Chapter XII: Part 12

Partisans fight against facts in vain. Mr. Goldwin Smith,[472] a writer of eloquence and power, although too prone to acerbity, is a partisan of the Puritans, and of the nonconformists who are the special inheritors of the Puritan tradition. He angrily resents the imputation upon that Puritan type of life, by which the life of our serious middle class has been formed, that it was doomed to hideousness, to immense ennui. He protests that it had beauty, amenity, accomplishment. Let us go to facts. Charles the First, who, with all his faults, had the just idea that art and letters are great civilizers, made, as you know, a famous collection of pictures,--our first National Gallery. It was, I suppose, the best collection at that time north of the Alps. It contained nine Raphaels, eleven Correggios, twenty-eight Titians. What became of that collection? The journals of the House of Commons will tell you. There you may see the Puritan Parliament disposing of this Whitehall or York House collection as follows: "Ordered, that all such pictures and statues there as are without any superstition, shall be forthwith sold.... Ordered, that all such pictures there as have the representation of the Second Person in the Trinity upon them, shall be forthwith burnt. Ordered, that all such pictures there as have the representation of the Virgin Mary upon them, shall be forthwith burnt." There we have the weak side of our parliamentary government and our serious middle class. We are incapable of sending Mr. Gladstone to be tried at the Old Bailey because he proclaims his antipathy to Lord Beaconsfield. A majority in our House of Commons is incapable of hailing, with frantic laughter and applause, a string of indecent jests against Christianity and its Founder. But we are not, or were not incapable of producing a Parliament which burns or sells the masterpieces of Italian art. And one may surely say of such a Puritan Parliament, and of those who determine its line for it, that they had not the spirit of beauty.

What shall we say of amenity? Milton was born a humanist, but the Puritan temper, as we know, mastered him. There is nothing more unlovely and unamiable than Milton the Puritan disputant. Some one answers his _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_. "I mean not," rejoins Milton, "to dispute philosophy with this pork, who never read any." However, he does reply to him, and throughout the reply Milton's great joke is, that his adversary, who was anonymous, is a serving-man. "Finally, he winds up his text with much doubt and trepidation; for it may be his trenchers were not scraped, and that which never yet afforded corn of favor to his noddle--the salt-cellar--was not rubbed; and therefore, in this haste, easily granting that his answers fall foul upon each other, and praying you would not think he writes as a prophet, but as a man, he runs to the black jack, fills his flagon, spreads the table, and serves up dinner."[473] There you have the same spirit of urbanity and amenity, as much of it, and as little, as generally informs the religious controversies of our Puritan middle class to this day.

But Mr. Goldwin Smith[474] insists, and picks out his own exemplar of the Puritan type of life and manners; and even here let us follow him. He picks out the most favorable specimen he can find,--Colonel Hutchinson,[475] whose well-known memoirs, written by his widow, we have all read with interest. "Lucy Hutchinson," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "is painting what she thought a perfect Puritan would be; and her picture presents to us not a coarse, crop-eared, and snuffling fanatic, but a highly accomplished, refined, gallant, and most amiable, though religious and seriously minded, gentleman." Let us, I say, in this example of Mr. Goldwin Smith's own choosing, lay our finger upon the points where this type deflects from the truly humane ideal.

Mrs. Hutchinson relates a story which gives us a good notion of what the amiable and accomplished social intercourse, even of a picked Puritan family, was. Her husband was governor of Nottingham. He had occasion, she said, "to go and break up a private meeting in the cannoneer's chamber"; and in the cannoneer's chamber "were found some notes concerning pædobaptism,[476] which, being brought into the governor's lodgings, his wife having perused them and compared them with the Scriptures, found not what to say against the truths they asserted concerning the mis-application of that ordinance to infants." Soon afterwards she expects her confinement, and communicates the cannoneer's doubts about pædobaptism to her husband. The fatal cannoneer makes a breach in him too. "Then he bought and read all the eminent treatises on both sides, which at that time came thick from the presses, and still was cleared in the error of the pædobaptists." Finally, Mrs. Hutchinson is confined. Then the governor "invited all the ministers to dinner, and propounded his doubt and the ground thereof to them. None of them could defend their practice with any satisfactory reason, but the tradition of the Church from the primitive times, and their main buckler of federal holiness, which Tombs and Denne had excellently overthrown. He and his wife then, professing themselves unsatisfied, desired their opinions." With the opinions I will not trouble you, but hasten to the result: "Whereupon that infant was not baptised."

