Matthew Arnold Intime

MANY books have been published about Matthew Arnold since his death in 1888. We have monographs by Professor Saintsbury, and the brilliant essayist, Mr. Herbert Paul, as well as a literary life from the pen of Mr. George Russell, the intimate friend who edited Arnold’s Letters in 1895; and there has been published, quite recently, a wide survey of Arnold’s work by Mr. Harbutt Dawson. But surpassing all these in value is the selection from his own Note Books, for which we are indebted to his daughter, the Hon. Mrs. Wodehouse. In her preface she tells us: “My father used often to say, half jokingly, that if any one would ever take the trouble to collect all the extracts from various writers which he had copied in his note books, there would be found a volume of priceless worth.”

But it is on other grounds that the volume is so valuable. We have all of us, probably, at one time or another, felt with regard to some eminent man of letters that we should like to know him: that is, to know him as he really was in his innermost self, and not only as seen through his writings, Letters, when they are not written with a thought of publication, are illuminating; but, somehow, the letters of Matthew Arnold that have been published are not satisfying in this respect. We want to know the man who charmed us, and instructed us while he did so. We want to get nearer to him; and that is what this book does for us. It is the key to a very beautiful disposition. It admits us to a more intimate knowledge of Arnold’s nature than we could have ventured to hope for. It increases the worth of his writings by its revelation of the nobility of his character, and of his unabated devotion to high ideals. It is, of course, as a poet and a literary critic that Arnold will live, and the importance of his work lies in the inculcation of the need for light and leading, and the attainment, through culture, of high ideals. Those letters of his which were published a few years ago did not shed fresh light on his character as we knew it through his books. But here in these Note Books, which for thirty-seven years were the receptacle of some portion of his daily reading, we see the mind of the man as he was to himself; and high as the standard was which he set for others, higher still was that which he placed before himself. We see that the urbanity, the gaieté littéraire, which sometimes proved so disconcerting to those whom he criticised, was not an affectation, but was the reflection of the inward sunshine which brightened his life; and that the largeness of mind which helped him to the appreciation of the widely different types with which his criticism was concerned was the fruit of severe mental discipline.

The soul of the man is reflected in this unique volume: austere, but never harsh. The harshness and rigor that an austere philosophy tends to induce were with him counteracted by natural kindliness of heart. The reading that makes a full man; the catholicity; the unerring instinct for the best, that marked him as a born critic, are here unmistakable, as well as the desire always to commune with noble minds: so much “a man’s life of each day depends for its solidity and value on whether he reads during that day, and, far more still, on what he reads during it.” “To know the best which has been thought and said in the world” is here seen to have been his life-long study.

If we would discover the mainspring of all his works, we shall find it in those words of his: “We are all seekers still;” not to imagine that we have heard or uttered the last word, “ not to strive or cry, nor to persist in pressing forward, on any one side with violence and self-will,” but patiently to investigate, and sift, and interpret, until we find the Truth. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Being of the “guild of the studious,” this afforded him the keenest intellectual enjoyment, and deepened his sense of what is beautiful in character and admirable in conduct. “ II avait un sens pénétrant pour tout chose d expérience et déverité.” “The importance of reading, not slight stuff to get through the time [he writes], but the best that has been written, forces itself upon me more and more every year I live; it is living in good company, the best company;” and in Essays in Criticism he tried to show us how to get at the best. These Essays, and the Discourses in America, contain, as it seems to me, the residuum of his prose writings. We may put aside as “touched with caducity” the theological excursions that he permitted himself in the belief that the type of religion to which the British middle class has sacrificed so much is defective; and as he himself did not regard his contributions to politics as being more than tentative, we need not enter upon them now. What is valuable in them we shall find in one form or another in the books that worthily represent him.

There is a line from à Kempis that recurs frequently in the Note Books, and it is eloquent of his own practice: “ Semper aliquid certi proponendum est:” “Always place a definite purpose before thee.” Probably no man ever wrote who more keenly appreciated the importance of this counsel. All his writing was inspired by a definite purpose, and toward making clear that purpose (whatever at the particular time it happened to be) he brought the resources of his richly equipped mind, and the effective instrument, a beautiful style.

