singular because they know these truths, and arrogant because they declare them!" 1 In political discussion as in all other forms of criticism Arnold aimed at disinterestedness. "I am a Liberal," he says in the Introduction to Culture and Anarchy, "yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and selfrenouncement." In the last condition he believed that his particular strength lay. "I do not wish to see men of culture entrusted with power." In his coolness and freedom from bitterness is to be found his chief superiority to his more violent contemporaries. This saved him from magnifying the faults inseparable from the social movements of his day. In contrast with Carlyle he retains to the end a sympathy with the advance of democracy and a belief in the principles of liberty and equality, while not blinded to the weaknesses of Liberalism. Political discussion in the hands of its express partisans is always likely to become violent and one-sided. This violence and one-sidedness Arnold believes it the work of criticism to temper, or as he expresses it, in Culture and Anarchy," Culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism, its fierceness and its addiction to an abstract system." VII Conclusion "Un Milton jeune et voyageant" was George Sand's description of the young Arnold. The eager pursuit of high aims, implied in this description, he carried from youth into manhood and age. The innocence, the hopefulness, and the noble curiosity of youth he retained to the end. But these became tempered with the ripe wisdom of maturity, a wisdom needed for the helpful interpretation of a perplexing period. His prose writings. are surpassed, in that spontaneous and unaccountable inspiration which we call genius, by those of certain of his contemporaries, but when we become exhausted by the perversities of ill-controlled passion and find ourselves unable to breathe the rarified air of transcendentalism, we may turn to him for the clarifying and strengthening effect of calm intelligence and pure spirituality. 1 From Dr. Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, Macmillan's Magazine, February, 1863, vol. 7, p. 336, BIBLIOGRAPHY ARNOLD'S POEMS. 1849. The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems. 1852. Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems. 1853. Poems. 1855. Poems (Second Series). 1858. Merope. 1867. New Poems. 1869. Poems (First Collected Edition). (A few new poems were added in the later collections of 1877, 1881, 1885, and 1890.) ARNOLD'S PROSE. 1859. England and the Italian Question. 1861. Popular Education in France. 1861. On Translating Homer. 1862. Last Words on Translating Homer. 1864. A French Eton. 1865. Essays in Criticism. 1867. On the Study of Celtic Literature. 1868. Schools and Universities on the Continent. 1869. Culture and Anarchy. 1870. St. Paul and Protestantism. 1871. Friendship's Garland. 1873. Literature and Dogma. 1875. God and the Bible. 1877. Last Essays on Church and Religion. 1879. Mixed Essays. 1882. Irish Essays. 1885. Discourses in America. 1888. Essays in Criticism (Second Series). 1888. Civilization in the United States. 1891. On Home Rule for Ireland. 1910. Essays in Criticism (Third Series). For a complete bibliography of Arnold's writings and of Arnold criticism, see Bibliography of Matthew Arnold, by T. B. Smart, London, 1892. The letters of Matthew Arnold, 1848–88, were edited by G. W. E. Russell in 1896. CRITICISM OF ARNOLD'S PROSE. BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE: Res Judicatæ, London, 1892. BROWNELL, W. C.: Victorian Prose Masters, New York, 1902. BURROUGHS, JOHN: Indoor Studies, Boston, 1889. DAWSON, W. H.: Matthew Arnold and his Relation to the Thought of our Time, New York, 1904. FITCH, SIR JOSHUA: Thomas and Matthew Arnold and their Influence on English Education, New York, 1897. GATES, L. E.: Selections from the Prose Writings of Matthew Arnold, New York, 1898. HARRISON, FREDERIC: Culture; A Dialogue. In The Choice of Books, London, 1886. HUTTON, R. H.: Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith, London, 1887. JACOBS, JOSEPH: Literary Studies, London, 1895. PAUL, HERBERT W.: Matthew Arnold. In English Men of Letters Series, London and New York, 1902. ROBERTSON, JOHN M.: Modern Humanists, London, 1891. RUSSELL, G. W. E.: Matthew Arnold, New York, 1904. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE: Corrected Impressions, London, 1895. Matthew Arnold, In Modern English Writers Series, London, 1899. SHAIRP, J. C.: Culture and Religion, Edinburgh, 1870. SPEDDING, JAMES: Reviews and Discussions, London, 1879. STEPHEN, SIR LESLIE: Studies of a Biographer, vol. 2, London, 1898. WOODBERRY, GEORGE E.: Makers of Literature, London, 1900. SELECTIONS FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD I. THEORIES OF LITERATURE AND CRITICISM POETRY AND THE CLASSICS1 IN two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time. I have, in the present collection, omitted the poem from which the volume published in 1852 took its title. I have done so, not because the subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musæus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there are entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient at least to indicate. What those who |