No doubt to a large division of English society at this very day, that sort of dinner and discussion, and indeed, the whole manner of life and conversation here suggested by Mrs. Hutchinson's narrative, will seem both natural and amiable, and such as to meet the needs of man as a religious and social creature. You know the conversation which reigns in thousands of middle-class families at this hour, about nunneries, teetotalism, the confessional, eternal punishment, ritualism, disestablishment. It goes wherever the class goes which is moulded on the Puritan type of life. In the long winter evenings of Toronto Mr. Goldwin Smith has had, probably, abundant experience of it. What is its enemy? The instinct of self-preservation in humanity. Men make crude types and try to impose them, but to no purpose. "_L'homme s'agite, Dieu le mene_,"[477] says Bossuet. "There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Eternal, that shall stand."[478] Those who offer us the Puritan type of life offer us a religion not true, the claims of intellect and knowledge not satisfied, the claim of beauty not satisfied, the claim of manners not satisfied. In its strong sense for conduct that life touches truth; but its other imperfections hinder it from employing even this sense aright. The type mastered our nation for a time. Then came the reaction. The nation said: "This type, at any rate, is amiss; we are not going to be all like _that!_" The type retired into our middle class, and fortified itself there. It seeks to endure, to emerge, to deny its own imperfections, to impose itself again;--impossible! If we continue to live, we must outgrow it. The very class in which it is rooted, our middle class, will have to acknowledge the type's inadequacy, will have to acknowledge the hideousness, the immense ennui of the life which this type has created, will have to transform itself thoroughly. It will have to admit the large part of truth which there is in the criticisms of our Frenchman, whom we have too long forgotten.

After our middle class he turns his attention to our lower class. And of the lower and larger portion of this, the portion not bordering on the middle class and sharing its faults, he says: "I consider this multitude to be absolutely devoid, not only of political principles, but even of the most simple notions of good and evil. Certainly it does not appeal, this mob, to the principles of '89, which you English make game of; it does not insist on the rights of man; what it wants is beer, gin, and _fun_."[479]

That is a description of what Mr. Bright[480] would call the residuum, only our author seems to think the residuum a very large body. And its condition strikes him with amazement and horror. And surely well it may. Let us recall Mr. Hamerton's account of the most illiterate class in France; what an amount of civilization they have notwithstanding! And this is always to be understood, in hearing or reading a Frenchman's praise of England. He envies our liberty, our public spirit, our trade, our stability. But there is always a reserve in his mind. He never means for a moment that he would like to change with us. Life seems to him so much better a thing in France for so many more people, that, in spite of the fearful troubles of France, it is best to be a Frenchman. A Frenchman might agree with Mr. Cobden,[481] that life is good in England for those people who have at least £5000 a year. But the civilization of that immense majority who have not £5000 a year, or, £500, or even £100,--of our middle and lower class,--seems to him too deplorable.

And now what has this condition of our middle and lower class to tell us about equality? How is it, must we not ask, how is it that, being without fearful troubles, having so many achievements to show and so much success, having as a nation a deep sense for conduct, having signal energy and honesty, having a splendid aristocracy, having an exceptionally large class of gentlemen, we are yet so little civilized? How is it that our middle and lower classes, in spite of the individuals among them who are raised by happy gifts of nature to a more humane life, in spite of the seriousness of the middle class, in spite of the honesty and power of true work, the _virtus verusque labor_, which are to be found in abundance throughout the lower, do yet present, as a whole, the characters which we have seen?

