Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold Part 1

Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.

by Matthew Arnold.

PREFACE

This book of selections aims to furnish examples of Arnold's prose in all the fields in which it characteristically employed itself except that of religion. It has seemed better to omit all such material than to attempt inclusion of a few extracts which could hardly give any adequate notion of Arnold's work in this department. Something, however, of his method in religious criticism can be discerned by a perusal of the chapter on _Hebraism and h.e.l.lenism_, selected from _Culture and Anarchy_. Most of Arnold's leading ideas are represented in this volume, but the decision to use entire essays so far as feasible has naturally precluded the possibility of gathering all the important utterances together. The basis of division and grouping of the selections is made sufficiently obvious by the headings. In the division of literary criticism the endeavor has been to ill.u.s.trate Arnold's cosmopolitanism by essays of first-rate importance dealing with the four literatures with which he was well acquainted. In the notes, conciseness with a reasonable degree of thoroughness has been the principle followed.

INTRODUCTION

I

[Sidenote: Life and Personality]

"The gray hairs on my head are becoming more and more numerous, and I sometimes grow impatient of getting old amidst a press of occupations and labor for which, after all, I was not born. But we are not here to have facilities found us for doing the work we like, but to make them."

This sentence, written in a letter to his mother in his fortieth year, admirably expresses Arnold's courage, cheerfulness, and devotion in the midst of an exacting round of commonplace duties, and at the same time the energy and determination with which he responded to the imperative need of liberating work of a higher order, that he might keep himself, as he says in another letter, "from feeling starved and shrunk up." The two feelings directed the course of his life to the end, a life characterized no less by allegiance to "the lowliest duties" than by brilliant success in a more attractive field.

Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham, December 24, 1822, the eldest son of Thomas Arnold, the great head master of Rugby. He was educated at Laleham, Winchester, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1845 he was elected a fellow of Oriel, but Arnold desired to be a man of the world, and the security of college cloisters and garden walls could not long attract him. Of a deep affection for Oxford his letters and his books speak unmistakably, but little record of his Oxford life remains aside from the well-known lines of Princ.i.p.al Shairp, in which he is spoken of as

So full of power, yet blithe and debonair, Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay.

From Oxford he returned to teach cla.s.sics at Rugby, and in 1847 he was appointed private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, then Lord President of the Council. In 1851, the year of his marriage, he became inspector of schools, and in this service he continued until two years before his death. As an inspector, the letters give us a picture of Arnold toiling over examination papers, and hurrying from place to place, covering great distances, often going without lunch or dinner, or seeking the doubtful solace of a bun, eaten "before the astonished school." His services to the cause of English education were great, both in the direction of personal inspiration to teachers and students, and in thoughtful discussion of national problems. Much time was spent in investigating foreign systems, and his _Report upon Schools and Universities on the Continent_ was enlightened and suggestive.

Arnold's first volume of poems appeared in 1849, and by 1853 the larger part of his poetry was published. Four years later he was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Of his prose, the first book to attract wide notice was that containing the lectures _On Translating Homer_ delivered from the chair of Poetry and published in 1861-62. From this time until the year of his death appeared the remarkable series of critical writings which have placed him in the front rank of the men of letters of his century. He continued faithfully to fulfill his duties as school inspector until April, 1886, when he resigned after a service of thirty-five years. He died of heart trouble on April 15, 1888, at Liverpool.

The testimony to Arnold's personal charm, to his cheerfulness, his urbanity, his tolerance and charity, is remarkably uniform. He is described by one who knew him as "the most sociable, the most lovable, the most companionable of men"; by another as "preeminently a good man, gentle, generous, enduring, laborious." His letters are among the precious writings of our time, not because of the beauty or inimitableness of detail, but because of the completed picture which they make. They do not, like the Carlyle-Emerson correspondence, show a hand that could not set pen to paper without writing picturesquely, but they do reveal a character of great soundness and sweetness, and one in which the affections play a surprisingly important part, the love of flowers and books, of family and friends, and of his fellow men. His life was human, kindly and unselfish, and he allowed no clash between the pursuit of personal perfection and devotion to the public cause, even when the latter demanded sacrifice of the most cherished projects and adherence to the most irritating drudgery.

