Chapter X: Front Matter (10)

ARNOLD, known as "ARNOLD OF BRESCIA" (d. 1155), one of the most ardent adversaries of the temporal power of the popes. He belonged to a family of importance, if not noble, and was born probably at Brescia, in Italy, towards the end of the 11th century. He distinguished himself in his monastic studies, and went to France about 1115. He studied theology in Paris, but there is no proof that he was a pupil of Abelard. Returning to Italy he became a canon regular. His life was rigidly austere, St Bernard calling him "homo neque manducans neque bibens." He at once directed his efforts against the corruption of the clergy, and especially against the temporal ambitions of the high dignitaries of the church. During the schism of Anacletus (1131-1137) the town of Brescia was torn by the struggles between the partisans of Pope Innocent II. and the adherents of the anti-pope, and Arnold gave effect to his abhorrence of the political episcopate by inciting the people to rise against their bishop, and, exiled by Innocent II., went to France. St Bernard accused him of sharing the doctrines of Abelard (see _Ep._ 189, 195), and procured his condemnation by the council of Sens (1140) at the same time as that of the great scholastic. This was perhaps no more than the outcome of the fierce polemical spirit of the abbot of Clairvaux, which led him to include all his adversaries under a single anathema. It seems certain that Arnold professed moral theology in Paris, and several times reprimanded St Bernard, whom he accused of pride and jealousy. St Bernard, as a last resort, begged King Louis VII. to take severe measures against Arnold, who had to leave France and take refuge at Zurich. There he soon became popular, especially with the lay nobility; but, denounced anew by St Bernard to the ecclesiastical authorities, he returned to Italy, and turned his steps towards Rome (1145). It was two years since, in 1143, the Romans had rejected the temporal power of the pope. The urban nobles had set up a republic, which, under forms ostensibly modelled on antiquity (e.g. patriciate, _senatus populusque romanus_, &c.), concealed but clumsily a purely oligarchical government. Pope Eugenius III. and his adherents had been forced after a feeble resistance to resign themselves to exile at Viterbo. Arnold, after returning to Rome, immediately began a campaign of virulent denunciation against the Roman clergy, and, in particular, against the Curia, which he stigmatized as a "house of merchandise and den of thieves." His enemies have attributed to him certain doctrinal heresies, but their accusations do not bear examination. According to Otto of Freising (_Lib. de gestis Friderici_, bk. ii. chap. xx.) the whole of his teaching, outside the preaching of penitence, was summed up in these maxims:--"Clerks who have estates, bishops who hold fiefs, monks who possess property, cannot be saved." His eloquence gained him a hearing and a numerous following, including many laymen, but consisting principally of poor ecclesiastics, who formed around him a party characterized by a rigid morality and not unlike the Lombard Patarenes of the 11th century. But his purely political action was very restricted, and not to be compared with that of a Rienzi or a Savonarola. The Roman revolution availed itself of Arnold's popularity, and of his theories, but was carried out without his aid. His name was associated with this political reform solely because his was the only vigorous personality which stood out from the mass of rebels, and because he was the principal victim of the repression that ensued. On the 15th of July 1148 Eugenius III. anathematized Arnold and his adherents; but when, a short time afterwards, the pope, through the support of the king of Naples and the king of France, succeeded in entering Rome, Arnold remained in the town unmolested, under the protection of the senate. But in 1152 the German king Conrad III., whom the papal party and the Roman republic had in vain begged to intervene, was succeeded by Frederick I. Barbarossa. Frederick, whose authoritative temper was at once offended by the independent tone of the Arnoldist party, concluded with the pope a treaty of alliance (October 16, 1152) of such a nature that the Arnoldists were at once put in a minority in the Roman government; and when the second successor of Eugenius III., the energetic and austere Adrian IV. (the Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear), placed Rome under an interdict, the senate, already rudely shaken, submitted, and Arnold was forced to fly into Campania (1155). At the request of the pope he was seized by order of the emperor Frederick, then in Italy, and delivered to the prefect of Rome, by whom he was condemned to death. In June 1155 Arnold was hanged, his body burnt, and the ashes were thrown into the Tiber. His death produced but a feeble sensation in Rome, which was already pacified, and passed almost unnoticed in Italy. The adherents of Arnold do not appear actually to have formed, either before or after his death, a heretical sect. It is probable that his adherents became merged in the communities of the Lombard Waldenses, who shared their ideas on the corruption of the clergy. Legend, poetry, drama and politics have from time to time been much occupied with the personality of Arnold of Brescia, and not seldom have distorted it, through the desire to see in him a hero of Italian independence and a modern democrat. He was before everything an ascetic, who denied to the church the right of holding property, and who occupied himself only as an accessory with the political and social consequences of his religious principles.

The bibliography of Arnold of Brescia is very vast and of very unequal
value. The following works will be found useful: W. von Giesebrecht,
_Arnold van Brescia_ (Munich, 1873); G. Gaggia, _Arnaldo da Brescia_
(Brescia, 1882); and notices by Vacandard in the _Revue des questions
historiques_ (Paris, 1884), pp. 52-114, by R. Breyer in the _Histor.
Taschenbuch_ (Leipzig, 1889), vol. viii. pp. 123-178, and by A.
Hausrath in _Neue Heidelberg. Jahrb._ (1891), Band i. pp. 72-144.
(P. A.)

