TO MARGUERITE, IN RETURNING A VOLUME OF THE LETTERS OF ORTIS
HUMAN LIFE
DESPONDENCY
YOUTH’S AGITATIONS
SELF-DECEPTION
LINES WRITTEN BY A DEATH-BED
I. TRISTRAM
II. ISEULT OF IRELAND
III. ISEULT OF BRITTANY
MEMORIAL VERSES
COURAGE
SELF-DEPENDENCE
A SUMMER NIGHT
THE BURIED LIFE
A FAREWELL
OBERMANN
CONSOLATION
LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS
THE WORLD’S TRIUMPHS
THE SECOND BEST
REVOLUTIONS
THE YOUTH OF NATURE
THE YOUTH OF MAN
MORALITY
PROGRESS
THE FUTURE
SOHRAB AND RUSTUM. AN EPISODE
PHILOMELA
THEKLA’S ANSWER
CHURCH OF BROU I. THE CASTLE
CHURCH OF BROU II. THE CHURCH
CHURCH OF BROU III. THE TOMB
THE NECKAN
A DREAM
REQUIESCAT
THE SCHOLAR GIPSY
STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE LATE EDWARD QUILLINAN, ESQ.
BALDER DEAD. AN EPISODE
SEPARATION
STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE
HAWORTH CHURCHYARD, APRIL, 1855
TO MARGUERITE I
TO MARGUERITE II
MEROPE
MEN OF GENIUS
SAINT BRANDAN
A SOUTHERN NIGHT
THYRSIS
A PICTURE AT NEWSTEAD
RACHEL
EAST LONDON
WEST LONDON
ANTI-DESPERATION
IMMORTALITY
WORLDLY PLACE
THE DIVINITY
THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID
AUSTERITY OF POETRY
EAST AND WEST
MONICA’S LAST PRAYER
CALAIS SANDS
DOVER BEACH
THE TERRACE AT BERNE
STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC
FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A DEJANEIRA
PALLADIUM
EARLY DEATH AND FAME
YOUTH AND CALM
GROWING OLD
THE PROGRESS OF POESY
A NAMELESS EPITAPH
THE LAST WORD
A WISH
A CAUTION TO POETS
PIS-ALLER
EPILOGUE TO LESSING’S LAOCOÖN
BACCHANALIA; OR, THE NEW AGE
RUGBY CHAPEL
HEINE’S GRAVE
OBERMANN ONCE MORE
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
A-D E-H I-L M-O P-S T-V W-Z
A CAUTION TO POETS
A DREAM
A FAREWELL
A MODERN SAPPHO
A NAMELESS EPITAPH
A PICTURE AT NEWSTEAD
A SOUTHERN NIGHT
A SUMMER NIGHT
A WISH
ABSENCE
ANTI-DESPERATION
AUSTERITY OF POETRY
BACCHANALIA; OR, THE NEW AGE
BALDER DEAD. AN EPISODE
CALAIS SANDS
CHURCH OF BROU I. THE CASTLE
CHURCH OF BROU II. THE CHURCH
CHURCH OF BROU III. THE TOMB
CONSOLATION
COURAGE
DESIRE
DESPONDENCY
DESTINY
DOVER BEACH
EARLY DEATH AND FAME
EAST AND WEST
EAST LONDON
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA
EPILOGUE TO LESSING’S LAOCOÖN
EXCUSE
FRAGMENT OF AN ‘ANTIGONE’
FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A DEJANEIRA
GROWING OLD
HAWORTH CHURCHYARD, APRIL, 1855
HEINE’S GRAVE
HUMAN LIFE
I. TRISTRAM
II. ISEULT OF IRELAND
III. ISEULT OF BRITTANY
IMMORTALITY
IN UTRUMQUE PARATUS
INDIFFERENCE
LINES WRITTEN BY A DEATH-BED
LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS
LONGING
MEMORIAL VERSES
MEN OF GENIUS
MEROPE
MONICA’S LAST PRAYER
MORALITY
MYCERINUS
OBERMANN
OBERMANN ONCE MORE
ON THE RHINE
PALLADIUM
PARTING
PHILOMELA
PIS-ALLER
PROGRESS
RACHEL
RELIGIOUS ISOLATION
REQUIESCAT
RESIGNATION
REVOLUTIONS
RUGBY CHAPEL
SAINT BRANDAN
SELF-DECEPTION
SELF-DEPENDENCE
SEPARATION
SHAKESPEARE
SOHRAB AND RUSTUM. AN EPISODE
SONNET: ONE LESSON, NATURE, LET ME LEARN OF THEE
SONNET. TO A FRIEND
STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC
STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE
STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE LATE EDWARD QUILLINAN, ESQ.
