pathy for the opposite reason. I can-ers, who were apparently unable to not affect to share Arnold's discomfort. distinguish between an epigram and I have never been able-doubtless it a philosophical dogma. To them, is a defect-to sympathize with the indeed, Arnold's whole position was Obermanns and Amiels whom Arnold naturally abhorrent. For it is not unadmired; excellent but surely effem- common now to hear denunciations of inate persons, who taste of the fruit of all attempts to connect art with mothe Tree of Knowledge, and finding rality and philosophy. It is wicked, we the taste bitter, go on making wry faces are told, for a poet, or a novelist, or over it all their lives; and, admitting a painter, to take any moral considerawith one party that the old creeds are tion into account; and therefore to talk doomed, assert with the other that all of poetry as destined to do for us much beauty must die with them. The uni- that philosophy and religion used to do verse is open to a great many criti- is, of course, manifestly absurd. I will cisms; there is plenty of cause for not argue the point at length, being tears and for melancholy; and great content to observe that the cry seems poets in all ages have, because they to me oddly superfluous. Of all the were great poets, given utterance to dangers to which modern novelists, for the sorrows of their race. But I don't example, are exposed, that against feel disposed to grumble at the abundance of interesting topics or the advance of scientific knowledge, because some inconveniences result from both. I say all this simply as explaining why the vulgar—including myself -fail to appreciate these musical moans over spilt milk, which represent rather a particular eddy in an intellectual revolution than the deeper and more permanent emotions of human nature. But I do not mean to depreciate Arnold's power; only to suggest reasons for the want of a wider recognition. The "Scholar Gipsy," for example, expresses in certain passages sentiment which I must call morbid, but for all that, even for me, it remains one of the most exquisite poems in the language. which they are least required to guard is the danger of being too philosophical. They really may feel at their ease; nor do I think that they need be much alarmed as to the risk of being too moral. Meanwhile, it is my belief that nobody is the better in any department of life or literature for being a fool or a brute; and least of all in poetry. I cannot think that a man is disqualified for poetry either by thinking more deeply than others or by hav ing a keener perception of (I hope E may join the two words) moral beauty.. A perception of what it is that makes a hero or a saint is, I faucy, as necessary to a great literary artist as a perception of what it is that constitutes physical beauty to a painter. The whole doctrine, in short, seems to me to be a This leads me to another point. In misstatement of the very undeniable his essay upon Joubert (Essays in and very ancient truth that it is a poet's Criticism, 249), Arnold spoke of liter- business to present types, for example, ature as "a criticism of life." Else- and not to give bare psychological thewhere (Introduction to Mr. H. Ward's ory; not that he is the worse for being "Collection of Poems") he gave the even a deep philosopher or a subtle same account of poetry. But to poetry, logician; on the contrary, he is so far he says in the same breath, we shall the better; but that he is the worse if have to turn for consolation, and it he gives the abstract reasoning instead' will replace much mist of "what now of incarnating his thought in concrete passes with us for religion and philos-imagery. And so, when Arnold called ophy." If so, he obviously cannot poetry a criticism of life, he only meant mean that poetry and criticism are to express what seems to me to be an really the same thing. The phrase undeniable truth. The Elgin marbles "criticism of life" gave great offence, might, in his sense, be called a critiand was much ridiculed by some writ-cism of the physique of the sight seers. To contrast their perfect forms | ever, of the poetical criticism is its tenand unapproachable grace with the dency to be "subjective," that is, to knock-kneed, spindle-shanked, narrow-reflect too strongly the personal prejuchested, round-shouldered product of dices of the author. It must virtually London slums who passes before them, consist in giving the impression made is to criticise the poor creature's de- upon the critic; and, however delicate fects of structure in the most effective his perception and wide his sympathy, way. In a similar sense, when a poct he will be scarcely human if his judgor a novelist presents us with a style, ments are not affected by his personal when Addison gives a Sir Roger de equation. No one could be more alive Coverley, or Goldsmith a Vicar of to the danger than Arnold, and his