ARNOLD, BENEDICT (1741-1801), American soldier, born in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 14th of January 1741. He was the great-grandson of Benedict Arnold (1615-1678), thrice colonial governor of Rhode Island between 1663 and 1678; and was the fourth in direct descent to bear the name. He received a fair education but was not studious, and his youth was marked by the same waywardness which characterized his whole career. At fifteen he ran away from home and took part in an expedition against the French, but, restless under restraint, he soon deserted and returned home. In 1762 he settled in New Haven, where he became the proprietor of a drug and book shop; and he subsequently engaged successfully in trade with the West Indies. Immediately after the battle of Lexington Arnold led the local militia company, of which he was captain, and additional volunteers to Cambridge, and on the 29th of April 1775 he proposed to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety an expedition against Crown Point and Ticonderoga. After a delay of four days the offer was accepted, and as a colonel of Massachusetts militia he was directed to enlist in the west part of Massachusetts and in the neighbouring colonies the men necessary for the undertaking. He was forestalled, however, by Ethan Allen (q.v.), acting on behalf of some members of the Connecticut Assembly. Under him, reluctantly waiving his own claim to command, Arnold served as a volunteer; and soon afterwards, Massachusetts having yielded to Connecticut, and having angered Arnold by sending a committee to make an inquiry into his conduct, he resigned and returned to Cambridge. He was then ordered to co-operate with General Richard Montgomery in the invasion of Canada, which he had been one of the first to suggest to the Continental Congress. Starting with 1100 men from Cambridge on the 17th of September 1775, he reached Gardiner, Maine, on the 20th, advanced through the Maine woods, and after suffering terrible privations and hardships, his little force, depleted by death and desertion, reached Quebec on the 13th of November. The garrison had been forewarned, and Arnold was compelled to await the coming of Montgomery from Montreal. The combined attack on the 31st of December 1775 failed; Montgomery was killed, and Arnold was severely wounded. Arnold, who had been commissioned a brigadier-general in January 1776, remained in Canada until the following June, being after April in command at Montreal.

Some time after the retreat from Canada, charges of misconduct and dishonesty, growing chiefly out of his seizure from merchants in Montreal of goods for the use of his troops, were brought against him; these charges were tardily investigated by the Board of War, which in a report made on the 23rd of May 1777, and confirmed by Congress, declared that his "character and conduct" had been "cruelly and groundlessly aspersed." Having constructed a flotilla on Lake Champlain, Arnold engaged a greatly superior British fleet near Valcour Island (October 11, 1776), and after inflicting severe loss on the enemy, made his escape under cover of night. Two days later he was overtaken by the British fleet, which however he, with only one war-vessel, and that crippled, delayed long enough to enable his other vessels to make good their escape, fighting with desperate valour and finally running his own ship aground and escaping to Crown Point. The engagement of the 11th was the first between British and American fleets. Arnold's brilliant exploits had drawn attention to him as one of the most promising of the Continental officers, and had won for him the friendship of Washington. Nevertheless, when in February 1777 Congress created five new major-generals, Arnold, although the ranking brigadier, was passed over, partly at least for sectional reasons--Connecticut had already two major-generals--in favour of his juniors. At this time it was only Washington's urgent persuasion that prevented Arnold from leaving the service. Two months later while he was at New Haven, Governor Tryon's descent on Danbury took place; and Arnold, who took command of the militia after the death of General Wooster, attacked the British with such vigour at Ridgefield (April 27, 1777) that they escaped to their ships with difficulty.

In recognition of this service Arnold was now commissioned major-general (his commission dating from 17th February) but without his former relative rank. After serving in New Jersey with Washington, he joined General Philip Schuyler in the Northern Department, and in August 1777 proceeded up the Mohawk Valley against Colonel St Leger, and raised the siege of Fort Stanwix (or Schuyler). Subsequently, after Gates had superseded Schuyler (August 19), Arnold commanded the American left wing in the first battle of Saratoga (September 19, 1777). His ill-treatment at the hands of General Gates, whose jealousy had been aroused, led to a quarrel which terminated in Arnold being relieved of command. He remained with the army, however, at the urgent request of his brother officers, and although nominally without command served brilliantly in the second battle of Saratoga (October 7, 1777), during which he was seriously wounded. For his services he was thanked by Congress, and received a new commission giving him at last his proper relative rank.

In June 1778 Washington placed him in command of Philadelphia. Here he soon came into conflict with the state authorities, jealous of any outside control. In the social life of Philadelphia, largely dominated by families of Loyalist sympathies, Arnold was the most conspicuous figure; he lived extravagantly, entertained lavishly, and in April 1779 took for his second wife, Margaret Shippen (1760-1804), the daughter of Edward Shippen (1729-1806), a moderate Loyalist, who eventually became reconciled to the new order and was in 1799-1805 chief-justice of the state. Early in February 1779 the executive council of Pennsylvania, presided over by Joseph Reed, one of his most persistent enemies, presented to Congress eight charges of misconduct against Arnold, none of which was of any great importance. Arnold at once demanded an investigation, and in March a committee of Congress made a report exonerating him; but Reed obtained a reconsideration, and in April 1779 Congress, though throwing out four charges, referred the other four to a court-martial. Despite Arnold's demand for a speedy trial, it was December before the court was convened. It was probably during this period of vexatious delay that Arnold, always sensitive and now incited by a keen sense of injustice, entered into a secret correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton with a view to joining the British service. On the 26th of January 1780 the court, before which Arnold had ably argued his own case, rendered its verdict, practically acquitting him of all intentional wrong, but, apparently in deference to the Pennsylvania authorities, directing Washington to reprimand him for two trivial and very venial offences. Arnold, who had confidently expected absolute acquittal, was inflamed with a burning anger that even Washington's kindly reprimand, couched almost in words of praise, could not subdue.

