Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/731

 ARNOLD 675 papers were not official, and he was acquitted on the charge his work would have been if his training had been different. of embezzlement but convicted of undue delay in restoring In his judgments on Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, official papers and condemned to three months’ imprison- and Hugo, it may be seen how strong was his impulse ment. On appeal the sentence was increased to nine to bow to authority. On the other hand, in Arnold’s months. Arnim avoided imprisonment by leaving the ingenious reasoning away the conception of Providence to country, and in 1875 published anonymously a pamphlet “a stream of tendency not ourselves which makes for entitled “Pro J7ihilo,” in which he attempted to show righteousness,” we see how strong was his natural impulse that the attack on him was caused by Bismarck’s personal for taking original views. The fact that the very air jealousy. For this he was accused of treason, insult to Arnold breathed during the whole of the impressionable the emperor, and libelling Bismarck, and in his absence period of his life was academic is therefore a very imcondemned to five years’ penal servitude. From his exile portant fact to bear in mind. in Austria he published two more pamphlets on the In one of his own most charming critical essays he conecclesiastical policy of Prussia, “ Der Nuntius Kommt,” trasts the poetry of Homer, which consists of “ natural and “ Quid faciamus nos ? ” He made repeated attempts, thoughts in natural words,” with the poetry of Tennyson, which were supported by his family, to be allowed to which consists of “ distilled thoughts in distilled words.” return to Germany in order to take his trial afresh on the charge of treason ; his request had just been granted when he died on the 19th of May 1881. In 1876 Bismarck carried an amendment to the criminal code making it an offence punishable with imprisonment or a fine up to £250 for an official of the Foreign Office to communicate to others official documents, or for an envoy to act contrary to his instructions. These clauses are commonly spoken of in Germany as the “Arnim paragraphs.” (j. w. he.) Arnold, Sir Edwin, (1832 ), British poet, orientalist, and man of letters, was born on 10th June 1832 and educated at King’s College, London, and University College, Oxford, where in 1852 he gained the Xewdigate prize for a poem on Belshazzar’s Feast. He spent some years in India as principal of the Government Sanscrit College, Poona, and upon his return in 1861 became connected with the Daily Teleyra/ph newspaper, upon whose editorial staff he has ever since held an important position. He is nevertheless best known for his travels in India and Japan, and his endeavours to introduce Eastern thought to Europeans by a succession of works in prose and verse on Oriental subjects, both original and translated. The best known of these, The Light of Asia, an epical poem on the life and teaching of Buddha, entirely derived from native sources, has gone through more than sixty English and eighty American editions since its first publication in 1879. His other principal volumes of poetry are With Soldi in the Garden, The Light of the World, Potiphar's Wife, Adzuma. In 1877, on the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India, the Companionship of the Star of India was conferred upon him; and in 1888 he was created K.C.I.E. Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888), English poet, literary critic, and inspector of schools, was born at Laleham, near Staines, 21th December 1822. When it is said that he was the son of the famous Dr Arnold of Rugby, and that Winchester, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford, contributed their best towards his education, it seems superfluous to add that, in estimating Matthew Arnold and his work, training no less than original endowment has to be considered. A full academic training has its disadvantages as well as its gains. In the individual no less than in the species the history of man’s development is the history of the struggle between the impulse to express original personal force and the impulse to make that force bow to the authority of custom. Where in any individual the first of these impulses is stronger than usual, a complete academic training is a gain; but where the second of these impulses is the dominant one, the effect of the academic habit upon the mind at its most sensitive and most plastic period is apt to be crippling. In regard to Matthew Arnold, it would be a bold critic of his life and his writings who should attempt to say what

Matthew Arnold. (From a photograph by Elliott and Fry, London.) “ Distilled ” is one of the happiest words to be found in poetical criticism, and it may be used with equal aptitude in the criticism of life. To most people the waters of life come with all their natural qualities—sweet or bitter undistilled. Only the ordinary conditions of civilization, common to all, flavoured the waters of life to Shakespeare, to Cervantes, to Burns, to Scott, to Dumas, and those other great creators whose minds were mirrors—broad and clear—for reflecting the rich drama of life around them. To Arnold the waters of life came distilled so carefully that the wonder is that he had any originality left. A member of the upper stratum of that “middle class” which he despised, or pretended to despise—the eldest son of one of the most accomplished as well as one of the most noble-tempered men of his time—Arnold from the moment of his birth drank the finest distilled waters that can be drunk even in these days. Perhaps, on the whole, the surprising thing is how little he suffered thereby. Indeed those who had formed an idea of Arnold’s personality from their knowledge of his “culture,” and especially those. who had been delighted by the fastidious and feminine delicacy of his prose style, used to be quite bewildered when for the first time they met him at a dinner-table or in a friend’s smoking-room. His prose was so self-conscious that what people expected to find in the writer was the Arnold as he was conceived by certain “young lions” of journalism whom he satirized—a somewhat owev-coltmed. petit-maitre—almost, indeed, a coxcomb of letters. On the other hand, those who had been