assuredly at some period anterior to his marriage, a French girl who exercised over him for a while a very considerajjle fascination ; that in the first spell of this attraction he dreamed of that per- fect union of harmonious spirits which poets cele- brate and realistic novelists tell us does not exist; 56 ARNOLD and that experience proved him mistaken in the ob- ject of his romantic devotion. It is hinted that "Marguerite's" affection flagged, and that the lovers parted by mutual agreement. The appealing pas- sages of the series are those which express the poet's sense of the hopeless fragility of human passion, his vague shame at his emotional abandonment, his final consciousness of spiritual isolation: IV. ISOLATION. TO MARGUERITE We were apart : yet, day by day, I bade my heart more constant be. I bade it keep the world away, And grow a home for only thee ; Nor feared but thy love likewise grew, Like mine, each day, more tried, more true. The fault was grave! I might have known, What far too soon, alas ! I learned, — The heart can bind itself alone, And faith may oft be unretumed. Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell. Thou lov'st no more. Farewell ! Farewell ! Farewell !— And thou, thou lonely heart. Which never yet without remorse Even for a moment didst depart From thy remote and sphered course To haunt the place where passions reign, — '■ Back to thy solitude again ! POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 57 Back ! with the conscious thrill of shame Which Luna felt, that summer-night, Flash through her pure immortal frame, When she forsook the starry height To hang over Endymion's sleep Upon the pine-grown Latraian steep. Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved How vain a thing is mortal love. Wandering in heaven, far removed; But thou hast long had place to prove This truth, — to prove, and make thine own : "Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone." Or, if not quite alone, yet they Which touch thee are unmating things, — Ocean and clouds and night and day; Lorn autumns and triumphant springs; And life, and others' joy and pain. And love, if love, of happier men. Of happier men; for they, at least. Have dreamed two human hearts might blend In one, and were through faith released From isolation without end Prolonged ; nor knew, although not less Alone than thou, their loneliness. V. TO MARGUERITE. CONTINUED Yes ! in the sea of life enisled. With . > echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild. We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow. And then their endless bounds they know. 58 ARNOLD But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing; And lovely notes, from shore to shore. Across the sounds and channels pour, — Oh ! then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent; For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent ! Now round us spreads the watery plain : Oh, might our marges meet again I Who ordered that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled? Who renders vain their deep desire? — A God, a God their severance ruled I And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea. To bring out still more clearly the conflicting forces in Arnold's nature let us take first a passage from "Faded Leaves" in which one feels the pang and hears the cry of the heart uttered in pure lyrical abandon : LONGING Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again ! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 59 Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, A messenger frcim radiant climes, And smile on thy new world, and be As kind to others as to mel Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth, Come now, and let me dream it truth ; And part my hair, and kiss my brow. And say. My love! why sufferest thou? Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again I For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. Now let us have a single stanza from "Absence," the Switzerland series which seems to sum up the I domment of Arnold's reason upon the sweet tumult I of the emotional life : I struggle towards the light ; and ye, Once-long'd-for storms of love 1 If with the light ye cannot be, I bear that ye remove. These same lines might be employed, with slight modification, to illustrate Arnold's final attitude in the religious field ; for there is a curious parallelism between his experiences and his disillusionments with respect to human and with respect to divine in- timacy. The primary fact in his religious experience was 60 ARNOLD his consciousness of his own soul. One speaks in these days with a good deal of hesitation about the nature of the soul; and Arnold himself is not too explicit. What he does make clear is his conviction that the true center of one's being is not in the life of the senses, nor in the shifting waves of emotion, nor in the activities of the discursive intellect. Deeper than all these, judging all these, unsatisfied with all these, the spiritual self sits apart, hungering and thirsting for its own felicity in the perfect, the absolute, the divine. The sensual, emotional, rea- soning man becomes aware of this innermost organ when the pain of its inappeasable desire throbs into the consciousness, as it intermittently does, through the anodynes of mortal love and toil. Thence the melancholy which has its sovereign shrine in the "very temple of delight." Arnold describes its vis- itations in "The Buried Life:" Light flows our war of mocking words ; and yet Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet ! I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll. Yes, yes, we know that we can jest. We know, we know that we can smile ! But there's a something in this breast. To which thy light words bring no rest, And thy gay smiles no anodyne ; Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, And turn those limpid eyes on mine, And let me read there, love 1 thy inmost soul. POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 61 Alas ! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel? I knew the mass of men concealed Their thoughts, for fear that if revealed They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reproved ; I knew they lived and moved Tricked in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet The same heart beats in every human breast I But we, my love ! doth a like spell benumb Our hearts, our voices ? must we too be dumb ? Ah 1 well for us, if even we. Even for a moment, can get free Our heart, and have our lips unchained ; For that which seals them hath been deep-ordained 1 Fate, which foresaw How frivolous a baby man would be, — By what distractions he would be possessed. How he would pour himself in every strife. And well-nigh change his own identity, — That it might keep from his capricious play His genuine self, and force him to obey Even in his own despite his being's law. Bade through the deep recesses of our breast The unregarded river of our life Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; 62 ARNOLD And that we should not see The buried stream, and seem to be Eddying at large in blind uncertainty, Though driving on with it eternally. # But often, in the world's most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife. There rises an imspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us, — to know Whence our lives come, and where they go. And many a man in his own breast then delves. But deep enough, alas ! none ever mines. And we have been on many thousand lines. And we have shown, on each, spirit and power; But hardly have we, for one little hour. Been on our own line, have we been ourselves, — Hardly had skill to utter one of all The nameless feelings that course through our breast, But they course on forever unexpressed. And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well — but 'tis not true 1 And then we will no more be racked With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power; Ah, yes, and they benumb us at our call ! POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 63 Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy intoAl our day. Only — ^but this is rare — When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours. Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafened ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed,^ — A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast. And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain. And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur, and he sees The meadow where it glides, the sun, the breeze. And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth forever chase / The flying and elusive shadow, rest. » An air of coolness plays upon his face. And an unwonted calm pervades his breast; And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where it goes. This poem gives us the point of departure, so to speak, for Arnold's religious disillusion. It shows 64 ARNOLD Ihim to begin with innately and profoundly religious. jIThat is to say, he felt in the depths of his being the need of a being outside himself — supreme, benefi- cent, eternal — to whose cor^nuous effort through the ages he might unite his OTvn will and workings, and so redeem them from insignifiicance and quick perdition. He lived, however, in an age when the power and the consolation which come from certi- tude in this great matter were not easily to be had. The medieval architecture of religious faith ap- peared to his candid eye to have crumbled into a Gothic ruin. His poetic feelings hovered fondly and regretfully about it ; but he could not, like New- man and the Oxford "medievalizers," worship in it. In his poem "The Grand Chartreuse," written in consequence of his visit to a Carthusian mon- astery, he reveals clearly enough why the Oxford Movement, however much he admired its leader, left him cold : For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire, Showed me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom : What dost thou in this living tomb? Forgive me, masters of the mind ! At whose behest I long ago So much unlearned, so much resigned : I come not here to be your foe ! POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 65 I seek these anchorites, not in ruth, To curse and to deny your truth ; Not as their friend, or child, I speak ! But as, on some far northern strand, Thinking of his own gods, a Greek In pity and mournful awe might stand Before some fallen Runic stone; For both were faiths, and both are gone. Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born. With nowhere yet to rest my head. Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. Their faith, my tears, the world deride : I conie to shed,, them at their side. Oh, hide me in your gloom profound, Ye solemn seats of holy pain ! Take me, cowled forms, and fence me round, Till I possess my soul again ; Till free my thoughts before, me roll. Not chafed by hourly false control I The main movement of mind, Arnold well knew, was not, in his time, cloisterward. It was clearing the ground for another edifice, still to be designed. Remorseless reason enjoined it upon him not to archaize but to spend his labor on the foundation of the new temple of the religious spirit. With arms outstretched, in farewell to the faith of his fathers, he seems to say : If with the light ye cannot be, I bear that ye remove. 66 ARNOLD His renunciation of what he held to be intellec- tually illegitimate consolations left him for a time in a cheerless spiritual isolation in a harsh and spir-. itually meaningless world. This is the major mood of "Dover Beach," in which, however, there blends the pathos of the merely human affections of lovers clinging to each other like children lost in the night : The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits ; on the French coast, the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air 1 Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand. Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the JEgean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery : we Find also in the sound a thought. Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 67 But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another 1 for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams. So various, so beautiful, so new. Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight. Where ignorant armies clash by night. Arnold went a long step further with the expres- sion of the bleakness of religious disillusion. In Empedocles on Etna he wrote a philosophical drama of despair. Though the Greek philosopher who is the nominal subject of the piece flourished about 500 B. C, and though Arnold protested against the identification of his personal ideas with those of his dramatic protagonist, the poem is manifestly sat- urated with his own thoughts and feelings about life. His own tendency, if unchecked, would have carried him near to the leaping-off place of his hero. On a fair summer morning, which has lost its fairness for Rim, the old philosopher, weary of the world and of his wisdom, climbs to the crest of the volcano, and seats himself on the verge of the glow- ing crater. There he pours out his last reflection 68 ARNOLD upon himself and upon the destiny of mortals. He has outlived his capacity for joy, his hopes, his faith in a divine order. He feels himself but a link in a mechanical universe. The stars that come out above him as evening draws on seem no longer as they were of yore "rejoicing, intelligent sons of heaven," but . . . lonely, cold-shining lights. Unwilling lingerers In the heavenly wilderness For a younger ignoble world. He deems his "ineffable longing for the life of life," knowledge of the absolute, "baffled forever;" nor does he desire in some new incarnation to return Back to this meadow of calamity, This uncongenial place, this human life. Allegiance to reason, which he had taken for the noblest human faculty, has poorly rewarded him. In his arid philosophical mind the image of the world and of himself is repellent. Having stripped himself of the consolatory emotions, he is now con- sumed by an impotent passion for his lost power of magnanimous feeling: Oh that I could glow like this mountain ! Oh that my heart bounded with the swell of the sea ! Oh that my soul were full of light as the stars ! Oh that it brooded over the world like the air ! POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 69 But no, this heart will glow no mg A living man no moTe^SxH^mocles ! Nothing but a deva^mg flame of thought,— But a naked, eternally restless mind ! One thought at the end feebly comforts him : he has not been the "slave of sense." He has served the mind — ^perhaps has been the slave of the mind. Faithful to what we think of as the new spirit of modern scientific investigation, he has followed truth wherever it led him, and whatever its conse- quences. The following lines Darwin might have spoken, or Huxley. In them one recognizes the austerity, the bitterness, and the pride of the un- compromising intellect : Yea, I take myself to witness That I have loved no darkness, Sophisticated no truth. Nursed no delusion, Allowed no fear. Clutching this iron consolation to his breast, Em- pedocles leaps headlong into the fiery crater of the volcano, and soon, like Ethan Brand in Hawthorne's melancholy tale, is a heap of white lime-^tragic symbol of intellectual frustration and despair^ A man who, at the age of thirty, feels and thinks as Empedocles does may be saved from his utter despondency by the discovery of fresh interests; but it is not likely that he will long continue to pro- 70 ARNOLD duce poetry. The spirit of modern scientific in- quiry and criticism has brought forth abundant fruits in its own field; but it has been no poet's Muse. On this point Arnold himself was perhaps at first a little deceived. He condemned the poetry of most of his contemporaries because it lacked in- tellectual content ; because it did not make him think. In his sonnet on the "Austerity of Poetry" he rep- resents the Muse as wearing "a robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin:" Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse ! young, gay. Radiant, adorned outside ; a hidden ground Of thought and of austerity within. He conceived of his critical labors for some time as a preparation for a period of richer and more im- portant poetical activity. His disillusionment was to find that as his intellectual vision widened his emotional powers contracted; that as the discipline of his feelings approached completion there was rela- tively little feeling left to discipline. Not in "Era- pedocles" only but in a dozen other places he laments the cessation in himself of the powerful throb of emotional impulse which he felt in his youth — a ces^ sation which is the innermost explanation of his abandonment of his poetical career. The loss of lyrical power is a dreary subject for song, yet this theme can not be passed over in any adequate rep- resentation of Arnold's personal poetry. The three POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 71 passages that follow will sufficiently illustrate it. The first is from "Growing Old," and is in answer to the question, "What is it to grow old?" 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred ; And weep, and feel the fulness of the past. The years that are no more. It is to spend long days. And not once feel that we were ever young ; It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, ^ And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change. But no emotion, — ^none. DESPONDENCY The thoughts that rain their steady glow Like stars on life's cold sea. Which others know, or say they know, — They never shone for me. Thou^its light, like gleams, my spirit's sky. But they will not remain. They light me once, thejT hurry by. And never come again. 72 ARNOLD THE PROGRESS OF POESY A VAEIATION Youth rambles on life's arid mount, And strikes the rock, and finds the vein, And brings the water from the fount, — The fount which shall not flow again. The man mature with labor chops For the bright stream a channel grand, And sees not that the sacred drops Ran off and vanished out of hand. And then the old man totters nigh. And feebly rakes among the stones. The mount is mute, the channel dry ; And down he lays his weary bones. We have considered now Arnold's three major disillusionments. While it is the quality of poetry to eternalize these depressing experiences, it is the quality of the human heart to live through them, and even to forget them. Actually Arnold was not long a broken-hearted lover. He was never a desiccated old man. He did not make the leap of Empedocles. He only in his early speculative melancholy contem- plated and imagined it. He seems to have passed out of his darker moods, as his contemporaries John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle did, through a "center of indifference" and by a gradual displace- POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 72> ment in his consciousness of the "me" by the "not- me" — ^the classical method of salvation. Among his more personal utterances is a group of poems expressing the idea that one ought to endure life even if one can not enjoy it; that one ought to endure life — if for no higher motive, then because the individual self is too insignificant a matter to dignify by an interruption of the ordinary course of nature. Readers of Sartor Resartus will recall the kind of solace that Teufelsdrockh found in self- humiliation as with "calcined" heart he looked up out of the shadows of the valley of despair at the eternal starry splendor of the heavens : "Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw ! what is all this paltry little Dog-cage of an earth ; what art thou that sittest whining there?" Similar reflec- tions, similarly induced, fixed in Arnold the whole- some bitterness of an inward and spiritual humility, Iwhich may be illustrated by an extract from "Resig- nation" : The world in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love, Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy; and, were the scope 74 ARNOLD Of these affections wider made, Man still would see, and see dismayed, Beyond his passion's widest range, Far regions of eternal change. Nay, and since death, which wipes out man. Finds him with many an unsolved plan, With much unknown, and much untried. Wonder not dead, and thirst not dried. Still gazing on the ever full Eternal mundane spectacle, — The world in which we draw our breath. In some sense, Fausta, outlasts death. Enough, we live ! and if a life With large results so little rife. Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread. The solemn hills around us spread. This stream which falls incessantly. The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky. If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere. Pierce Fate's impenetrable ear; Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits have forgot. In action's dizzying eddy whirled, The something that infects the world. Wordsworthian though Arnold professed him- self, the voice that he lends to the "solemn hills" POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 75 has a far grimmer message than that delivered by the ^^igeof Cockermoutjil There is no gusto or exultation in IF. 'l"he enthusiastic and entranced author of "Tintern Abbey" perceived, or thought he perceived, in nature a divine and consoling spirit, a moral guide and teacher. By the middle of the nineteenth century serious poets could hardly enter- tain such conceptions. They spoke rather of nature "red in tooth and claw," devouring her own sweet brood; for the younger generation had its senti- mental illusions of harmony and order in the nat- ural world shattered by overwhelming evidences of an ugly and more or less meaningless "struggle for existence." When Arnold attributes personality to the non-human forces of the universe, he seldom speaks of the "mighty Mother" flatteringly. To him she is enigmatic, a dark-browed sphinx, a cruel or rather indifferent spectator, mocking the vain fever of man's small activities. Thus in his sonnet in- scribed "to a preacher" : "In harmony with Nature?" Re^less fool, Who with stich heat dost preach what were to thee, When true, the last impossibility, — To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool! Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more. And in that more lie all his hopes of good. Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood ; Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore; 76 ARNOLD Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest; Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave; Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends; Nature and man can never be fast friends. Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave ! As these lines indicate, he was emphatically not a nature-worshiper in the Wordsworthian sense. His "Scholar-Gipsy" and his "Thyrsis" show him keenly sensitive to pastoral beauty ; but his feeling for na- ture's more winsome aspects is nearer to that of Keats in the odes and to that of the Greek idyllists than to that of Wordsworth. He is deeply pene- trated with the sentiment of the Cumner Hills near Oxford; and he renders with charming delicacy and suggestiveness the impressions which he has received from woods and rivers and flowering fields. The emotion which pervades these pieces is, however, a relatively simple and sensuous delight in the con- soling loveliness of the external features of rural life — a loveliness sufficient for an hour to make the scholar forget his books, and to free the thinker from the pain of thought. The emotion is modified in each case not by the heightening of mystical com- munion but by a return to Arnold's habitual world of thought and morality. Now, to speak it frankly, the thought in these much-praised elegies is a bit too POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 17 thin to bear triumphantly the weight of all the flowers which Arnold has strung upon it. He pre- sents in them both an appearance, an unwonted ap- pearance, of dallying by the wayside, of digressing, of indulging in a moral holiday. So that, though they are perfectly sincere and delightful, they repre- sent their author inadequately — as "L' Allegro" in- adequately represents Milton; they are a little aside from his central tendency. Let us have first a few stanzas from "Thyrsis," the monody written to commemorate his friend, Ar- thur Hugh Clough, and the haunts of their Oxford days: Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here, But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick; And with the country-folk acquaintance made By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick. Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assayed. Ah me! this many a year My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart Into the world and wave of men depart. But Thyrsis of his own will went away. It irked him to be here, he could not rest. He loved each simple joy the country yields. He loved his mates ; but yet he could not keep, For that a shadow lowered on the fields. Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. Some life of men unblest 78 ARNOLD He knew, which made him droop, and filled his head. He went ; his piping took a troubled sound Of storms that rage outside our happy ground; He could not wait their passing ; he is dead. So, some tempestuous morn in early June, When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er. Before the roses and the longest day, — When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor. With blossoms red and white of fallen May, And chestnut-flowers, are strewn, — So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, From the wet field, through the vexed garden-trees, Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze : The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I! Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ? Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on. Soon will the musk carnations break and swell. Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon. Sweet-william with his homely cottage-smell, And stocks in fragrant blow; Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, And the full moon, and the white evening star. He hearkens not ! light comer, he is flown ! What matters it? next year he will return. And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days, With whitening hedges, and uncrurapling fern, And bluebells trembling by the forest-ways, And scent of hay new-mown. POEMS OF THE 'PERSONAL LIFE 79 But Thyrsis never more we Iswains shall see, — See him come back, and cut a smoother reed. And blow a strain the world at last shall heed ; For Time, not Corydon, hath conquered thee ! In the "Scholar-Gipsy" Arnold plays much of the same pastoral music which he evokes in "Thyrsis" ; but the poem has this additional interest, that it be- trays his poetical sympathy with an impulse which in his own conduct he severely checked — ^the impulse to drift and wander irresponsibly. According to an old story of Glanvil's, a lad in the University of Oxford left his studies and joined a band of vaga- bond gipsies. While the poet is under the spell of the Cumner Hills and the vagrant memories of his own youth, he is content to idealize the life of the scholarly truant : Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gayly as the sparkling Thames ; Before this strange disease of modern life. With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife, — Fly hence, our contact fear ! Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood ! Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern From her false friend's approach in Hades turn. Wave us away, and keep thy solitude! Still nursing the unconquerable hope. Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through. By night, the silvered branches of the glade, — 80 ARNOLD Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, On some mild pastoral slope Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales Freshen thy flowers as in former years With dew, or listen with enchanted ears. From the dark dingles, to the nightingales I But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly ! For strong the infection of our mental strife. Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest Soon, soon thy cheer would die. Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers. And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made: And then thy glad perennial youth would fade. Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours. Both the famous elegies are in Arnold's "Doric mood ;" and that, we say, is not his most character- istic mood. It is the mood of a transient though poignant nostalgia. Some aspects of the natural world he thought exemplary and edifying, particularly the march of the stars in their courses, and the silent swinging of the earth through its lonely course around the sun. To speak of the exemplary and edifying aspects of nature is on the whole more characteristic of him than to speak of her consoling loveliness. There is little or nothing mystical for him in the sweet influence of the Pleiades. It is simply that the planetary and stellar motions appear to him POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 81 matchless patterns of quiet eternal activity. Illus- trations may be found in "A Summer Night," "Self- Dependence," and in "Quiet Work" — two of which are quoted below : A SUMMER NIGHT In the deserted, moon-blanch'd sheet. How lonely rings the echo of my feet! Those windows, which I gaze at, frown. Silent and white, unopening down. Repellent as the world ; — but see, A break between the housetops shows The moon ! and, lost behind her, fading dim Into the dewy dark obscurity Down at the far horizon's rim, Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose! And to my mind the thought Is on a sudden brought Of a past night, and a far different scene. Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep As clearly as at noon; The spring-tide's brimming flow Heaved dazzlingly between; Houses, with long white sweep, Girdled the glistening bay; Behind, through the soft air. The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away. That night was far more fair — But the same restless pacings to and fro, And the same vainly throbbing heart was there. And the same bright, calm moon. 82 ARNOLD And the calm moonlight seems to say, — Hast thou, then, still the old unquiet breast. Which neither deadens into rest. Nor ever feels the fiery glow That whirls the spirit from itself away. But fluctuates to and fro. Never by passion quite possessed. And never quite benumbed by the world's sway? And I, I know not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield, and be Like all the other men I see. For most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning task-work give, Dreaming of naught beyond their prison-wall. And as, year after year, Fresh products of their barren labor fall From their tired hands, and rest Never yet comes more near, Gloom settles slowly down over their breast And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest. Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest And the rest, a few, Escape their prison, and depart On the wide ocean of life anew. There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart Listeth, will sail; Nor doth he know how there prevail, POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 83 Despotic on that sea, Trade-winds which cross it from eternity. Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him ; and between The lightning-bursts is seen Only a driving wreck. And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguished face and flying hair, Grasping the rudder hard. Still bent to make some port, he knows not where. Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind ; and through the deepen- ing gloom Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom, And he too disappears, and comes no more. Is there no life, but these alone? Madman or slave, must man be one? Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain 1 Clearness divine! Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign Of languor, though so calm, and, though so great. Are yet untroubled and unpassionate ; Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil. And, though so task'd, keep free from dust and soil 1 I will not say that your mild deeps retain A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain Who have long'd deeply once, and long'd in vain — But I will rather say that you remain 84 ARNOLD A world above man's head, to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizon be How vast, yet of what clear transparency! How it were good to abide there, and breathe free ; How fair a lot to fill Is left to each man still. QUIET WORK One lesson. Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity, — Of toil unsevered from tranquillity; Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose. Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil. Still do thy quiet ministers move on, Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting; Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil. Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone. If the stars have any voice, it says : "Endure, and go about your business quietly and diligently." In general, however, Arnold feels that man needs not, and had better not, look to nature for moral guid- ance. There is one law for things and another law for man. "Man must begin, know this, where na- POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 85 ture ends." The stars perform their appointed tasks tranquilly and effortlessly indeed; but, after all, the effort and the earnestness of man are his special human distinctions, the signs of his morality, the marks which show his alliance with God : MORALITY We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides ; The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides. But tasks in hours of insight willed Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled. With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern. Then, when the clouds are off the soul, When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, Ask how she viewed thy self-control. Thy struggling, tasked morality, — Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air. Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. And she, whose censure thou dost dread. Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek. See, on her face a glow is spread, A strong emotion on her cheek ! "Ah, child !" she cries, "that strife divine. Whence was it, for it is not mine ? 86 ARNOLD "There is no effort on my brow ; I do not strive, I do not weep : I rush with the swift spheres, and glow In joy, and when I will, I sleep. Yet that severe, that earnest air, I saw, I felt it once — ^but where? "I knew not yet the gauge of time, Nor wore the manacles of space; I felt it in some other clime, I saw it in some other place. 'Twas when the heavenly house I trod. And lay upon the breast of God." It is clearly Arnold's conviction that the appointed places for man to hear his oracle are in human his- tory, in the inspired books, in the lives of his fellow men, and in his own heart. There he will find the ideals of truth, justice, courage, gentleness and love of which the non-human world, which we call na- ture, gives no token. Some superficial observers have remarked that Arnold the critic and Arnold the poet are two differ- ent persons. No one will come to such a conclusion who has the tact to distinguish the poems in which a vagrant fancy is indulged from those through which his central thought and feeling flow. For example, the author of the Notebooks, the poem called the "Buried Life," and the volumes of biblical criticism is clearly one and the same person. What element have these three works in common? They POpMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 87 have in common a strong sense that the center of man's being is an inward monitor, the heart of his moral and spiritual nature, and that his true pros- perity in life depends upon his listening to that, de- pends upon his being ruled by that. The two sonnets quoted below are not finer poetry than many of the stanzas describing the roving of the Scholar-Gipsy through dew-drenched English lanes; but they are much closer to the center of Arnold's thought and feeling at maturity : EAST LONDON 'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited. I met a preacher there I knew, and said, — "111 and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?" "Bravely !" said he ; "for I of late have been Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread." O human soul ! as long as thou canst so Set up a mark of everlasting light, Above the howling senses' ebb and flow. To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam, — Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night ! Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home. 88 ARNOLD THE BETTER PART Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man, How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare ! "Christ," some one says, "was human as we are; No judge eyes us from heaven, our sin to scan; "We live no more, when we have done our span." "Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care? From sin which Heaven records not, why forbear? Live we like brutes our life without a plan !" So answerest thou ; but why not rather say, — "Hath man no second life? Pitch this one high! Sits there no judge in heaven, our sin to see? "More strictly, then, the inward judge obey! Was Christ a man like us? Ah! let us try If we then, too, can he such men as he!" It is a curious and significant fact that Arnold is most bracing when he stands by a grave; his most inspiriting lines are his commemorative poems: the prayer at the end of "Heine's Grave;" the "Memo- rial Verses" for Wordsworth; "Westminster Ab- bey," written in commemoration of Dean Stanley; "A Southern Night," occasioned by the death of a brother; and, above all, "Rugby Chapel," in which he pays to his father's memory an almost religious veneration. POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 89 In the latter part of "Rugby Chapel" one feels the presence of that powerful stream of moral en- ergy which flowed from father to son, preserving him through the sandy and desert places of his thought, and making him at length a positive and shining force in the world. Let us conclude our consideration of his personal poems with the exult- ant notes of this tribute: And through thee I believe In the noble and great who are gone; Pure souls honored and blest By former ages, who else — Such, so soulless, so poor, Is the race of men whom I see — Seemed but a dream of the heart. Seemed but a cry of desire. Yes ! I believe that there lived Others like thee in the past. Not like the men of the crowd Who all round me to-day Bluster or cringe, and make life Hideous and arid and vile ; But souls tempered with fire, Fervent, heroic, and good. Helpers and friends of mankind. Servants of God ! — or sons Shall I not call you? because Not as servants ye knew Your Father's innermost mind, His who unwillingly sees 90 ARNOLD One of his little ones lost, — Yours is the praise, if mankind Hath not as yet in its march Fainted and fallen and died. See 1 In the rocks of the world Marches the host of mankind, A feeble, wavering line. Where are they tending? A God Marshalled them, gave them their goal. Ah, but the way is so long I Years they have been in the wild : Sore thirst plagues them ; the rocks. Rising all round, overawe ; Factions divide them; their host Threatens to break, to dissolve. Ah 1 keep, keep them combined 1 Else, of the myriads who fill That army, not one shall arrive ; Sole they shall stray; on the rocks Jti" Batter forever in vain, Die one by one in the waste. Then, in such hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race, Ye like angels appear. Radiant with ardor divine. Beacons of hope, ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van ! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. Ye move through the ranks, recall POEMS OF THE PERSONAL LIFE 91 The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, re-inspire the brave. Order, courage, return. Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste. On, to the City of God. CHAPTER III POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD "To be less and less personal in one's desires and workings is the great matter, and this too I feel, I am glad to say, more deeply than I did, but for progress in the direction of the 'seeketh not her own' there is always room." — Letters, I, 400. THE impulse to express spiritual desolation, to which Arnold yielded in "Empedocles" and numerous shorter pieces, was almost from the outset in conflict with his own theory of the function of / poetry. The true end of all art, he held, and of ' poetry especially is, like that of religion, to strengthen and uphold the heart with high inspira- tions and consolations. The great poet — this one learns of Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shake- speare — does not pour into the world the unchecked flood of his personal emotions. He rises above his individual passions and affairs to survey the wide course of human life; to feel and comment upon its permanent and significant aspects; to illustrate the fortitude and the moral splendor with which man may confront the indignity of his lot. In "Resigna- tion," published in 1849 in the first volume of his verse, Arnold, describing the character of the poet, 92 POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 93 writes an indirect condemnation of many of his more intimate effusions : The poet, to whose mighty heart Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart, Subdues that energy to scan Not his own course, but that of man. Lean'd on his gate, he gazes — tears Are in his eyes, and in his ears The murmur of a thousand years. Before him he sees life unroll, A placid and continuous whole — That general life, which does not cease, Whose secret is not joy, but peace. It is noteworthy that Arnold recognized the incon- sistency of "Empedocles" with his critical principles, and withdrew it from circulation. In the important preface to his poetical volume of 1853 he explains both why he had been attracted to the subject and why on reflection he suppressed the work. The dis- cussion provides us an interesting approach to his other long poems. He had been drawn to Empedo- cles by that sense of kinship in philosophic melan- choly which drew him to Senancour and Amiel. "I intended to delineate," he says, "the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musasus, having sur- vived his fellows, living on into a time when the 94 ARNOLD habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modem; how much the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufificient at least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great movements of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteris- tics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared; the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discourage- ment, of Hamlet and of Faust." The faithful delineation of such feelings may be interesting, as it adds to our knowledge; but it is depressing, and therefore falls short of the highest poetical quality. That a work commands interest is something; "but, if the representation be a poetical one, more than this is demanded. It is demanded not only that it shall interest, but also that it shall inspirit and rejoice the reader; that it shall convey a charm, and infuse delight. For the Muses, as Hesiod says, were born that they might be 'a forget- fulness of evils, and a truce from cares' : and it is not enough that the poet should add to the knowledge of men, it is required of him also that he should add to their happiness. 'All art,' says Schiller, 'is dedicated POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD^^.4^ to joy, and there is no higher and no more serious problem than how to make men happy. The right art is that alone which creates the highest enjoy- ment.' " This important principle, Arnold hastens to add, by no means excludes the poet from the treatment of tragic themes. The world could afford no better subjects, he says, than Macbeth, or Romeo and Juliet, or Othello. "In presence of the most tragic circumstances, represented in a work of art, the feeling of enjoy- ment, as is well known, may still subsist ; the repre- sentation of the most utter calamity, of the liveliest anguish, is not sufficient to destroy it; the more tragic the situation, the deeper becomes the enjoy- ment ; and the situation is more tragic in proportion as it becomes more terrible. "What then are the situations, from the repre- sentation of which, though accurate, no poetical en- joyment can be derived? They are those in which the suffering finds no vent in action ; in which a con- tinuous state of mental distress is prolonged, unre- lieved by incident, hope, or resistance ; in which there is everything to be endured, nothing to be done. In such situations there is inevitably something morbid, in the description of them something monotonous. When they occur in actual life they are painful, not tragic; the representation of them in poetry is pain- ful also. - "To ^is class of situations, poetically faulty as it appears to me, that of Empedocles, as I have en- deavoured to represent him, belongs; and I have i^A ARNOLD therefore excluded the poem from the present col- lection." The rest of this admirable preface is occupied with the development of another central critical doc- trine: that the choice of a poetical subject is all- important. Here again Arnold speaks as a sound classicist, protesting against the modem demand for modern themes, and decrying the romantic em- phasis upon the "treatment" as distinguished from the "subject" and upon detail as distinguished from design : "The poet, then, has in the first place to select an excellent action ; and what actions are the most ex- cellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is penhanent and the same also. The modernness or antiquity of an action, therefore, has nothing to do with its fitness for poetical repre- sentation; this depends upon its inherent qualities. To the elementary part of our nature, to our pas- sions, that which is great and passionate is eternally interesting; and interesting solely in proportion to its greatness and to its passion. A great human action of a thousand years ago is more interesting to it than a smaller human action of to-day, even though upon the representation of this last the most consummate skill may have been expended, and though it has the advantage of appealing by its mod- POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD, , ^T ern language, familiar manners, and contemporary allusions, to all our transient feelings and interests. These, however, have no right to demand of a poet- ical work that it shall satisfy them; their claims are to be directed elsewhere. Poetical works belong to the domain of our permanent passions ; let them in- terest these, and the voice of all subordinate claims upon them is at once silenced. . . . "The date of an action, then, signifies nothing; the action itself, its selection and construction, this is what is all-important. This the Greeks under- stood far more clearly than we do. The radical dif- ference between their poetical theory and ours con- sists, as it appears to me, in this : that, with them, the poetical character of the action in itself, and the conduct of it, was the first consideration; with us, attention is fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action. They regarded the whole ; we regard the parts. With them the action predominated over the expression of it ; with us the expression predom- inates over the action. Not that they failed in ex- pression, or were inattentive to it; on the contrary, they are the highest models of expression, the un- approached masters of the grand style." Now, when Arnold, obeying the injunction of the Elizabethan sonneteer, looked in his heart and wrote, he was constrained to record the poetical experience which he found there, such as it was. When, on the other hand, he deliberately chose a subject in the ex- ternal world, he was actuated more and more, as his critical ideas grew clearer, by a desire to repre- (a^ ARNOLD sent in English the spirit of the ancient classics — ^to show what a poem should be. If one considers his longer pieces in the order of their publication, one becomes conscious of a progressive diminution in them of the purely biographical and contempora- neous interest, a development in the direction of ob- jectivity. "Empedocles on Etna" and "Tristram and Iseult" appeared together in 1852 ; "Sohrab and Rustum" in 1853; "Balder Dead" in 1855; and "Merope" in 1858. "Empedocles" so obviously springs from the author's personal relations with mid-nineteenth century thought that we have treated it in the preceding chapter as a "biographical docu- ment." In "Tristram and Iseult" he attains a certain dramatic detachment from the emotions which he de- picts, yet he is still fascinated, as in the "Switzer- land" lyrics by a subject very close to his bosom — the counter-claims of passion and reason. Critics have remarked upon the curious prominence that he gives to Tristram's wife, Iseult of Brittany, in conse- quence of which the unity of the poem suffers, the interest quite passing, at the end of the second sec- tion, from the lovers to her. One suspects that the poet, not yet altogether disenthralled from the magic of medieval romance though more than half in love with classic beauty, was not absolutely certain where the center of his subject lay, was not entirely sure what effect he wished to produce. His per- POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD iO; sonal poems repeatedly prove that there was a period in his life in which he was drawn to and fro by his hunger for passion and his hunger for peace. Youth, as he declares in "Youth and Calm," hears an inner voice crying "Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well." At any rate he exhibits here, apparently with intense sympathy, passion, in Tris- tram and Iseult of Ireland, wearing life to a shadow ; and then with equal sympathy he exhibits in Iseult of Brittany the image of a life self-contained, re- signed, calm as a waxen effigy. Both pictures are beautiful and both are profoundly sad; the poet stands between them with divided affections. To the dead lovers he bids f arewfell with the compassion few can withhold from frustrated and perished love- liness : Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, O hunter! and without a fear^ Thy golden-tasselled bugle blow, And through the glades thy pastime take — For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! For these thou seest are unmoved; Cold, cold as those who lived and loved A thousand years ago. There can be no doubt, however, that in the long run Arnold, like the gods, approved "the depth and not the tumult of the soul;" nor that the last canto, presenting the life of Iseult and her children in Brit- tany, is incomparably the finest third of the poem. 1 ARNOLD In the fresh idyllic charm of its landscape, its touch- ing humanity, its tone of tranquil melancholy, and its metrical regularity, the graver, collected, habitual feelings of the poet find expression seldom surpassed by him or by any of his contemporaries : ISEULT OF BRITTANY A year had flown, and o'er the sea away, In Cornwall, Tristram and Queen Iseult lay; In King Marc's chapel, in Tyntagel old : There in a ship they bore those lovers cold. The young surviving Iseult, one bright day. Had wandered forth. Her children were at play In a green circular hollow in the heath Which borders the seashore; a country path Creeps over it from the tilled fields behind. The hollow's grassy banks are soft-inclined; And to one standing on them, far and near The lone unbroken view spreads bright and clear Over the waste. This cirque of open ground Is light and green ; the heather, which all round Creeps thickly, grows not here; but the pale grass Is strewn with rocks and many a shivered mass Of veined white-gleaming quartz, and here and there Dotted with holly-trees and juniper. In the smooth centre of the opening stood Three hollies side by side, and made a screen. Warm with the winter-sun, of burnished green With scarlet berries gemmed, the fell-fare's food. Under the glittering hollies Iseult stands. Watching her children play : their little hands POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 101 Are busy gathering spars of quartz, and streams Of stagshorn for their hats; anon, with screams Of mad delight they drop their spoils, and bound Among the holly-clumps and broken ground. Racing full speed, and startling in their rush The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush Out of their glossy coverts ; but when now Their cheeks were flushed, and over each hot brow, Under the feathered hats of the sweet pair. In blinding masses showered the golden hair, Then Iseult called them to her, and the three Clustered under the holly-screen, and she Told them an old-world Breton history. Warm in their mantles wrapped, the three stood there. Under the hollies, in the clear still air, — Mantles with those rich furs deep glistering Which Venice ships do from swart Egypt bring. Long they stayed still, then, pacing at their ease, Moved up and down under the glossy trees; But still, as they pursued their warm dry road. From Iseult's lips the unbroken story flowed. And still the children listened, their blue eyes Fixed on their mother's face in wide surprise. Nor did their looks stray once to the sea-side, Nor to the brown heaths round them, bright and wide, Nor to the snow, which, though 'twas all away From the open heath, still by the hedgerows lay. Nor to the shining sea-fowl, that with screams Bore up from where the bright Atlantic gleams, Swooping to landward ; nor to where, quite clear. The fell-fares settled on the thickets near. And they would still have listen'd, till dark night Came keen and chill down on the heather bright ; 102 ARNOLD But, when the red glow on the sea grew cold, And the grey turrets of the castle old Look'd sternly through the frosty evening-air, Then Iseult took by the hand those children fair. And brought her tale to an end, and found the path And led them home over the darkening heath. And is she happy? Does she see unmoved The days in which she might have lived and loved Slip without bringing bliss slowly away, One after one, to-morrow like to-day? Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will — Is it this thought which makes her mien so still, Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet, So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet Her children's ? She moves slow ; her voice alone Hath yet an infantine and silver tone, But even that comes languidly; in truth. She seems one djring in a mask of youth. And now she will go home, and softly lay Her laughing children in their beds, and play Awhile with them before they sleep ; and then She'll light her silver lamp, which fishermen Dragging their nets through the rough waves, afar, Along this iron coast, know like a star, And take her broidery-frame, and there she'll sit Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it; Lifting her soft-bent head only to mind Her children, or to listen to the wind. And when the clock peals midnight, she will move Her work away, and let her fingers rove Across the shaggy brows of Tristram's hound. Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground ; POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 103 Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes Fixed, her slight hands clasped on her lap ; then rise, And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have told Her rosary-beads of ebony tipped with gold; Then to her soft sleep — and to-morrow'U be To-day's exact repeated effigy. Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall. The children, and the grey-haired seneschal, Her women, and Sir Tristram's aged hound, Are there the sole companions to be found. But these she loves ; and noisier life than this She would find ill to bear, weak as she is. She has her children, too, and night and day Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play. The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore. The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails. These are to her dear as to them ; the tales With which this day the children she beguiled She gleaned from Breton grandames, when a child. In every hut along this sea-coast wild ; She herself loves them still, and, when they are told. Can forget all to hear them, as of old. Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear. Not suffering, which shuts up eye and ear To all that has delighted them before. And lets us be what we were once no more. No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain. By what of old pleased us, and will again. No, 'tis the gradual furnace of the world, In whose hot air our spirits are upcurl'd Until they crumble, or else grow like steel — 104 ARNOLD Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring — Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel, But takes away the power — ^this can avail. By drying up our joy in eversrthing. To make our former pleasures all seem stale. This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit Of passion, which subdues our souls to it. Till for its sake alone we live and move — Call it ambition, or remorse, or love — This too can change us wholly, and make seem All which we did before, shadow and dream. And yet, I swear, it angers me to see How this fool passion gulls men potently; Being, in truth, but a diseased unrest. And an unnatural overheat at best. How they are full of languor and distress Not having it; which when they do possess, They straightway are burnt up with fume and care. And spend their lives in posting here and there Where this plague drives them ; and have little ease. Are furious with themselves, and hard to please. Like that bold Caesar, the famed Roman wight. Who wept at reading of a Grecian knight Who made a name at younger years than he; Or that renown'd mirror of chivalry, Prince Alexander, Philip's peerless son. Who carried the great war from Macedon Into the Soudan's realm, and thundered on To die at thirty-five in Babylon. What tale did Iseult to the children say, Under the hollies, that bright winter's day? POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 105 She told them of the fairy-haunted land Away the other side of Brittany, Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea ; Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps, Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps. For here he came with the fay Vivian, One April, when the warm days first began. He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend, On her white palfrey; here he met his end, In these lone sylvan glades, that April-day. This tale of Merlin and the lovely fay Was the one Iseult chose, and she brought clear Before the children's fancy him and her. Blowing between the stems, the forest-air Had loosened the brown locks of Vivian's hair. Which played on her flushed cheek, and her blue eyes Sparkled with mocking glee and exercise. Her palfrey's flanks were mired and bathed in sweat. For they had travelled far and not stopped yet. A brier in that tangled wilderness Had scored her white right hand, which she allows To rest ungloved on her green riding-dress; The other warded off the drooping boughs. But still she chatted on, with her blue eyes Fixed full on Merlin's face, her stately prize. Her 'haviour had the morning's fresh clear grace. The spirit of the woods was in her face; She look'd so witching fair, that learned wight Forgot his craft, and his best- wits took flight. And he grew fond, and eager to obey His mistress, use her empire as she may. 106 ARNOLD They came to where the brushwood ceased, and day Peer'd 'twixt the stems ; and the ground broke away, In a sloped sward down to a brawling brook. And up as high as where they stood to look On the brook's farther side was clear ; but then The underwood and trees began again. This open glen was studded thick with thorns Then white with blossom ; and you saw the horns. Through last year's fern, of the shy fallow-deer Who come at noon down to the water here. You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along Under the thorns on the green sward ; and strong The blackbird whistled from the dingles near, And the weird chipping of the woodpecker Rang lonelily and sharp ; the sky was fair. And a fresh breath of spring stirr'd everywhere. Merlin and Vivian stopp'd on the slope's brow. To gaze on the light sea of leaf and bough Which glistering plays all round them, lone and mild, As if to itself the quiet forest smiled. Upon the brow-top grew a thorn, and here The grass was dry and moss'd, and you saw clear Across the hollow; white anemonies Starr'd the cool turf, and clumps of primroses Ran out from the dark underwood behind. No fairer resting-place a man could find. "Here let us halt," said Merlin then ; and she Nodded, and tied her palfrey to a tree. They sate them down together, and a sleep Fell upon Merlin, more like death, so deep. Her finger on her lips, then Vivian rose. And from her brown-locked head the wimple throws, POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 107 And takes it in her hand, and waves it over The blossomed thorn-tree and her sleeping lover. Nine times she waved the fluttering wimple round, And made a little plot of magic ground. And in that daisied circle, as men say, Is Merlin prisoner till the judgment-day; But she herself whither she will can rove — For she was passing weary of his love. Fine as "Tristram and Iseult" is in parts, it is less vigorously integrated than "Sohrab and Rustum," and it falls short of the high seriousness of the later poem. "Sohrab," combining freshness and charm of treatment with austerity of design and mood, probably approaches as closely as anything in Arnold's works to his own poetic ideal. On com- pleting it he wrote to his mother in May, 1853 : "All my spare time has been spent on a poem which I have just finished, and which I think by far the best thing I have yet done, and that it will be generally liked, though one never can be sure of this. I have had the greatest pleasure in composing it — a rare thing with me, and, as I think, a good test of the pleasure what you write is likely to afford to others ; but then the story is a very noble and excellent one." The nucleus of the story, told in Sir John Malcolm's History of Persia, is as follows : The great warrior Rustum, fighting as the champion of the Persians, unwittingly kills in single combat his long-lost son 108 ARNOLD Sohrab, the champion of the Tartars, who has been seeking his father through the world. The incident impressed Arnold as being of Homeric or Miltonic quality, and he treated it in the "grand style" as an epic episode. It was ad- mirably adapted to enforce his doctrine on the choice of a subject; for though the persons and places and the period of history involved are far remote from the common intei^ests and knowledge of Occidental readers, the nature of the action is such as to appeal powerfully to some of the most elementary human feelings — ^the feelings of fatherhood and sonship, and, let us add, the feeling which almost every mother's son knows soon or late, the feeling of irre- trievable disaster. Without indulging in oversub- tlety, we may surmise that the narrative peculiarly engaged the sympathies of the poet as a striking fragment of the evidence about human affairs which led him in "Dover Beach" to declare that We are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. In its pervading temper, however, "Sohrab and Rustum" differs significantly from the temper of "Dover Beach" and still more, from the temper of the condemned "Empedocles." It is poignantly sad, but it is not depressing; for it is in the heroic mood. The distress fulness of the action is relieved POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 109 by the splendid courage and magnanimity of the participants, and their bitter conflict ends not in despondency but in a solemn peace, which affects the reader with a curious sense of liberation, enlarge- ment, and exaltation. It yields, in short, the special joy of the truly tragic : a sense of something tran- scending the individual life, of something in the I world nobler than nature, of something in the heart Iwhich destiny can not break — a sense, in the pres- ence of death, of deathless things. This final effect, the highest which poetry can pro- duce, is procured by various more or less definable means. For example, the temporary importance and at the same time the ultimate insignificance of the champions is magnificently emphasized by the Homeric marshaling of the contending Persian and Tartar hosts, so that all barbaric Asia seems to seethe behind the individual combatants : The sun by this had risen, and cleared the fog From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands. And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed Into the open plain : so Haman bade, — Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa ruled The host, and still was in his lusty prime. From their black tents, long files of horse, they , streamed; As when some gray November morn the files, In marching order spread, of long-necked cranes Stream over Casbin and the southern slopes Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries. no ARNOLD Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, southward bound For the warm Persian seaboard, — so they streamed. The Tartars of the Oxus, the king's guard, First, with black sheep-skin caps and with long spears ; Large men, large steeds, who from Bokhara come And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares. Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south. The Tukas, and the lances of Salore, And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands; Light men and on light steeds, who only drink The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came From far, and a more doubtful service owned, — The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards And close-set skull-caps ; and those wilder hordes Who roam o'er Kipchak and the northern waste, Kalmucks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes who stray Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes, Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere, — These all filed out from camp into the plain. And on the other side the Persians formed, — First a light cloud of horse, Tartars they seemed, The Ilyats of Khorassan; and behind. The royal troops of Persia, horse and foot, Marshall'd battalions bright in burnish'd steel. The terrific grandeur of the combat is magnified by the representation of nature as an angry spectator or a participant in it ; yet the heroes are superbly at the center of the poem, and in the hottest fury of their encounter their personal relationship is the POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 111 center of the interest, and its disclosure the turning point of the action : And you would say that sun and stars took part In that unnatural conflict : for a cloud Grew suddenly in heaven, and darked the sun Over the fighters' heads ; and a wind rose Under their feet, and moaning swept the plain, And in a sandy whirlwind wrapped the pair. In gloom they twain were wrapped, and they alone ; For hoth the on-looking hosts on either hatid Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was pure, And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream. But in the gloom they fought, with bloodshot eyes And laboring breath. First Rustum struck the shield Which Sohrab held stiff out ; the steel-spiked spear Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin. And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm. Nor clove its steel quite through ; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horse-hair plume. Never till now defiled, sank to the dust ; And Rustum bowed his head. But then the gloom Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air. And lightnings rent the cloud ; and Ruksh the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry: No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some pained desert-lion, who all day Has trailed the hunter's javelin in his side, And comes at night to die upon the sand; The two hosts heard that cry, and quaked for fear. And Oxus curdled as it crossed his stream. But Sohrab heard, and quailed not, but rushed on. And struck again ; and again Rustum bowed 112 ARNOLD His head ; but this time all the blade, like glass, Sprang in a thousand shivers on the helm, And in the hand the hilt remained alone. Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear. And shouted : Rustum! — Sohrab heard that shout. And shrank amazed : back he recoil'd one step. And scann'd with blinking eyes the advancing form ; And then he stood bewilder'd, and he dropp'd His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side. He reel'd, and staggering back, sank to the ground. And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell, And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all The cloud ; and the two armies saw the pair ; — Saw Rustum standing, safe upon his feet. And Sohrab, wounded, on the bloody sand. While the stricken Sohrab declares himself, the father, still unconvinced, yet touched by the abstract pity of the young man's fate, lets his mind travel back to the days of his youth : . . . . yet he listen'd plunged in thought; And his soul set to grief, as the vast tide Of the bright rocking ocean sets to shore At the full moon; tears gathered in his eyes; For he remembered his own early youth. And all its bounding rapture ; as, at dawn, The shepherd from his mountain-lodge descries A far, bright city, smitten by the sun. Through many rolling clouds,— so Rustum saw His youth ; saw Sohrab's mother in her bloom ; And that old king, her father, who loved well POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 113 His wandering guest, and gave him his fair child With joy; and all the pleasant life they led, They three, in that long-distant summer-time, — The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt And hound, and morn on those delightful hills In Ader-baijan. And he saw that youth. Of age and looks to be his own dear son. Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand; Like some rich hyacinth which by the scythe Of an unskilful gardener has been cut, Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed. And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, On the mown, dying grass, — so Sohrab lay. Lovely in death, upon the common sand. And Rustum gazed on him with grief, and said, — "O Sohrab, thou indeed art such a son Whom Rustum, wert thou his, might well have loved ! Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, or else men Have told thee false : thou art not Rustum's son." When Sohrab produces unmistakable proof of his identity, Rustum in utter remorse and desperation clutches his sword "to draw it, and forever let life out." But Sohrab, uncomplaining, resigned, and blissful, speaks out of the strength and magnanimity of a great love : "Father, forbear I for I but meet to-day The 4oom which at my birth was written down In Heaven, and thou art. Heaven's unconscious hand. Surely my heart cried out that it was thou. When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too, I know it ! But fate trod those promptings down 114 ARNOLD Under its iron heel; fate, fate engaged The strife, and hurled me on my father's spear. But let us speak no more of this. I find My father, let me feel that I have found 1 Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks, And wash them with thy tears, and say, My son! Quick, quick ! for numbered are my sands of life, And swift ; for like the lightning to this field I came, and like the wind I go away, — Sudden, and swift, and like a passing wind; But it was writ in Heaven that this should be." So said he; and his voice released the heart Of Rustum, and his tears broke forth ; he cast His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud. And kissed him. And awe fell on both the hosts. When they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh, the horse, With his head bowing to the ground, and mane Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woe First to the one, then to the other, moved His head, as if inquiring what their grief Might mean ; and from his dark, compassionate eyes. The big warm tears rolled down, and caked the sand. But, with a grave mild voice, Sohrab replied : "Desire not that, my father ! thou must live. For some are born to do great deeds, and live As some are bom to be obscured, and die. Do thou the deeds I die too young to do. And reap a second glory in thine age ; Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine." POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 115 It is suggestive to place beside Empedocles' "criti- cism of life" — ^uttered in the hot fit of a fevered in- tellect — as an "uncongenial place," a "meadow of calamity," the lines describing the passage of Soh- rab's unconquerable soul, the busy resumption of routine by the Persian and Tartar hosts, and the starry tranquillity of nature which succeeds, faintly hinting at a far-off peace in the union of the Many with the One. Unwillingly the spirit fled away, Regretting the warm mansion which it left, And yoilth, and bloom, and this delightful world. So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead ; And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars, once high-reared By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear His house, now 'mid their broken flights of steps Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side, — So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. And night came down over the solemn waste, And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, And darkened all ; and a cold fog, with night, Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose. As of a great assembly loosed, and fires Began to twinkle through the fog ; for now Both armies moved to camp, and took their meal ; The Persians took it on the open sands Southward, the Tartars by the river-marge ; Apdl Itustum and his son were left alone. 116 ARNOLD But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved. Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon ; he flowed Right for the polar star, past Orgtmje, Brimming, and bright, and large ; then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams. And split his currents ; that for many a league The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles, — Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foiled circuitous wanderer, — till at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea. Two years after the appearance of "Sohrab and Rustum" Arnold brought out his "Balder Dead." He hoped that it would "consolidate the peculiar sort of reputation" which he had made by his treatment of the Persian episode. Why it missed the popular success attained by its predecessor is partly revealed in Arnold's own apology for it. Writing to Pal- grave in 1869 regarding the first collected edition of his poems, then in the press, he says : " '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 con- sider that it has a natural propriety of diction and POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 117. 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 tourmente which excludes this natural propriety; and I have myself in 'Sohrab' something, not dainty, but tourmente and Miltonically ampoulle, which excludes it. . . . We have enough' Scandi- navianism in our nature and history to make a short conspectus of the Scandinavian mythology admissi- ble."^ The apologist has temporarily forgotten his pref- ace of 1853. The relative failure of "Balder" is not due to its "Scandinavianism" any more than the suc- cess of "Sohrab" is due to its Orientalism. The trouble with "Balder" is in the subject itself — in the action, which is excessively fantastic, and in the characters, who are gods and notoriously difficult to handle. The subject does not "powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections" ; it is deficient in "greatness" and "passion." If it possessed these qualities, it would hold us, though the manners were Patagonian. For the absence of these qualities we find in a poem of nearly twelve hundred lines no adequate compensation in "a natural propriety of diction" and "a short conspectus of the Scandina- vian mythology." This is not to deny the work interest and charm. It has the interest of its fantastic story — its mytho- iQuoted in G. W. E. Russell's Matthew Arnold, p. 42. 118 ARNOLD logical interest. It has the chann of its rather dulcet style and its Virgilian echoes, singularly out of place, the captious will say, in a poem drawn from the Norse Edda. One can not believe that it orig- inated in the heat and light of an intense imaginative experience, for its effect is not cumulative and uni- fied; it has fine passages which one can excerpt without feeling conscience-stricken, as specimens of its quality. Let us have the beautiful speech of Reg- ner over the dead body of Balder, and the descrip- tion of the funeral pyre and the burial ship. When Arnold wrote the tribute to Balder's singing it is a fair guess that he was thinking of Wordsworth : "Balder, there yet are many scalds in heaven Still left, and that chief scald, thy brother Brage, AVhora we may bid to sing, though thou art gone. And all these gladly, while we drink, we hear. After the feast is done, in Odin's hall; But they harp ever on one string, and wake Remembrance in our soul of wars alone. Such as on earth we valiantly have waged, And blood, and ringing blows, and violent death. But when thou sangest, Balder, thou didst strike Another note, and, like a bird in spring. Thy voice of joyance minded us, and youth. And wife, and children, and our ancient home. Yes, and I too remembered then no more My dungeon, where the serpents stung me dead. Nor Ella's victory on the English coast ; But I heard Thora laugh in Gothland Isle, And saw my shepherdess, Aslauga, tend POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 119 Her flock along the white Norwegian beach. Tears started to mine eyes with yearning joy. Therefore with grateful heart I mourn thee dead." So Regner spake, and all the heroes groaned. But now the sun had passed the height of heaven, And soon had all that day been spent in wail ; But then the Father of the ages said, — "Ye gods, there well may be too much of wail ! Bring now the gathered wood to Balder's ship ; Heap on the deck the logs, and build the pyre." But when the gods and heroes heard, they brought The wood to Balder's ship, and built a pile. Full the deck's breadth, and lofty; then the corpse Of Balder on the highest top they laid. With Nanna on his right, and on his left Hoder, his brother, whom his own hand slew. And they set jars of wine and oil to lean Against the bodies, and stuck torches near, Splinters of pine-wood, soaked with turpentine ; And brought his arms and gold, and all his stuff, And slew the dogs who at his table fed, And his horse, Balder's horse, whom most he loved, And threw them on the pyre ; and Odin threw A last choice gift thereon, his golden ring. The mast they fixed, and hoisted up the sails ; Then they put fire to the wood ; and Thor Set his stout shoulder hard against the stern To push the ship through the thick sand ; sparks flew From the deep trench she ploughed, so strong a god Furrowed it; and the water gurgled in. And the ship floated on the waves, and rocked. But in the hills a strong east-wind arose. And came down moaning to the sea ; first squalls Ran black o'er the sea's face, then steady rushed 120 ARNOLD The breeze, and filled the sails, and blew the fire. And wreathed in smoke the ship stood out to sea. Soon with a roaring rose the mighty fire. And the pile crackled ; and between the logs Sharp quivering tongues of flame shot out, and leapt, Curling and darting, higher, until they licked The summit of the pile, the dead, the mast. And ate the shrivelling sails; but still the ship Drove on, ablaze above her hull with fire. And the gods stood upon the beach, and gazed. And while they gazed, the sun went lurid down Into the smoke-wrapped sea, and night came on. Then the wind fell, with night, and there was calm ; But through the dark they watch'd the burning ship Still carried o'er the distant waters on. Farther and farther, like an eye of fire. Readers who wish to become fond of Arnold's poetry should postpone "Merope," his last elaborate work, till they have acquired a decided taste for him — which is no more than one might say of Milton and his "Samson Agonistes." Critics generally re- gard this tragedy in the Greek manner as a quite un- inspired performance — perfunctory, cold, destitute of poetical beauty. If its production was a mistake, it was, however, a mistake that Arnold was doomed to make. The heavenly Muse was perhaps absent during its composition, but the critical spirit drove him to the task. He had come out as the exponent of classical principles in poetry. He looked upon Homer and Sophocles as the supreme exemplars in their respective fields of epic poetry and tragedy. POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 121 He had in his "Sohrab" represented the Homeric manner in English. He felt under obligation to do the same service for Sophocles, and would not have felt less so if Swinburne had already captivated the public with such glamourous corruptions of Greek form and Greek feeling as "Atalanta in Calydon." The really enthusiastic admiration that he enter- tained for his model and his desire to communicate that admiration through his imitation imparted to the experiment a special interest which is piquantly revealed in his letters. On July 25, 1857, he writes : "I am well in the middle of my Merope, and please myself pretty well, though between indolence and nervousness I am a bad worker. What I learn in studying Sophocles for my present purpose is, or seems to me, wonder- ful, so far exceeding all that one would learn in years' reading of him without such a purpose. And • what a man ! What works ! I must read Merope to you. I think and hope it will have what Buddha called the 'character of Fixity, that true sign of the Law.' " When the reviews appeared early in the following year, he was a good deal disappointed: "Instead of reading it for what it is worth, every- body begins to consider whether it does not betray a design to substitute tragedies a la Grecque for every other kind of poetical composition in England, and falls into an attitude of violent resistance to such an imaginary design. What I meant them was to 122 ARNOLD see in it a specimen of the world created by the Greek imagination. This imagination was different from our own, and it is hard for us to appreciate,' even to understand it; but it had a peculiar power, grandeur, and dignity, and these are worth trying to get an apprehension of. But the British public, pre- fer, like all obstinate multitudes, to 'die in their sins,' and I have no intention to keep preaching in the wilderness." On February 9, 1858, he writes to his sister: "I am anxious to explain to you that you are not the least bound to like her ["Merope"], as she is calculated rather to inaugurate my Professor- ship with dignity than to move deeply the present race of humans. No one is more sensible of this than I am, only I have such a real love for this form and this old Greek world that perhaps I infuse a little soul into my dealings with them which saves me from being entirely ennuyeux^ professorial, and pe- dantic; still you will not find in Merope what you wish to find, and I excuse you beforehand for wish- ing to find something different, and being a little dissatisfied with me." Later in the year came a letter from Froude beg- ging Arnold to "discontinue the Merope line" ; apro- pos of which Arnold avowed to his sister the ter- rible difficulty and strain which he experienced, under the pressure of his other occupations, in poet- ical productions of his best sort. The Greek tragedy is firmly designed and executed; but the gusto and POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 123 freshness of the poet's voice have almost vanished. In the main it is the contrivance of an austere and intelligent artisanship without the warmth and vital rhythm of the authentic creative impulse. The Eng- lish reader who desires a hint of the charm of Soph- ocles will find more of it in a good prose translation of the "Oedipus" than in many "Meropes." Yet for us who are studying the English poet's develop- ment it is worth while to pause for a moment over a specimen of his severest manner. Let us take the comment of the Chorus on — what shall we say? — Carlyle's theory of hero-worship, perhaps, or Bis- marck's belief in the superiority of a benevolent autocracy, or, if we will, some more recent and more tragic political egotism, not yet fully chastened by the indignant gods : THE CHORUS Much is there which the sea Conceals from man, who cannot plumb its depths. Air to his unwing'd , f orm denies a way, And keeps its liquid solitudes unsealed. » Even earth, whereon he treads, So feeble is his march, so slow. Holds countless tracts untrod. But more than all unplumb'd. Unsealed, untrodden, is the heart of man. More than all secrets hid, the way it keeps. Nor any of our organs so obtuse. Inaccurate, and frail. 