often helps a religion to hold its ground, and romance is good in its
way; but ours is not even a romantic religion. No doubt our aristocracy
is an object of very strong public interest. The _Times_ itself bestows
a leading article by way of epithalamium on the Duke of Norfolk's
marriage. And those journals of a new type, full of talent, and which
interest me particularly because they seem as if they were written by
the young lion[485] of our youth,--the young lion grown mellow and, as
the French say, _viveur_, arrived at his full and ripe knowledge of the
world, and minded to enjoy the smooth evening of his days,--those
journals, in the main a sort of social gazette of the aristocracy, are
apparently not read by that class only which they most concern, but are
read with great avidity by other classes also. And the common people,
too, have undoubtedly, as Mr. Gladstone says, a wonderful preference for
a lord. Yet our aristocracy, from the action upon it of the Wars of the
Roses, the Tudors, and the political necessities of George the Third, is
for the imagination a singularly modern and uninteresting one. Its
splendor of station, its wealth, show, and luxury, is then what the
other classes really admire in it; and this is not an elevating
admiration. Such an admiration will never lift us out of our vulgarity
and brutality, if we chance to be vulgar and brutal to start with; it
will rather feed them and be fed by them. So that when Mr. Gladstone
invites us to call our love of inequality "the complement of the love of
freedom or its negative pole, or the shadow which the love of freedom
casts, or the reverberation of its voice in the halls of the
constitution," we must surely answer that all this mystical eloquence is
not in the least necessary to explain so simple a matter; that our love
of inequality is really the vulgarity in us, and the brutality, admiring
and worshipping the splendid materiality.
Our present social organization, however, will and must endure until our
middle class is provided with some better ideal of life than it has now.
Our present organization has been an appointed stage in our growth; it
has been of good use, and has enabled us to do great things. But the use
is at an end, and the stage is over. Ask yourselves if you do not
sometimes feel in yourselves a sense, that in spite of the strenuous
efforts for good of so many excellent persons amongst us, we begin
somehow to flounder and to beat the air; that we seem to be finding
ourselves stopped on this line of advance and on that, and to be
threatened with a sort of standstill. It is that we are trying to live
on with a social organization of which the day is over. Certainly
equality will never of itself alone give us a perfect civilization. But,
with such inequality as ours, a perfect civilization is impossible.
To that conclusion, facts, and the stream itself of this discourse, do
seem, I think, to carry us irresistibly. We arrive at it because they so
choose, not because we so choose. Our tendencies are all the other way.
We are all of us politicians, and in one of two camps, the Liberal or
the Conservative. Liberals tend to accept the middle class as it is, and
to praise the nonconformists; while Conservatives tend to accept the
upper class as it is, and to praise the aristocracy. And yet here we are
at the conclusion, that whereas one of the great obstacles to our
civilization is, as I have often said, British nonconformity, another
main obstacle to our civilization is British aristocracy! And this while
we are yet forced to recognize excellent special qualities as well as
the general English energy and honesty, and a number of emergent humane
individuals, in both nonconformists and aristocracy. Clearly such a
conclusion can be none of our own seeking.
Then again, to remedy our inequality, there must be a change in the law
of bequest, as there has been in France; and the faults and
inconveniences of the present French law of bequest are obvious. It
tends to over-divide property; it is unequal in operation, and can be
eluded by people limiting their families; it makes the children, however
ill they may behave, independent of the parent. To be sure, Mr.
Mill[486] and others have shown that a law of bequest fixing the
maximum, whether of land or money, which any one individual may take by
bequest or inheritance, but in other respects leaving the testator quite
free, has none of the inconveniences of the French law, and is in every
way preferable. But evidently these are not questions of practical
politics. Just imagine Lord Hartington[487] going down to Glasgow, and
meeting his Scotch Liberals there, and saying to them: "You are ill at
ease, and you are calling for change, and very justly. But the cause of
your being ill at ease is not what you suppose. The cause of your being
ill at ease is the profound imperfectness of your social civilization.
Your social civilization is, indeed, such as I forbear to characterize.
