Part 11

Moreover, when he undertakes the abstract discussion of a general term, he is apt to be capricious in his treatment of it and to follow in his subdivisions and classifications some external clue rather than logical structure. In the essay on _Celtic Literature_ he discusses the various ways of handling nature in poetry, and finds four such ways--the conventional way, the faithful way, the Greek way, and the magical way. The classification recommends itself through its superficial charm and facility, yet rests on no psychological truth, or at any rate carries with it, as Arnold treats it, no psychological suggestions; it gives no swift insight into the origin in the poet’s mind and heart of these different modes of conceiving of nature. Hence the classification, as Arnold uses it, is merely a temporary makeshift for rather gracefully grouping effects, not an analytic interpretation of these effects through a reduction of them to their varying sources in thought and feeling.

This may be taken as typical of Arnold’s critical methods. As we read his essays we have little sense of making definite progress in the comprehension of literature as an art among arts, as well as in the appreciation of an individual author or poem. We are not being intellectually oriented, as in reading the most stimulating critical work; we are not getting an ever-surer sense of the points of the compass. Essays, to have this orienting power, need not be continually prating of theories and laws; they need not be rabidly scientific in phrase or in method. But they must issue from a mind that has come to an understanding with itself about the genesis of art in the genius of the artist; about the laws that, when the utmost plea has been made for freedom and caprice, regulate artistic production; about the history and evolution of art forms; and about the relations of the arts among themselves and to the other activities of life. It may fairly be doubted if Arnold had ever wrought out for himself consistent conclusions on all or most of these topics. Indeed, the mere mention of his name in connection with such a formal list of topics suggests the kind of mock-serious deprecatory paragraph with which the “unlearned bellettristic trifler” was wont to reply to charges of dilettantism--a paragraph sure to carry in its tail a stinging bit of sarcasm at the expense of pedantry and unenlightened formalism. And yet, great as must be every one’s respect for the thorough scholarship and widely varied accomplishment that Arnold made so light of and carried off so easily, the doubt must nevertheless remain whether a firmer grasp on theory, and a more consistent habit of thinking out literary questions to their principles, would not have invigorated his work as a critic and given it greater permanence and richer suggestiveness.

VI

It is, then, as an appreciator of what may perhaps be called the spiritual qualities of literature that Arnold is most distinctively a furtherer of criticism. An appreciator of beauty,--of true beauty wherever found,--that is what he would willingly be; and yet, as the matter turns out, the beauty that he most surely enjoys and reveals has invariably a spiritual aroma,--is the finer breath of intense spiritual life. Or, if spiritual be too mystical a word to apply to Homer and Goethe, perhaps Arnold should rather be termed an appreciator of such beauty in literature as carries with it an inevitable suggestion of elevation and nobleness of character in the author.

The importance of appreciation in criticism Arnold has described in one of the _Mixed Essays_: “Admiration is salutary and formative; ... but things admirable are sown wide, and are to be gathered here and gathered there, not all in one place; and until we have gathered them wherever they are to be found, we have not known the true salutariness and formativeness of admiration. The quest is large; and occupation with the unsound or half-sound, delight in the not good or less good, is a sore let and hindrance to us. Release from such occupation and delight sets us free for ranging farther, and for perfecting our sense of beauty. He is the happy man, who, encumbering himself with the love of nothing which is not beautiful, is able to embrace the greatest number of things beautiful in his life.”[55]

On this disinterested quest, then, for the beautiful, Arnold in his essays nominally fares forth. Yet certain limitations in his appreciation, over and beyond his prevalent ethical interest, must at once be noted. Music, painting, and sculpture have seemingly nothing to say to him. In his _Letters_ there are only a few allusions to any of these arts, and such as occur do not surpass in significance the comments of the chance loiterer in foreign galleries or visitor of concert rooms. In his essays there are none of the correlations between the effects and methods of literature and those of kindred arts that may do so much either to individualize or to illustrate the characteristics of poetry. For Arnold, literature and poetry seem to make up the whole range of art.

Within these limits, however,--the limits imposed by preoccupation with conduct and by carelessness of all arts except literature,--Arnold has been a prevailing revealer of beauty. Not his most hostile critic can question the delicacy of his perception, so far as he allows his perception free play. On the need of nice and ever nicer discriminations in the apprehension of the shifting values of literature, he has himself often insisted. Critics who let their likes and dislikes assert themselves turbulently, to the destruction of fine distinctions, always fall under Arnold’s condemnation. “When Mr. Palgrave dislikes a thing, he feels no pressure constraining him, either to try his dislike closely or to express it moderately; he does not mince matters, he gives his dislike all its own way.... He dislikes the architecture of the Rue Rivoli, and he puts it on the level with the architecture of Belgravia and Gower Street; he lumps them all together in one condemnation; he loses sight of the shade, the distinction which is here everything.” For a similar blurring of impressions, Professor Newman is taken to task, though in Newman’s case the faulty appreciations are due to a different cause: “Like all learned men, accustomed to desire definite rules, he draws his conclusions too absolutely; he wants to include too much under his rules; he does not quite perceive that in poetical criticism the shade, the fine distinction, is everything; and that, when he has once missed this, in all he says he is in truth but beating the air.” Here, again, what Arnold pleads for is temperamental sensitiveness, delicacy of perception. To appreciate literature more and more sensitively in terms of “an undulating and diverse temperament,” this is the ideal that he puts before literary criticism.