STANZAS ON A GIPSY CHILD BY THE SEA-SHORE
THE BURIED LIFE
THE DIVINITY
THE FORSAKEN MERMAN
THE FUTURE
THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID
THE HAYSWATER BOAT
THE LAKE
THE LAST WORD
THE NECKAN
THE NEW SIRENS
THE PROGRESS OF POESY
THE RIVER
THE SCHOLAR GIPSY
THE SECOND BEST
THE SICK KING IN BOKHARA
THE STRAYED REVELLER
THE TERRACE AT BERNE
THE VOICE
THE WORLD AND THE QUIETIST
THE WORLD’S TRIUMPHS
THE YOUTH OF MAN
THE YOUTH OF NATURE
THEKLA’S ANSWER
THYRSIS
TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND
TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND (CONTINUED)
TO AN INDEPENDENT PREACHER
TO FAUSTA
TO GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, ESQ.
TO MARGUERITE I
TO MARGUERITE II
TO MARGUERITE, IN RETURNING A VOLUME OF THE LETTERS OF ORTIS
TO MY FRIENDS
TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
TOO LATE
WEST LONDON
WORLDLY PLACE
WRITTEN IN BUTLER’S SERMONS
WRITTEN IN EMERSON’S ESSAYS
YOUTH AND CALM
YOUTH’S AGITATIONS
The Prose
Chester Square, Belgravia, London — Arnold lived at No. 2 from 1858 to 1868. While at this address, he wrote ‘Culture and Anarchy’, which attacked Victorian values. Three of his five children were born here, but Arnold was deeply saddened by the death of two of his sons during this time: Thomas, aged 16, and Basil, who was just two.
CULTURE AND ANARCHY
This series of periodical essays was first published in Cornhill Magazine from 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. The famous essays established his High Victorian cultural agenda, remaining dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s. In the work, he defines culture as “a study of perfection”, which “seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light”.
The whole scope of the principal essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties, explaining that culture is a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world. Arnold argues that through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, we may “follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes
up for the mischief of following them mechanically.”
Matthew Arnold by George Frederic Watts, 1880
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PREAMBLE: CULTURE AND ANARCHY
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
PREFACE
My foremost design in writing this Preface is to address a word of exhortation to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. In the essay which follows, the reader will often find Bishop Wilson quoted. To me and to the members of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge his name and writings are still, no doubt, familiar; but the world is fast going away from old-fashioned people of his sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a brilliant and distinguished votary of the natural sciences, that he had never so much as heard of Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have invented him. At a moment when the Courts of Law have just taken off the embargo from the recreative religion furnished on Sundays by my gifted acquaintance and others, and when St. Martin’s Hall and the Alhambra will soon be beginning again to resound with their pulpit-eloquence, it distresses one to think that the new lights should not only have, in general, a very low opinion of the preachers of the old religion, but that they should have it without knowing the best that these preachers can do. And that they are in this case is owing in part, certainly, to the negligence of the Christian Knowledge Society. In old times they used to print and spread abroad Bishop Wilson’s Maxims of Piety and Christianity; the copy of this work which I use is one of their publications, bearing their imprint, and bound in the well-known brown calf which they made familiar to our childhood; but the date of my copy is 1812. I know of no copy besides, and I believe the work is no longer one of those printed and circulated by the Society. Hence the error, flattering, I own, to me personally, yet in itself to be regretted, of the distinguished physicist already mentioned.