But the remedy is not disestablishment. The remedy is social equality.
Let me direct your attention to a reform in the law of bequest and
entail." One can hardly speak of such a thing without laughing. No, the
matter is at present one for the thoughts of those who think. It is a
thing to be turned over in the minds of those who, on the one hand, have
the spirit of scientific inquirers, bent on seeing things as they really
are; and, on the other hand, the spirit of friends of the humane life,
lovers of perfection. To your thoughts I commit it. And perhaps, the
more you think of it, the more you will be persuaded that Menander[488]
showed his wisdom quite as much when he said _Choose equality_, as when
he assured us that _Evil communications corrupt good manners_.
NOTES
POETRY AND THE CLASSICS
PAGE 1
[1] ~Poetry and the Classics~. Published as Preface to _Poems_: 1853
(dated Fox How, Ambleside, October 1, 1853). It was reprinted in Irish
Essays, 1882.
[2] ~the poem~. _Empedocles on Etna_.
[3] ~the Sophists~. "A name given by the Greeks about the middle of the
fifth century B.C. to certain teachers of a superior grade who,
distinguishing themselves from philosophers on the one hand and from
artists and craftsmen on the other, claimed to prepare their pupils, not
for any particular study or profession, but for civic life."
_Encyclopædia Britannica_.
PAGE 2
[4] _Poetics_, 4.
[5] _Theognis_, ll. 54-56.
PAGE 4
[6] ~"The poet," it is said~. In the _Spectator_ of April 2, 1853. The
words quoted were not used with reference to poems of mine.[Arnold.]
PAGE 5
[7] ~Dido~. See the _Iliad_, the _Oresteia_ (_Agamemnon, Choëpharæ_, and
_Eumenides_) of Æschylus, and the _Æneid_.
[8] ~Hermann and Dorothea, Childe Harold, Jocelyn, the Excursion~. Long
narrative poems by Goethe, Byron, Lamartine, and Wordsworth.
PAGE 6
[9] ~Oedipus~. See the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ and _Oedipus Coloneus_ of
Sophocles.
PAGE 7
[10] ~grand style~. Arnold, while admitting that the term ~grand~ style,
which he repeatedly uses, is incapable of exact verbal definition,
describes it most adequately in the essay _On Translating Homer_: "I
think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry when a
noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity
a serious subject." See _On the Study of Celtic Literature and on
Translating Homer_, ed. 1895, pp. 264-69.
[11] ~Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmæon~. The story of ~Orestes~ was
dramatized by Æschylus, by Sophocles, and by Euripides. Merope was the
subject of a lost tragedy by Euripides and of several modern plays,
including one by Matthew Arnold himself. The story of ~Alcmæon~ was the
subject of several tragedies which have not been preserved.
PAGE 8
[12] ~Polybius~. A Greek historian (c. 204-122 B.C.)
PAGE 9
[13]. ~Menander~. See _Contribution of the Celts, Selections_, Note 3,
p. 177.[Transcriber's note: this is Footnote 255 in this e-text.]
PAGE 12
[14] ~rien à dire~. He says all that he wishes to, but unfortunately he
has nothing to say.
PAGE 13
[15] Boccaccio's _Decameron_, 4th day, 5th novel.
[16] ~Henry Hallam~ (1777-1859). English historian. See his
_Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries_, chap. 23, §§ 51, 52.
PAGE 14
[17] ~François Pierre Guillaume Guizot~ (1787-1874), historian, orator,
and statesman of France.
PAGE 16
[18] ~Pittacus~, of Mytilene in Lesbos (c. 650-569 B.C.), was one of the
Seven Sages of Greece. His favorite sayings were: "It is hard to be
excellent" ([Greek: chalepon esthlon emenai]), and "Know when to act."
PAGE 17
[19] ~Barthold Georg Niebuhr~ (1776-1831) was a German statesman and
historian. His _Roman History_ (1827-32) is an epoch-making work. For
his opinion of his age see his Life and Letters, London, 1852, II, 396.