124 ARNOLD As those wherewith we try to test Feelings and motives there. Yea, and not only have we not explored That wide and various world, the heart of others, But even our own heart, that narrow world Bounded in our own breast, we hardly know, Of our own actions dimly trace the causes. Whether a natural obscureness, hiding That region in perpetual cloud, Or our own want of effort, be the bar. Therefore — while acts are from their motives judged. And to one act many most unlike motives. This pure, that guilty, may have each impell'd — Power fails us to try clearly if that cause Assign'd us by the actor be the true one ; Power fails the man himself to fix distinctly The cause which drew him to his deed, And stamp himself, thereafter, bad or good. The most are bad, wise men have said. Let the best rule, they say again. The best, then, to dominion hath the right. Rights unconceded and denied. Surely, if rights, may be by force asserted — May be, nay should, if for the general weal. The best, then, to the throne may carve his way, And strike opposers down. Free from all guilt of lawlessness. Or selfish lust of personal power ; Bent only to serve virtue. Bent to diminish wrong. And truly, in this ill-ruled world, toEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 125 Well sometimes may the good desire To give to virtue her dominion due ! Well may he long to interrupt The reign of folly, usurpation ever, Though fenced by sanction of a thousand years 1 Well thirst to drag the wrongful ruler down; Well purpose to pen back Into the narrow path of right The ignorant, headlong multitude, Who blindly follow, ever, Blind leaders, to their bane ! But who can say, without a fear: That best, who ought to rule, am I; The mob, who ought to obey, are these, I the dne righteous, they the many bad? Who, without check of conscience, can aver That he to power makes way by arms. Sheds blood, imprisons, banishes, attaints, Commits all deeds the guilty oftenest do, Without a single guilty thought, Arm'd for right only, and the general good? Therefore, with censure unallay'd Therefore, with unexcepting ban, Zeus and pure-thoughted Justice brand Imperious self -asserting violence; Sternly condemn the too bold man, who dares Elect himself Heaven's destined arm; And, knowing well man's inmost heart infirm, However noble the committer be. His grounds however specious shown. Turn with averted eyes from deeds of blood. 126 ARNOLD This chorus admirably complements Arnold's two sonnets "To a Republican Friend," illuminates the basis of his qualified Liberalism, and the statement in one of his letters — "I should never myself vote for a Tory." To the writer of this present chapter the chorus seems far from ennuyeux. Though it is quite without the fluent melancholy and passion of "Tristram," the somber and splendid imagery of "Sohrab," or the studied grace and decoration of "Balder," its wisdom and gravity and starkness of expression give it a kind of sincere and naked beauty of another order — the beauty of important thought compactly and lucidly uttered. The "present race of humans" differs from Arnold and the Greeks most signally in this: that it ranks above beauty of thought every other poetical beauty, and is quite willing to dispense with thinking altogether, pro- vided its emotions are sufficiently engaged. When it is asked to read poetry, it prefers to any amount of sheer intellectual edification the music and glam- our of a piece like "The Forsaken Merman," which, with all its metrical seductions, throbs with a per- petually enchanting "human interest." "The Forsaken Merman" appeared in Arnold's ' first volume, published in 1849. To read it imme- diately after the chorus from "Merope," published in 1858, should give one a sharp impression of the range of the poet's activities in his nine or ten fruit- \POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 127^ ful years. Those who find no virtue in "Merope," and no validity in the ideas which the tragedy was designed to illustrate will of course seize the occa- sion to say that here is a melancholy illustration of the disaster in store for a poet who sets out on his progress attended by an inspector of schools, a pro- fessor and a critic. THE FORSAKEN MERMAN Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below ! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away ! This way, this way! Call her once before you go, — Call her once yet I In a voice that she will know, — "Margaret ! Margaret I" Children's voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother's ear; Children's voices, wild with pain, — Surely she will come again ! Call her once, and come away; This way, this way! "Mother dear, we cannot stayl 128 ARNOLD The wild white horses foam and fret." Margaret ! Margaret ! Come, dear children, come away down : Call no more ! One last look at the white-walled town. And the little grey church on the windy shore ; Then come down! She will not come, though you call all day; Come away, come away! Children dear, was it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay, — In the caverns where we lay, Through the surf and through the swell, The far-oflf sound of a silver bell? Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep. Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream. Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round. Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground; Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, Dry their mail and bask in the brine; Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye. Round the world for ever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away? Once she sate with you and me. On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea. And the youngest sate on her knee. POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 129 She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well. When down swung the sound of a far-off bell. She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea; She said : "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray In the little grey church on the shore to-day. 'Twill be Easter-time in the world — ah me 1 And I lose my poor soul, Merman ! here with thee." I said : "Go up, dear heart, through the waves ; Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves 1" She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, were we long alone? "The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan ; Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say; Come !" I said ; and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town; Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still. To the little grey church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. We climb'd on the graves, on stones worn with rains, And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes. She sate by the pillar ; we saw her clear : "Margaret, hist I come quick we are here 1 Dear heart," I said, "we are all alone ; The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan." But, ah, she gave me never a look. For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book I Loud prays the priest ; shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more ! Come away, come down, call no more I 130 ARNOLD Down, down, down! Down to the depths of the sea ! She sits at her wheel in the humming town. Singing most joyfully. Hark what she sings : "O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well ; For the wheel where I spun. And the blessed light of the sun !" And so she sings her fill. Singing most joyfully. Till the spindle drops from her hand. And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, And over the sand at the sea ; And her eyes are set in a stare ; And anon there breaks a sigh. And anon there drops a tear, From a sorrow-clouded eye. And a heart sorrow-laden, A long, long sigh, For the cold strange eyes of a little mermaiden, And the gleam of her golden hair. Come away, away, children; Come, children, come down I The hoarse wind blows colder; Lights shine in the town. She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door : She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar. We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl, POEMS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD 131 A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl. Singing: "Here came a mortal, But faithless was she! And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea." But, children, at midnight, When soft the winds blow, When clear falls the moonlight. When spring-tides are low; When sweet airs come seaward From heaths starr'd with broom. And high rocks throw mildly On the blanch'd sands a gloom ; Up the still, glistening beaches. Up the creeks we will hie. Over banks of bright seaweed The ebb-tide leaves dry. We will gaze, from the sand-hills, At the white, sleeping town ; At the church on the hill-side — And then come back down. Singing : "There dwells a loved one, But cruel is she I She left lonely for ever The kings of the sea." CHAPTER IV LITERARY CRITICISM "I think the moment is, on the whole, favourable for the Essays; and in going through them I am struck by the admi- rable riches of human nature that are brought to light in the group of persons whom they treat, and the sort of unity that as a book to stimulate the better humanity in us the voltmie hsiS."— Letters, I, 286-7.— January, 1865. MUCH of what passes for literary criticism is a very perishable branch of literature. Most of Arnold's essays in this kind remain as sound, vital and interesting to-day as when they were writ- ten. By their virtue he probably exercises thirty years after his death a more constan|: and important influence upon current literary opinion and taste than any English critic living. The persistence of his critical force in literature is ascribable in the main to three causes. The first of these is clearly brought out in the passage of the letter quoted above: he did not attempt a chronicle of all the popular and transitory work issuing from the press ; he carefully selected for comment men and books which he thought had some mark of immortality about them; he assembled, as he says, a group of 132 LITERARY CRITICISM 133 persons illustrating the "admirable riches of human nature." In the second place, he conveyed along with the firm and delicate delineations of his subjects an irresistibly stimulating sense of his own fine de- light in them — that indispensable personal gusto of the interpreter which excites the envy of the reader, stimulates his curiosity, and makes him feel that, until he shares it, he is excluded from one of the ex- quisite pleasures of the world. The third and per- haps most distinctive cause of Arnold's durability is in the number and the soundness of the literary principles and the general ideas which he states and illustrates. Let us review in order: his more important general ideas; his critical method; and the principal subjects of his criticism. The first question which we ask, in these days of world-wide war, regarding any one who ventures an opinion of European politics is whether he is "pro- Ally" or "pro-German." The waves of prejudice and passion set in motion by the great conflict wash ' every coast; and we find it difficult to conceive of any disinterested commentator. At the present mo- ment it seems to some sensitive souls as if the states- men of every nation, the poets, the historians, even the men of science, were all patriotically engaged in lying, at home and abroad, for their countries. The cynically philosophical tell us that the now inflamed and apparent mendacity of mankind is only a magni- fication of our normal and habitual disinclination 1° 134 ARNOLD and incapacity for telling the truth. What is truth but some definite person's impression formed at some definite point of view ? "Name the person and the point of view," says the cynic, "and I shall know how to value his 'truth.' " Arnold, a seeker for truth, bows to the impressionists and acknowledges the tantalizing "relativity" of our knowledge in the preface to his first series of Essays in Criticism: "To try and approach truth on one side after an- other, no t to strive or cry, nor to persist in_ Bressing ^ forward, on any one side, with violence and self- will, — it is only thus, it seems to me that mortals may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious God- dess, whom we shall never see except in outline, hut only thus even in outline." He, too, would agree that the value of "truth" depends upon the perceiver and the point of view. To indicate Arnold's point of view is therefore fundamental to our consideration of his criticism. His culture had given him a strong sense of the com- munity of the civilized world; in literary matters he was an avowed cosmopolitan. "Let us conceive," he says in his essay on Wordsworth, "of the whole group of civilized nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working towards a com- mon result; a confederation whose members have a due knowledge both of the past, out of which they all proceed, and of one another. This was the ideal LITERARY CRITICISM 1^37 of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will, impose itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies more and more."^ Taken together, these two passages sufK- ciently indicate Arnold's position : We can not at- tain absolute truth ; but by taking civilized humanity as our center we can at least avoid the errors due to political, religious, national, or racial partisanship. To seek the absolute truth, not in this world to behold it face to face, but to press steadily nearer to it, this, as he understands it, is the sovereign busi- ness of criticism. In his important essay, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," he en- forces the idea in a series of memorable definitions. The first of these seems cold, dispassionate, disinter- ested, like the purest aspirations of the "scientific spirit" : "It is the business of the critical power ... to see the object as in itself it really is." Lest this offend the "relativists," he follows it up with the qualification that the critical power never quite com- pletes its business : "It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces ; to make the best ideas prevail. Presently these ideas reach society, the touch of truth is the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth everywhere; out of this stir and growth cbme the creative epochs of literature." ^ An earlier formulation of this idea occurs in "The Func- tion of Criticism," Essays in Criticism, First Series, N. Y., 1903, p. 39. 13,6 ARNOLD Criticism's positive and fructifying element he em- phasizes in a second definition of its function : "Its business is . . . simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas." To this, probably the most frequently quoted, formulation of its mission he adds a third : I its "best spiritual work" is "to keep man from a self-satisfaction which, is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the abso- lute beauty and fitness of things." By this time, one will observe, Arnold has passed far beyond the cold dispassionate curiosity "to see the object as in itself it really is." Criticism's supreme object is still truth ; but criticism now glows with esthetic and moral passion, is responsible, interested, purpose- ' ful, devoted to the advancement of human welfare. Yet as Arnold understands the matter the third def- inition is, so to speak, an implication of the first — seek first the kingdom of truth, and all these other things shall be added unto you. Abstractly considering, no sensible being can ob- ject to the operations of a force so benignant. It is only when the current of "true and fresh ideas" scatters the musty straw in which we have made our beds and disturbs the slumber of our old habits and our settled prejudices that we grow uneasy. Arnold, knowing that his readers will assent without refiec- LITERARY CRITICISM 137 tion unless he a little offends their sensibilities, names, with deliberately irritating iteration of the charge, some of the most ancient and honored or- gans of British opinion as offenders against the new- critical spirit of which he is the spokesman ; "What is the bane of criticism in this country? It is that rpractical considerations cling to it and stifle it. It 1. subserves interests not its own. Our organs of p criticism are organs of men and parties having prac- tical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the first thing and the play of mind the sec- ond; so much play of mind as is compatible with the prosecution of those ends is all that is wanted. . . . We have the Edinburgh Review, existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much play of the mind as may suit its being that ; we have the Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play of the mind as may suit its being that; we have the British Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of the political Dis- senters, and for as much play of the mind as may suit its being that; we have the Times, existing as an organ of the common, satisfied, well-to-do Eng- lishman, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that." These organs of partisan opinion we shall no doubt always have with us ; "but it would be well, too, that there should be a criticism, not the minister of these interests, not their enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of them." 138 ARNOLD Arnold develops this idea in his essay on "The Literary Influence of Academies." Precisely because his criticism is not cold and detached and abso- lutely disinterested but human and social and pas- sionate, he is not contented with a mere knowledge of the best; he is bent upon making the best prevail in society, and he turns, inquiringly, to the Academy as an instrument for accomplishing this purpose — for making the best authoritative. The occasion for his illuminating discussion was offered by a new edition of Pellison and D'Olivet's history of tlje French Academy. Reading this work causes Arnold to reflect upon the absence of any such institution in England. "A thousand voices," he says, "will be ready to tell us that this absence is a signal mark of our national superiority; that it is in great part owing to this absence that the exhilarating words of Lord Macaulay, lately given to the world by his very clever nephew, Mr. Trevelyan, are so profoundly true : Tt may safely be said that the literature now extant in the English language is of far greater value than all the literature which three himdred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together.'" "I daresay this is so;" continues Arnold with his characteristic insinuating irony, "only, remembering Spinoza's maxim that the two great banes of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness coming from self-conceit, I think it may do us good, instead of resting in our pre-eminence with LITERARY CRITICISM 139 perfect security, to look a little more closely why this is so, and whether it is so without any limitations." The French Academy had its origin, Arnold re- minds his readers, at about 1629 in a group of seven or eight persons in Paris who met at one another's houses to "discuss literary matters." Cardinal Richelieu, then the all-powerful minister, saw the possibility of developing this little society into a powerful institution for the elevation and standard- ization of literary taste in France; and in 1637 the • Parliament gave it a corporate and official public character. Its statutes of foundation expressed its purpose as follows: "The Academy's principal function shall be to work with all the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent and capa- ble of treating the arts and sciences." This, how- ever, was not the full scope of Richelieu's intention, nor of the actual activities of the Academicians: "The new Academy, now enlarged to a body of forty members, and meant to contain all the chief literary men of France, was to be a literary tribunal. The works of its members were to be brought before it previous to publication, were to be criticised by it, and finally, if it saw fit, to be published with its de- clared approbation. The works of other writers, not members of the Academy, might also, at the re- quest of these writers themselves, be passed under the Academy's review. Besides this, in essays and 140 ARNOLD discussions the Academy examined and judged works already published, whether by living or dead authors, and literary matters in general." Now, an effort to oppose the slovenliness and mediocrity in which the majority of men are suffi- ciently comfortable can never be a thoroughly popu- lar movement. "An effort to set up a recognized au- thority, imposing on us a high standard in matters of intellect and taste, has," as Arnold truly says, "many enemies in human nature. We all of us like to go our own way, and not to be forced out of the atmosphere of commonplace habitual to most of us; — 'was uns alle bandigf, says Goethe, 'das Gemeine'. . . . But if the effort to limit this freedom of our lower nature finds, as it does and must find, enemies in human nature, it finds also auxiliaries in it. Out of the four great parts, says Cicero, of the honestum, or good, which forms the matter on which officium, or human duty, finds emplo3mient, one is the fixing of a modus and an or do, a measure and order, to fashion and wholesomely constrain our action, in order to lift it above the level it keeps if left to itself, and to bring it nearer to perfection. . . . Other creatures submissively follow the law of their na- ture; man alone has an impulse leading him to set up some other law to control the bent of his nature." The influence of an Academy is to fortify this spe- cial human impulse toward measure and order; it is to lift us out of the indolence of our natures by hold- LITERARY CRITICISM 141 ing up ideas of excellence and of glory and golden opinions to be won by excellence alone. The English people, undisciplined by Academic influences, are constantly in danger, Arnold inti- mates, of being pleased without just cause! "'In France,' says M. Sainte-Beuve, 'the first cpnsidera- pon for us is not whether we are amused and pleased py a work of art or mind, nor is it whether we are itouched by it. What we seek above all to learn is, whether we were right in being amused with it, and ^n applauding it, and in being moved by it.' Those are very remarkable words, and they are, I believe, in the main quite true. A Frenchman has to a con- siderable degree, what one may call a conscience in intellectual matters; he has an active belief that there is a right and a wrong in them, that he is bound to honour and obey the right, that he is dis- graced by cleaving to the wrong. All the world has, or professes to have, this conscience in moral mat- ters. The word conscience has become almost con- fined, in popular use, to the moral sphere, because this lively susceptibility of feeling is, in the moral sphere, so far more common than ^n the intellectual sphere. . . . Well, now we are on the road to see why the French have their Academy and we have nothing pi the kind." Continuing his sinuous attack upon English self- satisfaction, Arnold ascribes the "note of pro- vinciality" in English literature to the same cause 142 ARNOLD that was responsible for the English lack of a "con- science in intellectual matters." "In the bulk of the intellectual work of a nation which has no centre, no intellectual metropolis like an Academy, like M. Sainte-Beuve's 'sovereign organ of opinion,' like M. Renan's 'recognized authority in matters of tone and taste' — ^there is observable a note of pro- vinciality. Now to get rid of provinciality is a cer- tain stage of culture; a stage the positive result of which we must not make of too much importance, but which is, nevertheless, indispensable, for it brings us on to the platform where alone the best and highest intellectual work can be said fairly to begin. Work done after men have reached this plat- form is classical; and that is the only work which, in the long run, can stand. All the sconce in the work of men of great genius who have not lived on this platform are due to their not having lived on it. Genius raises them to it by moments, and the por- tions of their work which are immortal are done at these moments ; but more of it would have been im- mortal if they had not reached this platform at mo- ments only, if they. had had the culture which makes men live there." At the conclusion of a long discourse on the ad- vantages of an Academy and the disadvantages of being without one, the reader may perhaps be a lit- tle surprised to find that Arnold does not advocate the establishment of an institution in England par- \ LITERARY CRITICISM 143 ^allel to the French Academy; that, in fact, he dis- misses the idea as foreign to the liberty-loving genius 01 the English. A people like the English, he feels, or, may we add, like the Americans, can not be bjillied into the kingdom of Heaven— to say nothing of being regimented and legislated into a love of high excellence in matters of intellect and taste. The adroit and effective appeal to a people long accus- tomed to wilfulness and freedom must be made through the subtle passions of jealousy and envy. In dealing with a democratic society the reformer who discreetly touches these powerful springs of human action can work miracles with the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Arnold has this magical touch ! What he has done in the essay on Academies is perhaps silfficient : by a skilful use of the comparative method he has made the possessions of the French people — their standard of high excellence, their conscience in intellectual matters, their freedom from provin- ciality — seem enviable. National jealousy, without an official organization of forty Immortals, can pos- sibly be trusted, once thoroughly aroused, to give force to these ideas, even in a democracy. That Arnold was in the broad sense of the word a classicist is manifest in his discourses on the crit- ical and the academic ideals. In his inaugural ad- dress as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, "On the Modem Element in Literature,"^ he declares himself 2 Essays in Criticism, Third Series, Boston, 1910. 