And really it seems as if the current of our discourse carried us of itself to but one conclusion. It seems as if we could not avoid concluding, that just as France owes her fearful troubles to other things and her civilizedness to equality, so we owe our immunity from fearful troubles to other things, and our uncivilizedness to inequality. "Knowledge is easy," says the wise man, "to him that understandeth";[482] easy, he means, to him who will use his mind simply and rationally, and not to make him think he can know what he cannot, or to maintain, _per fas et nefas_, a false thesis with which he fancies his interests to be bound up. And to him who will use his mind as the wise man recommends, surely it is easy to see that our shortcomings in civilization are due to our inequality; or, in other words, that the great inequality of classes and property, which came to us from the Middle Age and which we maintain because we have the religion of inequality, that this constitution of things, I say, has the natural and necessary effect, under present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.[483] And this is to fail in civilization.

For only just look how the facts combine themselves. I have said little as yet about our aristocratic class, except that it is splendid. Yet these, "our often very unhappy brethren," as Burke calls them, are by no means matter for nothing but ecstasy. Our charity ought certainly, Burke says, to "extend a due and anxious sensation of pity to the distresses of the miserable great." Burke's extremely strong language about their miseries and defects I will not quote. For my part, I am always disposed to marvel that human beings, in a position so false, should be so good as these are. Their reason for existing was to serve as a number of centres in a world disintegrated after the ruin of the Roman Empire, and slowly re-constituting itself. Numerous centres of material force were needed, and these a feudal aristocracy supplied. Their large and hereditary estates served this public end. The owners had a positive function, for which their estates were essential. In our modern world the function is gone; and the great estates, with an infinitely multiplied power of ministering to mere pleasure and indulgence, remain. The energy and honesty of our race does not leave itself without witness in this class, and nowhere are there more conspicuous examples of individuals raised by happy gifts of nature far above their fellows and their circumstances. For distinction of all kinds this class has an esteem. Everything which succeeds they tend to welcome, to win over, to put on their side; genius may generally make, if it will, not bad terms for itself with them. But the total result of the class, its effect on society at large and on national progress, are what we must regard. And on the whole, with no necessary function to fulfil, never conversant with life as it really is, tempted, flattered, and spoiled from childhood to old age, our aristocratic class is inevitably materialized, and the more so the more the development of industry and ingenuity augments the means of luxury. Every one can see how bad is the action of such an aristocracy upon the class of newly enriched people, whose great danger is a materialistic ideal, just because it is the ideal they can easiest comprehend. Nor is the mischief of this action now compensated by signal services of a public kind. Turn even to that sphere which aristocracies think specially their own, and where they have under other circumstances been really effective,--the sphere of politics. When there is need, as now, for any large forecast of the course of human affairs, for an acquaintance with the ideas which in the end sway mankind, and for an estimate of their power, aristocracies are out of their element, and materialized aristocracies most of all. In the immense spiritual movement of our day, the English aristocracy, as I have elsewhere said, always reminds me of Pilate confronting the phenomenon of Christianity. Nor can a materialized class have any serious and fruitful sense for the power of beauty. They may imagine themselves to be in pursuit of beauty; but how often, alas, does the pursuit come to little more than dabbling a little in what they are pleased to call art, and making a great deal of what they are pleased to call love!

Let us return to their merits. For the power of manners an aristocratic class, whether materialized or not, will always, from its circumstances, have a strong sense. And although for this power of social life and manners, so important to civilization, our English race has no special natural turn, in our aristocracy this power emerges and marks them. When the day of general humanization comes, they will have fixed the standard of manners. The English simplicity, too, makes the best of the English aristocracy more frank and natural than the best of the like class anywhere else, and even the worst of them it makes free from the incredible fatuities and absurdities of the worst. Then the sense of conduct they share with their countrymen at large. In no class has it such trials to undergo; in none is it more often and more grievously overborne. But really the right comment on this is the comment of Pepys[484] upon the evil courses of Charles the Second and the Duke of York and the court of that day: "At all which I am sorry; but it is the effect of idleness, and having nothing else to employ their great spirits upon."