It was now apparently that he first conceived the plan of betraying some important post to the British. With this in view he sought and obtained from Washington (August 1780) command of West Point, the key to the Hudson River Valley. Arnold's offers now became more explicit, and, in order to perfect the details of the plot, Clinton's adjutant-general, Major John Andre, met him near Stony Point on the night of the 21st of September. On the 23rd, while returning by land, Andre with incriminating papers was captured, and the officer to whom he was entrusted unsuspectingly sent information of his capture to Arnold, who was thus enabled to escape to the British lines. Arnold, commissioned a brigadier-general in the British army, received L6315 in compensation for his property losses, and was employed in leading an expedition into Virginia which burned Richmond, and in an attack upon New London (q.v.) in September 1781. In December 1781 he removed to London and was consulted on American affairs by the king and ministry, but could obtain no further employment in the active service. Disappointed at the failure of his plans and embittered by the neglect and scorn which he met in England, he spent the years 1787-1791 at St John, New Brunswick, once more engaging in the West India trade, but in 1791 he returned to London, and after war had broken out between Great Britain and France, was active in fitting out privateers. Gradually sinking into melancholia, worn down by depression, and suffering from a nervous disease, he died at London on the 14th of June 1801.

Arnold had three sons--Benedict, Richard and Henry--by his first wife, and four sons--Edward Shippen, James Robertson, George and William Fitch--by his second wife; five of them, and one grandson, served in the British army. Benedict (1768-1795) was an officer of the artillery and was mortally wounded in the West Indies. Edward Shippen (1780-1813) became lieutenant of the Sixth Bengal Cavalry and later paymaster at Muttra, India. James Robertson (1781-1854) entered the corps of Royal Engineers in 1798, served in the Napoleonic wars, in Egypt and in the West Indies, and rose to the rank of lieutenant-general, was an aide-de-camp to William IV., and was created a knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic order and a knight of the Crescent. George (1787-1828) was a lieutenant-colonel in the Second Bengal Cavalry at the time of his death. William Fitch (1794-1828) became a captain in the Nineteenth Royal Lancers; his son, William Trail (1826-1855) served in the Crimean War as captain of the Fourth Regiment of Foot and was killed during the siege of Sevastopol.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Jared Sparks' _Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold_
(Boston, 1835), in his "Library of American Biography," is biassed and
unfair. The best general account is Isaac Newton Arnold's _Life of
Benedict Arnold_ (Chicago, 1880), which, while offering no apologies
or defence of his treason, lays perhaps too great emphasis on his
provocations. Charles Burr Todd's _The Real Benedict Arnold_ (New
York, 1903) is a curious attempt to make Arnold's wife wholly
responsible for his defection. Francois de Barbe-Marbois's _Complot
d'Arnold et de Sir H. Clinton contre les Etats-Unis_ (Paris, 1816)
contains much interesting material, but is inaccurate. Two good
accounts of the Canadian Expedition are Justin H. Smith's _Arnold's
March from Cambridge to Quebec_ (New York, 1903), which contains a
reprint of Arnold's journal of the expedition; and John Codman's
_Arnold's Expedition to Quebec_ (New York, 1901). Arnold's _Letters on
the Expedition to Canada_ were printed in the Maine Historical
Society's _Collections_ for 1831 (repr. 1865). See also William
Abbatt, _The Crisis of the Revolution_ (New York, 1899); _The Northern
Invasion of 1780_ (Bradford Club Series, No. 6, New York, 1866); "The
Treason of Benedict Arnold" (letters of Sir Henry Clinton to Lord
George Germaine) in _Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography_,
vol. xxii. (Philadelphia, 1898); and _Proceedings of a General Court
Martial for the Trial of Major-General Arnold_ (Philadelphia, 1780;
reprinted with introduction and notes, New York, 1865).

ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN (1832-1904), British poet and journalist, was born on the 10th of June 1832, and was educated at the King's school, Rochester; King's College, London; and University College, Oxford, where in 1852 he gained the Newdigate prize for a poem on Belshazzar's feast. On leaving Oxford he became a schoolmaster, and went to India as principal of the government Sanskrit College at Poona, a post which he held during the mutiny of 1857, when he was able to render services for which he was publicly thanked by Lord Elphinstone in the Bombay council. Returning to England in 1861 he worked as a journalist on the staff of the _Daily Telegraph_, a newspaper with which he continued to be associated for more than forty years. It was he who, on behalf of the proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_ in conjunction with the _New York Herald_, arranged for the journey of H.M. Stanley to Africa to discover the course of the Congo, and Stanley named after him a mountain to the north-east of Albert Edward Nyanza. Arnold must also be credited with the first idea of a great trunk line traversing the entire African continent, for in 1874 he first employed the phrase "a Cape to Cairo railway" subsequently popularized by Cecil Rhodes. It was, however, as a poet that he was best known to his contemporaries. _The Light of Asia_ appeared in 1879 and won an immediate success, going through numerous editions both in England and America. It is an Indian epic, dealing with the life and teaching of Buddha, which are expounded with much wealth of local colour and not a little felicity of versification. The poem contains many lines of unquestionable beauty; and its immediate popularity was rather increased than diminished by the twofold criticism to which it was subjected. On the one hand it was held by Oriental scholars to give a false impression of Buddhist doctrine; while, on the other, the suggested analogy between Sakyamuni and Christ offended the taste of some devout Christians. The latter criticism probably suggested to Arnold the idea of attempting a second narrative poem of which the central figure should be the founder of Christianity, as the founder of Buddhism had been that of the first. But though _The Light of the World_ (1891), in which this idea took shape, had considerable poetic merit, it lacked the novelty of theme and setting which had given the earlier poem much of its attractiveness; and it failed to repeat the success attained by _The Light of Asia_. Arnold's other principal volumes of poetry were _Indian Song of Songs_ (1875), _Pearls of the Faith_ (1883), _The Song Celestial_ (1885), _With Sadi in the Garden_ (1888), _Potiphar's Wife_ (1892) and _Adzuma_ (1893). In his later years Arnold resided for some time in Japan, and his third wife was a Japanese lady. In _Seas and Lands_ (1891) and _Japonica_ (1892) he gives an interesting study of Japanese life. He received the order of C.S.I. on the occasion of the proclamation of Queen Victoria as empress of India in 1877, and in 1888 was created K.C.I.E. He also possessed decorations conferred by the rulers of Japan, Persia, Turkey and Siam. Sir Edwin Arnold died on the 24th of March 1904.

ARNOLD, GOTTFRIED (1666-1714), German Protestant divine, was born at Annaberg, in Saxony, where his father was a schoolmaster. In 1682 he went to the Gymnasium at Gera, and three years later to the university of Wittenberg. Here he made a special study of theology and history, and afterwards, through the influence of P.J. Spener, "the father of pietism," he became tutor in Quedlinburg. His first work, _Die Erste Liebe zu Christo_, to which in modern times attention was again directed by Leo Tolstoy, appeared in 1696. It went through five editions before 1728, and gained the author much reputation. In the year after its publication he was invited to Giessen as professor of church history. The life and work here, however, proved so distasteful to him that he resigned in 1698, and returned to Quedlinburg. In 1699 he began to publish his largest work, described by Tolstoy (_The Kingdom of God is within You_, chap, iii.) as "remarkable, although little known," _Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie_, in which he has been thought by some to show more impartiality towards heresy than towards the Church (cp. Otto Pfleiderer, _Development of Theology_, p. 277). His next work, _Geheimniss der gottlichen Sophia_, published in 1700, seemed to indicate that he had developed a form of mysticism. Soon afterwards, however, his acceptance of a pastorate marked a change, and he produced a number of noteworthy works on practical theology. He was also known as the author of sacred poems. Gottfried Arnold has rightly been classed with the pietistic section of Protestant historians (_Bibliotheca Sacra_, 1850).

See Calwer-Zeller, _Theologisches Handworterbuch_, and the account of
him in Albert Knapp's new edition of _Die erste Liebe zu Christo_
(1845).

ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822-1888), English poet, literary critic and inspector of schools, was born at Laleham, near Staines, on the 24th of December 1822. When it is said that he was the son of the famous Dr Arnold of Rugby, and that Winchester, Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford, contributed their best towards his education, it seems superfluous to add that, in estimating Matthew Arnold and his work, training no less than original endowment has to be considered. A full academic training has its disadvantages as well as its gains. In the individual no less than in the species the history of man's development is the history of the struggle between the impulse to express original personal force and the impulse to make that force bow to the authority of custom. Where in any individual the first of these impulses is stronger than usual, a complete academic training is a gain; but where the second of these impulses is the dominant one, the effect of the academic habit upon the mind at its most sensitive and most plastic period is apt to be crippling. In regard to Matthew Arnold, it would be a bold critic of his life and his writings who should attempt to say what his work would have been if his training had been different. In his judgments on Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Hugo, it may be seen how strong was his impulse to bow to authority. On the other hand, in Arnold's ingenious reasoning away the conception of Providence to "a stream of tendency not ourselves which makes for righteousness," we see how strong was his natural impulse for taking original views. The fact that the very air Arnold breathed during the whole of the impressionable period of his life was academic is therefore a very important fact to bear in mind.