PAGE 18
[20] _Æneid_, XII, 894-95.
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME
PAGE 20
[21] Reprinted from _The National Review_, November, 1864, in the
_Essays in Criticism_, Macmillan & Co., 1865.
[22] In _On Translating Homer_, ed. 1903, pp. 216-17.
[23] An essay called _Wordsworth: The Man and the Poet_, published in
_The North British Review_ for August, 1864, vol. 41. ~John Campbell
Shairp~ (1819-85), Scottish critic and man of letters, was professor of
poetry at Oxford from 1877 to 1884. The best of his lectures from this
chair were published in 1881 as _Aspects of Poetry_.
[24] I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England during
the last century, and still followed in France, of printing a notice of
this kind,--a notice by a competent critic,--to serve as an introduction
to an eminent author's works, might be revived among us with advantage.
To introduce all succeeding editions of Wordsworth, Mr. Shairp's notice
might, it seems to me, excellently serve; it is written from the point
of view of an admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is right; but then
the disciple must be also, as in this case he is, a critic, a man of
letters, not, as too often happens, some relation or friend with no
qualification for his task except affection for his author.[Arnold.]
[25] See _Memoirs of William Wordsworth_, ed. 1851, II, 151, letter to
Bernard Barton.
PAGE 21
[26] ~Irene~. An unsuccessful play of Dr. Johnson's.
PAGE 22
[27] ~Preface~. Prefixed to the second edition (1800) of the _Lyrical
Ballads_.
PAGE 28
[28] ~The old woman~. At the first attempt to read the newly prescribed
liturgy in St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh, on July 23, 1637, a riot took
place, in which the "fauld-stools," or folding stools, of the
congregation were hurled as missiles. An untrustworthy tradition
attributes the flinging of the first stool to a certain Jenny or Janet
Geddes.
PAGE 29
[29] _Pensées de J. Joubert_, ed. 1850, I, 355, titre 15, 2.
PAGE 30
[30] ~French Revolution~. The latter part of Burke's life was largely
devoted to a conflict with the upholders of the French Revolution.
_Reflections on the Revolution in France_, 1790, and _Letters on a
Regicide Peace_, 1796, are his most famous writings in this cause.
PAGE 31
[31] ~Richard Price, D.D.~ (1723-91), was strongly opposed to the war
with America and in sympathy with the French revolutionists.
[32] From Goldsmith's epitaph on Burke in the _Retaliation_.
PAGE 32
[33] ~Num. XXII~, 35.
[34] ~William Eden, First Baron Auckland~ (1745-1814), English
statesman. Among other services he represented English interests in
Holland during the critical years 1790-93.
PAGE 35
[35] ~Revue des deux Mondes~. The best-known of the French magazines
devoted to literature, art, and general criticism, founded in Paris in
1831 by Francois Buloz.
PAGE 36
[36] ~Home and Foreign Review~. Published in London 1862-64.
PAGE 37
[37] ~Charles Bowyer Adderley, First Baron Norton~ (1814-1905), English
politician, inherited valuable estates in Warwickshire. He was a strong
churchman and especially interested in education and the colonies.
[38] ~John Arthur Roebuck~ (1801-79), a leading radical and utilitarian
reformer, conspicuous for his eloquence, honesty, and strong hostility
to the government of his day. He held a seat for Sheffield from 1849
until his death.
PAGE 38
[39] From Goethe's _Iphigenie auf Tauris_, I, ii, 91-92.
PAGE 40
[40] ~detachment~. In the Buddhistic religion salvation is found through
an emancipation from the craving for the gratification of the senses,
for a future life, and for prosperity.
PAGE 42
[41] ~John Somers, Baron Somers~ (1651-1716), was the most trusted
minister of William III, and a stanch supporter of the English
Constitution. See Addison, _The Freeholder_, May 14, 1716, and
Macauley's _History_, iv, 53.