Heaven forbid that I should speak in dispraise of that unique and most English class which Mr. Charles Sumner extols--the large class of gentlemen, not of the landed class or of the nobility, but cultivated and refined. They are a seemly product of the energy and of the power to rise in our race. Without, in general, rank and splendor and wealth and luxury to polish them, they have made their own the high standard of life and manners of an aristocratic and refined class. Not having all the dissipations and distractions of this class, they are much more seriously alive to the power of intellect and knowledge, to the power of beauty. The sense of conduct, too, meets with fewer trials in this class. To some extent, however, their contiguousness to the aristocratic class has now the effect of materializing them, as it does the class of newly enriched people. The most palpable action is on the young amongst them, and on their standard of life and enjoyment. But in general, for this whole class, established facts, the materialism which they see regnant, too much block their mental horizon, and limit the possibilities of things to them. They are deficient in openness and flexibility of mind, in free play of ideas, in faith and ardor. Civilized they are, but they are not much of a civilizing force; they are somehow bounded and ineffective.

So on the middle class they produce singularly little effect. What the middle class sees is that splendid piece of materialism, the aristocratic class, with a wealth and luxury utterly out of their reach, with a standard of social life and manners, the offspring of that wealth and luxury, seeming utterly out of their reach also. And thus they are thrown back upon themselves--upon a defective type of religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners. And the lower class see before them the aristocratic class, and its civilization, such as it is, even infinitely more out of _their_ reach than out of that of the middle class; while the life of the middle class, with its unlovely types of religion, thought, beauty, and manners, has naturally, in general, no great attractions for them either. And so they, too, are thrown back upon themselves; upon their beer, their gin, and their _fun_. Now, then, you will understand what I meant by saying that our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower.

And the greater the inequality the more marked is its bad action upon the middle and lower classes. In Scotland the landed aristocracy fills the scene, as is well known, still more than in England; the other classes are more squeezed back and effaced. And the social civilization of the lower middle class and of the poorest class, in Scotland, is an example of the consequences. Compared with the same class even in England, the Scottish lower middle class is most visibly, to vary Mr. Charles Sumner's phrase, _less_ well-bred, _less_ careful in personal habits and in social conventions, _less_ refined. Let any one who doubts it go, after issuing from the aristocratic solitudes which possess Loch Lomond, let him go and observe the shopkeepers and the middle class in Dumbarton, and Greenock, and Gourock, and the places along the mouth of the Clyde. And for the poorest class, who that has seen it can ever forget the hardly human horror, the abjection and uncivilizedness of Glasgow?

What a strange religion, then, is our religion of inequality! Romance 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

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[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_.

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[4] _Poetics_, 4.

[5] _Theognis_, ll. 54-56.

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[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.]

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[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.

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[9] ~Oedipus~. See the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ and _Oedipus Coloneus_ of Sophocles.

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[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.

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[12] ~Polybius~. A Greek historian (c. 204-122 B.C.)

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[13]. ~Menander~. See _Contribution of the Celts, Selections_, Note 3, p. 177.[Transcriber's note: this is Footnote 255 in this e-text.]

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[14] ~rien à dire~. He says all that he wishes to, but unfortunately he has nothing to say.

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[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.

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[17] ~François Pierre Guillaume Guizot~ (1787-1874), historian, orator, and statesman of France.

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[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."

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[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.

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[20] _Æneid_, XII, 894-95.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME

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[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.

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[26] ~Irene~. An unsuccessful play of Dr. Johnson's.

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[27] ~Preface~. Prefixed to the second edition (1800) of the _Lyrical Ballads_.

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[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.

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[29] _Pensées de J. Joubert_, ed. 1850, I, 355, titre 15, 2.

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[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.

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[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_.

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[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.

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[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.

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[36] ~Home and Foreign Review~. Published in London 1862-64.

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[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.