Another frequent quotation is

That he drew upon these sources of knowledge and wisdom, this book bears eloquent testimony. Besides abundant quotations from the Bible, the mere enumeration of the authors from whom he noted down passages that specially struck him as helpful toward keeping in the right course through outward troubles and inward perplexities, is to realize what a daily education he imposed upon himself. Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, Lucan, Dante, Leopardi, Lessing, Heine, Vauvenargues, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Renan, Condorcet, Littré, Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Senancour, Bishop Wilson, Bishop Butler, Barrow, Burke, Clarendon, Paley, Johnson, Goethe, Bunsen, Vinet, “George Sand,” Joseph de Maistre. A catholic taste, truly. “ He that reads many books,” says Johnson, “must compare one opinion or one style with another; and when he compares, must necessarily distinguish, reject, and prefer. ” The naturally fine literary sense with which Arnold was endowed was made more delicately keen by the range of reading indicated in the list above, as remarkable for what it omits as for what it contains. His deep reading in and love for the classics endued him with that sweetness and light which he inculcated so persistently, rightly believing that the “two noblest things,” as Swift termed them, were the essence of true culture. That one who would have chosen a diplomatic career should find an inspectorship of schools occasionally irksome is easily conceivable: but Arnold was wise, and in his Note Boohs we find entries like these: —

“Grant that I may this day omit no part of my duty.”

“I pray God preserve me from ease, idleness, and trifling away my precious time (Bp. Wilson).”

“Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward; he that doth heep his sold shall be far from there.”

“For Thy sake!

“The more graces a man has received, the more reason he has to fear, and the greater obligation to labour for God.”

“Look up to God at all times, and He will, as in a glass, discover what is fit to be done.”

“ Give me grace to make amends, by my future diligence, for the many days and years that I have spent unprofitably.”

“It is a part of special prudence never to do anything because one has an inclination to it; but because it is one’s duty, or is reasonable.”

“Not to desire to be ministered unto, but rather to minister; never to make it my object to live in ease, plenty, luxury, and independence.”

“L’homme est en ce monde pour profiter de l’école de sa destinée et pour travailler à son salut.”

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts; therefore guard accordingly (Marcus Aurelius).”

“Rien ne sauve dans cette vie-ci que l’occupation et le travail.”

“Une vie laborieuse, une succession de travaux qui remplissent et moralisent les jours! ”

“La gaieté clarifie 1’ esprit, surtout la gaieté littéraire. L’ ennui rembrouille.”

“Omnia vanitas, praeter amare deum, et illi soli servire (à Kempis).”

“Angelica hilaritas cum raonastica simplicitate.”

The value of these quotations consists, of course, in the light they throw on the mind of Arnold in noting them down for his daily guidance and support, while his life illustrated their truth. His own heart beat an echo to the sentiment contained in:

“Le cœur humain a en soi-même un élan vers une beauté inconnue.”

Against the drudgery incident to school inspection he set such truths as that; and braced himself by the determination “Through the contemplation of works of art, to keep alive in the mind a high, unapproachable ideal.”

That the drudgery helped to sap the springs of poetry within him would appear evident from his almost complete abandonment of the practice of poetry after 1867. “ Carmina secessum scribentis et otia quaerunt.” But then, as he himself has said, “Poetry and the poetic form of expression naturally precede prose.” To him poetry was a forgetfulness of evils, and a truce from cares; “a divine plaything,” as Heine said. Yet many good judges are inclined to set his poetry above his prose. Perhaps it will prove to be his passport to immortality. But when the serious business of life began he found his best utterance in prose, in which, with him, the utilitarian and artistic elements united in a most fascinating manner. Unlike the conscious stylist, he wrote because he had something to say, and he naturally took pains to say it in the very best way. The Greek word Eutrapelia, on which he discoursed so entertainingly to the Eton boys, well describes his style. It had the flexibility without which it would not have been easy for him to convey the subtle shades of meaning, the delicate nuances, with which his prose abounds; or to indulge the lambent humor which makes his essays such delightful reading. In his case there is no need to exclaim with Émile de Girardin, “Ah! si l’on voulait lire les Préfaces!” for every one knows that they contain some of his best and most piquant writing, and are on no account to be missed. We may rank him as next to Newman, if not sometimes his equal. There is a simple directness in Newman that we do not find in Arnold. Newman is winning, Arnold persuasive; and if he fails to convince us at alt times, he is.invariably charming. In his hands language becomes a living thing, instinct with spirit and grace. In his poetry, his exquisite sagacity of taste may almost be said to have never failed him. It is always severely correct, beautiful with the symmetriaprisca of the Greeks, his chosen models.