[42] ~William Cobbett~ (1762-1835). English politician and writer. As a
pamphleteer his reputation was injured by his pugnacity, self-esteem,
and virulence of language. See _Heine, Selections_, p. 120,
[Transcriber's note: This is Footnote 144 in this e-text] and _The
Contribution of the Celts, Selections_, p. 179.[Transcriber's note:
This is Footnote 257 in this e-text.]
[43] ~Carlyle's~ _Latter-Day Pamphlets_ (1850) contain much violent
denunciation of the society of his day.
[44] ~Ruskin~ turned to political economy about 1860. In 1862, he
published _Unto this Last_, followed by other works of similar nature.
[45] ~terrae filii~. Sons of Mother Earth; hence, obscure, mean persons.
[46] See _Heine, Selections_, Note 2, p. 117.[Transcriber's note: This
is Footnote 140 in this e-text.]
PAGE 43
[47] ~To think is so hard~. Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_,
Book VII, chap. IX.
[48] See Sénancour's _Obermann_, letter 90. Arnold was much influenced
by this remarkable book. For an account of the author (1770-1846) and
the book see Arnold's _Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann_,"
with note on the poem, and the essay on Obermann in _Essays in
Criticism_, third series.
[49] So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and controversy,
that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time from the
occasion which called them forth, the essays in which I criticized Dr.
Colenso's book; I feel bound, however, after all that has passed, to
make here a final declaration of my sincere impenitence for having
published them. Nay, I cannot forbear repeating yet once more, for his
benefit and that of his readers, this sentence from my original remarks
upon him; _There is truth of science and truth of religion; truth of
science does not become truth of religion till it is made religious._
And I will add: Let us have all the science there is from the men of
science; from the men of religion let us have religion.[Arnold.]
~John William Colenso~ (1814-83), Bishop of Natal, published a series of
treatises on the _Pentateuch_, extending from 1862-1879, opposing the
traditional views about the literal inspiration of the Scriptures and
the actual historical character of the Mosaic story. Arnold's censorious
criticism of the first volume of this work is entitled _The Bishop and
the Philosopher_ (_Macmillan's Magazine_, January, 1863). As an example
of the Bishop's cheap "arithmetical demonstrations" he describes him as
presenting the case of Leviticus as follows: "'_If three priests have to
eat 264 pigeons a day, how many must each priest eat?_' That disposes of
Leviticus." The essay is devoted chiefly to contrasting Bishop Colenso's
unedifying methods with those of the philosopher Spinoza. In passing,
Arnold refers also to Dr. Stanley's _Sinai and Palestine_ (1856),
quotations from which are characterized as "the refreshing spots" in the
Bishop's volume.
[50] It has been said I make it "a crime against literary criticism and
the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant." Need I point out
that the ignorant are not informed by being confirmed in a confusion?
[Arnold.]
PAGE 44
[51] Joubert's _Pensées_, ed. 1850, II, 102, titre 23, 54.
[52] ~Arthur Penrhyn Stanley~ (1815-81), Dean of Westminster. He was the
author of a _Life_ of (Thomas) _Arnold_, 1844. In university politics
and in religious discussions he was a Liberal and the advocate of
toleration and comprehension.
[53] ~Frances Power Cobbe~ (1822-1904), a prominent English
philanthropist and woman of letters. The quotation below is from _Broken
Lights_ (1864), p. 134. Her _Religious Duty_ (1857), referred to on p.
46, is a book of religious and ethical instruction written from the
Unitarian point of view.
[54] ~Ernest Renan~ (1823-92), French philosopher and Orientalist. The
_Vie de Jésus_ (1863), here referred to, was begun in Syria and is
filled with the atmosphere of the East, but is a work of literary rather
than of scholarly importance.
PAGE 45
[55] ~David Friedrich Strauss~ (1808-74), German theologian and man of
letters. The work referred to is the _Leben Jesu_ 1835. A popular
edition was published in 1864.
[56] From "Fleury (Preface) on the Gospel."--Arnold's _Note Book_.
PAGE 46
[57] Cicero's _Att._ 16. 7. 3.
[58] ~Coleridge's happy phrase~. Coleridge's _Confessions of an
Inquiring Spirit_, letter 2.
