Matthew Arnold MASTERS OF WORLD LITERATURE PUBLISHED: GEORGE ELIOT by Walter Allen COLERIDGE by Walter Jackson Bate MATTHEW ARNOLD by Douglas Bush JOHN KEATS by Douglas Bush JOHN MILTON by Douglas Bush JONATHAN SWIFT by Nigel Dennis DANTE by Francis Fergusson STENDHAL by Wallace Fowlie THOMAS HARDY by Irving Howe HONORE DE BALZAC by E. ]. Oliver GOLDSMITH by Ricardo Quintana IN PREPARATION: PROUST by William Barrett FLAUBERT by Jacques Barzun T.S. ELIOT by Bernard Bergonzi SAMUEL JOHNSON by ]ames L. Clifford ffiSEN by Harold Clurman EUGENE o'NEILL l:iy Harold Clurman EMILY DICKINSON by ]. V. Cunningham YEATS by F. W. Dupee JOYCE by LeonEdel CONRAD by Elizabeth Hardwick EMERSON by Alfred Kazin SHAKESPEARE by Frank Kermode JANE AUSTEN by Louis Kronenberger POE by Dwight Macdonald VIRGINIA WOOLF by Howard Moss FIELDING by Midge Podhoretz HENRY JAMES by Richard Poirier TOLSTOY by Philip Rahv TENNYSON by Christopher Ricks MELVILLE by Harold Rosenberg BEN JONSON by Raymond Rosenthal WORDSWORTH by Lionel Trilling MASTERS OF WORLD LITERATURE SERIES LOUIS KRONENBERGER, GENERAL EDITOR Matthew Arnold cA Survey of His Poetry and Prose DOUGLAS BUSH PALGRAVE MACMILLAN ©The Macmillan Company 1971 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1971 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published in the United States of America 1971 First published in the United Kingdom 1971 Published 1971 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New Y ark Toronto Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras Library of Congress catalog card no. 72-144817 SBN 333 13392 7 ISBN 978-1-349-01436-1 ISBN 978-1-349-01434-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01434-7 To Hazel Contents PREFACE ix ABBREVIATIONS xi INTRODUCTION xiii I Life 1 II Poetry 20 1. Arnold's Early Critical Theories 20 2. Themes and Ideas 31 POETRY AND THE POET 34 38 THE LOSS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH NATURE 42 46 FEELING AND REASON: YOUTH AND AGE POEMS OF AFFIRMATION 66 3· Poetic Craftsmanship 72 III Literary Criticism 85 IV Education, Society, and Politics 134 v Religion 169 187 CONCLUSION 189 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 19.'3 INDEX Preface A SHORT SURVEY of Arnold's writings in several areas is necessarily limited to some main lines and attitudes and must forgo the am plitude of exposition that he deserves-and has had in larger general and special studies. Also, in such a book, it seems best to avoid spacious generalities about his variegated and complex world, to stick closely to his own utterances, and to try, so far as one can, to see him as in himself he really is. During recent decades Arnold's poetry and prose have re ceived a large and rapidly increasing amount of enlightened and enlightening criticism, from which of course this book has prof ited. Some books are listed at the end and some books and arti cles are recorded in footnotes; many other substantial things could not be mentioned, since in a sketch of this kind a river of text (to use Arnold's favorite poetic image) must not pursue a sluggish course through "a blacker, incessanter line" of notes. One primary debt is owed to Kenneth Allott's edition of the poems and R. H. Super's edition, not yet completed, of the prose works. (If, by the way, some readers are annoyed by the references given f01 quotations, others may not be; one can spend hours hunting f0r a desired item and its context.) I am obliged, for permission to quote, to the following pub lishers and authors: The Columbia University Press and Lionel Trilling for quotations from his Matthew Arnold; Frederick Crews, The New York Review of Books, and Winthrop Publishers, Inc., for quotations from "Anaesthetic Criticism: II" ix X PREFACE (New York Review of Books, March 12, 1970; repr. in Psychoanalysis & Literary Process, Winthrop Publishers, 1970}; Faber and Faber Ltd. and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. for quotations from T. S. Eliot's Selected Essays; The Harvard University Press for quotations from T. S. Eliot's The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism and from Essays, Letters, and Reviews by Matthew Arnold, Collected and Edited by Fraser Neiman; Longmans, Green & Company for the use of The Poems of Matthew Arnold, ed. Kenneth Allott; The University of Michigan Press for the use of The Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super; The Oxford University Press and the Clarendon Press for quota tions from The Letters of Matthew Arnold to Arthur Hugh Clough, ed. H. F. Lowry, and The Correspondence of Arthur Hugh Clough, ed. F. L. Mulhauser; St. John's College, Oxford, and the Hogarth Press for an extract from Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies, translated and edited by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender; The Viking Press for quotations from Lionel Trilling's Beyond Cul ture; The Yale University Press for quotations from Unpublished Letters of Matthew Arnold, ed. Arnold Whitridge, and Rene Wellek's History of Modern Criticism, vol. IV. Finally, I may once again return thanks to Louis Kronenberger, most amiable and encouraging of general editors. D.B. Abbreviations Allott =The Poems of Matthew Arnold, ed. Kenneth Allott. London: Longmans, Green; New York: Bames & Noble, 1965. Culler = A. Dwight Culler, Imaginative Reason: The Poetry of Mat thew Arnold. New Haven E.nd London: Yale University Press, 1966. Lowry= The Letters of Matthew Arnold to Arthur Hugh Clough, ed. Howard F. Lowry. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1932. Neiman = Essays, Letters, and Reviews by Matthew Arnold, Col lected and Edited by Fraser Neiman. Cambridge, Mass.: Har vard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1960. Russell= Letters of Matthew Arnold 1848-1888, Collected and Ar ranged by George W. E. Russell. z v. New York and London: Macmillan, 1895. This collection was issued in editions with dif ferent pagination. Super= The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super, in progress. Vols. 1-6, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 196o-68. Whitridge = Unpublished Letters of Matthew Arnold, ed. Amold Whitridge. New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1923. xi