His own appreciations of poetry are probably richest, most discriminating, and most disinterested in the lectures on _Translating Homer_. The imaginative tact is unfailing with which he renders the contour and the subject-qualities of the various poems that he comments on; and equally noteworthy is the divining instinct with which he captures the spirit of each poet and sets it before us with a phrase or a symbol. The “inversion and pregnant conciseness” of Milton’s style, its “laborious and condensed fulness”; the plainspokenness, freshness, vigorousness, and yet fancifulness and curious complexity of Chapman’s style; Spenser’s “sweet and easy slipping movement”; Scott’s “bastard epic style”; the “one continual falsetto” of Macaulay’s “pinchbeck _Roman Ballads_,”--all these characterizations are delicately sure in their phrasing and suggestion, and are the clearer because the various styles are made to stand in continual contrast with Homer’s style, the rapidity, directness, simplicity, and nobleness of which Arnold keeps ever present in our consciousness. Incidentally, too, such suggestive discriminations as that between _simplesse_ and _simplicité_, the “semblance” of simplicity and the “real quality,” are wrought out for the reader as the critic goes on with his pursuit of the essential qualities of Homeric thought and diction. To read these lectures is a thoroughly tempering process; a process that renders the mind and imagination permanently finer in texture, more elastic, more sensitively sure in tone, and subtly responsive to the demands of good art.

The essay on the _Study of Poetry_, which was written as preface to Ward’s _English Poets_, is also rich in appreciation, and at times almost as disinterested as the lectures on Homer; yet perhaps never quite so disinterested. For in the _Study of Poetry_ Arnold is persistently aware of his conception of “the grand style” and bent on winning his readers to make it their own. Only poets who attain this grand style deserve to be “classics,” and the continual insistence on the note of “high seriousness”--its presence or absence--becomes rather wearisome. Moreover, Arnold’s preoccupation with this ultimate manner and quality tends to limit the freedom and delicate truth of his appreciations of other manners and minor qualities. At times, one is tempted to charge Arnold with some of the unresponsiveness of temperament that he ascribes to systematic critics, and to find even Arnold himself under the perilous sway of a fixed idea. Yet, when all is said, the _Study of Poetry_ is full of fine things, and does much to widen the range of appreciation, and, at the same time, to make appreciation more certain. “The liquid diction, the fluid movement of Chaucer, his large, free, sound representation of things”; Burns’s “touches of piercing, sometimes almost intolerable, pathos,” his “archness,” too, and his “soundness”; Shelley, “that beautiful spirit building his many-coloured haze of words and images ‘Pinnacled dim in the intense inane’”; these, and other interpretations like them, are easily adequate and carry the qualities of each poet readily into the minds and imaginations of sympathetic readers. Appreciation is much the richer for this essay on the _Study of Poetry_.

Nor must Arnold’s suggestive appreciations of prose style be forgotten. Several of them have passed into standard accounts of clearly recognized varieties of prose diction. Arnold’s phrasing of the matter has made all sensitive English readers permanently more sensitive to “the warm glow, blithe movement, and soft pliancy of life” of the Attic style, and also permanently more hostile to “the over-heavy richness and encumbered gait” of the Asiatic style. Equally good is his account of the Corinthian style: “It has glitter without warmth, rapidity without ease, effectiveness without charm. Its characteristic is that it has no _soul_; all it exists for, is to get its ends, to make its points, to damage its adversaries, to be admired, to triumph. A style so bent on effect at the expense of soul, simplicity, and delicacy; a style so little studious of the charm of the great models; so far from classic truth and grace, must surely be said to have the note of provinciality.”[56] “Middle-class Macaulayese” is his name for Hepworth Dixon’s style; a style which he evidently regards as likely to gain favour and establish itself. “I call it Macaulayese ... because it has the same internal and external characteristics as Macaulay’s style; the external characteristic being a hard, metallic movement with nothing of the soft play of life, and the internal characteristic being a perpetual semblance of hitting the right nail on the head without the reality. And I call it middle-class Macaulayese, because it has these faults without the compensation of great studies and of conversance with great affairs, by which Macaulay partly redeemed them.”[57] It will, of course, be noted that these latter appreciations deal for the most part with divergences from the beautiful in style, but they none the less quicken and refine the æsthetic sense.