But Bishop Wilson’s Maxims deserve to be circulated as a religious book, not only by comparison with the cartloads of rubbish circulated at present under this designation, but for their own sake, and even by comparison with the other works of the same author. Over the far better known Sacra Privata they have this advantage, that they were prepared by him for his own private use, while the Sacra Privata were prepared by him for the use of the public. The Maxims were never meant to be printed, and have on that account, like a work of, doubtless, far deeper emotion and power, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, something peculiarly sincere and first-hand about them. Some of the best things from the Maxims have passed into the Sacra Privata; still, in the Maxims, we have them as they first arose; and whereas, too, in the Sacra Privata the writer speaks very often as one of the clergy, and as addressing the clergy, in the Maxims he almost always speaks solely as a man. I am not saying a word against the Sacra Privata, for which I have the highest respect; only the Maxims seem to me a better and a more edifying book still. They should be read, as Joubert says Nicole should be read, with a direct aim at practice. The reader will leave on one side things which, from the change of time and from the changed point of view which the change of time inevitably brings with it, no longer suit him; enough will remain to serve as a sample of the very best, perhaps, which our nation and race can do in the way of religious writing. Monsieur Michelet makes it a reproach to us that, in all the doubt as to the real author of the Imitation, no one has ever dreamed of ascribing that work to an Englishman. It is true, the Imitation could not well have been written by an Englishman; the religious delicacy and the profound asceticism of that admirable book are hardly in our nature. This would be more of a reproach to us if in poetry, which requires, no less than religion, a true delicacy of spiritual perception, our race had not done such great things; and if the Imitation, exquisite as it is, did not, as I have elsewhere remarked, belong to a class of works in which the perfect balance of human nature is lost, and which have therefore, as spiritual productions, in their contents something excessive and morbid, in their form something not thoroughly sound. On a lower range than the Imitation, and awakening in our nature chords less poetical and delicate, the Maxims of Bishop Wilson are, as a religious work, far more solid. To the most sincere ardour and unction, Bishop Wilson unites, in these Maxims, that downright honesty and plain good sense which our English race has so powerfully applied to the divine impossibilities of religion; by which it has brought religion so much into practical life, and has done its allotted part in promoting upon earth the kingdom of God. But with ardour and unction religion, as we all know, may still be fanatical; with honesty and good sense, it may still be prosaic; and the fruit of honesty and good sense united with ardour and unction is often only a prosaic religion held fanatically. Bishop Wilson’s excellence lies in a balance of the four qualities, and in a fulness and perfection of them, which makes this untoward result impossible; his unction is so perfect, and in such happy alliance with his good sense, that it becomes tenderness and fervent charity; his good sense is so perfect and in such happy alliance with his unction, that it becomes moderation and insight. While, therefore, the type of religion exhibited in his Maxims is English, it is yet a type of a far higher kind than is in general reached by Bishop Wilson’s countrymen; and yet, being English, it is possible and attainable for them. And so I conclude as I began, by saying that a work of this sort is one which the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge should not suffer to remain out of print or out of currency.
To pass now to the matters canvassed in the following essay. The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. This, and this alone, is the scope of the following essay. I say again here, what I have said in the pages which follow, that from the faults and weaknesses of bookmen a notion of something bookish, pedantic, and futile has got itself more or less connected with the word culture, and that it is a pity we cannot use a word more perfectly free from all shadow of reproach. And yet, futile as are many bookmen, and helpless as books and reading often prove for bringing nearer to perfection those who use them, one must, I think, be struck more and more, the longer one lives, to find how much, in our present society, 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. More and more he who examines himself will find the difference it makes to him, at the end of any given day, whether or no he has pursued his avocations throughout it without reading at all; and whether or no, having read something, he has read the newspapers only. This, however, is a matter for each man’s private conscience and experience. If a man without books or reading, or reading nothing but his letters and the newspapers, gets nevertheless a fresh and free play of the best thoughts upon his stock notions and habits, he has got culture. He has got that for which we prize and recommend culture; he has got that which at the present moment we seek culture that it may give us. This inward operation is the very life and essence of culture, as we conceive it.
