MATTHEW ARNOLD.

The praise which Lord Coleridge, just as he was leaving the United States, bestowed upon Matthew Arnold, who was just arriving, was stronger than it was truthful. "To me," said Lord Coleridge, "he seems distinctly at this moment to be the most distinguished Englishman living. As a poet, writer, and thinker, he has scarcely any equal." A very genial and kind-hearted gentleman "my lord” undoubtedly is, but not much of a critic. Among literary Englishmen there are at least three men who stand much above Matthew Arnold in acknowledged reputation and in original power. These are Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin,- three men of remarkable gifts and great genius.

It is true, however, that Matthew Arnold is a man of great influence at the present moment, and one who has rare gifts of thought and expression. His books are stimulating and fresh, his ideas are suggestive and full of insight, and his manner is vigorous and original. His visit to this country draws attention to his work and to the value of what he has said. A new and complete edition of his prose and poetry, uniform, convenient, and tasteful, just published in nine volumes by Macmillan, gives good excuse for a short sketch of his life and of his writings.

Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham, Middlesex, Dec. 24, 1822. His father had married and gone to Laleham soon after his graduation at Oxford; and his work there was the preparation of boys for the universities. There also he began his historical studies, and the sermons of his first volume were preached in that place. Matthew was the first child of his parents; and he early showed great vigor, with a decided love for sports of all kinds. In 1828, Dr. Arnold was called to the great school at Rugby, and soon earned for himself that enduring reputation as a teacher which has so distinguished his name. Matthew was but six years old when his father went to Rugby, and he seems to have remained at Laleham for some time with an uncle. Then, he went for two years to Winchester,

another school for boys. Not being contented there, he was taken home, and became a student of Rugby.

Matthew entered Baliol College, Oxford, in 1840; and he graduated in 1844. A year before his graduation, he won a prize for English verse with a poem on Cromwell, which he was not able to recite, owing to a disgraceful tumult on the part of the undergraduates. During the years that he was at Oxford, the agitation carried on by John Henry Newman was at its height, and soon after culminated by Newman's withdrawal from the Anglican Church. Among those men whose advocacy of the liberal religious ideas obtained from Germany had provoked Newman and his friends to the Anglo-Catholic movement, perhaps none was more outspoken and influential than Dr. Arnold. Matthew was therefore brought under the fullest influence of both movements, and with an effect upon his mind deeply marked in all his subsequent career.

Matthew Arnold became a fellow of Oriel College in 1845; and, in 1847, he was made the private secretary of the Marquis of Lansdowne, then the President of the Council under Lord John Russell's administration. He held this position until 1851, when he was appointed Lay Inspector of schools under the Committee of Council on Education. In the same year, he was married.

His career as an author was begun in 1849, with the publication of a small volume of poems bearing the title of The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems, "by A." The use of this initial he adopted from his father, who published some of his first pamphlets in the same way; and the book was given to the world by the same obscure London bookseller who had printed his father's booklets. That the son should write poetry seemed quite natural, for Thomas Arnold was known as "Poet Arnold" when he was a schoolboy; and, during these Winchester days, he wrote verses. It was his somewhat poetic temperament which made him a liberal in theology, and which led him to believe so strongly in the more gracious and spiritual side of religion.

With the same initial on the title-page, Matthew Arnold,

in 1852, published his Empedocles on Etna, with Other Poems. The next year, he reprinted his first two volumes, with additional poems, under the title of Poems, "by Matthew Arnold," thus acknowledging their authorship. In the preface to this volume of 1853, he enters upon a long discussion concerning poetic objects and methods, with the aim of defending his use of classic subjects. In all his early poems, the influence of Greek literature is very strongly apparent, and the subjects of the longer poems are taken from Greek history or mythology. He defends his love of the Greeks by saying that "they are the highest models of expression, the unapproached masters of the grand style," which is his first use of one of his most expressive phrases. He says in this preface that the aim of poetry is to fitly characterize great actions and to portray the universal human sentiments. To this end, he says, the poet will find "how unspeakably superior is the effect of the one moral impression left by a great action treated as a whole to the effect produced by the most striking single thought or by the happiest image."

