Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold

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Arnold Matthew. Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

~BIBLIOGRAPHY~

~SELECTIONS FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD~

I. THEORIES OF LITERATURE AND CRITICISM

POETRY AND THE CLASSICS2

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME22

THE STUDY OF POETRY63

LITERATURE AND SCIENCE118

II. LITERARY CRITICISM

HEINRICH HEINE137

MARCUS AURELIUS185

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CELTS TO ENGLISH LITERATURE255

GEORGE SAND298

WORDSWORTH349

III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT392

HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM433

EQUALITY462

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"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

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"I look around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not property safe? Is not every man able to say what he likes? Can you not walk from one end of England to the other in perfect security? I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, there is anything like it? Nothing. I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last."

Now obviously there is a peril for poor human nature in words and thoughts of such exuberant self-satisfaction, until we find ourselves safe in the streets of the Celestial City.

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