In one of his own most charming critical essays he contrasts the poetry of Homer, which consists of "natural thoughts in natural words," with the poetry of Tennyson, which consists of "distilled thoughts in distilled words." "Distilled" is one of the happiest words to be found in poetical criticism, and may be used with equal aptitude in the criticism of life. To most people the waters of life come with all their natural qualities--sweet or bitter--undistilled. Only the ordinary conditions of civilization, common to all, flavoured the waters of life to Shakespeare, to Cervantes, to Burns, to Scott, to Dumas, and those other great creators whose minds were mirrors--broad and clear--for reflecting the rich drama of life around them. To Arnold the waters of life came distilled so carefully that the wonder is that he had any originality left. A member of the upper stratum of that "middle class" which he despised, or pretended to despise--the eldest son of one of the most accomplished as well as one of the most noble-tempered men of his time--Arnold from the moment of his birth drank the finest distilled waters that can be drunk even in these days. Perhaps, on the whole, the surprising thing is how little he suffered thereby. Indeed those who had formed an idea of Arnold's personality from their knowledge of his "culture," and especially those who had been delighted by the fastidious and feminine delicacy of his prose style, used to be quite bewildered when for the first time they met him at a dinner-table or in a friend's smoking-room. His prose was so self-conscious that what people expected to find in the writer was the Arnold as he was conceived by certain "young lions" of journalism whom he satirized--a somewhat over-cultured _petit-maitre_--almost, indeed, a coxcomb of letters. On the other hand, those who had been captured by his poetry expected to find a man whose sensitive organism responded nervously to every uttered word as an aeolian harp answers to the faintest breeze. What they found was a broad-shouldered, manly--almost burly--Englishman with a fine countenance, bronzed by the open air of England, wrinkled apparently by the sun, wind-worn as an English skipper's, open and frank as a fox-hunting squire's--and yet a countenance whose finely chiselled features were as high-bred and as commanding as Wellington's or Sir Charles Napier's. The voice they heard was deep-toned, fearless, rich and frank, and yet modulated to express every _nuance_ of thought, every movement of emotion and humour. In his prose essays the humour he showed was of a somewhat thin-lipped kind; in his more important poems he showed none at all. It was here, in this matter of humour, that Arnold's writings were specially misleading as to the personality of the man. Judged from his poems, it was not with a poet like the writer of "The Northern Farmer," or a poet like the writer of "Ned Bratts," that any student of poetry would have dreamed of classing him. Such a student would actually have been more likely to class him with two of his contemporaries between whom and himself there were but few points in common, the "humourless" William Morris and the "humourless" Rossetti. For, singularly enough, between him and them there was this one point of resemblance: while all three were richly endowed with humour, while all three were the very lights of the sets in which they moved, the moment they took pen in hand to write poetry they became sad. It would almost seem as if, like Rossetti, Arnold actually held that poetry was not the proper medium for humour. No wonder, then, if the absence of humour in his poetry did much to mislead the student of his work as to the real character of the man.

After a year at Winchester, Matthew Arnold entered Rugby school in 1837. He early began to write and print verses. His first publication was a Rugby prize poem, _Alaric at Rome_, in 1840. This was followed in 1843, after he had gone up to Oxford in 1840 as a scholar of Balliol, by his poem _Cromwell_, which won the Newdigate prize. In 1844 he graduated with second-class honours, and in 1845 was elected a fellow of Oriel College, where among his colleagues was A.H. Clough, his friendship with whom is commemorated in that exquisite elegy _Thyrsis_. From 1847 to 1851 he acted as private secretary to Lord Lansdowne; and in the latter year, after acting for a short time as assistant-master at Rugby, he was appointed to an inspectorship of schools, a post which he retained until two years before his death. He married, in June 1851, the daughter of Mr Justice Wightman, Meanwhile, in 1849, appeared _The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, by A_, a volume which gained a considerable esoteric reputation. In 1852 he published another volume under the same initial, _Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems_. _Empedocles_ is as undramatic a poem perhaps as was ever written in dramatic form, but studded with lyrical beauties of a very high order. In 1853 Arnold published a volume of _Poems_ under his own name. This consisted partially of poems selected from the two previous volumes. A second series of poems, which contained, however, only two new ones, was published in 1855. So great was the impression made by these in academic circles, that in 1857 Arnold was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, and he held the chair for ten years. In 1858 he published his classical tragedy, _Merope_. Nine years afterwards his _New Poems_ (1867) were published. While he held the Oxford professorship he published several series of lectures, which gave him a high place as a scholar and critic. The essays[1] _On Translating Homer: Three Lectures given at Oxford_, published in 1861, supplemented in 1862 by _On Translating Homer: Last Words_, a fourth lecture given in reply to F.W. Newman's _Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice_ (1861), and _On the Study of Celtic Literature_, published in 1867, were full of subtle and brilliant if not of profound criticism. So were the two series of _Essays in Criticism_, the first of which, consisting of articles reprinted from various reviews, appeared in 1865. The essay on "A Persian Passion Play" was added in the editions of 1875; and a second series, edited by Lord Coleridge, appeared in 1888.