Finally, throughout the two series of miscellaneous essays there is, in the midst of much business with ethical matters, an often-recurring free play of imagination in the interests, solely and simply, of beauty. Many are the happy windfalls these essays offer of delicate interpretation both of poetic effect and of creative movement, and many are the memorable phrases and symbols by which incidentally the essential quality of a poet or prose-writer is securely lodged in the reader’s consciousness.

And yet, wide ranging and delicately sensitive as are Arnold’s appreciations, the feeling will assert itself, in a final survey of his work in literary criticism, that he nearly always has designs on his readers and that appreciation is a means to an end. The end in view is the exorcism of the spirit of Philistinism. Arnold’s conscience is haunted by this hideous apparition as Luther’s was by the devil, and he is all the time metaphorically throwing his inkstand at the spectre. Or, to put the matter in another way, his one dominating wish is to help modern Englishmen to “conquer the hard unintelligence” which is “their bane; to supple and reduce it by culture, by a growth in the variety, fulness, and sweetness of their spiritual life”; and the appreciative interpretation of literature to as wide a circle of readers as possible seems to him one of the surest ways of thus educing in his fellow-countrymen new spiritual qualities. It must not be forgotten that Matthew Arnold was the son of Thomas Arnold, master of Rugby; there is in him a hereditary pedagogic bias--an inevitable trend towards moral suasion. The pedagogic spirit has suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange, and yet traces of its origin linger about it. Criticism with Arnold is rarely, if ever, irresponsible; it is our schoolmaster to bring us to culture.

In a letter of 1863 Arnold speaks of the great transformation which “in this concluding half of the century the English spirit is destined to undergo.” “I shall do,” he adds, “what I can for this movement in literature; freer perhaps in that sphere than I could be in any other, but with the risk always before me, if I cannot charm the wild beast of Philistinism while I am trying to convert him, of being torn in pieces by him.”[58] In charming the wild beast Arnold ultimately succeeded; and yet there is a sense in which he fell a victim to his very success. The presence of the beast, and the necessity of fluting to him debonairly and winningly, fastened themselves on Arnold’s imagination, and subdued him to a comparatively narrow range of subjects and set of interests. From the point of view, at least, of what is desirable in appreciative criticism, Arnold was injured by his sense of responsibility; he lacks the detachment and the delicate mobility that are the redeeming traits of modern dilettantism.

If, then, we regard Arnold as a writer with a task to accomplish, with certain definite regenerative purposes to carry out, with a body of original ideas about the conduct of life to inculcate, we must conclude that he succeeded admirably in his work, followed out his ideas with persistence and temerity through many regions of human activity, and embodied them with unwearying ingenuity and persuasiveness in a wide range of discussions. If, on the other hand, we consider him solely as a literary critic, we are forced to admit that he is not the ideal literary critic; he is not the ideal literary critic because he is so much more, and because his interests lie so decisively outside of art. Nor is this opinion meant to imply an ultimate theory of art for art’s sake, or to suggest any limitation of criticism to mere impressionism or appreciation. Literature must be known historically and philosophically before it can be adequately appreciated; that is emphatically true. Art may or may not be justifiable solely as it is of service to society; that need not be debated. But, in any event, literary criticism, if it is to reach its utmost effectiveness, must regard works of art for the time being as self-justified integrations of beauty and truth, and so regarding them must record and interpret their power and their charm. And this temporary isolating process is just the process which Arnold very rarely, for the reasons that have been traced in detail, is willing or able to go through with.

VII

When we turn to consider Arnold’s literary style, we are forced to admit that this, too, has suffered from the strenuousness of his moral purpose; it has been unduly sophisticated, here and there, because of his desire to charm “the wild beast of Philistinism.” To this purpose and this desire is owing, at least in part, that falsetto note--that half-querulous, half-supercilious artificiality of tone--which is now and then to be heard in his writing. To exaggerate the extent to which this note is audible would doubtless be easy; an unprejudiced reader will find long continuous passages of even Arnold’s most elaborately designed writing free from any trace of undue self-consciousness or of gentle condescension. And yet it is undeniable that when, apart from his _Letters_, Arnold’s prose, as a whole, is compared with that of such a writer, for example, as Cardinal Newman, there is in Arnold’s style, as the ear listens for the quality of the bell-metal, not quite the same beautifully clear and sincere resonance. There seems to be, now and then, some unhappy warring of elements, some ill-adjustment of over-tones, a trace of some flaw in mixing or casting.