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[39] From Goethe's _Iphigenie auf Tauris_, I, ii, 91-92.

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[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.

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[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.]

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[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

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[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.

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[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.]

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[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).

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[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.

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[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.]

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[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.

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[83] _Hamlet_, V, ii, 361-62.

[84] _Paradise Lost_, I, 599-602.

[85] _Ibid._, I, 108-9.

[86] _Ibid._, IV, 271.

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[87] _Poetics_, § 9.

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[88] ~Provençal~, the language of southern France, from the southern French _oc_ instead of the northern _oïl_ for "yes."

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[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.

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[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_.

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[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.

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[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."

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[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.]

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[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_.

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[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.

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[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.

[108] Burns to Mr. Thomson, October 19, 1794.

PAGE 80

[109] From _The Holy Fair_.

PAGE 81

[110] From _Epistle: To a Young Friend_.

[111] From _Address to the Unco' Quid, or the Rigidly Righteous_.

[112] From _Epistle: To Dr. Blacklock_.

[Footnote 4: See his _Memorabilia_.][Transcriber's note: The reference for this footnote is missing from the original text.]

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[113] From _Winter: A Dirge_.

PAGE 84

[114] From Shelley's _Prometheus Unbound_, III, iv, last line.

[115] _Ibid._, II, v.

LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

PAGE 87

[116] Reprinted (considerably revised) from the _Nineteenth Century_, August, 1882, vol. XII, in _Discourses in America_, Macmillan & Co., 1885. It was the most popular of the three lectures given by Arnold during his visit to America in 1883-84.

[117] Plato's _Republic_, 6. 495, _Dialogues_, ed. Jowett, 1875, vol. 3, p. 194.

[118] ~working lawyer~. Plato's _Theoetetus,_ 172-73, _Dialogues_, IV, 231.

PAGE 88

[119] ~majesty~. All editions read "majority." What Emerson said was "majesty," which is therefore substituted here. See Emerson's _Literary Ethics, Works_, Centenary ed., I, 179.

PAGE 89

[120] "His whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom. ... And in the first place, he will honor studies which impress these qualities on his soul and will disregard others."--_Republic_, IX, 591, _Dialogues_, III, 305.

PAGE 91

[121] See _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.]

[122] Delivered October 1, 1880, and printed in _Science and Culture and Other Essays_, Macmillan & Co., 1881.

[123] See _The Function of Criticism, Selections_, pp. 52-53. [Transcriber's note: This approximates to the section following the text reference for Footnote 61 in this e-text.]

PAGE 92

[124] See _L'Instruction supérieur en France_ in Renan's _Questions Contemporaines_, Paris, 1868.

PAGE 93

[125] ~Friedrich August Wolf~ (1759-1824), German philologist and critic.

PAGE 99

[126] See Plato's _Symposium, Dialogues_, II, 52-63.

PAGE 100

[127] ~James Joseph Sylvester~ (1814-97), English mathematician. In 1883, the year of Arnold's lecture, he resigned a position as teacher in Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, to accept the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford.

PAGE 101

[128] Darwin's famous proposition. _Descent of Man_, Part III, chap. XXI, ed. 1888, II, 424.

PAGE 103

[129] ~Michael Faraday~ (1791-1867), English chemist and physicist, and the discoverer of the induction of electrical currents. He belonged to the very small Christian sect called after ~Robert Sandeman~, and his opinion with respect to the relation between his science and his religion is expressed in a lecture on mental education printed at the end of his _Researches in Chemistry and Physics_.

PAGE 105

[130] Eccles. VIII, 17.[Arnold.]

[131] _Iliad_, XXIV, 49.[Arnold.]

[132] Luke IX, 25.

PAGE 107

[133] _Macbeth_, V, iii.

PAGE 109

[134] A touching account of the devotion of ~Lady Jane Grey~ (1537-54) to her studies is to be found in Ascham's _Scholemaster_, Arber's ed., 46-47.

HEINRICH HEINE.