There are many reasons why we cannot afford to be without his poetry. It is helpful and healing. Poetry cannot, of course, as Strauss reminds us, take the place of real religion. Man is religious by instinct. But poetry such as Arnold’s sustains us against what we may term the crudities of life: " Quid enim non carmina possunt ? ” Do we not feel this when we read Self-Dependence for instance ? “He remains the especial friend and comforter of all clear-headed and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and upward striving men. . . . He cannot give such souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them much; and what he gives them they can receive.”

How applicable to him are these words from his essay on Marcus Aurelius! In the light of the Note Books we understand why that essay is so good, is, in fact, the very best of all in the volume published in 1865. The subject was one with which he was in full sympathy. He found in the writings of the Roman emperor “food for men engaged in the current of contemporary life and action,” and “ a source from which to draw example of life and instruction of manners.” This is just what we get from Arnold. We can learn from him (who lived in our own day), as the imperial moralist learnt from Maximus, “Cheerfulness in all circumstances as well as in illness; and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity.” And Arnold had the “emotion which lends to his voice so touching an accent;” he too yearned for something unattained by him; he too kept watch over himself that the springs of action might be right within him, and that the minute details of action might be right also. His emotion was “a spirit, not so much of gladness and elation, as of gentleness and sweetness; a delicate and tender sentiment, which is less than joy and more than resignation.”

It was the knovdedge that the human spirit cannot live aright if it lives at one point only, that gave such variety to his literary interests; but in all that he has written there is a unity, an equality, a continuity, resulting in a harmonious and lasting impression; while for a moral teacher there is an absence of emphase that is admirable. “He that hath knowledge spareth his words.” “Donner aux hommes un amour intelligent etpassionée du bien!” he quotes from Saint-Hilaire; and this intelligent and passionate love of what is good breathes all through his work. It is the spirit that inspired the Discourses in America, the Essays and the Poems. It pervades the discourse on “Numbers” with its beautiful application of Philippians iv 8 to the practice of every-day life. There is in this discourse a striking instance of his clearness of vision with regard to current events, and their inevitable tendency as shown in affairs in France:—

“The French have always had a leaning to the goddess of whom we speak [Aselgeia], and have been willing enough to let the world know of their leaning, to pride themselves on their Gaulish salt, their gallantry, and so on. But things have come to their present head gradually. Catholicism was an obstacle; the serious element in the nation was another obstacle. But now just see the course which things have taken, and how they all, one may say, have worked together for this goddess. . . . Let us say that, by her present popular literature, France gives proof that she is suffering from a dangerous and perhaps fatal disease; and that it is not clericalism which is the real enemy to the French so much as their goddess; and if they can none of them see this themselves, it is only a sign of how far the disease has gone, and the case is so much the worse. The case is so much the worse; and for men in such case to be so vehemently busy about clerical and dynastic intrigues at home, and about alliances and colonial acquisitions and purifications of the flag abroad, might well make one borrow of the prophets and exclaim, ‘Surely ye are perverse!’ perverse to neglect your really pressing matters for those secondary ones. . . . And the present popular literature of France is a sign that she has a most dangerous moral disease.”

“Literature and Science,” the second of the Discourses, is eloquent with its plea for the humanities; for the acquisition of knowledge that can be brought into intimate relation with our sense for conduct and our sense for beauty.