Arnold's poetic activity almost ceased after he left the chair of poetry at Oxford. He was several times sent by government to make inquiries into the state of education in France, Germany, Holland and other countries; and his reports, with their thorough-going and searching criticism of continental methods, as contrasted with English methods, showed how conscientiously he had devoted some of his best energies to the work. His fame as a poet and a literary critic has somewhat overshadowed the fact that he was during thirty-five years of his life--from 1851 to 1836--employed in the Education Department as one of H.M. inspectors of schools, while his literary work was achieved in such intervals of leisure as could be spared from the public service. At the time of his appointment the government, by arrangement with the religious bodies, entrusted the inspection of schools connected with the Church of England to clergymen, and agreed also to send Roman Catholic inspectors to schools managed by members of that communion. Other schools--those of the British and Foreign Society, the Wesleyans, and undenominational schools generally--were inspected by laymen, of whom Arnold was one. There were only three or four of these officers at first, and their districts were necessarily large. It is to the experience gained in intercourse with Nonconformist school managers that we may attribute the curiously intimate knowledge of religious sects which furnished the material for some of his keen though good-humoured sarcasms. The Education Act of 1870, which simplified the administrative system, abolished denominational inspection, and thus greatly reduced the area assigned to a single inspector. Arnold took charge of the district of Westminster, and remained in that office until his resignation, taking also an occasional share in the inspection of training colleges for teachers, and in conferences at the central office. His letters, _passim_, show that some of the routine which devolved upon him was distasteful, and that he was glad to entrust to a skilled assistant much of the duty of individual examination and the making up of schedules and returns. But the influence he exerted on schools, on the department, and on the primary education of the whole country, was indirectly far greater than is generally supposed. His annual reports, of which more than twenty were collected into a volume by his friend and official chief, Sir Francis (afterwards Lord) Sandford, attracted, by reason of their freshness of style and thought, much more of public attention than is usually accorded to blue-book literature; and his high aims, and his sympathetic appreciation of the efforts and difficulties of the teachers, had a remarkable effect in raising the tone of elementary education, and in indicating the way to improvement. In particular, he insisted on the formative elements of school education, on literature and the "humanities," as distinguished from the collection of scraps of information and "useful knowledge"; and he sought to impress all the young teachers with the necessity of broader mental cultivation than was absolutely required to obtain the government certificate. In his reports also he dwelt often and forcibly on the place which the study of the Bible, not the distinctive formularies of the churches, ought to hold in English schools. He urged that besides the religious and moral purposes of Scriptural teaching, it had a literary value of its own, and was the best instrument in the hands even of the elementary teacher for uplifting the soul and refining and enlarging the thoughts of young children.

On three occasions Arnold was asked to assist the government by making special inquiries into the state of education in foreign countries. These duties were especially welcome to him, serving as they did as a relief from the monotony of school inspection at home, and as opportunities for taking a wider survey of the whole subject of education, and for expressing his views on principles and national aims as well as administrative details. In 1859, as foreign assistant commissioner, he prepared for the duke of Newcastle's commission to inquire into the subject of elementary education a report (printed 1860) which was afterwards reprinted (1861) in a volume entitled _The Popular Education of France, with Notices of that of Holland and Switzerland_. In 1865 he was again employed as assistant-commissioner by the Schools Inquiry Commission under Lord Taunton; and his report on this subject, _On Secondary Education in Foreign Countries_ (1866), was subsequently reprinted under the title _Schools and Universities on the Continent_ (1868). Twenty years later he was sent by the Education Department to make special inquiries on certain specified points, e.g. free education, the status and training of teachers, and compulsory attendance at schools. The result of this investigation appeared as a parliamentary paper, _Special Report on certain points connected with Elementary Education in Germany, Switzerland and France_, in 1886. He also contributed the chapter on "Schools" (1837-1887) to the second volume of Mr Humphry Ward's _Reign of Queen Victoria_. Part of his official writings may be studied in _Reports for Elementary Schools_ (1852-1882), edited by Sir F. Sandford in 1889.

All these reports form substantial contributions to the history and literature of education in the Victorian age. They have been quoted often, and have exercised marked influence on subsequent changes and controversies. One great purpose underlies them all. It is to bring home to the English people a conviction that education ought to be a national concern, that it should not be left entirely to local, or private, or irresponsible initiative, that the watchful jealousy so long shown by Liberals, and especially by Nonconformists, in regard to state action was a grave practical mistake, and that in an enlightened democracy, animated by a progressive spirit and noble and generous ideals, it was the part of wisdom to invoke the collective power of the state to give effect to those ideals. To this theme he constantly recurred in his essays, articles and official reports. "_Porro unum est necessarium_. One thing is needful; organize your secondary education."

In 1883 a pension of L250 was conferred on Arnold in recognition of his literary merits. In the same year he went to the United States on a lecturing tour, and again in 1886, his subjects being "Emerson" and the "Principles and Value of Numbers." The success of these lectures, though they were admirable in matter and form, was marred by the lecturer's lack of experience in delivery. It is sufficient, further, to say that _Culture and Anarchy: an Essay in Political and Social Criticism_, appeared in 1869; _St Paul and Protestantism, with an Introduction on Puritanism and the Church of England_ (1870); _Friendship's Garland: being the Conversations, Letters and Opinions of the late Arminius Baron van Thunder-ten-Tronckh_ (1871); _Literature and Dogma: an Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible_ (1873); _God and the Bible: a Review of Objections to Literature and Dogma_ (1875); _Last Essays on Church and Religion_ (1877); _Mixed Essays_ (1879); _Irish Essays and Others_ (1882); _Discourses in America_ (1885). Such essays as the first of these, embodying as they did Arnold's views of theological and polemical subjects, attracted much attention at the time of their publication, owing to the state of the intellectual atmosphere at the moment; but it is doubtful, perhaps, whether they will be greatly considered in the near future. Many severe things have been said, and will be said, concerning the inadequacy of poets like Coleridge and Wordsworth when confronting subjects of a theological or philosophical kind. Wordsworth's High Church Pantheism and Coleridge's disquisitions on the Logos seem farther removed from the speculations of to-day than do the dreams of Lucretius. But these two great writers lived before the days of modern science. Arnold, living only a few years later, came at a transition period when the winds of tyrannous knowledge had blown off the protecting roof that had covered the centuries before, but when time and much labour were needed to build another roof of new materials--a period when it was impossible for the poet to enjoy either the quietism of High Church Pantheism in which Wordsworth had basked, or the sheltering protection of German metaphysics under which Coleridge had preached--a period, nevertheless, when the wonderful revelations of science were still too raw, too cold and hard, to satisfy the yearnings of the poetic soul. Objectionable as Arnold's rationalizing criticism was to contemporary orthodoxy, and questionable as was his equipment in point of theological learning, his spirituality of outlook and ethical purpose were not to be denied. Yet it is not Arnold's views that have become current coin so much as his literary phrases--his craving for "culture" and "sweetness and light," his contempt for "the dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion," his "stream of tendency not ourselves making for righteousness," his classification of "Philistines and barbarians"--and so forth. His death at Liverpool, of heart failure on the 15th of April 1888, was sudden and quite unexpected.