The dominating influence of the Greek spirit appears throughout all Matthew Arnold's poetry. In this tendency to revive the past, he was influenced by the Oxford movement, not directly, but by way of reaction. The same influence may be seen in the religious attitude of his poetry as in the poetry of Clough and others among the younger poets of the period. Brought under the intensest influence of the two great movements of the time in religious thought, they were repelled from both in the direction of an intellectual scepticism. Deeply loving the leaders on both sides, and under that personal influence which made the taking of sides difficult, they were led into an attitude of doubt as to whether the truth is to be found anywhere. In this dilemma, they found escape and relief in literature.

The first volume of his Poems was reprinted in 1854, with an additional preface, and the same year a new volume appeared. In 1857, he published a one-act tragedy based on the legendary history of Merope, taking the Greek trage

dies for his model. It cannot be said the poem was much of a success in catching either the spirit or manner of the Greeks; and it is not now included in his poems. A long preface on the legendary and dramatic history of Merope, and on the dramatic method of the Greeks, is by far the best part of the little book.

In 1857, Arnold was appointed the Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford; and he held that position for eleven years. One of the published results of his holding that office are four lectures On the Translation of Homer. In 1859, he published a pamphlet on "England and the Italian Question." At about this time, he began to contribute papers on literary subjects to the reviews; and these were, in 1865, gathered together under the title of Essays in Criticism. It is one of the best of his books, and a model of fine literary insight and suggestion. In 1867 appeared his scholarly essay On the Study of Celtic Literature.

All this literary work was carried on in the midst of his professional labors, and shows the way in which he filled up his idle hours. For more than twenty years, he was connected with the work of the Council of Education, and was a most active and valuable promoter of a better system of public schools. As one of the school inspectors, he visited repeatedly nearly every county in England. His reports in this capacity have never been reprinted from the official documents, but they doubtless contain much of valuable information and suggestion. In connection with his school work, he visited the primary schools of France, Holland, and Switzerland in 1860. He made a thorough study of the methods of primary instruction in France; made himself familiar with every kind of school, and with all the results produced. Returning home, he made a report to the government, which he enlarged and revised and published in 1861, under the title of The Popular Education of France, with Notices of that of Holland and Switzerland. This is an exceedingly interesting and valuable work, full of information, and abounding with wise advice and criticism. In 1859, he visited the great school for boys at Sorèze, in

France, then under the care of Lacordaire; and, in 1864, he gave an account of it in his little book called A French Eton; or, Middle-Class Education and the State. Again, in 1865, he visited the continent in the interests of education, making a careful study of the middle-class and higher methods of instruction in France, Germany, Prussia, Switzerland, and Italy. The results of his studies were embodied in his Schools and Universities on the Continent, published in 1868. That part of this work relating to Germany was in 1874 republished as the Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, and with a new and a long preface.

These works on education in continental Europe deserve a greater recognition than they have as yet received. They are not only valuable for the facts they contain, but for the wise suggestions quite as much. Their suggestions to the English people on their own schools are marked by great courage and a wonderfully clear insight into what is likely to be most helpful toward promoting a genuine education of the people. His criticisms are bold, and yet broad in tone and spirit, rising quite out of the provincial habit of mind. These books will do much to lead those who have looked on Matthew Arnold as merely a literary worker, with a good deal of the dilettante in him and an excess of culture, to see him in a broader and a more generous light. They show him to be in sympathy with the people in their desire to make education universal, and to have a very widely based conception of the meaning of culture. Some of his most valuable writing is contained in these books, and in the long and racy prefaces with which he introduces them to the public. His services to the cause of education in England are to be regarded as of great importance, and they must be taken into full consideration in estimating the man and his work.

With the publication, in 1869, of his Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism, Matthew Arnold entered on that career of prose authorship which has given him most of his reputation as a writer. He had already abandoned the writing of poetry; and the merely