144 ARNOLD a classicist in a more restricted sense of the terra. That is to say, when he compares the great Htera- , tures, ancient and modem, he reaches the conclusion that the literature of Greece is on the whole the soundest, the most admirable, the most worthy of emulation that has as yet been produced in the world. He desired no slavish imitation of Greek models. His attitude toward foreign influences is well indicated in a letter of January 21, 1865 : "I hate ?ill over-preponderance of single elements, and all my efforts are directed to enlarge and complete us by bringing in as much as possible of Greek, Latin, Celtic authors. More and more I see hopes of fruit by steadily working in this direction. To be too much with the Americans is like living with somebody who has all one's own bad habits and tendencies." In English literature he recognized peculiar virtues of energy and sincerity and imag- inative splendor, but also peculiar vices and defi- ciencies of provincialism, whim, caprice, eccentricity, and verbal and emotional incontinence, notably ex- emplified by writers like Ruskin, Carlyle, Sterne, Swinburne, Shelley, and even, to some extent, by writers so near supremacy as Milton and Shake- speare. The special corrective for the inherent faults of the English temper, Arnold believed, was to be found in ever-renewed contacts with litera- tures showing a natural instinct, like that of the LITERARY CRITICISM 145 Greeks, or an acquired taste, like that of the French, for form, order and measure. It is a misfortune of English criticism that when- ever one breathes a word of a "classical restora- tion," some one exclaims "Pope!" — and the public yawns. Pope is an admirable and delightful writer, who has been quoted and calumniated for more than a hundred years by romantic critics and school- boys. Some day it will be thought an ill omen to speak disrespectfully of Pope. But Arnold did not come to restore Pope. For the pseudo-classicism of the Queen Anne period he had as little real liking as had the belligerent romanticists of the early nine- teenth century. In Pope's poverty of feeling he saw the excesses of restraint just as in Keats's super- abundance of it he saw the excesses of freedom. As a true classicist he wishes to mediate between them. [The clearness, good sense, and continence which are the special excellences of the pseudo-classicist he wishes to preserve and unite with the passion and exaltation which are the peculiar glories of the ro- manticist. No poetry which falls short of such a union can be entirely "adequate" — can wholly sat- isfy our desire for an art which represents human life in its integrity. Has such a union been accom- plished ? * Yes, Arnold tells us, it was accomplished in Greece ; and thither we must still turn for light and 146 ARNOLD leading. "Now, the peculiar characteristic of the /highest literature — ^the poetry — of the fifth century f in Greece before the Christian era, is its adequacy; the peculiar characteristic of the poetry of Sophocles is its consummate, its unrivalled adequacy; that it represents the highly developed human nature of that age — ^human nature developed in a number of directions, politically, socially, religiously, morally developed — in its completest and most harmonious development in all these directions; while there is shed over this poetry the charm of that noble se- renity which always accompanies true insight. If in the body of Athenians of that time there was, as we have said, the utmost energy of mature man- hood, public and private; the most entire freedom, the most unprejudiced and intelligent observation of human affairs — in Sophocles there is the same en- ergy, the same maturity, the same freedom, the same intelligent observation; but all these idealized and glorified by the grace and light shed over them from the noblest poetical feeling. And therefore I have ventured to say of Sophocles, that he 'saw life steadily, and saw it whole.' " If Sophocles "saw life steadily and saw it whole," why then he saw "the object as in itself it really is." But this — seeing the object as in itself it really is — as Arnold tells us in another place is the func- tion of criticism. Are then the functions of poetry and criticism the same? To the distress of LITERARY CRITICISM 147 some of his readers, Arnold would reply that, in great f)art, they are. One of his most discussed definitions or descriptions of poetry occurs in his essay on Wordsworth : "It is important, therefore, ,to hold fast to this : that poetry is at bottom a criti- cism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question: How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion. . . . We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them. ... Or we find attraction in a poetry indifferent to them. . . . We delude our- selves in either case ; and the best cure for our, de- lusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indif- ference to moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life." We need inquire no further into Ar- nold's position with respect to the tiresome but still- mooted question of the relation of art to morals. Poetry, he holds, which represents human life adequately is by necessity, by the nature of human life, rhoral. If we infer from this position that he thought the best poeti^ the best morality, we shall not be far from the track of his own reasoning. Indeed, we may go further and say that he thought the best poetry the best religion, also. In his essay on "The 148 ARNOLD Study of Poetry" he justifies this identification as follows: "The future of poetry is immense, be- 1 cause in poetry, where it is worthy of its high des- [tinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever ' surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of di- vine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry. . . . More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry." Arnold here makes great claims for poetry ; but it is to be remembered that the only poetry which much interests him is great poetry. What constitutes poetical greatness, however, is a topic which he seldom discussed abstractly, and probably never dis- cussed to the satisfaction of modern estheticians. We have seen clearly enough what he sought in the substance of poetry: "the application of ideas to LITERARY CRITICISM 149 lifCj" truth and hig h serious ness, the finer spirit of science, moraHty, and rehgion. He sought also in the manner of poetry — in its diction and move- ment — "the grand style." When critics asked him what he meant by "the grand style,"- he gave, in his lectures on translating Homer, what they must have considered an evasive answer. To those who ques- tioned him mockingly, he retorted mockingly, "Ye shall die in your sins." To those who questioned him earnestly he did not however declare directly what "the grand style" is. He only pointed to a specimen of it, and formulated the conditions under which it appears : "I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically f gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a se- ' rious subject. I think this definition will be found to cover all instances of the grand style in poetry which present themselves. I think it will be found to exclude all poetry which is not in the grand style. And I think it contains no terms which are obscure, which themselves need defining. Even those who do not understand what is meant by calling poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, what is meant by speaking of a noble nature in a man. But the noble or powerful nature — the bedeutendes individuum of Goethe — is not enough. For instance, Mr. New- man has zeal for learning, zeal for thinking, zeal for liberty, and all these things are noble, they en- noble a man; but he has not the poetical gift; there 150 ARNOLD must be the poetical gift, the 'divine faculty,' also. And, besides all this, the subject must be a serious one ( for it is only by a kind of license that we can speak of the grand style in comedy) ; and it must be treated with simplicity or severity." Many years later he returned to the subject, in "The Study of Poetry," and emphasized the inseparability of style and substance: "So far as high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet's matter and sub- stance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high poetic stamp of diction and movement be wanting to his style and manner." But after he had labored through a couple of pages in an effort to be abstract and theoretical he declared, with a touch of charac- teristic impatience over abstractions: "So stated, these are but dry generalities : their whole force lies in their application." This brings us inevitably to a consideration of Arnold's special method in criticism. His type is not very easy to define, for it is a composite of three methods which we may designate in order of their appearance as : the judicial or classical method ; the impressionistic or romantic method ; and the histori- cal or naturaHstic method. Arnold's composition of all these methods into a method of his own may be explained more clearly if we first indicate a little more distinctly the character of each of them sep- arately. The judicial method was established by Aristotle, LITERARY CRITICISM 151 who in his Poetics attempted to set forth the principles of sound poetical composition which he had derived from the practise of the great Greek poets. The enduring influence of the principles enunciated by Aristotle was at bottom due to their conformity in general with the principles of "right reason" and human psychology. His followers for many ages accepted the Poetics quite literally as the supreme authority. The primary object of their criticism was to bring a work of art into the Aris- totelian court, and to judge it, and to rank it by literary law. The first question with all such critics is not, "Does the work please us?", but "Has it a right to please us?" Such, in the main, is the criti- cism of Horace, Scaliger, Vida, Ben Jonson, Ry- mer, Boileau, Pope, Addison, and, with some im- portant qualifications, of Doctor Johnson, for whom, by the way, Arnold felt a very great respect. The impressionistic method has no such illustrious il_, origin nor descent nor continuity of development. Historians of literature may, if they please, trace it to Longinus; but for England, at any rate, it originated in the eighteenth century. It originated '^ in a growing interest and satisfaction in the Middle Ages, the romantic tradition, the works of Spenser and Shakespeare, which, in many important re- spects, were quite indefensible before a literal in- terpretation of the Aristotelian law. It originated 152 ARNOLD in a protest against "criticism by rules." It rose in response to a demand for some one who would dare to be pleased without giving a reason why. The excellence of an impressionistic critic is not in his judgment but in his sensibility. His business with a work of art is to feel keenly its charm, to de- scribe accurately the impression that it has made upon him, and so to transmit his pleasure to the reader. He speaks little or nothing of rules but much of taste. "Mrs. M.'s conversation," says Haz- litt — one of the keenest of the impressionists, "is as fine cut as her features, and I like to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. What she said leaves a flavor, like fine green tea. H — t's is like champagne, and N — 's like anchovy sandwiches." Of Lamb, a rival in the use of the impressionistic method, Hazlitt exclaims : "But with what a gusto would he describe his favorite authors, Donne, or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed pas- sages delicioxis! He tried them on his palate as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in them, like a roughness on the tongue." There is impressionism piquantly described and ex- emplified by a master. Lamb, Hazlitt and Hunt constitute the most winsome group of English im- pressionists ; Swinburne and Pater are others. They appeal to no authority outside themselves; they are ambassadors plenipotentiary from the poet to the LITERARY CRITICISM 153 reader; such power and persuasion as they exercise are dependent upon their individual personality, style, and gusto. The historical method, not fully developed till the nineteenth century, got fairly under way in eighteenth-century England, and in a rather curious relation with impressionism. To put the matter simply, early practitioners, like Joseph and Thomas Warton, beginning with a lively relish for work in the romantic tradition, dignified their inclinations and satisfied their curiosity by exploring and bring- ing to light the English and Continental origins of romance. In other words, they gave to their schol- arship the task of explaining and, to that extent, of justifying their taste. This ulterior purpose be- comes, however, in typical modern historical criti- - cism, negligible. Its supreme object is not to judge a work of art and fix its absolute value, like the \^ criticism by rule and reason; nor to relish it and \ communicate its pleasure, like the impressionistic 'i criticism ; but to understand and explain it. In this sense, to understand and explain it is to note at what time and under what circumstances it orig- inated, what personal and "environmental" forces "produced" it, its relation to the author and his other works, the author's relation to his contempo- raries and predecessors, the influence of nation, race, etc. — in short, to set forth its "evolution." To a man like Taine, who was perhaps the most brilliant 154 ARNOLD exponent of the historical method in its rigor and vigor, this seems the only serious form of criticism. Other methods were the methods of pedants or dilettantes ; this alone was "scientific." The French- men whom Arnold most admired — Sainte-Beuve, Renan, and Scherer — all utilized it impressively, though not exclusively, and always with a more sensitive tact than Taine exhibited. Now if the question is asked whether Arnold's criticism is judicial, the answer must indubitably be in the affirmative. The discrimination of values is the final object of all his work; and no critic judges more steadily and vigorously and severely than he. This indeed, is one of his shining distinctions: that his discussion of a principle or a poem or a man al- ways comes to a point, always terminates in a de- cision, usually pronounced with a tone of finality and authority which insures its making a lasting im- pression even upon those who do not accept it. What makes his decisions generally so weighty is one's consciousness that he seldom speaks, as the impressionist often does, out of a whim or a crochet or a mere personal inclination. His sovereign as- surance is not due to arrogant self-confidence. It is due rather to confidence in an authority higher than himself, of which he has made himself the rep- resentative and interpreter. He speaks with em- phasis and certitude because he speaks for the clas- sical spirit and the classical tradition. He is not a LITERARY CRITICISM 155 pedantic follower of the letter of the law; yet, whenever he can, he will cite Aristotle and the Greeks, even, as in the case of "Empedocles," against himself — the finest proof of judicial integrity. He checks his instinctive estimate, furthermore, by con- stantly comparing the work in hand with the un- disputed master works of similar kind in various tongues. Finally, he looks for authority outside himself in concurrent opinions of other qualified judges. The way to test the goodness of a transla- tion of Homer, he says, is to ask how it affects scholars "who possess, at the same time with knowl- edge of Greek, adequate poetical taste and feeling." He will hesitate to hold an opinion alone in the great "intellectual federation" of modern nations, for it may be only an English opinion ; it may even be only an Arnoldian opinion. But if he finds that Goethe and Sainte-Beuve are on his side, he is strongly disposed to believe that right is there, too. Deference to the reasons underlying classical rules; constant reference to the body of classical literature, ancient and modern ; habitual recourse to the opinions of the most eminent modern critics : — these are the features of Arnold's criticism which give it centrality, weight, and authority. They add immensely to his personal force. But what of the personal force itself? Tradition and society are admirable disciplinarians, are powerful allies, of individual talent ; but they are not a substitute for it. 156 ARNOLD In the work of criticism, as Arnold would be the first to declare, the value of sound principles and great examples "lies in their application." To what extent does his own treatment of books and authors depend upon the element of "divine grace" — palate, taste, an immediate personal relish for the excel- lencies that are set before him? Richard Garnett asserts, in the Dictionary of National Biography,^ that the literary organ, so notably present in Lamb and Hazlitt, is in Arnold inadequately developed: "His great defect as a critic is the absence of a lively aesthetic sense; the more exquisite beauties of lit- erature do not greatly impress him unless as ve- hicles for the communication of ideas." We may freely admit that he cared little for form without substance; but, on the other hand, he cared little for substance without form! The charge that he lacked a "lively aesthetic sense" will not stand ex- amination. One of the constant marks of the critic of taste is the citation of passages. Lamb and Hazlitt, for example, are great quoters; they are always placing before you specimens of the "beauties" which they have come upon in their explorations, to which they affix their personal certificates of high excellence. This is the warrant of their good faith — the token that the report of their esthetic ecstasies was not mere windy vaporing. Adducing an exquisite frag- ment, "Here," they say in effect, "is precisely what LITERARY CRITICISM 157 moved us; try it for yourself!" Does Arnold com- mit himself in this fashion — does he offer to his readers the concrete material by which they may verify fpr themselves the quality of his taste? Un- questiona^bly he does. Take, for example, in the essay on "The Influence of Academies," his dis- cussion of the "classical" and the "provincial" in the form and in the substance of prose. There is a bit out of Jeremy Taylor to show exactly what he means by the provincial in form; a bit out of Bossuet to show exactly what he means by the classical in form ; a bit out of Addison to show ex- actly what he means by provincial commonplace in ideas ; and a bit of Joubert to show exactly what he means by classical elevation and distinction in ideas. Nothing, indeed, more clearly vouches for the liveliness of Arnold's taste and his reliance upon it than his often avowed preference of concrete illus- tration to definition. In "The Function of Criti- cism" he tells us that it is not as an abstract law- giver that the critic "will generally do mofet good to his readers;" even on the occasions when an enunciation and detailed application of principles are necessary, "the safeguard is never to let oneself become abstract, always to retain an intimate and lively consciousness of the truth of what one is say- ing, and, the moment this fails us, to be sure that something is wrong." Take, for example, in his essay on "The Study of Poetry," his discussion of 158 ARNOLD "the characters of a high quality of poetry." "There can be no more useful help," he says, "for discover- ing what poetry belongs to the class of the truly ex- cellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. But if "we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the de- gree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside them." To show precisely what kind of poetry he himself employs as a touchstone, he presents three lines of Homer, half a dozen from Dante, as many from Shakespeare, and three various bits from Milton. "These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious estimates of it, to con- duct us to a real estimate." Here are classical au- thority and personal taste met together. The "touchstones" will "save" us — ^yes, "if we have tact and can use them!" But taste must function in choosing them, and taste must keep on functioning in using them; there is no automatic mode of reg- istering the reaction to them of inferior work. It is primarily as a critic of taste, throughout this LITERARY CRITICISil 159 ven- fascinating essay on "The Study of Poetry," that Arnold takes up the Chanson dc Roland , Chre- tien de Troyes, Chaucer, Villon, Dryden, Pope, Bums ; and, with a sample of poetic ore from each lying on the table before us, applies his touchstones for high beauty, worth and power. It is as a critic of taste that he appears in his lectures "On Trans- lating Homer" ; for the vdlnt of the discussion de- pends from point to point upon the drawing and concrete illustration of fine distinctions of personal feeling in the mjrsterious matter of style. It is as a critic of taste that he ventures among pundits in his essay "On Celtic Literature,"' in which his prob- lem is not so much to assay for the "grand style" as to recognize, isolate and describe that perilously elusive and intangible element, the Celtic spirit. That surely was not a task to be performed by rule, for there were no rules; it was a task to be per- formed by "divine grace." And so we might mul- tiply illustrations; for, much as he emphasizes the importance of fresh information, there is hardly one of the Essays in Criticism in which the conclu- sion is reached by an effort of intellect and knowl- edge, unassisted by esthetic sensibility. In most of them, the really decisive part is played by personal taste, functioning, to be sure, under classical dis- cipline. His treatment of Wordsworth is tjrpical of his procedure. He has the whole body of the poet's 160 ARNOLD work before him. He picks up one piece of it after another, inquiring whether it exhibits the special power and virtue of its author. He rejects three- fourths of it as below the level of high excellence which Wordsworth attained at his best. He rejects the portions of it in which Wordsworth introduces his metaphysical system; in which he flatly moral- izes; in which he "proses" about the future of science. He preserves the portion of it that has been rendered crystalline and radiant by the poet's special faculty, which, according to his custom, he com- pactly defines: "Wordsworth's poetry is great be- cause of the extraordinary power with which Words- worth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties ; and because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it." The defini- tion of Wordsworth's power is a task of thought and reflection; but the selection of the passages in which the power is exhibited is the task of taste. We come now to the question of Arnold's rela- tion to the type of criticism which concerns itself primarily with understanding and explaining the genesis and evolution of a great work of art. To what extent does he resort to the historical method? We may say in general that such historical elucida- tion as appears in his literary essays is quite sub^ ordinate to other ends. The (Suggestively sympar^ LITERARY CRITICISM 161 thetK^ essay on Thomas Gray is exceptional; it is perhaps primarily an attempt to "explain" Gray's sterihty ^i^ referen|:e to his age. In the "Hein- rich Heine," also, tl^ere is an extended effort to "^ show the poet's coniiection with the main current of European ideas and his reaction against German Philistinism; but the essay terminates with the characteristic verdict : "A half-result, for want of q moral balance, and of nobleness of soul and char- acter" — a judgment in which historical explication is not concerned. In the essay on Byron we find two or three pages occupied with an account of the British Philistinism of the early nineteenth century, <* against which Byron reacted ; the final object of the discussion, however, is not to "explain" his work and career, but to define his special qualities and to assign him his rank among modern poets. In the "Milton" the reference of the "dead wood" in Para- dise Lost to contemporary theology and the Zeit- geist is quite incidental to the chief purpose of the discourse, which is to declare that, for English read- ers, Milton's poetry has an absolute value as its supreme illustration of the grand style, as the best modem equivalent to the manner of the ancient classics. For the relatively slight use which Arnold made of the historical method, the really distinctive critical method of his time, we may offer two very different explanations. It may be said first that, though he was a man of 162 ARNOLD deep and varied culture, he had not the minute and exhaustive erudition which is — ^theoretically, at least — required for the successful use of the historical method. He was not even one of the old-fashioned "giant readers" — like Coleridge or James Russell Lowell. For omnivorous "browsing," he had neither leisure nor inclination. -In his early manhood he began quite deliberately to restrict his excursions, to live with the world's classics, to confine himself I more and more strictly to the reading of works I which are permanently important and of intrinsic I interest and merit. A critic whose culture has taken this course must tread warily among our modern historical investigators or run the risk of being tripped up by annotators without a htindredth part of his learning or judgment. Any student of the Elizabethan drama, for example, will undertake to revise and improve the "roll of our chief poetical names, besides Shakespeare and Milton, from the age of EHzabeth downwards," which Arnold gives in his essay on Wordsworth: "Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Bums, Coleridge, 1 Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, Keats [and ! Wordsworth] ." What, one exclaims, Tom" Moore a greater poetical glory than Jonson, Campbell a greater poetical glory than Marlowe, Goldsmith a greater poetical glory than Webster, Cowper or Scott a greater poetical glory than Beaumont and Fletcher! Arnold speaks elsewhere to be sure, of LITERARY CRITICISM 163 the Elizabethan as a great poetical age, but this roll of honor, with its amazing predominance of men whose works fall after 1750, is pretty conclusive evidence that he was not intimately acquainted with it. Ohe is almost tempted to suggest that, in "get- ting up" the period, he selected Spenser and Shakes- peare as its best representatives, and let the rest go. So, too, when generalizing about eighteenth-century poetry, he declares that the heroic couplet was the inevitable vehicle for a large work, one feels that he has his eye on Pope; but one has grave doubts whether he has really envisaged at all the simply innumerable long pieces in blank verse and Spen- serian stanza which that age produced. Lapses like these a critic can never be sure of avoiding, who has not explored an immense wilderness of forgotten, obscure, and, from a strictly esthetic point of view, almost worthless and entirely negligible literature. The work of taste and judgment will never rest in complete security unless it rests upon the work of a thorough historical investigation. Of Arnold's lapses we may say, as he said of Johnson's Lives, "Such is the common course and law of progress; one thing is done at a time, and other things are sacrificed to it. We must be thankful for the thing done, if it is valuable, and we must put up with the temporary sacrifice of other things to this one. The other things will have their turn sooner or later." The second and chief reason why Arnold does not •' 164 ARNOLD much employ the historical method is that he is not ' primarily interested in its results. It is when he : touches upon medieval literature that he most dis- tinctly sets his own work off from the work of the historica,! scholar. "Yet it is now all gone," he says in "The Study of Poetry," "this French romance poetry, of which the weight of substance and the power of style are not inadequately represented by this extract from Christian of Troyes. Only by means of the historical estimate can we persuade ourselves now to think that any of it is of historical importance." This sweeping condemnation would impress one as more authoritative, more likely to be final, if one felt sure that Arnold possessed, along with his poetical taste and judgment, the medieval eruditeness of Gaston Paris or Professor Bedier. If he had been on intimate terms with French romantic poetry, no doubt he would have found something in it which deserved to be saved for the "high seriousness" of its matter and its man- ner. His statement is over-emphatic; yet it is suffi- ciently illustrative. If a modern defender of the Middle Ages, however learned, asserted the "poetical importance of Christian of Troyes," Arnold would feel qualified and called upon to dispute the point. If, on the other hand, the medieval champion took his stand, not upon the intrinsic worth of things like the Chanson de Roland, the Ivain, Gawain and the Green Knight, or the Romance of the Rose, but LITERARY CRITICISM 165 upon the importance of these works in the evolution of poetry and the history of cuhure, Arnold would not offer combat. He would say: "We have no quarrel. To you, who are studious of the origins and evolutions and relations of literary species, third and fourth rate poetry, may be just as sig- nificant as the best. To me, who am studious only lof literary works which subsist absolutely — without /reference to the time or place of their production, third and fourth rate poetry of a bygone age hardly exists. Let us go our separate ways : you, the way of the historian, the naturalist, the inan of science, if you please; I, the way of the literary critic." In more than one place, however, Arnold inserts a caution against imagining that historical explica- tion can do the work of esthetic and moral criticism. The caution was timely, because leading exponents of the newly perfected "historical method" were en- deavoring to destroy the credit of both the "classical method" and the "impressionistic method." From this attack the worst sufferers were probably these who judged by taste or "divine grace." To men of letters who were fascinated by the methods and aims of modern science the discussion of one's likings and dislikings in the field of literature seemed a trifling and somewhat contemptible effusion of personal feeling. Even Arnold's friend Scherer took his stand against it. In "A French Critic on Milton," Arnold explains Scherer's belief in the "historical 166 ARNOLD method," and then pretty definitely expresses his own belief that without taste the historical method is as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal : "He [Scherer] sees very clearly how vain is Lord Macaulay's sheer laudation of Milton, or Voltaire's sheer disparagement of him. Such judgments, M. Scherer truly says, are not judgments at all. They merely express a personal sensation of like or dis- like. And M. Scherer goes on to recommend, in the place of such 'personal sensations,' the method of historical criticism — ^that great and famous power in the present day. He sings the praises of 'this method at once more conclusive and equitable, which sets itself to understand things rather than to class them, to explain rather than to judge them; which seeks to account for a work from the genius of its author, and for the turn which this genius has taken from the circumstances amidst which it was developed;' — the old story of 'the man and the milieu/ in short. 