II

[Sidenote: Arnold's Place among Nineteenth-Century Teachers]

By those who go to literature primarily for a practical wisdom presented in terms applicable to modern life, the work of Arnold will be reckoned highly important, if not indispensable. He will be placed by them among the great humanizers of the last century, and by comparison with his contemporaries will be seen to have furnished a complementary contribution of the highest value. Of the other great teachers whose work may most fitly be compared with his, two were preeminently men of feeling. Carlyle was governed by an overmastering moral fervor which gave great weight to his utterances, but which exercised itself in a narrow field and which often distorted and misinterpreted the facts.

Ruskin was governed by his affections, and though an ardent lover of truth and beauty, was often the victim of caprice and extravagance.

Emerson and Arnold, on the other hand, were governed primarily by the intellect, but with quite different results. Emerson presents life in its ideality; he comparatively neglects life in its phenomenal aspect, that is, as it appears to the ordinary man. Arnold, while not without emotional equipment, and inspired by idealism of a high order, introduces a yet larger element of practical season. _Tendens ma.n.u.s ripae ulterioris amore_, he is yet first of all a man of this world. His chief instrument is common sense, and he looks at questions from the point of view of the highly intelligent and cultivated man. His dislike of metaphysics was as deep as Ruskin's, and he was impatient of abstractions of any sort. With as great a desire to further the true progress of his time as Carlyle or Ruskin, he joined a greater calmness and disinterestedness. "To be less and less personal in one's desires and workings" he learned to look upon as after all the great matter. Of the lessons that are impressed upon us by his whole life and work rather than by specific teachings, perhaps the most precious is the inspiration to live our lives thoughtfully, in no haphazard and hand-to-mouth way, and to live always for the idea and the spirit, making all things else subservient. He does not dazzle us with extraordinary power prodigally spent, but he was a good steward of natural gifts, high, though below the highest. His life of forethought and reason may be profitably compared with a life spoiled by pa.s.sion and animalism like that of Byron or of Burns. His counsels are the fruit of this well-ordered life and are perfectly in consonance with it. While he was a man of less striking personality and less brilliant literary gift than some of his contemporaries, and though his appeal was without the moving power that comes from great emotion, we find a compensation in his greater balance and sanity. He makes singularly few mistakes, and these chiefly of detail. Of all the teachings of the age his ideal of perfection is the wisest and the most permanent.

III

[Sidenote: His Teachers and his Personal Philosophy]

Arnold's poetry is the poetry of meditation and not the poetry of pa.s.sion; it comes from "the depth and not the tumult of the soul"; it does not make us more joyful, but it helps us to greater depth of vision, greater detachment, greater power of self-possession. Our concern here is chiefly with its relation to the prose, and this, too, is a definite and important relation. In his prose Arnold gives such result of his observation and meditation as he believes may be gathered into the form of counsel, criticism, and warning to his age. In his poetry, which preceded the prose, we find rather the processes through which he reached these conclusions; we learn what is the nature of his communing upon life, not as it affects society, but as it fronts the individual; we learn who are the great thinkers of the past who came to his help in the straits of life, and what is the armor which they furnished for his soul in its times of stress.

One result of a perusal of the poems is to counteract the impression often produced by the jaunty air a.s.sumed in the prose. The real substance of Arnold's thought is characterized by a deep seriousness; no one felt more deeply the spiritual unrest and distraction of his age.

More than one poem is an expression of its mental and spiritual sickness, its doubt, ennui, and melancholy. Yet beside such poems as _Dover Beach_ and _Stagirius_ should be placed the lines from _Westminster Abbey_:--

For this and that way swings The flux of mortal things, Though moving inly to one far-set goal.