Wakefield, or Scott a Dandie Dinmont, most characteristic teaching turns upon or Thackeray a Colonel Newcome, or the mode of avoiding it. There are Dickens a Mr. Creakle (I choose this times, no doubt, when he relies too example of Dickens only because Ar- confidently upon the fineness of his nold made use of it himself), they pre- perception, and then obviously has a sent us with ideal types which set off slight spasm of diffidence. I have nomore effectively than any deliberate ticed how, in his "Essays on Celtic analysis the actual human beings Literature," he uses the true poetical known to us, who more or less repre- or intuitive method; he recognizes the sent similar classes. In his essay upon precise point at which Shakespeare or the "Function of Criticism," Arnold Keats passes from the Greek to the explained his lofty conception of the Celtic note; he trusts to the fineness art, and showed why, in his sense of of his ear, like a musician who can dethe word, it should be the main aim of tect the slightest discord. And we feel all modern literature. "Criticism," he perhaps that a man who can decide, for said, "is the disinterested endeavor to example, an ethnological question by learn and propagate the best that is such means, who can by simple inspiraknown or thought in the world." The tion determine which are the Celtic and difference between poetry and criticism which are the Teutonic and which are is that one gives us the ideal and the Norman elements in English character, other explains to us how it differs from is going a little beyond his tether. Arthe real. What is latent in the poet is nold obviously feels so too. In the made explicit in the critic. Arnold, same book he speaks most respectfully himself, even when he turned to criti- of the opposite or prosaic method. cism, was primarily a poet. His judg Zeuss, the great Celtic scholar, is ments show greater skill in seizing praised because he uses a scientific characteristic aspects than in giving a test to determine the age of documents. logical analysis or a convincing proof. This test is that in Welsh and Irish the He goes by intuition not by roundabout letters p and t gradually changed into logical approaches. No recent English bor d (as if the Celts had caught a critic, I think, has approached him in cold in their head); that map became the art of giving delicate portraits of mab, and coet, coed. This, says Arliterary leaders; he has spoken, for nold, is a verifiable and scientific test. example, precisely the right word When Arnold is himself trying to disabout Byron and Wordsworth. Many tinguish the Celtic element in Englishof us who cannot rival him may gain, men, he starts by remarking that a from Arnold's writings, a higher con Frenchman would speak of German ception of what is our true function. bêtise, but of English gaucherie; the He did, I think, more than any man to German is balourd, and the Englishman impress upon his countrymen that the empêtré; and the German niais, while critic should not be a mere combatant the Englishman is mélancolique. We in a series of faction fights, puffing can hardly say that the difference befriends and saying to an enemy, "This tween balourd and empêtré is as clear as will never do." The weak side, how-the difference between t and d; and 1 Arnold is, perhaps, too much inclined | point of view which would reveal our to trust to his intuitions, as if they were narrowness and ignorance. Hence the equivalent to scientific and measurable vast importance of "culture ;" the one statements. The same tendency shows thing needful; which, again, in anitself in his curious delight in discours- other view, is equivalent to a frank ing catch-words, and repeating them submission of ourselves to the Zeitgeist. sometimes to weariness. He uses such The Zeitgeist, indeed, is an entity not phrases as "sweetness and light" with quite easy to define. But it at least a certain air of laying down a genuine supposes that genuine philosophy and scientific distinction, as clear-cut and scientific thought is a reality; that unequivocal as a chemist's analysis. there is a real difference between the He feels that he has thoroughly ana- scholar and the charlatan; that critilyzed English characteristics when he cism in a wide sense has achieved some has classified his countrymen as "Phil-permanent and definite results; and istines, Barbarians, and the Popu- that, although many antiquated prejulace." To fix a certain aspect of things dices still survive and dominate us, by an appropriate phrase is the process especially in England, and constitute which corresponded with him to a sci- the whole mental furniture of the Philentific analysis. But may not this istine, they are doomed to decay, and method merely lead to the substitution those who hold by them doomed to of one set of prejudices for another; perish with them. To recognize, therethe prejudices, say, of the fastidious fore, the deep, underlying currents of don for the prejudices of the coarser thought, to get outside of the narrow tradesman? The Frenchman who calls limits of the popular prejudice, to steep the Englishman empêtré may be as nar- our minds in the best thought of the row-minded as the Englishman who past, and to be open to the really great calls the Frenchman a frog-eater. Cer- thoughts of the present, is the one tainly, Arnold would reply. What we salvation for the race and for reasonneed is to make a stream of fresh able men. The English people, he thought play freely upon our stock often said, had entered the prison of "notions and habits." 