'For thus,' M. Scherer continues, 'out of these two things the analysis of the writer's character and the study of his age, there sponta- neously issues the right understanding of his work. In place of an appreciation thrown off by some chance comer, we have the work passing judgment, so to speak, upon itself, and assuming the rank which belongs to it among the productions of the human mind.' "The advice to study the character of an author and the circumstances in which he has lived, in order to account to oneself for his work is excellent^ But it is a perilous doctrine, that from such a study the LITERARY CRITICISM 167 right understanding of his work will "spontaneously issue.' In a mind qualified in a certain manner it will — ^not in all minds. It cannot be said that Macaulay had not studied the character of Milton, and the history of the times in which he lived. But a right understanding of Milton did not 'sponta- neously issue' therefrom in the mind of Macaulay, because Macaulay's mind was that of a rhetorician, not of a disinterested critic. Let us not confound the method with the result intended by the method: The critic who rightly appreciates a great man or a great work, and who can tell us faithfully — life being short, and art long, and false information very plentiful — what we may expect from their study and what they can do for us: he is the critic we want, by whatever methods, intuitive or historical, he may have managed to get his knowl- edge." We have now considered the measure of Arnold's participation in the judicial, the impressionistic, and the historical methods of criticism. We have seen" that his own method is marked by the constant func- tioning of his personal taste, constantly disciplined i by standards and authorities outside himself, and as- sisted, in a subordinate degree, by the processes of historical elucidation. We do not, however, touch upon the really distinguishing characteristic of his criticism while we are speaking of his method. We touch upon his distinguishing characteristic when we speak of his object. We have noticed earlier in the chapter several of his own statements of the 168 ARNOLD "function of criticism." Bringing them and their implications all together, we may say that Arnold's object in criticism is : to make us know the best, to make us love it, and to make us practise it. As he advanced in years his distaste increased to impa- tience with knowledge which is not amiable, with amiability which is unintelligent, and with both knowledge and amiability which lead to nothing. He desired ever more earnestly to get people to honor his truths by using them ; he drove ever more steadily at the incorporation of ideas in character and at their expression in the conduct of life. He wanted to see something more of the grand style in the manner and something more of truth and se- riousness in the substance of the men of his time. This is what he might have called the "keynote" of his criticism. If we keep this keynote in mind, we shall under- stand the choice of most of his subjects. In the opening paragraph of his essay "On the Modern Element in Literature" he quotes a saying of Buddha to one of his disciples : "Go then, O Pouma, having been delivered, deliver; having been consoled, con- sole ; being arrived at the farther bank, enable others to arrive there also." Arnold applies the utterance to the "intellectual deliverance" which a man achieves who attains a central position in the mun- dane spectacle, and "sees life steadily, and sees it whole." In this particular essay he is commending LITERARY CRITICISM 169 the literature of the Greeks as a means to such in- tellectual deliverance ; but, as we have seen, he does not declare that the only "means of grace." A man is on the road to salvation when he loves the best, devotes himself wholly to the pursuit of it, and for its sake is indifferent to the second-rate, the medi- ocre, the unsound. To be freed from all the thou- sand seductions and distractions of inferior inter- ests — was uns alle bandigt, das Gemeine, to quote Arnold's favorite phrase from Goethe — that is in- deed, an intellectual deliveranc e. All facts are in- teresting — ^this he concedes to the omnivorous sci- entific curiosity of the age; but some are so much more interesting, more valuable, more "edifying" than others ! If we had the leisure of a Methuselah we should perhaps have appetite for them all. But we have not; and if we are unwilling to pass through the brief span of life in a state of bewilderment and dizziness at the whirl and variety and glitter of the show, we must reject its indiscriminated multiplicity, we must make ovuc own choices. There is enough of high and permanent excellence to engage us. Why accept anything else ? Pronouncing his last word on Goethe, whom he considered the wisest of modern men, Arnold says: "There rises to mind this sen- tence: 'Die Gestalt dieser Welt vergeht; und ich mochte mich nur mit dem beschaftigen, was blei- bende Verhaltnisse sind.' 'The fashion of this jvorld passeth away; and I would fain occupy my- 170 ARNOLD self only with the abiding.' There is the true Goethe, and with that Goethe we would end." Now it is Arnold's de votion to ' ^e abidin g" that makes his volumes of literary criticism a kind of center and refuge and stronghold for — ^let us not say, the professed student; let us say, for the gen- eral reader, for the man of affairs, for any man who, conscious of the breadth and brevity of Ufa, wishes a guide to the highlands and mountain topsv of literature — ^wishes death, when it overtakes him, to find him in good company, and noble occupation. And what an admirable center for such excursions these volumes constitute! There are not many of them. The two volumes of the Essays in Criticism which Arnold himself collected should be on every "five-foot shelf." If to these we add the volume containing "On the Study of Celtic Literature" and "On Translating Homer;" the "Emerson" in Dis- courses in America; half a dozen of the Mixed Es- says; and the "third series" of Essays in Criticism collected in 1910 by Mr. Eldward J. O'Brien, we shall have the substance of his work in this kind.' Let us consider rather more closely some of the ways in which it offers us help. Remembering his strong sense of the community * It must be admitted that his Biblical critidsm might fairly be included in this kind; and the inclusion of it here would perhaps profitably emphasize his essentially "literary" approach to the Bible. To give importance to the religious department of his thought rather than to mark a division of literary kinds, I have treated it in a later diapter. LITERARY CRITICISM 171 I of mankind, his literary cosmopolitanism, his 1 avowed hatred of "over-preponderance of single elements," one notices first perhaps how many paths, radiating how widely into the literature of the world, converge in these books. Toward the Greeks, one is directed by "On the Modem Element in Lit- erature," "On Translating Homer," the preface to the poems of 1853, "Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment," "A Speech at Eton," and by innumera- ble incidental references. Toward the Romans one is directed by "Marcus Aurelius" and by reiterated incidental references to Virgil. Toward the Per- sians, by "A Persian Passion Play" — ^probably more persuasively, by "Sohrab and Rustum." Toward the Celts, by "On the Study of Celtic Literature." Toward the Italians, by "Dante and Beatrice" and — certainly far more persuasively in this case — ^by incidental praise and illustration of Dante's "grand style" in its "simplicity" and in its "severity." To- ward, let us say, the wandering Jew, by "Spinoza and the Bible." Toward the Germans, by "Hein- rich Heine," "A French Critic on Goethe," and by continual reference to Goethe. Toward the French by "Maurice de Gu'erin," "Eugenie de Guerin," "Joubert," "Amiel," "Obermann," "George Sand," Scherer on Milton and on Goethe, "Renan," "Sainte- Beuve," and by almost ubiquitous reference. To- ward the Russians, by "Tolstoi." Toward the Americans, by "Emerson." Toward the English, by 172 ARNOLD "The Study of Poetry," "Milton," "Johnson's Lives," "Thomas Gray," "John Keats," "Words- worth," "Byron," "Shelley." We should have prized a formal deliverance on Shakespeare: — ^yet here is a goodly company — all distinguished, though not all equally important — of poets, philosophers, novehsts and critics, assembled from the four quar- ters of the earth with the deliberate purpose of sug- gesting to the reader that, if he wishes to know the best that has been said and thought in the world, he should not settle indolently down with the writers of his own day and nation. Disparagers of Arnold's criticism not infre- quently complain that, though he goes far and wide for subjects, he is monotonous in his discoveries, because he is interested only in "moral ideas" of I fatiguing "high seriousness." The field of "moral ideas," if one really understands the words, is not such a narrow field, nor such a dull field, as some of the younger critics would have us believe. But that Arnold was exclusively interested in it is an error so serious as to warrant some pains in its re- moval. Four volumes or forty of "literary criti- cism" are of little more help to the student of lit- erature than so many volumes of sermons, if they stimulate only his moral centers, if they do not quicken his literary sensibility. Any one who reads Arnold thoughtfully and thor- oughly without feeling an immense quickening of LITERARY CRITICISM 173 hi s literary sensibility has, in all probability, no lit- erary sensibility to quicken. The q uickening' force of t he esthetic interest is present to a greater or less de- gree in everything that Arnold wrote. But it is pres- ent with conspicuous and irresistible power in one of the works, which by its title is perhaps a little for- bidding to the unprofessional reader — the lectures "On Translating Homer." Readers whom the title deters with the apprehension of something very pro- fessional, technical, and pedantic should be assured that, though they may be so unfortunate as to feel no special interest in Homer and absolutely none in translating him, they are likely to find these lectures one of the most instructively delightful of Arnold's works. Occasioned by two recent English trans- lations of the Greek poet, they afford to the relics of savagery in most of us a continuous illicit pleas- ure in the skilful pitiless flaying of Mr. Francis Newman, the worst of the translators. This per- formance, it will be acknowledged, exhilarates by no moral appeal — except, perhaps to a sense that Mr. Newman deserved what was administered to him. The destruction of Mr. Wright and Mr. Newman, however, is quite incidental to the main purposes, which are to establish the stylistic qualities of Homer, and, further than that, to establish the idea of the "g'rand style. " Now in establishing his idea of the grand style by his "touchstone" method Ar- 174 ARNOLD nold sharply challenges us, in the course of a hun- dred and fifty vivacious pages, to feel, mark, and compare with him the stylistic qualities in specific lines from: Homer, Newman, Cowper, Pope, Chapman, the romance of Richard Coeur de Leon, Milton, the Popular Ballads, Shakespeare, the Bible, P Doctor Maginn, Scott, Virgil, Dante, Spenser, Ten- y nyson, Horace, Hawtrey, Spedding, Wordsworth and Macaulay. If you compare all these passages as you are directed to compare them, if you make an earnest effort to perceive the stylistic distinctions which Arnold tells you are there, you will find the process highly exciting to your esthetic sensibility; you will undergo an esthetic discipline which you will never forget, and which will leave you with a sense of augmented power in these matters. That you can not always agree with your guide nor feel what he feels is of comparatively little moment. That he has induced in you a sustained effort of feeling and discrimination — ^there is the precious vir- tue of his discipline. In this connection one can not resist borrowing from Arnold, Joubert's exquisite appreciation of a Greek disciplinarian of the mind who achieved by similar methods similar results: "Plato shows us nothing, but he brings brightness with him; he puts light into our eyes, and fills us with a clearness by which all objects afterwards be- come illuminated. He teaches us nothing; but he prepares us, fashions us, and makes us ready to LITERARY CRITICISM 175 know all. Somehow or other, the habit of reading him augments in us the capacity for discerning and entertaining whatever fine truths may afterwards present themselves. Like movxntain-air, it sharpens our organs, and gives us an appetite for wholesome food." It is pretty generally agreed that Arnold's dis- courses on Celtic literature are not so sound as his lectures on Homer. He had little or no acquaintance with Celtic works in the original languages : and his determination of national and racial characteristics is rather a matter of divination than of science. His method of detecting the presence of "Celtic Magic" in English poetry is itself a magical method, reminding one of the method of New England well- finders with their hazel dipping-sticks. Professor Saintsbury, the erudite and animated historian of criticism, remarks severely: "With bricks of igno- rance and mortar of assumption you can build no critical house." This is taking Arnold's effort just a bit too seriously. He himself openly avows his superficial acquaintance with the monuments of Celtic culture, and frequently reminds his readers that his opinions are conjectural and speculative. He writes as an "essayist" in the older sense of the word; does what he can to convey the impression that he is on a holiday-excursion into a compara- tiA'ely unmapped and little traveled land. He has seen many delightful things, he has formed many 176 ARNOLD traveler's impressions; and he reports these sights and these impressions to enlist the interest of the general public and to stimulate scholarly investiga- tion. Both these purposes his treatment of the sub- ject was admirably calculated to serve. It related what was then a neglected and extremely obscure channel of European life to the central political, religious, social and literary interests of the day; and it thus engaged the attention of thousands of cultivated people who had thitherto no notion that the literature of the ancient Celts had any bearing on their concerns. Full of striking generalizations, it made conspicuous, if it did not settle, innumer- able fascinating linguistic, literary and ethnological problems ; and it thus stimulated many young schol- ars to enter a field where the harvest was ripe and the reapers few. It helped to prepare the way, on the one hand, for the Anglo-Celtic Renaissance en- gineered by Mr. Yeats, and, on the other hand, for the foundation of schools of Irish learning and chairs of Celtic in the universities. With results like these, a critic who desires that what he writes may "lead to something" may feel reasonably well satisfied. We have given what Arnold would have called an "historical estimate" of the importance of his rather light-hearted excursion among the Celts. If the essay has accomplished its immediate purpose, what value has it now? If there are to-day more LITERARY CRITICISM 177 experienced guides to the literature of the Celts, if interest in it is widely diffused, why should we turn any longer to this "popular" and "pioneer" discus- sion ? One might give many reasons : the charm of its style, its incidental appreciations, its critical digressions, the fact that many of its guesses are as good as any one's guesses, its suggestive com- parison of national traits and tendencies, its repre- hension of national pride and arrogance, its various persuasions to the study of perfection. The chief reason, however, for still turning to the essay is suggested by its "historical" influence: it was and it is still a vigorous stimulus to intellectual curiosity. This virtue abides in it and distinguishes it just as the virtue of a stimulus to esthetic sensibility abides in and distinguishes the lectures on Homer. Intel- lectual curiosity was one of the "stops" which Ar- nold desired to pull out "in that powerful but at present somewhat narrow-minded organ, the mod-' em Englishman." That he did not consider intel- lectual curiosity the supreme mark of a wise man is revealed in his criticism of Sainte-Beuve ; but that he considered it the beginning of wisdom it is the effort of this essay to make manifest. His dealing with the Celts, unscientific as it may be in its method and results, is his most extended tribute in the field of literary criticism to the Catholicism and the multi- form energy of the scientific spirit. The bane of the modern English, he would say, and the bane of us 178 ARNOLD all, we may add, is our lethargic disdain for what we do not understand, is our indolence and dulness in the presence of "alien" things and thoughts — like philology, ethnology, and the Irish! Taking Celtic literature, the most "alien" matter at hand, he makes his own brilliant intelligence play through it and all around it, illuminating it and its relation- ships, making it at least momentarily important, and thus initiating the reader into the function of curiosity. The reader who follows him will be invited in the end to make all sorts of moral and esthetic and social applications of what he has seen; but the primary invitation is to open the eyes of the mind on unfamiliar fields, to enliven ourselves by varie- gating our interests, to enlarge our s)mipathies by widening our knowledge. The discourses on Homer and the Celts are not the most frequently applauded portions of Arnold's literary criticism. We have lingered over them here because so many persons who have written about Arnold have not lingered over them, but, fixing at- tention rather exclusively upon portions of his work in which moral stimulus is the predominant impulse, have not exhibited his critical effort "whole" — ^have failed properly to emphasize its essential, its charac- teristic, many-sidedness. Having now indicated ex- tensive studies in which the esthetic stimulus and the intellectual stimulus are the predominant im- pulses, we may cordially recognize the grave and LITERARY CRITICISM 179 appealing beauty of his "spiritual portraits" — the two "Guerins," "Joubert," "Heine," "Spinoza," "Marcus Aurelius," "Obermann," "Amiel," "George Sand." In the presence of these portraits one rightly feels that one is becoming intimate with Arnold; for, here is a curious fact, every one of them is in a sense a "partial portrait" of him. It is not that he interposes himself between the observer and the canvas, blurring the delineation, so to speak, with personal comment. On the contrary his method is apparently self-repressive; he tends to confine comment to the task of connecting and elucidating passages in which the subject of study speaks for himself. The self-repression is, however, only ap- parent. Arnold is present, and is peculiarly re- vealed, in the selection and composition of the pas- sages; for he aims not at a complete realistic presentment, but at an ideal portrait. He chooses and arranges what in human characters he has ad- mired and loved and wishes others to love and ad- mire. Consequently one could fashion an adequate spiritual portrait of Arnold himself by selecting and composing his appreciations of other men and his extracts from their works. In such a portrait would appear something of Maurice de Guerin's "profound and delicate sense of the life of Nature," something of his sister's spiritual "distinction," Joubert's pas- sion for style and his penetrating intuitions, Heine's wit and his intellectual emancipation, Spinoza's de- 180 ARNOLD sire for "the love and knowledge of God," the res- ignation and austerity of Marcus Aurelius, the rich melancholy of "Obermann," the critical acumen of Amiel, the social passion of George Sand. In the essay on Spinoza Arnold distinguishes the Christian's love of God, which is primarily emo- tional, from Spinoza's love of God, which is pri- marily intellectual. One may say that the love which Arnold exhibits for most of the objects of his appreciative criticism is primarily of the intellec- tual quality. He writes criticisms customarily in a "dry light," seldom permitting his more intimate per- sonal emotion to reveal itself in the movement or dic- tion of his prose — a usurpation, as he held it, of the function of poetry. There are two especially note- worthy exceptions. One of them occurs at the close of his "Marcus Aurelius." The wistful solitude of the emperor in his high seriousness troubled the still waters of Arnold's spiritual life. In the following passage he illustrates well the difference between an intellectual and an emotional love. Through the penultimate paragraph he preserves the tone of a judicious, admiring and dispassionate friend; but deep calls unto deep in the valediction : "In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius prescribes is action which every sound nature must recognize as right, and the motives he assigns are motives which every clear reason must recognize as valid. And so he remains the especial friend ria LITERARY CRITICISM 181 and comforter of all clear-headed and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and upward-striving men, in those ages most especially that walk by sight, not by faith, but yet have no open vision. He cannot give such souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them much; and what he gives them, they can receive. "Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such souls love him most ! it is rather because of the emotion which lends to his voice so touching an accent, it is because he too yearns as they do for something unattained by him. What an affinity for Christianity had this persecutor of the Christians! The effusion of Christianity, its relieving tears, its happy self-sacrifice, were the very element, one feels, for which his soul longed ; they were near him, they brushed him, he touched them, he passed them by. . . . Granted that he might have found, like the Alogi of modern times, in the most beautiful of the gospels, the Gospel which has leavened Christianity most powerfully, the Gospel of St. John, too much metaphysics, too much gnosis; granted that this Gos- pel might have looked too like what he knew already to be a total surprise to him : what, then, would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew? What would have become of the exitiabilis superstitio, of the 'ob- stinacy of the Christians'? Vain question! yet the greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, tharikful, blameless ; yet, with all this stretch- ing out his arms for something beyond, — tenden- temque manus ripae ulterioris amore." Because Arnold is speaking here about an expe- 182 ARNOLD rience identical with his own he speaks with an in- tense emotion of sympathy and he seems almost to be speaking about himself. Of a similar transpar- ency and emotional candor is his essay on George Sand; one sees through it the moral lineaments of the author. "Nothing else!" — complain those who weary of his powerful application of ideas to life — "no handling of her novels as novels, no present- ment of the French novelist as she really was!" How differently Mr. George Moore, for example, would have treated the theme ! With what esthetic musings and n;ialicious innuendo and scandalous anecdote would he have drawn out a portrait of the half-mannish, inky, smoky female Bohemian ! Well, there are various ways to approach an author; and "George Sand" particularly well illustrates the mer- its and defects of Arnold's way, because, he tells us, he wrote it to please himself. George Sand had been one of the inspirations of his early manhood; in writing a commemorative notice of her he under- takes to define what she had meant to him: "'Le sentiment de la vie ideate, qui n'est autre que la vie normale telle que nous sommes appeles a la con- naitre'; — 'the sentiment of the ideal life, which is none other than man's normal life as we shall some day know it,' — those words from one of her last publications give the ruling thought of George Sand, the ground-OTO^Jz/^, as they say in music, of all her LITERARY CRITICISM 183 strain. It is as a personage inspired by this motive that she interests us." With an exquisite recollection of his visit to the Chateau of Nohant thirty years before and with a passing reference to the novels "as novels," he re- marks: "We do not know her unless we feel the spirit which goes through her work as a whole." This spirit he analyzes into three elements: "the cry of agony and revolt, the trust in nature and beauty, the aspiration towards a purged and renewed human society." He then proceeds to illustrate by carefully selected passages the preserice of these, ele- ments in George Sand's work. In doing so, he is retracing his own spiritual development ; he has lived through all that. Those cries of "agony and re- volt," he had uttered them all in his lyrics, long years ago when he was a poet, lohg years ago when he found in the French woman's novels companion- ship to alleviate the bitter melancholy of his disil- lusion. The emotion recollected in tranquillity quickens the pulse of his prose: "George Sand speaks somewhere of her 'days of Corinne.' Days of Valentine, many of us may in like manner say, — days of Valentine, days of Lelia, days never to re- turn ! They are gone, we shall read the books no more, and yet how ineffaceable is their impression! How the sentences from George Sand's works of that period still linger in our memory and haunt the 184 ARNOLD ear with their cadences! Grandiose and moving, they come, those cadences, Hke the sighing of the wind, through the forest, hke the breaking of the waves on the seashore." Passing to the second ele- ment of her "spirit," Arnold asks, with the same unwonted poetic heightening of his style, "How should she faint and fail before her time, because of a world out of joint, because of the reign of stu- pidity, because of the passions of youth — she who , could feel so well the power of those eternal con- solers, nature and beauty ? From the very first they introduce a note of suavity in her strain of grief and passion. Who can forget the lanes and mead- ows of Valentine?" One can turn to the bitter au- thor of "Empedocles on Etna" and say: Et tu in Arcadia — who can forget the scholar-gipsy's "dark blue-bells drenched with dews of summer eves"? "In all this," Arnold continues, "we are passing from the second element in George Sand to the third, — ^her aspiration for a social new-birth, a renaissance sociale. It is eminently the ideal of France; it was hers. Her religion connected itself with this ideal." In developing this last topic the critic is discussing indirectly his own major effort. The weight of his entire experience is in his brief comment on a passage from the novelist's Journal : "All the later work of George Sand, however, all her hope of genuine social renovation, take the sim- ple and serious groimd so necessary. 