Though I do not myself rank Matthew Arnold among the great prose
writers of England, yet, like all true poets--and he indeed was one of
them,--he wrote excellent English prose.
It is true that he turned to poetry to express his finest emotions and
thoughts, and he himself alludes to his prose writings thus: "I am a
mere solitary wanderer in search of the light, and I talk an artless,
unstudied, everyday familiar language. But, after all, this is the
language of the mass of the world."
The chief note of all his teaching was urbanity. "The pursuit of
perfection," he said, "is the pursuit of sweetness and light." "Culture
hates hatred: culture has one great passion--the passion for sweetness
and light."
This teaching, no doubt, leads to fields of pleasantness and charm,
and not at all to the high places of self-sacrifice, or the austere
peaks of martyrdom. Burning indignation against intolerable things,
fierce denunciation of the cruelties and abominations of the world
find no encouragement or sympathy from this serene, detached, and
therefore somewhat ineffectual, teaching.
Sweetness and light would never have interfered with the slave trade,
or fiercely fought beside Plimsoll for the load-line on the sides of
ships.
We did not fight the Germans under the doctrine of sweetness and
light.
It was a beautiful and edifying adornment for the drawing-room in
times of Victorian self-satisfied peace, but was a tinsel armour for the
battle of life, and entirely futile as a sword for combating wrong.
I am not sure that Matthew Arnold would not have called those who
wrathfully slash about them at abominable evils, Philistines.
After all, the great men of action and the great writers of the world
have been capable of harbouring great enthusiasms and deep
indignations in their hearts; and these emotions do not emerge from a
"passion for sweetness and light."
A better doctrine, Antony, is, I think, to try to push things along
cheerfully but strenuously in the right direction wherever and whenever
you can.
As a writer I think Matthew Arnold's best passage is to be found in the
Preface to his _Essays in Criticism_:--
"Oxford. Beautiful city! So venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by
the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!
"There are our young barbarians, all at play!
"And yet steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens
to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last
enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her
ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us to the true goal of all of
us, to the ideal, to perfection,--to beauty, in a word, which is
only truth seen from another side?--nearer perhaps than all the
science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so
romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to
sides and heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of
lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and
impossible loyalties!... Apparitions of a day, what is our puny
warfare against the Philistines, compared with the warfare which
this Queen of Romance has been waging against them for centuries,
and will wage after we are gone?"
As a man and a companion,[1] if you expected nothing but delightful
humour, brilliant discourse, and urbane outlook upon everything, few
could rival his personal charm; but he would never really join you in a
last ditch to defend the right, or actually charge with you against the
wrong, although in his poem "The Last Word," while not participating
himself in such strenuous doings, he seems to yield a reluctant
admiration to him who does so charge, and who leaves his "body by the
wall."
Much has happened since Matthew Arnold poured his scorn upon the
unregenerate Philistines; but let us remember, Antony, that thousands
and thousands of these contemned neglecters of sweetness and light
stood unflinchingly and died upon the plains of France that our country
and its freedom should survive.
Your loving old
G.P.
[Footnote 1: See my _Memories_, pp. 46-52 and 55.]
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