The Project Gutenberg EBook of Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, by Matthew Arnold

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Title: Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold

Author: Matthew Arnold

Release Date: June 15, 2004 [EBook #12628] Last Updated: December 28, 2008

Language: English

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[Transcriber's notes:

Bold text is denoted with ~.

Footnotes: In the original, footnote numbering restarted on each page, and they were collated at the end of the text in page number order. In this e-text, footnotes have been renumbered consecutively through the text. However, they are still to be found in their original position after the text, and the original page numbers have been retained in the footnotes.

There is one footnote in the Preface, which is to be found in its original position at the end of the Preface.]

* * * * *

Riverside College Classics

SELECTIONS

FROM THE PROSE WORKS OF

MATTHEW ARNOLD

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

WILLIAM SAVAGE JOHNSON, PH.D.

Professor of English Literature in the University of Kansas

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO

The Riverside Press Cambridge

The essays included in this issue of the Riverside College Classics are reprinted by permission of, and by arrangement with, The Macmillan Company, the American publishers of Arnold's writings.

1913, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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 Hellenism, 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 illustrate 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.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTIONS:

I. THEORIES OF LITERATURE AND CRITICISM:

1. Poetry and the Classics (1853) 2. The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1864) 3. The Study of Poetry (1880) 4. Literature and Science (1882)

II. LITERARY CRITICISM:

1. Heinrich Heine (1863) 2. Marcus Aurelius (1863) 3. The Contribution of the Celts to English Literature (1866) 4. George Sand (1877) 5. Wordsworth (1879)

III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES:

1. Sweetness and Light (1867) 2. Hebraism and Hellenism (1867) 3. Equality (1878)

NOTES

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 Principal 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 classics 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