Arnold was a prominent figure in that great galaxy of Victorian poets who were working simultaneously--Tennyson, Browning, Rossetti, William Morris and Swinburne--poets between whom there was at least this connecting link, that the quest of all of them was the old-fashioned poetical quest of the beautiful. Beauty was their watchword, as it had been the watchword of their immediate predecessors--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron. That this group of early 19th-century poets might be divided into two--those whose primary quest was physical beauty, and those whose primary quest was moral beauty-is no doubt true. Still, in so far as beauty was their quest they were all akin. And so with the Victorian group to which Arnold belonged. As to the position which he takes among them opinions must necessarily vary. On the whole, his place in the group will be below all the others. The question as to whether he was primarily a poet or a _prosateur_ has been often asked. If we were to try to answer that question here, we should have to examine his poetry in detail--we should have to inquire whether his primary impulse of expression was to seize upon the innate suggestive power of words, or whether his primary impulse was to rely upon the logical power of the sentence. In nobility of temper, in clearness of statement, and especially in descriptive power, he is beyond praise. But intellect, judgment, culture and study of great poets may do much towards enabling a prose-writer to write what must needs be called good poetry. What they cannot enable him to do is to produce those magical effects which poets of the rarer kind can achieve by seizing that mysterious, suggestive power of words which is far beyond all mere statement. Notwithstanding the exquisite work that Arnold has left behind him, some critics have come to the conclusion that his primary impulse in expression was that of the poetically-minded _prosateur_ rather than that of the born poet. And this has been said by some who nevertheless deeply admire poems like "The Scholar Gypsy," "Thyrsis," "The Forsaken Merman," "Dover Beach," "Heine's Grave," "Rugby Chapel," "The Grande Chartreuse," "Sohrab and Rustum," "The Sick King in Bokhara," "Tristram and Iseult," &c. It would seem that a man may show all the endowments of a poet save one, and that one the most essential--the instinctive mastery over metrical effects.

In all literary expression there are two kinds of emphasis, the emphasis of sound and the emphasis of sense. Indeed the difference between those who have and those who have not the true rhythmic instinct is that, while the former have the innate faculty of making the emphasis of sound and the emphasis of sense meet and strengthen each other, the latter are without that faculty. But so imperfect is the human mind that it can rarely apprehend or grasp simultaneously these two kinds of emphasis. While to the born _prosateur_ the emphasis of sense comes first, and refuses to be more than partially conditioned by the emphasis of sound, to the born poet the emphasis of sound comes first, and sometimes will, even as in the case of Shelley, revolt against the tyranny of the emphasis of sense. Perhaps the very origin of the old quantitative metres was the desire to make these two kinds of emphasis meet in the same syllable. In manipulating their quantitative metrical system the Greeks had facilities for bringing one kind of emphasis into harmony with the other such as are unknown to writers in accentuated metres. This accounts for the measureless superiority of Greek poetry in verbal melody as well as in general harmonic scheme to all the poetry of the modern world. In writers so diverse in many ways as Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Sappho, the harmony between the emphasis of sound and the emphasis of sense is so complete that each of these kinds of emphasis seems always begetting, yet always born of the other. When in Europe the quantitative measures were superseded by the accentuated measures a reminiscence was naturally and inevitably left behind of the old system; and the result has been, in the English language at least, that no really great line can be written in which the emphasis of accent, the emphasis of quantity and the emphasis of sense do not meet on the same syllable. Whenever this junction does not take place the weaker line, or lines, are always introduced, not for makeshift purposes, but for variety, as in the finest lines of Milton and Wordsworth. Wordsworth no doubt seems to have had a theory that the accent of certain words, such as "without," "within," &c., could be disturbed in an iambic line; but in his best work he does not act upon his theory, and endeavours most successfully to make the emphasis of accent, of quantity and of sense meet. It might not be well for a poem to contain an entire sequence of such perfect lines as

"I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,"

or

"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart,"

for then the metricist's art would declare itself too loudly and weaken the imaginative strength of the picture. But such lines should no doubt form the basis of the poem, and weaker lines--lines in which there is no such combination of the three kinds of emphasis--should be sparingly used, and never used for makeshift purposes. Now, neither by instinct nor by critical study was Arnold ever able to apprehend this law of prosody. If he does write a line of the first order, metrically speaking, he seems to do so by accident. Such weak lines as these are constantly occurring--

"The poet, to whose mighty heart
Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,
Subdues that energy to scan
Not his own course, but that of man."