Out of this entanglement and distraction Arnold turned for help to those writers who seemed most perfectly to have seized upon the eternal verities, to have escaped out of the storm of conflict and to have gained calm and peaceful seats. Carlyle and Ruskin, Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, were stained with the blood of battle, they raged in the heat of controversy; Arnold could not accept them as his teachers. But the Greek poets and the ancient Stoic philosophers have nothing of this dust and heat about them, and to them Arnold turns to gather truth and to imitate their spirit. Similarly, two poets of modern times, Goethe and Wordsworth, have won tranquillity. They, too, become his teachers.

Arnold's chief guides for life are, then, these: two Greek poets, Sophocles and Homer; two ancient philosophers, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus; two modern poets, Goethe and Wordsworth.

In Homer and Sophocles, Arnold sought what we may call the Greek spirit.

What he conceived this spirit to be as expressed in art, we find in the essay on _Literature and Science_, "fit details strictly combined, in view of a large general result n.o.bly conceived." In Sophocles, Arnold found the same spirit interpreting life with a vision that "saw life steadily and saw it whole." In another Greek idea, that of fate, he is also greatly interested, though his conception of it is modified by the influence of Christianity. From the Greek poets, then, Arnold derived a sense of the large part which destiny plays in our lives and the wisdom of conforming our lives to necessity; the importance of conceiving of life as directed toward a simple, large, and n.o.ble end; and the desirability of maintaining a balance among the demands that life makes on us, of adapting fit details to the main purpose of life.

Among modern writers Arnold turned first to Goethe, "Europe's sagest head, Physician of the Iron Age." One of the things that he learned from this source was the value of detachment. In the midst of the turmoil of life, Goethe found refuge in Art. He is the great modern example of a man who has been able to separate himself from the struggle of life and watch it calmly.

He who hath watch'd, not shared the strife, Knows how the day hath gone.

Aloofness, provided it be not selfish, has its own value, and, indeed, isolation must be recognized as a law of our existence.

Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow, And faint the city gleams; Rare the lone pastoral huts--Marvel not thou!

The solemn peaks but to the stars are known, But to the stars and the cold lunar beams; Alone the sun rises, and alone Spring the great streams.

From Goethe, also, Arnold derived the gospel of culture and faith in the intellectual life. It is significant that while Carlyle and Arnold may both be looked upon as disciples of Goethe, Carlyle's most characteristic quotation from his master is his injunction to us to "do the task that lies nearest us," while Arnold's is such a maxim as, "To act is easy, to think is hard."

In some ways Wordsworth was for Arnold a personality even more congenial than Goethe. His range, to be sure, is narrow, but he, too, has attained spiritual peace. His life, secure among its English hills and lakes, was untroubled in its faith. Wordsworth strongly reinforces three things in Arnold, the ability to derive from nature its "healing power" and to share and be glad in "the wonder and bloom of the world"; truth to the deeper spiritual life and strength to keep his soul

Fresh, undiverted to the world without, Firm to the mark, not spent on other things;

and finally, a satisfaction in the cheerful and serene performance of duty, the spirit of "toil unsevered from tranquillity," sharing in the world's work, yet keeping "free from dust and soil."

From the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and from the slave Epictetus alike, Arnold learned to look within for "the aids to n.o.ble life." Overshadowed on all sides by the "uno'erleaped mountains of necessity," we must learn to resign our pa.s.sionate hopes "for quiet and a fearless mind," to merge the self in obedience to universal law, and to keep ever before our minds

The pure eternal course of life, Not human combatings with death.

No conviction is more frequently reiterated in Arnold's poetry than that of the wisdom of resignation and self-dependence.