Arnold rightly held that they refine the manners, and make men mild and gentle in their conduct. “So long as human nature is what it is, their attractions will remain irresistible. As with Greek, so with letters generally: they will some day come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, but they will not lose their place. What will happen will rather be that there will be crowded into education other matters besides, far too many; there will be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion and false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they will get it back again. We shall be brought back to them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor humanist may possess his soul in patience, neither strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the partisans of physical science, and their present favour with the public, to be far greater than his own, and still have a happy faith that the nature of things works silently on behalf of the studies which lie loves, and that, while we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with the great results reached by modern science, and to give ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will always require humane letters; and so much the more, as they have the more and the greater results of science to relate to the need in man for conduct and to the need in him for beauty.”

But perhaps the best of the three Discourses is that on Emerson, wherein he penetrates to the core of the philosopher’s work, and plucks out the heart of his mystery. “We have not in Emerson a great poet, a great writer, a great philosophy-maker. His relation to us is not that of one of those personages; yet it is a relation of, I think, even superior importance. His relation to us is more like that of the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is not a great writer, a great philosophy-maker; he is the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit. . . .

“Emerson’s abiding word for us, the word by which being dead he yet speaks to us, is this: ‘That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavour to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart, which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives ? ’

“ One can scarcely overrate the importance of thus holding fast to happiness and hope. It gives to Emerson’s work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth’s poetry is, in my judgment, the most important work done in verse, in our language, during the present century, so Emerson’s Essays are, I think, the most important work done in prose.”

Besides the searching criticism of Emerson, this discourse is remarkable for the insight disclosed in resting Carlyle’s chance of immortality, not upon the history and the other works which cost him such travail, but upon his letters, his correspondence with Emerson especially. And then there is the beautiful passage about Newman, which falls on the ear like music: —

“Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible season of youth hears such voices! they are a possession to him for ever. No such voices as those which we heard in our youth at Oxford are sounding there now. Oxford has more criticism now, more knowledge, more light; but such voices as those of our youth it has no longer. The name of Cardinal Newman is a great name to the imagination still; his genius and his style are still things of power. But he is over eighty years old; he is in the Oratory at Birmingham; he has adopted, for the doubts and difficulties which beset men’s minds to-day, a solution which, to speak frankly, is impossible. Forty years ago he was in the very prime of life; he was close at hand to us at Oxford; he was preaching in St. Mary’s pulpit every Sunday; he seemed about to transform and to renew what was for us the most national and natural institution in the world, the Church of England. Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary’s, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music, — subtle, sweet, mournful ? I seem to hear him still.”

In deciding that he would elect to be represented in prose by these Discourses, I cannot but think that he was right. They display his prescience in a remarkable degree; and they have that quality of style which, in criticising Emerson, he declared marks the great writer, the born man of letters. “It resides in the whole tissue of his work, and of his work regarded as a composition for literary purposes. Brilliant and powerful passages in a man’s writings do not prove his possession of it; it lies in their whole tissue.”

That is what gives their great charm, likewise, to the Essays in Criticism, of which there is no need to speak. Who is not familiar with them ? do we not return to them again and again to enjoy their perennial freshness ? Many of the truths for recognition of which he pleaded have since become commonplaces; proof, if it were needed, that his principles are sure guidance to what is sound and true, and that he w’as one of the greatest intellectual forces of his century. The Discourses, the Essays, and the Poems worthily represent him; they are des choses qui durent; the rest we may give up to “envious Time.” That, as he has said himself, is the safer course. “Time has no indulgence; any veils of illusion which we may have left around an object because we loved it, Time is sure to strip away.” His other writings are not, of course, without their interest and value; but they are lacking in the qualities of universality, the qualities that make for permanence. The mystery of life pressed upon him as it did upon Ruskin, but it could not crush the buoyancy of his nature. “One can scarcely overrate the importance,” he says, “of holding fast to happiness and hope.”

The emotion with which his poetical voice is often touched must save him from the charge of coldness, a charge which, we know, has been preferred against his poetry. The fire of passion does not burn in it, it is true; but it is animated with the warmth of his serene and generous nature, so vividly reflected in the Note Books.

“We none of us,” as Ruskin says, “need many books;” but as an aid to the better understanding of Arnold’s work and teaching, his aims and motives, it would be difficult to overestimate the usefulness of this collection from the best that has been thought and said by saints and sages. It is like the voice of Matthew Arnold himself: defunctus adhuc loquitur.