Much has been said about what is called the "Greek temper" of Matthew Arnold's muse. A good deal depends upon what it meant by the Hellenic spirit. But if the Greek temper expresses itself, as is generally supposed, in the sweet acceptance and melodious utterance of the beauty of the world as it is, accepting that beauty without inquiring as to what it means and as to whither it goes, it is difficult to see where in Arnold's poetry this temper declares itself. Surely it is not in _Empedocles on Etna_, and surely it is not in _Merope_. If there is a poem of his in which one would expect to find the joyous acceptance of life apart from questionings about the civilization in which the poet finds himself environed (its hopes, its fears, its aspirations and its failures)--such questionings, in short, as were for ever Vexing Arnold's soul--it would be in "The Scholar Gypsy," a poem in which the poet tries to throw himself into the mood of a "Romany Rye." The great attraction of the gypsies to Englishmen of a certain temperament is that they alone seem to feel the joyous acceptance of life which is supposed to be specially Greek. Hence it would have been but reasonable to look, if anywhere, for the expression of Arnold's Greek temper in a poem which sets out to describe the feelings of the student who, according to Glanville's story, left Oxford to wander over England with the Romanies. But instead of this we got the old fretting about the unsatisfactoriness of modern civilization. Glanville's Oxford student, whose story is glanced at now and again in the poem, flits about in the scenery like a cloud-shadow on the grass; but the way in which Arnold contrives to avoid giving us the faintest idea either dramatic or pictorial of the student about whom he talks so much, and the gypsies with whom the student lived, is one of the most singular feats in poetry. The reflections which come to a young Oxonian lying on the grass and longing to escape life's fitful fever without shuffling off this mortal coil, are, no doubt, beautiful reflections beautifully expressed, but the temper they show is the very opposite of the Greek. To say this is not in the least to disparage Arnold. "A man is more like the age in which he lives," says the Chinese aphorism, "than he is like his own father and mother," and Arnold's polemical writings alone are sufficient to show that the waters of life he drank were from fountains distilled, seven times distilled, at the topmost slope of 19th-century civilization. Mr George Meredith's "Old Chartist" exhibits far more of the temper of acceptance than does any poem by Matthew Arnold.

His most famous critical dictum is that poetry is a "criticism of life." What he seems to have meant is that poetry is the crowning fruit of a criticism of life; that just as the poet's metrical effects are and must be the result of a thousand semiconscious generalizations upon the laws of cause and effect in metric art, so the beautiful things he says about life and the beautiful pictures he paints of life are the result of his generalizations upon life as he passes through it, and consequently that the value of his poetry consists in the beauty and the truth of his generalizations. But this is saying no more than is said in the line--

"Rien n'est beau que le vrai; le vrai seul est aimable"--

or in the still more famous lines--

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

To suppose that Arnold confounded the poet with the writer of _pensees_ would be absurd. Yet having decided that poetry consists of generalizations on human life, in reading poetry he kept on the watch for those generalizations, and at last seemed to think that the less and not the more they are hidden behind the dramatic action, and the more unmistakably they are intruded as generalizations, the better. For instance, in one of his essays he quotes those lines from the "Chanson de Roland" of Turoldus, where Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down under a pine-tree with his face turned towards Spain and the enemy, and begins to "call many things to remembrance; all the lands which his valour conquered, and pleasant France, and the men of his lineage, and Charlemagne, his liege lord, who nourished him"--

"De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist,
De tames teres cume li bers cunquist,
De dulce France, des humes de sun ligu,
De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l'nurrit."

"That," says Arnold, "is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise is sufficient for it." Then he contrasts it with a famous passage in Homer--that same passage which is quoted in the article POETRY, for the very opposite purpose to that of Arnold's, quoted indeed to show how the epic poet, leaving the dramatic action to act as chorus, weakens the [Greek: apatae] of the picture--the passage in the _Iliad_ (iii 243-244) where the poet, after Helen's pathetic mention of her brother's comments on the causes of their absence, "criticizes life" and generalizes upon the impotence of human intelligence, the impotence even of human love, to pierce the darkness in which the web of human fate is woven. He appends Dr Hawtrey's translation:--

[Greek: Os phato roys d ede katechen physizoos aia
en Lakedaimoni authi, phile en patridi gaie.]

"So said she; they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing
There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedaemon."

"We are here," says Arnold, "in another world, another order of poetry altogether; here is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitel gives to the _Chanson de Roland_. If our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior." He does not see that the two passages cannot properly be compared at all. In the one case the poet gives us a dramatic picture; in the other; a comment on a dramatic picture.

Perhaps, indeed, the place Arnold held and still holds as a critic is due more to his exquisite felicity in expressing his views than to the penetration of his criticism. Nothing can exceed the easy grace of his prose at the best. It is conversational and yet absolutely exact in the structure of the sentences; and in spite of every vagary, his distinguishing note is urbanity. Keen-edged as his satire could be, his writing for the most part is as urbane as Addison's own. His influence on contemporary criticism and contemporary ideals was considerable, and generally wholesome. His insistence on the necessity of looking at "the thing in itself," and the need for acquainting oneself with "the best that has been thought and said in the world," gave a new stimulus alike to originality and industry in criticism; and in his own selection of subjects--such as _Joubert_, or the _de Guerins_--he opened a new world to a larger class of the better sort of readers, exercising in this respect an awakening influence in his own time akin to that of Walter Pater a few years afterwards. The comparison with Pater might indeed be pressed further, and yet too far. Both were essentially products of Oxford. But Arnold, whose description of that "home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties," is in itself almost a poem, had a classical austerity in his style that savoured more intimately of Oxford tradition, and an ethical earnestness even in his most flippant moments which kept him notably aloof from the more sensuous school of aesthetics.