'The cure for LITERARY CRITICISM 185 us is far more simple than we will believe. All the better natures among us see it and feel it. It is a good direction given by ourselves to our hearts and consciences ; — une bonne direction donnee par nous- memes a nos cceurs et a nos consciences.' " To give a good direction to our hearts and con- sciences : — ^that may appear to many readers in these progressive days a homely and old-fashioned func- tion to be performed by literary criticism; but Ar- nold was unquestionably very greatly interested in giving that. His character adds weight and impor- tance to his morality. His fine intelligence and pure elevated feeling invest his morality with a winsome beauty. So let a stimulus to the heart and conscience be reckoned with the stimulus to esthetic sensibility and the stimulus to intellectual curiosity as the three vital elements which the reader may expect to find in his essays on criticism. CHAPTER V EDUCATION Comme au temps de Rabelais, c'est la methode qui resoudra les difficultes. — Notebooks, 116. La souveraine habilete consiste a bien connaitre le prix des choses. — Notebooks, 129. /i RNOLD'S writing on education, like his poetry, x\. derives a good deal of interest from its close relation to the "main movement of mind" in his time. He was what we call nowadays an "educa- tional expert," but one is inclined to say that he was that only incidentally and in a somewhat old- fashioned sense; for there is no smack in him of statistical method, child-psychology, or the deeper mysteries of pedagogy. He writes, to be sure, with extensive knowledge of schools and universities, but he writes like a man of broad general scholarship, like an accomplished man of letters, like an intelli- gent man of the world, like an alert student of so- ciety. In his attention to the means of education he never for an instant forgets the ends. If power had been conferred upon him, he might have been ah educational statesman; for he steadily sees his 186 EDUCATION 187 subject and handles it in full consciousness of, its political and social bearings. He has the statesman's sense of the central inevitable drift of things, and the statesman's passion for steering the drift. What first reconciled him to his inspectorship of schools was his perception that the education of the people was to be one of the big tasks of his day. At the very outset of his career he was tremen- dously impressed by his conviction that the govern- ment of England was not much longer to remain in the hands of a cultivated aristocracy. The ex- tension of the franchise from 1832 onward meant the coming into political power of first the middle and then the lower classes. The political emergence of the artisan, the shopkeeper, and the "common laborer" made the educational question appear to Arnold a remarkably "live issue." Since he re- garded this emergence as irresistible, it seemed to him imperative to prepare for it. It seemed to him, for political reasons if for no other, imperative with all possible speed to educate the democracy. Carlyle told the governing class that in extending the suf- frage to fools they were rushing straight to destruc- tion — they were "shooting Niagara." Arnold, equally anxious but more resourceful, said that if intelligent people did not wish their political des- tinies dictated by the ignorant masses they must in a thoroughgoing fashion regenerate and enlighten the masses. He felt, furthermore, that the need for 188 ARNOLD regeneration and enlightenment was not confined to the masses. To the solution of the grand problems of the ed- ucational statesman — what to do, and how to do it — he contributed in three distinct ways. Ip the first place, as inspector of schools he supplied to the Ed- ucation Department careful reports on the existing system of elementary education in England — the training of teachers, the proficiency of pupils, the text-books and methods in vogue, the effect of gov- ernment grants to local boards, and kindred matters ; his nineteen General Reports were collected and pub- lished in 1889. Tri ti^^ c^/^^pri ^i>i^o he prepared for the Education Commissioners and for the pub- -^ lie elaborate reports on Continental systems of edu- cation : The Popular Education of France with No- tices of That in Holland and Switzerland, 1861 ; A French Eton; or Middle Class Education and the State, 1864; Schools and Universities on the Con- tinent, 1868; Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, 1874; and a Special Report on . . . Elementary Education in Germany, Switzerland, and France, 1888. In the third place, he set forth, in these reports and elsewliei e 111 +hs works, his own ideas of educational administration and organiza- tion, and the choice of studies. The special student will find all these writings full of matter and sug- gestiveness. The descriptive portions, however, have now mainly an historical interest, and we shall EDUCATION 189 accordingly limit ourselves to a brief consideration of his leading ideas. In his survey of English education he became con- scious that its deficiencies were due largely to the fact that like Topsy it had "just growed." It had "muddled along" voluntarily, parochially, privately, under denominational control, without standards, wise supervision, or definitely conceived ends. Its presiding spirit had been the too much extolled "English love of liberty," which meant in this case liberty to be as little educated or as badly educated as one pleased. In his survey of Continental sys- tems, on the other hand, he was everywhere im- pressed by the fact that educational statesmanship had been at work. In Germany, Frederick the Great and Humboldt, in France Napoleon and Guizot, grasping the immense potentialities of the imperfect instrument at hand, had nationalized education, and had brought the highest order of intelligence to its administration and organization. Arnold repeatedly declared that public instruction would never be on the right footing in England till there was a man like Guizot or Humboldt responsibly at the head of it. Meanwhile, taking his cue from the Continent, he urged certain reforms in elementary, secondary and higher education. (T he fir st step, he held, toward social regeneration and enlightenment was to make elementary educa- tion sound and uniform, public and universal. If 190 ARNOLD it was to be sound and uniform, it must be wisely supervised and effectively controlled. If it was to be public and universal, it must be accessible to all ^"^ and compulsory for all. The, second step was to multiply in the interest of the middle classes good public secondary schools such as at Eton and Rugby and Harrow already existed yet were enjoyed mainly by the wealthy and aristocratic classes. The '''~\ third step was to add to Oxford, Cambridge, and London universities ten or a dozen institutions for higher learning in the "provinces"; and to make these institutions universities in the Continental sense of the word, that is to say, centers of produc- tive scholarship and scientific research. Here in rough outline is Arnold's program for improving the educational machinery of a young and backward democracy, rather heavily encumbered by its inher- itance of fixed ideas and habits from an older re- gime. In such circumstances, to propose the pro- gram was the least of his tasks. To overcome the innate English antipathy to compulsion and super- vision ; to rouse the middle class from its conceit and self-satisfaction; to make people feel their need for new ideas and fresh information — ^these were the real labors and difficulties. In these tasks Arnold's literary talent comes into play. His most delightful development of the implica- tions of compulfjio n in educa tion is to be found in the sixth and seventh letters of Friendship's Gar- EDUCATION 191 land, which constitute a good-tempered yet biting satire on educational conditions in all classes of Eng- lish society. In this brilliant series of skits Arnold ironically assumes the position of the jealous de- fender of British institutions against the brutally caustic criticism of his friend, the young Prussian savant, Arminius ("he was christened Herman, but I call him Arminius, because it is more in the grand style"). Arnold here represents himself as seizing the occasion of a magistrates' day for sitting in a certain country town "to show off our local self- government to a bureaucracy-ridden Prussian like Arminius." The prisoner, Zephaniah Diggs — "an old fellow in a smock-frock, with a white head, a low forehead, a red nose, and a foxy expression of countenance" — is up for snafing a hare. "The worst of the story, to my mind," says Arnold slyly, "was that the old rogue had a heap of young children by a second wife whom he had married late in life, and that not one of these children would he send to school, but persisted in letting them run wild, and grow up in utter barbarism. . . . Do you know, Arminius, I begin to think, that the time has almost come for taking a leaf out of your Prussian book, and applying, in the education of children of this class, what the great Kant calls the categorical im- perative. The gap between them and our educated classes is really too frightful. 'Your educated and intelligent classes!' sneered Arminius, in his very 192 ' ARNOLD most offensive manner; 'where are they? I should like to see them.' " In reply Arnold exhibits the magistrates, declar- ing that they "embody our whole national life; — ^the land, religion, commerce are all represented by them. Lord Lumpington is a peer of old family and great estate; Esau Hittall is a clergyman; Mr. Bottles is one of our self-made middle-class men. Their poli- tics are not all of one color, and that color the gov- ernment's. Lumpington is a Constitutional Whig; Hittall is a benighted old Tory. As for Mr. Bottles, he is a radical of the purest water; quite one of the Manchester school." " 'That is all very well as to their politics,' said Arminius, but I want to hear about their education and intelligence.' " Lumping- ton, Arnold explains, was at Eton; Hittall was the last of six nephews nominated to the Charterhouse by his uncle, a distinguished prelate, "who had thor- oughly learnt the divine lesson that charity begins at home." Arminius insists on inquiring what they learnt at Eton and at the Charterhouse, and whether their minds were much braced by the mental gym- nastics of "the grand old, fortifying, classical cur- riculum." "Well," returns Arnold, "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 part I have al- ways thought their both getting their degree at last with flying colours, after three weeks of a famous EDUCATION 193 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 I ever heard of." As for Mr. Bottles, he was educated -in the Lycurgus House Academy by Archimedes Silverpump, Ph. D., a man of modern views, thus summarized by his pupil : "Original man, Silverpump ! fine mind ! fine system ! None of your antiquated rubbish — ^all practical work — latest discoveries in science — ^mind constantly kept excited — lots of interesting experiments — lights of all colours — fizz ! fizz ! bang ! bang ! That's what I call forming a man." So much for English laisses-faire in education. Arnold's destructive and constructive criticism of what Lumpington, Hittall, and Bottles represent he appropriately expresses through his Prussian friend. " 'But,' continued Arminius, 'you were talking of compulsory education, and your common people's want of it. Now, my dear friend, I want you to understand what this principle of compulsory educa- tion really means. 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, be- tween 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. Our Prussian peasant stands our compelling him to instruct him- self before he may go about his calling, because he 194 ARNOLD sees we believe in instruction, and compel our own class, too, in a way to make it really feel the pres- sure, to instruct itself before it may go about its call- ing. Now, you propose to make old Diggs's boys in- struct themselves before they may go bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want to know what you do to make those three worthies in that justice-room in- struct themselves before they may go acting as magistrates and judges.' 'Do?' said I; 'why, just look what they have done all of themselves. Lump- ington and Hittall have had a public-school and uni- versity education ; Bottles has had Dr. Silverpump's, and the practical training of business. What on earth would you have us make them do more?' 'Qualify themselves for administrative or judicial functions, if they exercise them,' said Arminius. 'That is what really answers, in their case, to the compulsion you propose to apply to Diggs's boys.' Sending Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall 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's boys. You are not interposing, for the rich, education as a bar or condition between them and that which they aim at. But interpose it, as we do, between the rich and things they aim at, and I will say something to you. I should like to know what has made Lord Lumping- ton a magistrate ?' TMade Lord Lumpington a mag- istrate ?' said I ; 'why, the Lumpington estate, to be sure.' 'And the Reverend Esau Hittall ?' continued Arminius. 'Why, the Lumpington living, of course,' said I. 'And that man Bottles?' he went on. 'His English energy and self-reliance,' I answered very EDUCATION 195 stiffly, for Arminius's incessant carping began to put me in a huff ; 'those same incomparable and truly British qualities which have just triumphed over every obstacle and given us the Atlantic telegraph ! — and let me tell you, Von T., in my opinion it will be a long time before the "Geist" of any pedant of a Prussian professor gives us anything half so valu- able as that.' 'Pshaw!' replied Arminius, con- temptuously: 'that great rope, with a Philistine at each end of it talking inutilities ! " 'But in my country,' he went on, 'we should have begun to put a pressure on these future magis- trates at school. Befofe we allowed Lord Lumping- ton and Mr. Hittall to go to the university at all, we should have examined them, and we should not have trusted the keepers of that absurd cockpit you took me down to see, to examine them as they choose, and send them jogging comfortably off to the university on their lame longs and shorts. No; there would have been some Mr. Grote as School Board Com- missioner, pitching into them questions about his- tory, 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's boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till they instructed themselves. Then, if, after three years of their university, they wanted to be magistrates, another pressure! — a great Civil Service examination be- fore a board of experts, an examination in English law, Roman law, English history, history of juris- prudence. . . . ' 'A most abominable liberty to take with Lumpington and Hittall!' exclaimed I. 'Then your compulsory education is a most abom- 196 ARNOLD inable liberty to take with Diggs's boys,' retorted Arminius. 'But, good gracious ! my dear Artninius,' expostulated I, 'do you really mean to maintain that a man can't put old Diggs in quod for snaring a hare without all this elaborate apparatus of Roman law and history of jurisprudence?' 'And do you really mean to maintain,' returned Arminius, 'that a man can't go bird-scaring or sheep-tending with- out all this elaborate apparatus of a compulsory school ?' 'Oh, but,' I answered, 'to live at all, even at the lowest stage of human life, a man needs instruc- tion.' 'Well,' returned Arminius, 'and to administer at all, even at the lowest stage of public administra- tion, a man needs instruction.' 'We have never found it so,' said I." The principle of compulsion illustrated by the case of the magistrates bears upon the educational inefficiency which is due to indolence. T he pi;i n- ci p_le_pf s upervision in which Arnold is equally inter- ested, bears upon the inefficiency which is due to misdirected effort. He agrees with the stoutest champions of liberty that nothing should be done by the state to discourage individual initiative and local, denominational, and class enterprise in educational matters. But he feels very strongly that most indi- viduals, most localities, most denominations, and most classes stand in need, in the long run, of a power outside themselves to help them to realize their best selves, and to hold them up to the level of their highest possibilities. That power, he believes, EDUCATION 197 may best be lo'dged in the state, and exercised prac- tically through state supervision, examination, ^nd pecuniary aid. On the Continent he finds the govern- ment conscientiously and intelligently leading and directing educational effort. In England, on the contrary, the habit of governors, when they let their countenances shine upon the people, is to flatter them in their misdirection. In the third chapter of Cul- ture and Anarchy he illustrates, with a somewhat Socratic air, this distressing difference between the English and the Germans : "The Liscensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers propose to make a school for their chil- dren; and I suppose, in the matter of schools, one may call the Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers ordinary men, with their natural taste for the bathos still strong ; and a Sovereign with the advice of men like Wilhelm von Humboldt or Schleiermacher may, in this matter, be a better judge, and nearer to right reason. And it will be allowed, probably, that right reason would suggest that, to have a sheer school of Licensed Victuallers' children, or a sheer school of Commercial Travel- lers' children, and to bring them all up, not only at home but at school too, in a kind of odour of licensed victualism or bagmanism, is not a wise training to give to these children. And in Germany, I have said, the action of the national guides or governors is to suggest and provide a better. But, in England, the action of the national guides or governors is, for a Royal Prince or a great Minister to go down to the 198 ARNOLD opening of the Licensed Victuallers' or of the Com- mercial Travellers' school, to take the chair to extol the energy and self-reliance of the Licensed Victual- lers or the Commercial Travellers, to be all of their way of thinking, to predict full success to their schools, and never so much as to hint to them that they are probably doing a very foolish thing, and that the right way to go to work with their children's education is quite different. And it is the same in almost every department of affairs. While, on the Continent, the idea prevails that it is the business of the heads and representatives of the nation, by vir- tue of their superior means, power, and information, to set an example and to provide suggestions of right reason, among us the idea is that the business of the heads and representatives of the nation is to do nothing of the kind, but to applaud the natural taste for the bathos showing itself vigorously in any part of the community, and to encourage its works." , To education no less than to literature Arnold ap- plied Goethe's maxim, Alles Grandioses ist bildend — everything in the grand style is formative. A school for Licensed Victuallers or for Seventh Day Baptists could not but impress him as inadequately and even viciously conceived — ^as the institutional equivalent of an inferior and vulgar poetry. There were, he said in A French Eton, "numberless en- dowed schools and 'educational homes' — some of them good, many of them middling, most of them bad; but none of them invested with much consid- eration or dignity." What he desired for the chil- EDUCATION 199 i dren of th e middle class was an institiition , w hich shoul d give them "largeness of soul," lifting tl;iei;n pg rgTll-Le middle class into the life of the nation — the educational equivalent of epic poetry. The readiest way to introduce the element of grandeur where it was so much needed was by the public establishment of schools for the middle class on something like the scale established in France. Let us quote from The Popular Education of France a. passage which well illustrates his sense of the moral and social ends to be attained by such establish- ments : "The aristocratic classes in England may, per- haps, be well content to rest satisfied with their Eton and Harrow ; the State is not likely to do better for them ; nay, the superior confidence, spirit, and style, engendered by a training in the great public schools, constitute for these classes a real privilege, a real engine of command, which they might, if they were selfish, be sorry to lose by the establishment of schools great enough to beget a like spirit in the classes below them. But the middle classes in Eng- land have every reason not to remain content with their private schools ; the State can do a great deal better for them; by giving to schools for these classes a public character, it can bring the instruction in them under a criticism which the knowledge of these classes is not in itself at present able to supply; by giving to them a national character, it can confer on them a greatness and a noble spirit, which the tone of these classes is not in itself at present ade- 200 ARNOLD quate to impart. Such schools would soon prove notable competitors with the existing public schools : they would do these a great service by stimulating them, and making them look into their own weak points more closely: economical, because with charges uniform and under severe supervision, they would do a great service to that large body of per- sons, who, at present, seeing that on the whole the best secondary instruction to be found is that of the existing public schools, obtain it for their children from a sense of duty, although they can ill afford it, and although its cost is certainly exorbitant. Thus the middle classes might, by the aid of the State, better their instruction, while still keeping its cost moderate. This in itself would be a gain; but this gain would be nothing in comparison with that of acquiring the sense of belonging to great and hon- ourable seats of learning, and of breathing in their youth the air of the best culture of their nation. This sense would be an educational influence for them of the highest value; it would really augment their self-respect and moral force; it would truly fuse them with the class above, and tend to bring about for them the Equality which they desire." The English governing class in Arnold's time was vastly more concerned about elementary and sec- ondary than about higher education. In his Higher Schools and Universities in Germany he emphat- ically indicates the course that England must take to bring her most venerated institutions of learning "up to date." He dwells, according to his custom, upon the characteristic excellencies of the German EDUCATION 201 institutions, remarking, however, that the English deficiency is not in Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit — academic freedom — but in Wissenschaft, which he glosses as "knowledge systematically pursued and prized in and for itself." "Our university system," he continues, "is a routine, indeed, but it is our want of science, not our want of liberty, which makes it a routine. It is science that we have most need to borrow from the German universities. The French university has no liberty, and the English universities have no science ; the German universities have both." The dawn of genuine university in- struction in the United States is marked for us by the foundation of the Johns Hopkins University in 1867; but the distinction between the function of the old-fashioned college and the function of the modem university is none too firmly established among us, even in these days. It is to Arnold's credit that he made the distinction sharp and pointed it as early as 1874 : "The want of the idea of science, of systematic knowledge, is, as I have said again and again, the capital want of English education and of Qiiglish life; it is the tmiversity, or the superior school, which ought to foster this idea. The university or superior school ought to provide facilities, after the general education is finished, for the young man to go on in the line where his special aptitudes lead him, be it that of languages and literature, of mathemat- ics, of the natural sciences, of the application of 202 ARNOLD these sciences, or any other Une, and follow the studies of this line systematically under first-rate teaching. Our great universities, Oxford and Cam- bridge, do next to nothing towards this end. They are, as Signor Matteuci called them, hauts lycccs; and though valuable in their way as places where the youth of the upper classes prolong to a very great age, and vmder some very admirable influences, their school education, and though in this respect to be envied by the youth of the upper class abroad, and, if possible, instituted for their benefit, yet, with their college and tutor system, nay, with their ex- amination and degree system, they are still, in fact, schools, and do not carry education beyond the stage of general and school education. The exam- ination for the degree of bachelor of arts, which we place at the end of our three years' university course, is merely the Abituricntenexavien of Germany, the cpreuve du baccaktureat of France, placed in both