PAGE 112

[135] Reprinted from the _Cornhill Magazine_, vol. VIII, August, 1863, in _Essays in Criticism_, 1st series, 1865.

[136] Written from Paris, March 30, 1855. See Heine's _Memoirs_, ed. 1910, II, 270.

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[137] The German Romantic school of ~Tieck~ (1773-1853), ~Novalis~ (1772-1801), and ~Richter~ (1763-1825) followed the classical school of Schiller and Goethe. It was characterized by a return to individualism, subjectivity, and the supernatural. Carlyle translated extracts from Tieck and Richter in his _German Romance_ (1827), and his _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_ contain essays on Richter and Novalis.

PAGE 114

[138] From _English Fragments; Conclusion_, in _Pictures of Travel_, ed. 1891, Leland's translation, _Works_, III, 466-67.

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[139] ~Heine's~ birthplace was not ~Hamburg~, but ~Düsseldorf~.

[140] ~Philistinism~. In German university slang the term _Philister_ was applied to townsmen by students, and corresponded to the English university "snob." Hence it came to mean a person devoid of culture and enlightenment, and is used in this sense by Goethe in 1773. Heine was especially instrumental in popularizing the expression outside of Germany. Carlyle first introduced it into English literature in 1827. In a note to the discussion of Goethe in the second edition of _German Romance_, he speaks of a Philistine as one who "judged of Brunswick mum, by its _utility_." He adds: "Stray specimens of the Philistine nation are said to exist in our own Islands; but we have no name for them like the Germans." The term occurs also in Carlyle's essays on _The State of German Literature_, 1827, and _Historic Survey of German Poetry_, 1831. Arnold, however, has done most to establish the word in English usage. He applies it especially to members of the middle class who are swayed chiefly by material interests and are blind to the force of ideas and the value of culture. Leslie Stephen, who is always ready to plead the cause of the Philistine, remarks: "As a clergyman always calls every one from whom he differs an atheist, and a bargee has one or two favorite but unmentionable expressions for the same purpose, so a prig always calls his adversary a Philistine." _Mr. Matthew Arnold and the Church of England, Fraser's Magazine_, October, 1870.

[141] The word ~solecism~ is derived from[Greek: soloi], in Cilicia, owing to the corruption of the Attic dialect among the Athenian colonists of that place.

PAGE 118

[142] The "~gig~" as Carlyle's symbol of philistinism takes its origin from a dialogue which took place in Thurtell's trial: "I always thought him a respectable man." "What do you mean by 'respectable'?" "He kept a gig." From this he coins the words "gigman," "gigmanity," "gigmania," which are of frequent occurrence in his writings.

PAGE 119

[143] _English Fragments, Pictures of Travel, Works_, III, 464.

PAGE 120

[144] See _The Function of Criticism, Selections_, Note 2, p. 42. [Transcriber's note: This is Footnote 42 in this e-text.]

PAGE 121

[145] _English Fragments_, chap. IX, in _Pictures of Travel, Works_, III, 410-11.

[146] Adapted from a line in Wordsworth's _Resolution and Independence_.

PAGE 122

[147] ~Charles the Fifth~. Ruler of The Holy Roman Empire, 1500-58.

PAGE 124

[148] _English Fragments, Conclusion_, in _Pictures of Travel, Works_, III, 468-70.

[149] A complete edition has at last appeared in Germany.[Arnold.]

PAGE 125

[150] ~Augustin Eugène Scribe~ (1791-1861), French dramatist, for fifty years the best exponent of the ideas of the French middle class.

PAGE 126

[151] ~Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte~ (Napoleon III), 1808-73, son of Louis Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon I, by the _coup d'état_ of December, 1851, became Emperor of France. This was accomplished against the resistance of the Moderate Republicans, partly through the favor of his democratic theories with the mass of the French people. Heine was mistaken, however, in believing that the rule of Louis Napoleon had prepared the way for Communism. An attempt to bring about a Communistic revolution was easily crushed in 1871.