These great masters, then, strengthened Arnold in those high instincts which needed nourishment in a day of spiritual unrest. From the Greek poets he learned to look at life steadily and as a whole, to direct it toward simple and n.o.ble ends, and to preserve in it a balance and perfection of parts. From Goethe he derived the lessons of detachment and self-culture. From Wordsworth he learned to find peace in nature, to pursue an unworldly purpose, and to be content with humble duties. From the Stoics he learned, especially, self-dependence and resignation. In general, he endeavored to follow an ideal of perfection and to distinguish always between temporary demands and eternal values.

IV

[Sidenote: Theory of Criticism and Equipment as a Critic]

In pa.s.sing from poetry to criticism, Arnold did not feel that he was descending to a lower level. Rather he felt that he was helping to lift criticism to a position of equality with more properly creative work.

The most noticeable thing about his definition of criticism is its lofty ambition. It is "the disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world," and its more ultimate purpose is "to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is r.e.t.a.r.ding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards perfection." It is not to be confined to art and literature, but is to include within its scope society, politics, and religion. It is not only to censure that which is blameworthy, but to appreciate and popularize the best.

For this work great virtues are demanded of the critic. Foremost of these is disinterestedness. "If I know your sect, I antic.i.p.ate your argument," says Emerson in the essay on _Self-Reliance_. Similarly Arnold warns the critic against partisanship. It is better that he refrain from active partic.i.p.ation in politics, social or humanitarian work. Connected with this is another requisite, that of clearness of vision. One of the great disadvantages of partisanship is that it blinds the partisan. But the critical effort is described as "the effort to see the object as in itself it really is." This is best accomplished by approaching truth in as many ways and from as many sides as possible.

Another precaution for the critic who would retain clearness of vision is the avoidance of abstract systems, which petrify and hinder the necessary flexibility of mind. Coolness of temper is also enjoined and scrupulously practiced. "It is only by remaining collected ... that the critic can do the practical man any service"; and again: "Even in one's ridicule one must preserve a sweetness and good humor" (letter to his mother, October 27, 1863). In addition to these virtues, which in Arnold's opinion comprised the qualities most requisite for salutary criticism, certain others are strikingly ill.u.s.trated by Arnold's own mind and methods: the endeavor to understand, to sympathize with, and to guide intelligently the main tendencies of his age, rather than violently to oppose them; at the same time the courage to present unpleasant antidotes to its faults and to keep from fostering a people in its own conceit; and finally, amidst many discouragements, the retention of a high faith in spiritual progress and an unwavering belief that the ideal life is "the normal life as we shall one day see it."

Criticism, to be effective, requires also an adequate style. In Arnold's discussion of style, much stress is laid on its basis in character, and much upon the transparent quality of true style which allows that basic character to shine through. Such words as "limpidness," "simplicity,"

"lucidity," are favorites. Clearness and effectiveness are the qualities that he most highly valued. The latter he gained especially through the crystallization of his thought into certain telling phrases, such as "Philistinism," "sweetness and light," "the grand style," etc. That this habit was attended with dangers, that his readers were likely to get hold of his phrases and think that they had thereby mastered his thought, he realized. Perhaps he hardly realized the danger to the coiner of apothegms himself, that of being content with a half truth when the whole truth cannot be conveniently crowded into narrow compa.s.s.

Herein lies, I think, the chief source of Arnold's occasional failure to quite satisfy our sense of adequacy or of justice, as, for instance, in his celebrated handling of the four ways of regarding nature, or the pa.s.sage in which he describes the sterner self of the working-cla.s.s as liking "bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter self, beer."

By emotionalism, however, he does not allow himself to be betrayed, and he does not indulge in rhythmical prose or rhapsody, though occasionally his writing has a truly poetical quality resulting from the quiet but deep feeling which rises in connection with a subject on which the mind has long brooded with affection, as in the tribute to Oxford at the beginning of the _Essay on Emerson_. Sometimes, on the other hand, a certain pedagogic stiffness appears, as if the writer feared that the dullness of comprehension of his readers would not allow them to grasp even the simplest conceptions without a patient insistence on the literal fact.