The jungle lord, the kingly tiger, prowling, For fierce thirst howling, orbs a-stare and red, Sees without heed the elephants pass by him, Lolls his lank tongue, and hangs his bloody head, Nor heed the elephants that tiger, plucking With restless snout rooting the dark morasses, The frog, for misery of his pool departing — 'Neath that flame-darting ball-and waters drained Down to their mud, crawls croaking forth, to cower Under the black-snake's coils, where there is gained A little shade; and, strained To patience by such heat, scorching the jewel That worm, whose tongue, as the blast burns along, Strikes not his strange friend dead! The pool, with tender-growing cups of lotus With foam-strings roping from his jowls, and dropping Questing a water channel. Bare and scrannel Choking the wells. Far o'er the hills and dells Wanders th' affrighted eye, beholding blasted Wilted; its waters waned; its grace exhausted; Then leaps to view-blood-red and bright of hue- Of lurid death! The conflagration, driven The forest folk! Dreadful that flame to see New spoils! In herds, elephants, jackals, pards, Which flows between fair isles: in company BUT Thee, my Best Beloved! may "Suchi" visit fair head Its silvery veil! So Nights and Days of Summer pass for thee Amid the pleasure-palaces, with love and melody! 844 MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888) BY GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY ATTHEW ARNOLD, an English poet and critic, was born December 24th, 1822, at Laleham, in the Thames valley. M He was the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, best remembered as the master of Rugby in later years, and distinguished also as a histo rian of Rome. His mother was, by her maiden name, Mary Penrose, į and long survived her husband. Arnold passed his school days at . Winchester and Rugby, and went to Oxford in October, 1841. There, as also at school, he won scholarship and prize, and showed poetical talent. He was elected a fellow of Oriel in March, 1845. He taught: for a short time at Rugby, but in 1847 became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, who in 1851 appointed him school inspector. From that time he was engaged mainly in educational labors, as inspector and commissioner, and traveled frequently on the Continent examining foreign methods. He was also interested controversially in political and religious questions of the day, and altogether had a sufficient public life outside of literature. In 1851 he married Frances Lucy, daughter of Sir William Wightman, a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench, and by her had five children, three sons and two daughters. His first volume of verse, 'The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems,' bears the date 1849; the second, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems, 1852; the third, 'Poems,' made up mainly from the two former, was published in 1853, and thereafter he added little to his poetic work. His first volume of similar significance in prose was 'Essays in Criticism,' issued in 1865. Throughout his mature life he was a constant writer, and his collected works of all kinds now fill eleven volumes, exclusive of his letters. In 1857 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and there began his career as a lecturer; and this method of public expression he employed often. life was thus one with many diverse activities, and filled with practical or literary affairs; and on no side was it deficient in, human relations. He won respect and reputation while he lived; and his works continue to attract men's minds, although with much unevenness. He died at Liverpool, on April 15th, 1888. That considerable portion of Arnold's writings which was concerned with education and politics, or with phases of theological thought and religious tendency, however valuable in contemporary discussion, and to men and movements of the third quarter of the century, must be set on one side. It is not because of anything there contained that he has become a permanent figure of his time, or is of interest in literature. He achieved distinction as a critic and as a poet; but although he was earlier in the field as a poet, he was recognized by the public at large first as a critic. The union of the two functions is not unusual in the history of literature; but where success has been attained in both, the critic has commonly sprung from the poet in the man, and his range and quality have been limited thereby. It was so with Dryden and Wordsworth, and, less obviously, with Landor and Lowell. In Arnold's case there is no such growth: the two modes of writing, prose and verse, were disconnected. One could read his essays without suspecting a poet, and his poems without discerning a critic, except so far as one finds the moralist there. In fact, Arnold's critical faculty belonged rather to the practical side of his life, and was a part of his talents as a public man. This appears by the very definitions that he gave, and by the turn of his phrase, which always keeps an audience rather than a meditative reader in view. "What is the function of criticism at the ! present time?" he asks, and answers «A disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." That is a wide warrant. The writer who exercises his critical function under it, however, is plainly a reformer at heart, and labors for the social welfare. He is not an analyst of the form of art for its own sake, or a contemplator of its substance of wisdom or beauty merely. He is not limited to literature or the other arts of expression, but the world - the intellectual world -is all before him where to choose; and having learned the best that is known and thought, his second and manifestly not inferior duty is to go into all nations, a messenger of the propaganda of intelligence. It is a great mission, and nobly characterized; but if criticism be so defined, it is ticism of a large mold. The scope of the word conspicuously appears also in the phrase, which became proverbial, declaring that literature is "a criticism of life." In such an employment of terms, ordinary meanings evaporate; and it becomes necessary to know the thought of the author rather than the usage of men. Without granting the dictum, therefore, which would be far from the purpose, is it not clear that by "critic" and "criticism" Arnold intended to designate, or at least to convey, something peculiar to his own conception, not strictly related to literature at all, it may be, but more closely tied to society in its general mental activity? In other words, Arnold was a critic of civilization more than of books, and aimed at illumination by means of ideas. With this goes his manner, that habitual air of telling you something which you did not know before, and doing it for your good, which stamps him as a preacher born. Under the mask of the critic is the long English face of the gospeler; that type whose persistent physiognomy was never absent from the conventicle of English thought. This evangelizing prepossession of Arnold's mind must be recog nized in order to understand alike his attitude of superiority, his stiffly didactic method, and his success in attracting converts in whom the seed proved barren. The first impression that his entire work makes is one of limitation; so strict is this limitation, and iti profits him so much, that it seems the element in which he had his being. On a close survey, the fewness of his ideas is most surprising, though the fact is somewhat cloaked by the lucidity of his thought, its logical vigor, and the manner of its presentation. He takes a text, either some formula of his own or some adopted phrase that he has made his own, and from that he starts out only to return to it again and again with ceaseless iteration. In his illus trations, for example, when he has pilloried some poor gentleman, otherwise unknown, for the astounded and amused contemplation of the Anglican monocle, he cannot let him alone. So too when, with the journalist's nack for nicknames, he divides all England into three parts, he cannot forget the rhetorical exploit. He never lets the points he has made fall into oblivion; and hence his work in general, as a critic, is skeletonized to the memory in watchwords, formulas, and nicknames, which, taken altogether, make up only a small number of ideas. His scale, likewise, is meagre. His essay is apt to be a book review or a plea merely; it is without that free illusiveness and undeveloped suggestion which indicate a full mind and give to such brief pieces of writing the sense of overflow. He takes no large subject as a whole, but either a small one or else some phases of the larger one; and he exhausts all that he touche seems to have no more to say. It is probable that his acquaintance with literature was incommensurate with his reputation or apparent scope as a writer. As he has fewer ideas than any other author of his time of the same rank, so he discloses less knowledge of his own or foreign literatures. His occupations forbade wide acquisition; he husbanded his time, and economized also by giving the best direction to his private studies, and he accomplished much; but he could not master the field as any man whose profession was literature might easily do. Consequently, in comparison with Coleridge or Lowell, his critical work seems dry and bare, with neither the fluency nor the richness of a master. |