PAGE 49
[59] ~Luther's theory of grace~. The question concerning the "means of
grace," i.e. whether the efficacy of the sacraments as channels of the
divine grace is _ex opere operato_, or dependent on the faith of the
recipient, was the chief subject of controversy between Catholics and
Protestants during the period of the Reformation.
[60] ~Jacques Bénigne Bossuet~ (1627-1704), French divine, orator, and
writer. His _Discours sur l'histoire universelle_ (1681) was an attempt
to provide ecclesiastical authority with a rational basis. It is
dominated by the conviction that "the establishment of Christianity was
the one point of real importance in the whole history of the world."
PAGE 50
[61] From Virgil's _Eclogues_, iv, 5. Translated in Shelley's _Hellas_:
"The world's great age begins anew."
THE STUDY OF POETRY
PAGE 55
[62] Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to _The English
Poets_, edited by T.H. Ward. Reprinted in _Essays in Criticism_, Second
Series, Macmillan & Co., 1888.
[63] This quotation is taken, slightly condensed, from the closing
paragraph of a short introduction contributed by Arnold to _The Hundred
Greatest Men_, Sampson, Low & Co., London, 1885.
PAGE 56
[64] From the Preface to the second edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_,
1800.
[65] ~Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve~ (1804-69), French critic, was
looked upon by Arnold as in certain respects his master in the art of
criticism.
PAGE 57
[66] ~a criticism of life~. This celebrated phrase was first used by
Arnold in the essay on _Joubert_ (1864), though the theory is implied in
_On Translating Homer_, 1861. In _Joubert_ it is applied to literature:
"The end and aim of all literature, if one considers it attentively, is,
in truth, nothing but that." It was much attacked, especially as applied
to poetry, and is defended as so applied in the essay on _Byron_ (1881).
See also _Wordsworth, Selections_, p. 230.[Transcriber's note: This is
Footnote 371 in this e-text.]
[67] Compare Arnold's definition of the function of criticism,
_Selections_, p. 52.[Transcriber's note: This approximates to the
section following the text reference for Footnote 61 in this e-text.]
PAGE 59
[68] ~Paul Pellisson~ (1624-93). French author, friend of Mlle. Scudéry,
and historiographer to the king.
[69] Barren and servile civility.
70. ~M. Charles d' Hericault~ was joint editor of the Jannet edition
(1868-72) of the poems of ~Clément Marot~ (1496-1544).
PAGE 62
[71] _Imitation of Christ_, Book III, chap. 43, 2.
[72] ~Cædmon~. The first important religious poet in Old English
literature. Died about 680 A.D.
[73] ~Ludovic Vitet~ (1802-73). French dramatist and politician.
[74] ~Chanson de Roland~. The greatest of the _Chansons des Gestes_,
long narrative poems dealing with warfare and adventure popular in
France during the Middle Ages. It was composed in the eleventh century.
Taillefer was the surname of a bard and warrior of the eleventh century.
The tradition concerning him is related by Wace, _Roman de Rou_, third
part, v., 8035-62, ed. Andreson, Heilbronn, 1879. The Bodleian _Roland_
ends with the words: "ci folt la geste, que Turoldus declinet." Turold
has not been identified.
PAGE 63
[75] "Then began he to call many things to remembrance,--all the lands
which his valor conquered, and pleasant France, and the men of his
lineage, and Charlemagne his liege lord who nourished him."--_Chanson de
Roland_, III, 939-42.[Arnold.]
[76]
"So said she; they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing,
There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedæmon."
_Iliad_, III, 243, 244 (translated by Dr. Hawtrey).[Arnold.]
PAGE 64
[77] "Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a mortal? but
ye are without old age, and immortal. Was it that with men born to
misery ye might have sorrow?"--_Iliad_, XVII, 443-445.[Arnold.]
[78] "Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear,
happy."--_Iliad_, XXIV, 543.[Arnold.]
[79] "I wailed not, so of stone grew I within;--_they_ wailed."--
_Inferno_, XXXIII, 39, 40.[Arnold.]
