MATTHEW ARNOLD is not merely a critic of letters : he is a critic of life also. He identifies the literature of a period with the life of that period, and equally his criticism of literature proceeds upon the same And there is this that

lines as his criticism of life.

is remarkable in his position. He is a critic in an epoch of criticism, a reformer in an age of reform— a critic of the critics and a reformer of the reformers. The very titles of his works have a challenging ring: God and the Bible, Literature and Dogma, Culture and Anarchy. The man who assumes this attitude is obliged to emphasize and exaggerate the points on which he conceives that he differs from his contemporaries. And for this purpose Matthew Arnold brings all life to the test of the ideal. Nothing will satisfy him short of perfection. Even where he admits that the ideal cannot be attained, he insists upon the necessity of keeping it in view, for future improvement depends upon the recognition of present

imperfection. Perfection,' he says,' 'can never be reached without seeing things as they really are.' Neither politicians, nor theologians, nor even the poets could do this, he thought; and, therefore, he suggested a remedy, a means of 'seeing things as they really are.' The whole scope of his essay Culture and Anarchy 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 matters which most concern us, the best that 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.'

2

What Matthew Arnold here calls 'culture' is something which is more properly indicated by the term 'criticism.' He speaks of this remedy as a 'pursuit' and a 'getting to know,' implying a certain progress and activity which is alien to the idea of culture. For culture is rather the mental condition which results from the possession of knowledge, whereas what Arnold recommends is plainly the acquisition of this mental condition by distinguishing truth from falsehood—that is, by criticism. In other words, he here states as a process what is in reality the result of that process. And subsequently we find that he himself identifies 'culture' with 'criti

1 Culture and Anarchy. Pref. p. xxxiv.

2 Ib. p. viii.

cism.' The business of criticism, he writes' in his essay on the Function of Criticism at the Present Time, 'is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas.' And the essential quality of criticism is disinterestedness.' 'Its business,' he continues, 'is to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence given to them.'

Now, in this identification of culture with criticism we have an example of what is a characteristic of his thought, as it was of Addison's thought. I mean the gradual advance in the direction of definiteness shown by his later, as compared with his earlier writings. This will, I hope, become apparent, even in the necessarily limited account of the one aspect of that thought-literary criticism-which is here offered to the reader.

Matthew Arnold finds a starting-point for his criticism in his knowledge of the literature of ancient Greece. But in so doing he has more than one advantage over Addison. Apart from a more accurate knowledge of the Greek language and of Greek authors, he takes the literature first and the theory, as given in the Poetics, afterwards. And he subsequently finds another starting-point in his knowledge

1
1 Essays in Criticism, I. p. 18.

of continental literature. In this In this way he approaches the study of English literature from two separate points of view, and finally he acquires that independence, that detachment from local and historical interests, which is the crowning merit of a critic; for comparison is the life-blood of criticism. But, as I said, he starts from a knowledge of Greek literature. The difference between Greek and modern poetry he finds to be a difference of construction.

'The radical difference between their poetical theory and ours consists, as it appears to me, in this that, with them, the poetical character of an action in itself and the conduct of it was the first consideration; with us attention is fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action. They regarded the whole; we regard the parts.'

The deficiency of construction, which he finds characteristic of contemporary poetry, he attributes to the absorption of the age in scientific pursuits. For discovery produces an analytic tendency of mind; whereas the tendency of mind which is helpful to the artist is synthetic.

'The grand work of literary genius is a work of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most effective and attractive combinations-making beautiful works with them, in short.'"

1 Irish Essays. Pref. to Poems, p. 288.

2 Essays in Criticism, I. p. 5.

And, therefore, the present age was, in his opinion, one in which any great manifestation of creative genius was not to be expected.

Poets are told that it is an era of progress, an age commissioned to carry out the great ideas of industrial development and social amelioration. They reply that with all this they can do nothing; that the elements they need for the exercise of their art are great actions calculated powerfully and delightfully to affect what is permanent in the human soul; that so far as the present age can supply such actions they will gladly make use of them; but that an age wanting in moral grandeur can with difficulty supply such, and an age of spiritual discomfort with difficulty be powerfully and delightfully affected by them.'1

Afterwards, however, he suggests a further difference between Greek and modern poetry, which is to the advantage not of the Greek, but of the modern poets.

'The poetry of later paganism lived by the senses and understanding; the poetry of medieval Christianity lived by the heart and imagination. But the main element of the modern spirit's life is neither the senses and understanding, nor the heart and imagination; it is the imaginative reason. And there is a century in Greek life-the century preceding the Peloponnesian War, from about the year 530 to the year 430 B.C.-in which poetry made, it seems to me, the noblest, the most successful effort she has ever made as the priestess of the imaginative reason, of the element by which the modern spirit, if it would live right, has chiefly to live. Of this effort, of which the four great names are Simonides, 1 Irish Essays, p. 302.