2 We have to Puritanism, and had the key turned get out of an unfruitful and mechanical upon their spirit for two centuries. To routine. Or, as he puts it in another give them the key and to exhort them way, his one qualification for teaching to use it was his great aim. Heine had his countrymen is, he says, his belief in the "primary needfulness of seeing things as they really are, and of the greater importance of ideas than of the machinery which exists for them." 8 That is, we want, above all things, to get rid of prejudices in general, not of any special prejudice; to have our opinions constructed out of pure, impartial, unbiassed thought, free from all baser alloy of mephitic vapors. The mere self-willed assertion of our own fancies can never lift us to the higher called himself a "brave soldier in the war of the liberation of humanity," and Arnold took service in the same army. Only—and this was the doctrine upon which he laid emphasis - to fight effectually we must recognize the true leaders, those who really spoke with authority and who were the true advanced guard in the march to the land of promise. Your individualist would only take off the fetters so as to allow a free fight among the prisoners. The prophet of culture alone can enable us to get free from the prison-house itself. His strong sense of the mischief of literary anarchy appeared in his once famous essay upon the French Academy. Though he guarded himself against recommending an English Essays in Criticism, p. 70. Fread the institution, he was fascinated by the | strength, and had gained much in delcharm of an acknowledged tribunal of icacy, and certainly in a sense of humor good taste, an outward and visible sym- curiously absent in the elder, as it is, I bol of right reason, of a body which, by think, in most good men. Dr. Arnold its normal authority, should restrain shared the forebodings common at the men from those excesses and faults of period of the Reform Bill. The old taste into which even the greatest En- dogged conservatism of the George III. glishmen are apt to fall, and which and Eldon type was doomed. But who should keep distinctly before our minds was to profit by the victory? The Radthe conviction that we only obtain icals, led by Bentham and James Mill? worthy intellectual liberty when we That meant confiscation and disestabrecognize the necessity of subordina-lishment in practice; and in theory, tion to the highest minds. To imbibe materialism or atheism. This was the the teaching of the Zeitgeist, to know"liberalism" denounced and dreaded what is the true living thought of the by Newman. But then, to Dr. Arage and who are its great men, is to nold, the Oxford Movement itself accept a higher rule, and not merely meant a revival of superstition and (as he puts it) to exchange the errors sacerdotalism. He held that there was of Miall for the errors of Mill; to be-a truer liberalism than Benthamism, come a vulgar Freethinker instead of a a liberalism of which Coleridge exvulgar Dissenter. pounded and suggested the philosophy; The doctrine of culture is, of course, a doctrine which could reanimate the in some sense the common property of old creeds by exposing them to the all cultivated men. Carlyle, like Ar- light, and bring them into harmony nold, wished for an exit from Hounds- with the last modern thought. The ditch and a relinquishment of Hebrew Church, neither plundered nor enold clothes. But Arnold detested Car-slaved by superstition, might be lifted lyle's Puritanism, and was alienated by to a higher intellectual level, and behis sulphurous and volcanic explosiveness. Mill hated the tyranny of the majority, and, of course, rejected the Puritan theology. But Mill was a Benthamite, and Benthamism was the natural doctrine of the Philistine. Mill's theories would lead, though in spite of himself, to that consummation which Arnold most dreaded—the general dominion of the Commonplace; to the definitive imposition upon the world of the code of the Philistine. To define Arnold's point of view, we should have, I think, to consider what in our modern slang is called his cuvironment. Any one who reads the life of his father will see how profound was the influence upon the son. "Somewhere, surely, afar," as he says in