of these coimtries at the entrance to university studies instead of, as with us, at their close. Scientific in- struction, university instruction, really begins when the degree of bachelor {has chevalier, knight of low degree) is taken, and the preparation for mas- tership in any line of study, or for doctorship (fit- ness to teach it), commences. But for mastership or doctorship, Oxford and Cambridge have, as is well known, either no examination at all, or an ex- amination which is a mere form; they have conse- quently no instruction directed to these grades; no real university-instruction, therefore, at all." The age of private endowment, Arnold expressly declared, was over. It would be pleasant to record EDUCATION 203 that, ignoring institutions like Harvard and Yale and Andover and Exeter, ignoring also the countless poverty-stricken and badly manned and ignorantly directed, privately endowed institutions in the United States, he found in our high schools and in our state universities models for the public establishment of secondary and higher education in England. If he had been inclined to the utterance of comforting prophecy, if he had been disposed to flatter the "American cousins," he might at least have told us that we had drawn the plans and laid the founda- tions for a grand system. What he actually said — in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, August 27, 1886 — ^was this : "I am doubtful about your petty acad- emies, just as I am doubtful about your pullulating colleges and universities. Das Gemeine is the American danger, and a few and good secondary schools and universities, setting a high standard, are what you seem to me to want, rather than a multi- tude of institutions which their promoters delude themselves by taking seriously, but which no serious person can so take." We have been discussing up to this point Arnold's program for the improvement of educational ma- chinery. We may now remark that if he had not been officially concerned with educational machinery he would probably have given little attention to the need for administrative centralization, organization, coordination, extension, efficiency, and the similar 204 ARNOLD abstractions with which the tongue of the educa- tional "engineer" has made us familiar. Called to the task, he develops, with a constant desire to steer and control the "Uberty" of a growing democracy, his ideas of an adequate, modem, educational in- strument. His personal, as distinguished from his official, interest was, however, not in the machine but in its product. He is nearer home when he dis- cusses the choice of studies than when he discusses the coordination of schools. He has more closely at heart what education can do for the individual than what an educational system can do for the state. Now t he choice of studi es was made in the third quarter of the nineteenth century a particularly "live issue" by the new claims put forth in behalf of the natural sciences. The immediate eflFect in the field of education produced by the immense scien- tific activity of the century was an inquiry whether the traditional educational disciplines were not anti- quated. It was of course to be expected that as soon as a large body of new scientific knowledge was available its discoverers and popularizers would de- mand a place for it in the curricula of schools and colleges. The discoverers and popularizers were not slow nor excessively modest in presenting their case. They demanded for modem science not merely a place but the predominant place in a reformed edu- cational program. Pointing to the rich fmits of recent scientific effort, they challenged the "classi- EDUCATION 205 cists" to exhibit an equivalent. They brought about a new battle of the ancients and the moderns, a head-on collision of the "sciences" and the "human- ities," with the echoes of which the educational \vorld still rings. With relation to this great clash of opinion Ar- nold sets forth in "Literature and Science" his doc- trine on the choice of studies. Incidentally he takes up — we must not say the cudgels — he draws his rapier in behalf of the humanists, and exchanges a few courteous thrusts with Darwin's brilliant ex- positor, Thomas Huxley. The cudgels had been employed, some years earlier, by Herbert Spencer, the quasi-official philosopher of evolution; and, though explicit reference is not made to him in Arnold's lecture, he must certainly have been in Arnold's mind as the very Goliath among the men of science. With Huxley, who asked large concessions from the humanists, Arnold could come to an under- standing, if not to a perfect agreement. But with Spencer, who wished to destroy the humanists, he could hardly have found any common ground. In pliilosophical circles Spencer seems to have dwindled from a star of the first riiagnitude to a rather con- temned candle, guttering and smoking toward ex- tinction. Jn departments of Pedagogy, hbwever, his Education — ^published in 1861, two years after the Origin of Species — is still studied as a classic; and in college faculties it is still quoted as a gospel by 206 ARNOLD the men of science who acquired their leading ideas when Spencer was a name to conjure with. The temper, training and writings of Spencer as educator give us just the right foil for the exhibition of Arnold in the same capacity. Spencer was brought up in a religious environ- ment of a Quaker and Methodist complexion. Edu- cationally a "self-made man," he knew nothing at first hand of the influence of the traditional human- istic disciplines at Oxford or Cambridge. He fol- lowed imchecked his natural bent, which inclined him strongly toward the natural sciences, mathe- matics, and abstract reasoning. He began his career as a civil engineer on the Birmingham railway; served for a time as sub-editor on an economic peri- odical; and then passed to reading and writing in the fields of the natural sciences, psychology, sociol- ogy and philosophy. All his thinking was pervaded by an optimistic faith in progress, which was his first philosophical deduction from the scientific the- ory of evolution. He cheerfully accepted the theory of the descent of man from the anthropoid apes; and one may say that his central conception of man was derived from the study of biology and physiol- ogy. He thought steadily of man as an animal who owed his place in nature to the skill with which he had adapted himself to his environment ; and, as his Autobiography reveals, he thought steadily of him- self as the most illustrious example of "adaptation." EDUCATION 207 Spencer's educational theory develops out of his elementary conception of man as an animal, and out of his elementary conception of adaptation to en- vironment. His entire treatise has a twang of zool- ogy and anthropology. Considering the matter as a convinced naturalist, he can not see that the study of Greek and Latin is of any appreciable service to the modern animal in the powers of adaptation. He has read a good deal in the history of savage tribes, and, with a display of his elephantine humor, he opens his argument by comparing the function of the classics among civilized people to that of finery among barbarians : "We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that throughout his after career a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purpose. The remark is trite that in his shop, or his ofifice, in man- aging his estate or his family, in playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire. li we enquire what is the real motive for giving boys a classical education, we find it to be simply con- formity to public opinion. . . . As the Oronoco Indian puts on his paint before leaving his hut, not with a view to any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be seen without it, so a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not be- cause Q-f their intrinsic value, but that he may not be disgraced by being found ignorant of them." 208 ARNOLD After these preliminary flings, Spencer tells us that we need to revise our ideas and set up a new and real standard of educational values. Whereupon, divid- ing the subject into five parts, he sets up the follow- ing standard : "That education which prepares for direct self-preservation ; that which prepares for in- direct self-preservation; that which prepares for parenthood; that which prepares for citizenship; that which prepares for the miscellaneous refine- ments of life." This enumeration, in the order of the relative importance of the parts, we shall com- pare in a moment with Arnold's division of the sub- ject. But let us notice now its significant features : three out of five parts of education are to deal with the preservation and propagation of the physical species to which man belongs ; one part is to prepare for civic responsibility; the fifth, for the "miscella- neous refinements" — ^the beads and gewgaws, so to speak. Spencer contemplates the education of an indus- trious democracy: "Leaving out some very small classes, what are all men employed in? They are employed in the production, preparation and distri- bution of commodities. And on what does efficiency in the production, preparation and distribution of commodities depend? It depends on the use of methods fitted to the respective natures of these commodities ; it depends on an adequate knowledge of their physical, chemical, or vital properties, as the EDUCATION 209 case may be; that is, it depends on science. This order of knowledge, which is in great part ignored in our school courses, is the order of knowledge un- derlying the right performance of all those processes by which civilized li f e is made possible." In this pass- age "science" obviously means physics (including mathematics), chemistry, biology, and their branches. The passage may also mean that civil- ized life consists mainly in the "production, prepara- tion, and distribution of commodities"; but that is not quite so clear. Proceeding with his argument, Spencer shows in great detail how science enters into our business if not into our bosoms; how essential mathematics is to the carpenter; how physics with mathematics builds the steam engine and operates in the kitchen ; how chemistry serves the dyer, the gas maker, the soap boiler; how biology concerns the sheep raiser; how physiology opens the door for the dietitian ; how important psychology and physiology are in the rearing of children; and finally how fun- damental the various sciences are even to the inter- pretation of history, the creation of art, etc., etc., etc. This searching inquiry he concludes with a triumphant summary, calculated to make the clas- sicists ask themselves what reason they had for longer encumbering the earth : "For direct self-preservation, or the maintenance of life and health, the all-important knowledge is — Science. 210 ARNOLD "For that indirect self-preservation which we call gaining a livelihood, the knowledge of greatest value is — Science. "For the due discharge of parental functions, the proper guidance is to be found only in — Science. "For the interpretation of national life, past and present, without which the citizen cannot regulate his conduct, the indispensable key is — Science. "And for the purposes of discipline — intellectual, moral, religious — the most efficient study is, once more. Science." At the conclusion of his chapter on "What Knowl- edge is of Most Worth," he speaks of science as up to that time a household drudge kept in the back- ground "that her haughty sisters might flaunt their fripperies in the eyes of the world." But thence- forth, he says, their positions will be changed, "and while these haughty sisters sink into merited neglect, Science, proclaimed as highest alike in worth and beauty, will reign supreme." We are to believe, the immense immediate influence of Spencer constrains us to believe, that by this sort of tiling men in the 'sixties and 'seventies were stirred as with the sound of a trumpet. Arnold's lecture on "Literature and Science," de- livered in America in 1883, was addressed to a peo- ple mainly employed, like those for \\ hom Spencer legislated, in the "production, preparation and dis- tribution of commodities." But when we turn from Spencer's Education to this lecture we are in the EDUCATION 211 presence of a quite different order of ideas. The difference is not felt merely in the fact that we have turned from a self-educated man to a man who has undergone the best traditional disciplines, from an advocate of the natural sciences to an advocate of humane letters, from an educational theorist to an educational expert intimately in touch for thirty years with educational practise in England and on the Continent. No : the difference is felt primarily in the opposition of two unlike conceptions of man and his destiny on the planet. To Spencer, man is an animal, who by natural cunning has managed to get his head a little higher tlian the apes and to live more comfortably than they, and who by tlie scien- tific extension of his cunning may expect to live still more comfortably. To Arnold, who waives the question of man's ultimate origin, man is now essen- tially a moral being, who by certain discipline has fortified his instinct for righteousness, wisdom and beauty, and who by the continued use of these dis- ciplines may expect to make progress in perfecting his essence. Between the lines of scientific cunning along which an animal achieves comfort and the lines of discipline along which a moral being perfects his essence there are many points of contact and coincidence. But the ends are not the same. Be- tween the ultimate ideals there is an irreconcilable conflict which it is idle to slur over or to attempt to disguise. The special service of Arnold's light- 212 ARNOLD handed but firm critical meditation is in showing how far literature and the natural sciences go to- gether, and where they part. "Practical people," he begins, "talk with a smile of Plato and of his absolute ideas ; and it is impossi- ble to deny that Plato's ideas do often seem unprac- tical and impracticable, and especially when one views them in connexion with the life of a great work-a-day world like the United States. The nec- essary staple of such a world Plato regards with disdain; handicraft and trade and the working professions he regards with disdain; but what be- comes of the life of an industrial modem com- mimity if you take handicraft and trade and the working professions out of it? . . . Now edu- cation, many people go on to say, is still mainly gov- erned by the ideas of a man like Plato, who lived when the warrior caste and the priestly or philo- sophical class were alone in honour, and the really useful part of the community were slaves. . . . And how absurd it is, people end by saying, to inflict this education upon an industrious modem community, where very few indeed are persons of leisure, and the mass to be considered has not lei- sure, but is bound, for its own great good, and for the great good of the world at large, to plain labour and to industrial pursuits, and the education in ques- tion tends necessarily to make men dissatisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for them !" Arnold admits that much in Plato is obsolete, "that his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic," EDUCATION 213 but he makes a distinction : "So far I must defend Plato, as to plead that his view of education and studies is in the general, as it seems to (m^ sound enough, and fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever their pursuits may be. 'An inteUi- gent man,' says Plato, 'will prize those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the others.' I can- not consider that a bad description of the aim of education, and of the motives which should govern us, whether we are preparing for a hereditary seat in the English House of Lords or for the pork trade in CKicago." Here we may contrast the central conceptions of the educational function held by a man of science with that held by a humanist. By all odds the most important function of education as Spencer describes it relates to the care of the body and to the perpetuation of the physical life of the race. Arnold, following Plato, begins almost at the point where Spencer leaves off: without a word about self-preservation, "direct" or "indirect," he begins with the moral being and the desires which it is entitled to satisfy. For him obviously the primary consideration is the perpetuation of the moral life of the race. A significant difference in emphasis is unquestionable. Spencer, anticipating a flanking movement against his position, had, it will be remembered, prepared his defense in advance when he said : "For the purposes 214 ARNOLD of discipline — intellectual, moral, religious — ^the most efficient study is, once more. Science." Ar- nold's attack is in that "sector." "The moral educa- tion in the past," he says, "has been mainly literary. ' The question is whether the studies which were long supposed to be the best for all of us are practically the best now; whether others are not better. The tyranny of the past, many think, weighs on us in- juriously in the predominance given to letters in education. . . . The design of abasing what is called 'mere literary instruction and education,' and of exalting what is called 'sound, extensive, and practical scientific knowledge,' is, in this intensely modem world of the United States, even more per- haps than in Europe, a very popular design. I am going to ask . , . whether this brisk and flourish- ing movement ought to prevail, and whether it is likely to prevail." First, however, Arnold clears away an important misunderstanding — a misunderstanding, unfortu- nately, which the humanist has usually still to re- move when he disputes with a man from the left wing of science. In defending humane letters Arnold explains that he is not advocating a belletris- tic program of an ornamental character from which scientific knowledge is excluded. On the contrary, the program which he defends will provide for scien- tific knowledge of the natural world, and will reform the study of the classics and of belles-lettres in gen- EDUCATION 215 eral by introducing into it something of the sys- tematic and thoroughgoing spirit which animates workers in the natural sciences : "But as I do not mean, by knowing anciept Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin belles lettres, and taking no account of Rome's military, and polit- ical, and legal, and administrative work in the world; and as, by knowing Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific method, and the founder of our mathematics and physics and astronomy and biology — I understand knowing her as all this, and not merely knowing cer- tain Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, and speeches, — so as to the knowledge of modern na- tions also. By knowing modern nations, I mean not merely knowing their belles lettres, but knowing also what has been done by such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. . . . There is, there- fore, really no question between Professor Hux- ley and me as to whether knowing the great results of the modern scientific study of nature is not re- quired as a part of our culture, as well as knowing the products of literature and art." "But," he says — returning to the attack, "to fol- low the processes by which these results are reached, ought, say the friends of physical science, to be made the staple of education for the bulk of man- kind. And here there does arise a question between those whom Professor Huxley calls with playful sarcasm 'the Levites of culture,' and those whom the poor humanist is sometimes apt to regard as its Nebuchadnezzars. . . .AH knowledge is inter- 216 ARNOLD esting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men. It is very interesting to know, that, from the albuminous white of the egg, the chick in the egg gets the materials for its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers. . . . It is less inter- esting, perhaps, but still it is interesting to know that when a taper bums, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water. . . . We must all admit that in natural science the habit gained of dealing with facts is a most valuable disci- pline, and that everyone should have some experi- ence of it. More than this, however, is demanded by the reformers. It is proposed to make the train- ing in natural science the main part of education, for the great majority of mankind at any rate. And here, I confess, I part company with the friends of physical science, with whom up to this point I have been agreeing." Why ? Well, says Arnold, "at present it seems to me, that those who are for giving to natural knowl- edge, as they call it, the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind, leave one important thing out of their account: the constitution of hu- man nature." Let us recall here once more Spencer's fivefold division of the powers of education: educa- tion for (1) self-preservation, (2) indirect self- preservation, (3) parenthood, (4) civic responsi- bility, and (5) "miscellaneous refinements." Ar- nold makes a fourfold division, "not pretending to scientific exactness," with moral, intellectual, esthetic, and social branches. The powers which EDUCATION 217 go to the building up of human life, he says, are : "The power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners. . . . Human nature is built up by these powers ; we have need for all of them. When we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them all, we shall then be in a fair way for getting soberness and righteousness, with wisdom. This is evident enough, and the friends of science would admit it." The argument which Arnold con- structs upon this conception of human nature does not proceed to demonstrate the superiority of letters over science in every sphere. It makes a distinction : in the sphere of "intellect and knowledge," the study of the natural'sciences is of very great service ; in the spheres of "conduct," "beauty," and "social life and manners" it is, for the mass of mankind, of negligible service, certainly of far less service than the study of letters. With this conclusion all good humanists will agree. The agreement of men of science will depend upon their various notions of the constituent elements in a satisfactory civilization; will depend upon the presence in them of a non- scientific sense — ^the sense for human values. In reaching it Arnold enters into some interesting and amusing developments. "We experience, as we go on learning and know- ing, — ^the vast majority of us experience, — the need of relating what we have learnt and known to the 218 ARNOLD sense which we have in us for conduct, to the sense which we have in us for beauty. . . . But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot be made to directly serve the instinct in question, cannot be re- lated to the sense for beauty, to the sense for con- duct. These are instrument-knowledges; they lead on to other knowledges, which can. A man who passes his life in instrument-knowledges is a special- ist. They may be invaluable as instruments to some- thing beyond, for those who have the gift thus to employ them ; and they may be disciplines in them- selves wherein it is useful for every one to have some schooling. But it is inconceivable that the gen- erality of men should pass all their mental life with Greek accents or with formal logic. ... In the very Senate House and heart of our English Cam- bridge I once ventured, though not without an apol- ogy for my profaneness, to hazard the opinion that for the majority of mankind a little of mathematics, even, goes a long way. . . . "The natural sciences do not, however, stand on the same footing with the instrument-knowledges. . . . And one piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and others are added to that, and at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr. Darwin's famous proposition that 'our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits.' Or we come to propositions of such reach and magnitude as Pro- fessor Huxley delivers, when he says that the no- tions of our forefathers about the beginning and the end of the world were all wrong, and that na- ture is the expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes. EDUCATION i 219 "Interesting, indeed, these results of science are, important they are, and we should all of us be ac- quainted with them. But what I now wish you to mark is, that we are still, when they are propounded to us and we receive them, we are still in the sphere of intellect and knowledge. And for the generality of men there will be found, I say, to arise, when they have duly taken in the proposition that their ancestor was 'a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits,' there will be found to arise an invincible desire to relate this proposition to the sense in us for conduct, and to the sense in us for beauty. But this the men of science will not do for us, and will hardly even profess to do." "The success of modem science in extirpating what it calls 'mediaeval thinking' " has not dimin- ished the demands of man's emotional nature, though it has destroyed for many men one of the chief means of satisfying them. An individual here and there will be found — Darwin, for example — who does not suffer from the loss of the old relig- ious consolations. But, as the work of science pro- gresses, most men will more and more feel the need of a substitute for the forms of emotional satisfac- tion which science has discredited. At this point Arnold develops his idea that humane letters — es- pecially poetry — are the available equivalent to re- ligion. "First, have poetry and eloquence the power of 220 ARNOLD calling out the emotions? The appeal is to experi- ence. Experience shows us that for the vast ma- jority of men, for mankind in general, they have the power. Next, do they exercise it? They do. But then, how do they exercise it so as to affect man's sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? And this is perhaps a case for applying the Preacher's words : 'Though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.' Why should it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions to say, 'Patience is a virtue,' and quite an- other thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer, / JIKririv yip JioTpai Bv/ibv 8i > > I Spenser, Edmund, 151, 162, 163, 174. Spinoza and the Bible, 171, 179, 180. Spinoza, Baruch, 138, 179, 180, 220, 282. Stanley, Dean A. P., 88. Stanley, Lady Augusta, 36. /' Sterne, Laurence, 144. Strauss, D. F., 53. Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, The, 10. Stud'j) of Celtic Literature, On the, 30, 34, 159, 170, 171, 175, 178 251 Study of Poetry, The, 39, 147, ISO, 157, 159, 164, 172. Summer Night, A, 81, 82, 83. Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 31, 33, 121, 144, 152, 255. Switzerland, 55, 98. ' ' ' Taine, H. A., 153. Taylor, Jeremy, f57. Tennyson, Alfred, 10, 33, 52, 117, 174. Thackeray, William Makepeace, 33, 53. Thomas Qray, 172. Thyrsis, 76, 77, 78, 79, Times, The London, 137, 242. Tolstoi, 40, 171. Tom Brown at Rugby, 5. Translating Homer, On, 30, 159, 170, 171, 173, 175, 178. Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, 138. Tristram and Iseult, 15, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 126. TroUope, Anthony, S3. Trollope, Mrs. Frances, 40. Unpopular Review, The, 274. Utilitarians, 242. Vida, 151. Villon, Francois, 159. Vinet, A. R., 29, 281. Virgil, 92, 117, 171, 174, 263. Voltaire, 48, 166. 326 INDEX Ward, Mrs. Humphrey : her Robert Elsmere, 283. Ward, W. G., 39. Warton, Joseph and Thomas, 153. Webster, John, 162. Wells, H. G., 2 note. Westminster Abbey, 88. Whately, Bishop, 283. Whitridge, F. W., 47. Whittier, John Greenleaf, 43. Wightman, Sir William, 13. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, 31. Wilson, Bishop, 19, 237, 264. Wordsworth, 172. Wordsworth, William, 6, 8, 32, 39, 7S, 76, 88, 118, 134, 147, 159, 160, 162, 174. Yeats, W. B., 176. Youth and Calm, 99.