Matthew Arnold biography

Dromo's Den

Matthew Arnold Biography

ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822-88). An English poet and essayist. He was a son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the famous head master of Rugby, and was born Dec. 24 1892, at Laleham, a village near Staines, in the valley of the Thames. With the exception of a year (1836-37) at Winchester under Dr. Moberly, later Bishop of Salisbury, Arnold passed his school days at Rugby, where his "Alaric at Rome" won the prize for poetry (1840) . He was elected a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, in November, 1840, but did not begin residence till October of the next year. In 1843 he gained the Newdigate Prize with a poem entitled "Cromwell," and in March, 1845, was elected a fellow of Oriel. Among his colleagues at Oriel were Dean Church, John Earle, subsequently known as professor of Anglo-Saxon in the university, and Arthur Hugh Clough, to whom Arnold has paid tribute in "Thyrsis," justly ranked with "Lycidas" and "Adonais," as one of the finest elegies in the language. After a short period of teaching the classics in the fifth form at Rugby, he became, in 1847, private secretary to the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council, who in 1851 appointed him an inspector of schools. This inspectorship he held until November, 1886. He appears ever to have felt repugnance toward the details of the official routine-the hearing of recitations by students of training colleges and the correction of endless examination papers. Yet even here his influence was felt by the English public, and his annual reports, appearing from 1852 to 1882, aroused an interest seldom accorded to such publications. From 1857 to 1867 he was successor to Wharton and Keble in the more congenial post of professor of poetry at Oxford. It was then, by his famous series of prelections On Translating Homer and On the Study of Celtic Literature, that he began a reform of English criticism so important in the history of nineteenth-century literature. Three times, in 1859, 1865, and 1885, he was commissioned to visit the Continent for study of the school discipline and methods of education there in vogue; and in 1883-84 he came to the United States as a lecturer. The visit to America was repeated in 1886. As a lecturer he was disappointing, both because of his awkward manner and the feebleness of his voice, which was inaudible to the greater part of his audience. He died April 15, 1888, and was buried in the churchyard of All Saints at Laleham.

Like Dryden and Coleridge, Arnold gained high distinction both as critic and as poet. Even his prize poems, though not foreshadowing his later work, display more talent than is usual with a poet's first efforts. In "Alaric at Rome" (Rugby, 1840; reprinted, 1893), a difficult stanza is managed with skill; and the heroic verse of "Cromwell" is smooth and agreeable. In 1849, under the initial "A," he published The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, containing the beautiful "Mycerinus" and "The Forsaken Merman." This volume was followed, still under "A," by Empedocles on Ætna and Other Poems (1852), where first appeared the narrative "Tristram and Iseult," and several lovely lyrics, such as "A Summer Night," "The Youth of Nature," "The Youth of Man," and "Faded Leaves." In 1853 Arnold threw off the mask of anonymity. The Poems of that year (3d ed., 1857) include "Sohrab and Rustum," his popular poem, founded upon a story in Firdausi's Shah-Nameh; "Requiescat," "The Scholar-Gipsy," and many pieces from the earlier collections. "Empedocles," however, was omitted as structurally weak. Time now singles it out as one of Arnold's most attractive dramatic poems. The songs of Callicles, the harp-player, are among his choicest lyrics. The volume was prefaced with an admirable statement of the author's aim--an essay since famous not only for its brilliancy, but also as suggesting a different field in which Arnold was to become well known. Arnold's other volumes of verse comprise Poems, Second Series (1855) , of which the chief new poem is the magnificent episode "Balder Dead," and in which four songs of Callicles are grouped as "The Harp-Player on Ætna"; Merope, a rather frigid tragedy (1858); New Poems (1867), memorable for "Thyrsis," and containing "Empedocles on Etna" revived; Poems (the first collected edition, 1869; reissued, 1877), in which was included "Rugby Chapel," that noble elegy on the death of his father; and a fine edition complete in three volumes (1885) , containing "Westminster Abbey," a splendid elegy on Dean Stanley. In this edition Arnold classified his poems as Early Poems, Narrative Poems, Sonnets, Lyric Poems, Elegiac Poems, Dramatic Poems, and Later Poems-a division since carefully observed by his editors.