the liues in Rugby Chapel, come once more the great national organ of spiritual influence and development. Matthew Arnold always held. to this aspiration. He hoped that the Church might open its doors to all Dissenters - not only to Protestants, but even in course of time to Roman Catholics.2 He hated disestablishment, and even in the case of the Church of Ireland, condemned a measure which, though it removed an injustice, removed it at the cost of an alliance with the narrow Dissenting prejudices. But the views of the young man were also modified by the fascination of the Newman school. Of Oxford he could never speak without enthusiasm, if he could not quite refrain from a touch of irony. "Adorable dreamer!" he exclaims, "whose heart has been so romantic! who has given thyself prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only not to the Philistines ! Home of lost causes and for 1 Culture and Anarchy, p. 23. 5 saken beliefs, and unpopular names | to which his whole literary activity in and impossible loyalties !" Oxford, later life converged. Condemned to as he says elsewhere,1 had taught the live and work among the middle class, truth that "beauty and sweetness are while imbued with the ideas in which essential characters of a complete hu- they were most defective, loving, as he man perfection." Bad philosophies, did, the beauty and freshness of Oxanother critic (I think Professor Flint) ford, the logical clearness and belief has said, when they die, go to Oxford. in ideas of France, the devotion to Arnold admitted the badness of the scientific truth and philosophical thorphilosophies, but the beauty and sweet-oughness in Germany, the sight of the ness, he would have added, are im-dogged British Philistine became to mortal. The effect, therefore, upon him a perpetual grievance. The midhim was not to diminish his loyalty to dle class, as he said in one of his favorphilosophy; no one more hated all ite formulæ, has a "defective type of obscurantism; his belief in "culture," | religion, a narrow range of intellect in the great achievements of scholar- and knowledge, a stinted ship, of science, of historical criticism, was part of his nature. He was not the man to propose to put back the hand of the dial, or to repel the intellectual ocean with the mop of an orthodox Mrs. Partington. But his keen appreciation of the beauty of the old ideals governed his thought. He even held that the Christianity of the future would be Catholicism, though Catholicism 66 purged " and sense of beauty, and a low type of manners." Accordingly, the function which he took for himself was to be a thorn in the side of the Philistine; to pierce the animal's thick hide with taunts, delicate but barbed; to invent nicknames which might reveal to the creature his own absurdity; to fasten upon expressions characteristic of the blatant arrogance and complacent, inefopening fable self-conceit of the vulgar John itself to the light," "conscious of its Bull, and repeat them till even Bull own poetry, freed from its sacerdotal might be induced to blush. Somedespotism, and freed from its pseudo- body's unlucky statement that English scientific apparatus of superannuated was the best breed in the world; the dogma.' "Meanwhile, his classical train-motto about the "dissidence of Dissent ing and his delight in the clearness and and the Protestantism of the Protessymmetry of the great French writers tant religion; "the notice of Wragg affected his taste. He has told us how his youthful enthusiasm took him at one time to Paris, to spend two months in secing Rachel's performances 3 on the French stage, and at another, to visit George Sand in her country retirement. And then came the experience of his official career which made him familiar with the educational systems of France and Germany, and with the chaotic set of institutions which represented an educational system in England. The master-thought, he says, by which his politics were governed was the thought of the "bad civilization of the English middle class." This was, in fact, the really serious aim 1 Culture and Anarchy, p. 23. 2 Mixed Essays, p. 121. 3 Irish Essays, p. 151. 4 Irish Essays, p. 17. the woman who was taken up for childmurder; the assertion of the Saturday Review that we were the most logical people in the world; the roarings of the "young lions of the Daily Telegraph," and their like, which covered our impotence in European wars; the truss-manufactory which ornamented the finest site in Europe; upon these and other texts he harped — perhaps with a little too much repetition — in the hope of bringing to us some sense of our defects. I must confess that, as a good Philistine, I often felt, and hope I profited by the feeling, that he had pierced me to the quick, and I submitted to his castigations as I have had to submit to the probings of a dentist, I knew they were for my good. And I 5 Mixed Essays, p. 167. |