[80] "Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made me, that your
misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this fire strike me."
--_Inferno_, II, 91-93.[Arnold.]
[81] "In His will is our peace."--_Paradiso_, III, 85.[Arnold.]
[82] _Henry IV_, part 2, III, i, 18-20.
PAGE 65
[83] _Hamlet_, V, ii, 361-62.
[84] _Paradise Lost_, I, 599-602.
[85] _Ibid._, I, 108-9.
[86] _Ibid._, IV, 271.
PAGE 66
[87] _Poetics_, § 9.
PAGE 67
[88] ~Provençal~, the language of southern France, from the southern
French _oc_ instead of the northern _oïl_ for "yes."
PAGE 68
[89] Dante acknowledges his debt to ~Latini~ (c. 1230-c. 1294), but the
latter was probably not his tutor. He is the author of the _Tesoretto_,
a heptasyllabic Italian poem, and the prose _Livres dou Trésor_, a sort
of encyclopedia of medieval lore, written in French because that
language "is more delightful and more widely known."
[90] ~Christian of Troyes~. A French poet of the second half of the
twelfth century, author of numerous narrative poems dealing with legends
of the Round Table. The present quotation is from the _Cligés_, ll.
30-39.
PAGE 69
[91] Chaucer's two favorite stanzas, the seven-line and eight-line
stanzas in heroic verse, were imitated from Old French poetry. See B.
ten Brink's _The Language and Meter of Chaucer_, 1901, pp. 353-57.
[92] ~Wolfram von Eschenbach~. A medieval German poet, born in the end
of the twelfth century. His best-known poem is the epic _Parzival_.
PAGE 70
[93] From Dryden's _Preface to the Fables_, 1700.
[94] The _Confessio Amantis_, the single English poem of ~John Gower~
(c. 1330-1408), was in existence in 1392-93.
PAGE 71
[95] ~souded~. The French _soudé_, soldered, fixed fast.[Arnold.] From
the _Prioress's Tale_, ed. Skeat, 1894, B. 1769. The line should read,
"O martir, souded to virginitee."
PAGE 73
[96] ~François Villon~, born in or near Paris in 1431, thief and poet.
His best-known poems are his _ballades_. See R.L. Stevenson's essay.
[97] The name _Heaulmière_ is said to be derived from a headdress (helm)
worn as a mark by courtesans. In Villon's ballad, a poor old creature of
this class laments her days of youth and beauty. The last stanza of the
ballad runs thus:
"Ainsi le bon temps regretons
Entre nous, pauvres vieilles sottes,
Assises bas, à croppetons,
Tout en ung tas comme pelottes;
A petit feu de chenevottes
Tost allumées, tost estainctes.
Et jadis fusmes si mignottes!
Ainsi en prend à maintz et maintes."
"Thus amongst ourselves we regret the good time, poor silly old things,
low-seated on our heels, all in a heap like so many balls; by a little
fire of hemp-stalks, soon lighted, soon spent. And once we were such
darlings! So fares it with many and many a one."[Arnold.]
PAGE 74
[98] From _An Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, 1688.
[99] A statement to this effect is made by Dryden in the _Preface to the
Fables_.
[100] From _Preface to the Fables_.
PAGE 75
[101] See Wordsworth's _Essay, Supplementary to the Preface_, 1815, and
Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_.
[102] _An Apology for Smectymnuus_, Prose Works, ed. 1843, III, 117-18.
Milton was thirty-four years old at this time.
PAGE 76
[103] The opening words of Dryden's _Postscript to the Reader_ in the
translation of Virgil, 1697.
PAGE 77
[104] The opening lines of _The Hind and the Panther_.
[105] _Imitations of Horace_, Book II, Satire 2, ll. 143-44.
PAGE 78
[106] From _On the Death of Robert Dundas, Esq._
PAGE 79
[107] ~Clarinda~. A name assumed by Mrs. Maclehose in her sentimental
connection with Burns, who corresponded with her under the name of
Sylvander.