Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/136

 Among the fruits of his first American tour were two powerful lectures — one on the importance of a high standard of culture, the other vindicating literary study as an instrument of education against the encroachments of physical science. These, with a hardly adequate lecture on Emerson, in which he finds much to say about Carlyle, were published in 1885 as 'Discourses in America.' 'Mixed Essays' had appeared in 1879 ; 'Irish Essays and Others' was published in 1882, and * Essays in Criticism, Second Series,' in 1888 ; and he continued to the last an active contributor to periodical literature, especially in the 'xsineteenth Century.' Essays from this review and from 'Murray's Magazine' were issued at Boston in 1888 as 'Civilization in the United States.' His last essay, on Milton, appeared in the United States after his death. Arnold died very suddenly from disease of the heart on 15 April 1888 at Liverpool, whither he had gone on a visit to his sister to welcome his daughter homeward bound from America. Matthew Arnold was buried in the churchyard of All Saints, Laleliam, in the same grave with his eldest son Thomas (1852-1868) ; the tombstone bears the inscription 'Awake, thou Lute and Harp! I will awake right early' (cf. Winter, Gray Days and Gold, 1890).

Arnold unwisely discouraged all biographical memorials of himself, and the only authentic record is the disappointing 'Letters of Matthew Arnold, 1848-1888,' collected and arranged by Mr. G. W. E. Russell in two volumes, 1895. These are entertaining reading, and pleasing as proofs of the extreme amiability of one who was generally set down as supercilious and sardonic, but are remarkably devoid of insight, whether literary or political. This probably arises in great measure from their being mostly addressed to members of his own family, and so wanting the stimulus arising from the collision of dissimilar minds. They depict the writer's moral character, notwithstanding, with as much clearness as attractiveness, and his intellectual character is sufficiently evident in his writings. If a single word could resume him, it would be 'academic;' but, although this perfectly describes his habitual attitude even as a poet, it leaves aside his chaste diction, his pictorial vividness, and his overwhelming pathos. The better, which is also the larger, part of his poetry is without doubt immortal. His position is distinctly independent, while this is perhaps less owing to innate originality than to the balance of competing influences. Wordsworth saves him from being a mere disciple of Goethe, and Goethe from being a mere follower of Wordsworth. As a critic he repeatedly evinced a happy instinct for doing the right thing at the right time. Apart from their high intellectual merits, the seasonableness of the preface to the poems of 1853, of the lectures on Homer, and those on the Celtic spirit, renders these monumental in English literature. His great defect as a critic is the absence of a lively aesthetic sense ; the more exquisite beauties of literature do not greatly impress him unless as vehicle for the communication of ideas. He inherited his father's ethical cast of mind ; conduct interests him more than genius. Nothing else can account for his amazing definition of poetry as a 'criticism of life;' and in the same spirit, when he ought to be giving a comprehensive view of Keats and Gray, he spends his time in inquiring whether Keats was manly, and why Gray was unproductive. When, however, he could place himself at a point of view that suited him, none could write more to the point. His characters of Spinoza, Marcus Aurelius, and Heine are masterly, and nothing can be better than his poetical appreciation of Wordsworth, Byron, and Goethe. A great writer whose influence on conduct was mainly indirect, such as Dickens or Thackeray, seemed to puzzle him ; Tennyson's beauties as a poet were unappreciated on account of his secondary place as a thinker ; and the vehemence of a Carlyle or a Charlotte Bronte offended his fastidious taste. Thus, for one reason or another, he estimated the genius of his own age much below its real desert, and this unsympathetic attitude towards the contemporary representatives of English thought perverted his entire view of it, political, social, and intellectual. Mr. Herbert Spencer criticises some of the caprices of his 'anti-patriotic bias' and effectively ridicules his longings for an English academy in his 'Study of Sociology' (chapter ix. and notes). Yet, if Ar nold cannot be praised as he praises Sophocles for having 'seen life steadily and seen it whole,' he at all events saw what escaped many others ; and if he exaggerated the inaccessibility of the English mind to ideas, he left it more accessible than he found it. This would have contented him ; his aim was not to subjugate opinion but to emancipate it, contending for the ends of Goethe with the weapons of Heine.

A noble portrait of Arnold, by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., is in the National Portrait Gallery (it is reproduced in Arnold's' Poems' in the 'Temple Classics,' 1900, which also