It will be noted that the bulk of Arnold's verse is relatively small-a fact doubtless to be attributed to the preoccupation of official duties. It is equally noticeable that throughout his body of verse a level of excellence is maintained so nearly invariable that at most there are perhaps not more than a round dozen titles which one would not regret to see removed. Although it can no longer with accuracy be said that Arnold is not a popular poet, it is nevertheless true that he does not appeal to the wide audience of Tennyson and Browning. His poetical work will, it is certain, have always a peculiar grace for not a few. In its grave and noble music as in its stoic austerity, it will claim its own fit audience.

But it is a question whether Arnold will not in time take a place as the third great poet of the Victorian age. On this point Arnold himself wrote: "My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century; and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions that reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigor 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."

Among Arnold's prose writings are: On Translating Homer (1861-62), and the Study of Celtic Literature (1867), both redactions of Oxford lectures; Essays in Criticism (1865); Culture and Anarchy (1869); St. Paul and Protestantism (1870); Literature and Dogma (1873); Mixed Essays (1879); Irish Essays (1882); Discourses in America (1885); Essays in Criticism, second series (1888) . Two volumes of his letters were published in 1895 under the editorship of G. W. E. Russell. These, though they are likely to add little to his literary fame, do, as the editor hoped they might, "reveal aspects of his character... which could be only imperfectly apprehended through the more formal medium of his published works." Besides all these, there are other theological and social essays, and reports and books on education. He also edited selections from Dr. Johnson (1878), Wordsworth (1879), Byron (1881), and Burke (1881) , with noteworthy prefaces. Arnold's work in prose is not altogether uniform in value. Naturally what pertains to schools is of interest primarily to educators; although students of Arnold's style will find A French .Eton (1864) a valuable document. Likewise much that he wrote on politics and theology, though it served its purpose, now possesses chiefly an historical value. Literature and Dogma and God and the Bible, the former of which he himself considered his most significant work, were in his own time much misunderstood. Their purpose was to assert the natural truth of the Christian religion as against its dogma, to emphasize the literary aspect of the Bible, and in the words of Mr. Brownell, to make "each a theme, a topic of literature"-a part of that generous culture of which he was so persuasive an advocate. Arnold was among the earliest thus to apply to these subjects the methods of literary criticism-he wrote of them in a style quite new in treatises of the sort; but he failed at the time to satisfy either orthodox or radical. His permanent place as a critic is made secure by such volumes as the first series of Essays in Criticism. Not only is the thought here of the first order, but the style is of the best, ranking with that of Newman, his master. The essays follow the sympathetic method of Sainte-Beuve. Especially brilliant is the essay on Heine, an author from whom Arnold derived many of his ideas and the sting with which he attacked Philistinism, a term which he introduced into English from the slang of the German universities. The essay on "Pagan and Mediæval Sentiment" is a charming contrast between Greek and mediæval ideals as represented by Theocritus and St. Francis of Assisi. The Oxford lectures above referred to are now classics. Of the discourses delivered in America, the one on "Literature and Science" is a strong plea for literature against the encroachments of science; and the one on "Emerson," though clearly inadequate as an estimate, contains passages of great eloquence. Arnold's influence is still paramount in English criticism. Many of his phrases, such as "sweetness and light," "the great goddess Lubricity," the "lyrical cry," the definition of poetry as "a criticism of life," the contention that criticism should be "a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the, world," the description of conduct as "three-fourths of life," the phrase "the not-ourselves that makes for righteousness," the division of the British public into "Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace," the infusion of new meaning into the terms "Hebraism" and "Hellenism"-all these have become common property; but more, his general manner of treating literary themes very widely prevails. Even during his lifetime his judgments in this field were received as ex cathedra. He did away with the pompous rhetoric and blustering animosities of the eighteenth-century school, and substituted therefor restraint, poise, taste-in short, the ethical element. It was thus that he introduced into English criticism a new era. What Principal Shairp has happily called "the sparkling banter" of his occasional manner (for example, in Culture and Anarchy), has led to the ascription to Arnold by the careless and the unperceptive of a flippancy which, it is hardly necessary to state, was not characteristic of his temper.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol II (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 170-172.