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[152] ~J.J. von Goerres~ (1776-1848), ~Klemens Brentano~ (1778-1842), and ~Ludwig Achim von Arnim~ (1781-1831) were the leaders of the second German Romantic school and constitute the Heidelberg group of writers. They were much interested in the German past, and strengthened the national and patriotic spirit. Their work, however, is often marred by exaggeration and affectation.

PAGE 128

[153] From _The Baths of Lucca_, chap. X, in _Pictures of Travel, Works_, III, 199.

PAGE 129

[154] Cf. _Function of Criticism, Selections_, p. 26.[Transcriber's note: This approximates to the section following the text reference for Footnote 27 in this e-text.]

[155] Job XII, 23: "He enlargeth the nations and straiteneth them again."

PAGE 131

[156] Lucan, _Pharsalia_, book I, 135: "he stands the shadow of a great name."

PAGE 132

[157] From _Ideas_, in _Pictures of Travel, Works_, II, 312-13.

[158] ~Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh~ (1769-1822), as Foreign Secretary under Lord Liverpool, became the soul of the coalition against Napoleon, which, during the campaigns of 1813-14, was kept together by him alone. He committed suicide with a penknife in a fit of insanity in August, 1822.

[159] From _Ideas_, in _Pictures of Travel, Works_, II, 324.

[160] From _English Fragments_, 1828, in _Pictures of Travel, Works_, III, 340-42.

PAGE 133

[161] Song in _Measure for Measure_, IV, i.

[162][Transcriber's note: "From _The Dying One_: for translation see p. 142." in original. Please see reference in text for Footnote 180.]

PAGE 135

[163] From _Mountain Idyll, Travels in the Hartz Mountains, Book of Songs. Works_, ed. 1904, pp. 219-21.

[164] Published 1851.

[165] ~Rhampsinitus~. A Greek corruption of _Ra-messu-pa-neter_, the popular name of Rameses III, King of Egypt.

[166] ~Edith with the Swan Neck~. A mistress of King Harold of England.

[167] ~Melisanda of Tripoli~. Mistress of Geoffrey Rudel, the troubadour.

[168] ~Pedro the Cruel~. King of Castile (1334-69).

[169] ~Firdusi~. A Persian poet, author of the epic poem, the _Shahnama_, or "Book of Kings," a complete history of Persia in nearly sixty thousand verses.

[170] ~Dr. Döllinger~. A German theologian and church historian (1799-1890).

[171] _Spanish Atrides, Romancero, Works_, ed. 1905, pp. 200-04.

[172] ~Henry of Trastamare~. King of Castile (1369-79).

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[173] ~garbanzos~. A kind of pulse much esteemed in Spain.

PAGE 138

[174] Adapted from Rom. VIII, 26.

PAGE 139

[175] From _The Baths of Lucca_, chap. IX, in _Pictures of Travel, Works_, III, 184-85.

[176] _Romancero_, book III.

PAGE 140

[177] ~Laura~. The heroine of Petrarch's famous series of love lyrics known as the _Canzoniere_.

[178] ~Court of Love~. For a discussion of this supposed medieval tribunal see William A. Neilson's _The Origins and Sources of the Court of Love, Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature_, Boston, 1899, chap. VIII.

PAGE 142

[179] _Disputation, Romancero_, book III.

[180] _The Dying One, Romancero_, book II, quoted entire.

PAGE 143

[181] Written from Paris, September 30, 1850. See _Memoirs_, ed. 1910, II, 226-27.

MARCUS AURELIUS.

PAGE 145

[182] Reprinted from _The Victoria Magazine_, II, 1-9, November, 1863, in _Essays in Criticism_, 1865.

[183] ~John Stuart Mill~ (1806-73), English philosopher and economist. _On Liberty_ (1859) is his most finished writing.

[184] The _Imitation of Christ_ (_Imitatio Christi_), a famous medieval Christian devotional work, is usually ascribed to Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), an Augustinian canon of Mont St. Agnes in the diocese of Utrecht.

PAGE 146