Nevertheless, it is not easy so to frame one’s discourse concerning the operation of culture, as to avoid giving frequent occasion to a misunderstanding whereby the essential inwardness of the operation is lost sight of. We are supposed, when we criticise by the help of culture some imperfect doing or other, to have in our eye some well-known rival plan of doing, which we want to serve and recommend. Thus, for instance, because I have freely pointed out the dangers and inconveniences to which our literature is exposed in the absence of any centre of taste and authority like the French Ac
ademy, it is constantly said that I want to introduce here in England an institution like the French Academy. I have indeed expressly declared that I wanted no such thing; but let us notice how it is just our worship of machinery, and of external doing, which leads to this charge being brought; and how the inwardness of culture makes us seize, for watching and cure, the faults to which our want of an Academy inclines us, and yet prevents us from trusting to an arm of flesh, as the Puritans say, — from blindly flying to this outward machinery of an Academy, in order to help ourselves. For the very same culture and free inward play of thought which shows us how the Corinthian style, or the whimsies about the One Primeval Language, are generated and strengthened in the absence of an Academy, shows us, too, how little any Academy, such as we should be likely to get, would cure them. Every one who knows the characteristics of our national life, and the tendencies so fully discussed in the following pages, knows exactly what an English Academy would be like. One can see the happy family in one’s mind’s eye as distinctly as if it was already constituted. Lord Stanhope, the Bishop of Oxford, Mr. Gladstone, the Dean of Westminster, Mr. Froude, Mr. Henry Reeve, — everything which is influential, accomplished, and distinguished; and then, some fine morning, a dissatisfaction of the public mind with this brilliant and select coterie, a flight of Corinthian leading articles, and an irruption of Mr. G. A. Sala. Clearly, this is not what will do us good. The very same faults, — the want of sensitiveness of intellectual conscience, the disbelief in right reason, the dislike of authority, — which have hindered our having an Academy and have worked injuriously in our literature, would also hinder us from making our Academy, if we established it, one which would really correct them. And culture, which shows us truly the faults, shows us this also just as truly.
It is by a like sort of misunderstanding, again, that Mr. Oscar Browning, one of the assistant-masters at Eton, takes up in the Quarterly Review the cudgels for Eton, as if I had attacked Eton, because I have said, in a book about foreign schools, that a man may well prefer to teach his three or four hours a day without keeping a boarding-house; and that there are great dangers in cramming little boys of eight or ten and making them compete for an object of great value to their parents; and, again, that the manufacture and supply of school-books, in England, much needs regulation by some competent authority. Mr. Oscar Browning gives us to understand that at Eton he and others, with perfect satisfaction to themselves and the public, combine the functions of teaching and of keeping a boarding-house; that he knows excellent men (and, indeed, well he may, for a brother of his own, I am told, is one of the best of them,) engaged in preparing little boys for competitive examinations, and that the result, as tested at Eton, gives perfect satisfaction. And as to school-books he adds, finally, that Dr. William Smith, the learned and distinguished editor of the Quarterly Review, is, as we all know, the compiler of school-books meritorious and many. This is what Mr. Oscar Browning gives us to understand in the Quarterly Review, and it is impossible not to read with pleasure what he says. For what can give a finer example of that frankness and manly self- confidence which our great public schools, and none of them so much as Eton, are supposed to inspire, of that buoyant ease in holding up one’s head, speaking out what is in one’s mind, and flinging off all sheepishness and awkwardness, than to see an Eton assistant-master offering in fact himself as evidence that to combine boarding-house- keeping with teaching is a good thing, and his brother as evidence that to train and race little boys for competitive examinations is a good thing? Nay, and one sees that this frank-hearted Eton self- confidence is contagious; for has not Mr. Oscar Browning managed to fire Dr. William Smith (himself, no doubt, the modestest man alive, and never trained at Eton) with the same spirit, and made him insert in his own Review a puff, so to speak, of his own school-books, declaring that they are (as they are) meritorious and many? Nevertheless, Mr. Oscar Browning is wrong in thinking that I wished to run down Eton; and his repetition on behalf of Eton, with this idea in his head, of the strains of his heroic ancestor, Malvina’s Oscar, as they are recorded by the family poet, Ossian, is unnecessary. “The wild boar rushes over their tombs, but he does not disturb their repose. They still love the sport of their youth, and mount the wind with joy.” All I meant to say was, that there were unpleasantnesses in uniting the keeping a boarding-house with teaching, and dangers in cramming and racing little boys for competitive examinations, and charlatanism and extravagance in the manufacture and supply of our school-books. But when Mr. Oscar Browning tells us that all these have been happily got rid of in his case, and his brother’s case, and Dr. William Smith’s case, then I say that this is just what I wish, and I hope other people will follow their good example. All I seek is that such blemishes should not through any negligence, self-love, or want of due self- examination, be suffered to continue.
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