Are not these defects in Arnold’s style due to his somewhat self-conscious attempt to fascinate a recalcitrant public? Is it not the assumption of a manner that jars on us often in Arnold’s less happy moments? Has he not the pose of the man who overdoes bravado with the hope of getting cleverly through a pass which he feels a bit trying to his nerves? Arnold has a keen consciousness of the very stupid beast of Philistinism lying in wait for him; and in the stress of the moment he is guilty of a little exaggeration of manner; he is just a shade unnatural in his flippancy; he treads his measure with an unduly mincing flourish.

Arnold’s habit of half-mocking self-depreciation and of insincere apology for supposititious personal shortcomings has already been mentioned; to his controversial writings, particularly, it gives often a raspingly supercilious tone. He insists with mock humbleness that he is a “mere bellettristic trifler”; that he has no “system of philosophy with principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative” to help him in the discussion of abstract questions. He assures us that he is merely “a feeble unit” of the “English middle class”; he deprecates being called a professor because it is a title he shares “with so many distinguished men--Professor Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor Frickel, and others--who adorn it,” he feels, much more than he does. These mock apologies are always amusing and yet a bit exasperating too. Why should Arnold regard it, we ask ourselves, as such a relishing joke--the possibility that he has a defect? The implication of almost arrogant self-satisfaction is troublesomely present to us. Such passages certainly suggest that Arnold had an ingrained contempt for the “beast” he was charming.

Yet, when all is said, much of this supercilious satire is irresistibly droll, and refuses to be gainsaid. One of his most effective modes of ridiculing his opponents is through conjuring up imaginary scenes in which some ludicrous aspect of his opponent’s case or character is thrown into diverting prominence. Is it the pompous, arrogant self-satisfaction of the prosperous middle-class tradesman that Arnold wishes to satirize? And more particularly is it the futility of the _Saturday Review_ in holding up Benthamism--the systematic recognition of such a smug man’s ideal of selfish happiness--as the true moral ideal? Arnold represents himself as travelling on a suburban railway on which a murder has recently been committed, and as falling into chat with the middle-class frequenters of this route. The demoralization of these worthy folk, Arnold assures us, was “something bewildering.” “Myself a transcendentalist (as the _Saturday Review_ knows), I escaped the infection; and, day after day, I used to ply my agitated fellow-travellers with all the consolations which my transcendentalism would naturally suggest to me. I reminded them how Cæsar refused to take precautions against assassination, because life was not worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all are in the life of the world. ‘Suppose the worst to happen,’ I said, addressing a portly jeweller from Cheapside; ‘suppose even yourself to be the victim; _il n’y a pas d’homme nécessaire_. We should miss you for a day or two upon the Woodford Branch; but the great mundane movement would still go on, the gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, dividends would still be paid at the Bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still be the old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street.’ All was of no avail. Nothing could moderate in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost bloodthirsty clinging to life.” This is, of course, “admirable fooling”; and equally, of course, the little imaginary scene serves perfectly the purposes of Arnold’s argument and turns into ridicule the narrowness and overweening self-importance of the smug tradesman.

Another instance of Arnold’s ability to conjure up fancifully a scene of satirical import may be adduced from the first chapter of _Culture and Anarchy_. Arnold has been ridiculing the worship of mere “bodily health and vigour” as ends in themselves. “Why, one has heard people,” he exclaims, “fresh from reading certain articles of the _Times_ on the Registrar General’s returns of marriages and births in this country, who would talk of our large English families in quite a solemn strain, as if they had something in itself, beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in them; as if the British Philistine would have only to present himself before the Great Judge with his twelve children, in order to be received among the sheep as a matter of right!”

It is a fact worth remarking that in his prose Arnold’s imagination seems naturally to call up and visualize only such scenes as those that have just been quoted--scenes that are satirically and even maliciously suggestive; scenes, on the other hand, that have the limpid light and the winning quality of many in Cardinal Newman’s writings--scenes that rest the eye and commend themselves simply and graciously to the heart--are in Arnold’s prose rarely, if ever, to be found. This seems the less easy to explain inasmuch as his poetry, though of course not exceptionally rich in colour, nevertheless shows everywhere a delicately sure sense of the surface of life. Nor is it only the large sweep of the earth-areas or the diversified play of the human spectacle that is absent from Arnold’s prose; his imagination does not even make itself exceptionally felt through concrete phrasing or warmth of colouring; his style is usually intellectual almost to the point of wanness, and has rarely any of the heightened quality of so-called poetic prose. In point of fact, this conventional restraint in Arnold’s style, this careful adherence to the mood of prose, is a very significant matter; it distinguishes Arnold both as writer and as critic of life from such men as Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin. The meaning of this quietly conventional manner will be later considered in the discussion of Arnold’s relation to his age.