Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/80

ARNOLD. executive officer, in the defense of Fort Pickens during the bombardments of November, 1861, January, 1862, and May, 1862. He was then appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, and commanded successively the department of Florida and the Union forces at New Orleans and Algiers, La., but was disabled by a stroke of paralysis (November, 1862), and was retired from the service, as lieutenant-colonel of regulars, in August, 1864.

ARNOLD, (1822-88). An English poet and essayist. He was a son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the famous headmaster of Rugby, and was born December 24, 1822, at Laleham, a village near Staines, in the valley of the Thames. With the exception of a year (1836-37) at Winchester under Dr. Moberly, later Bishop of Salisbury, Arnold passed his school days at Rugby, where his "Alaric at Rome" won the prize for poetry (1840). He was elected a classical scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, in November, 1840, but did not go into residence till October of the next year. In 1843 he gained the Newdigate prize with a poem entitled "Cromwell," and in March, 1845, was elected a fellow of Oriel. Among his colleagues at Oriel were Dean Church, John Earle, subsequently known as professor of Anglo-Saxon in the university, and Arthur Hugh Clough, to whom he has paid tribute in "Thyrsis," justly ranked with "Lycidas"' and "Adonaïs," as one of the finest elegiac poems in the language. After a short period of teaching the classics in the fifth form at Rugby, he became, in 1847, private secretary to the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council, who in 1851 appointed him an inspector of schools. This inspectorship he held until November, 1886. He appears ever to have entertained repugnance toward the details of the official routine — the hearing of recitations by students of training colleges, and the correction of endless examination papers. Yet even here his influence was felt by the English public, and his annual reports, appearing from 1852 to 1882, met with an interest seldom manifested toward such publications. From 1857 to 1867 he was successor to Wharton and Keble in the more congenial post of professor of poetry at Oxford. It was then by his famous series of prelections On Translating Homer and On the Study of Celtic Literature, that he began that reform of English criticism so important in the history of Nineteenth-Century literature. Three times, in 1859, 1865, and 1885, he was commissioned to visit the Continent for study of the school discipline and methods of education in vogue there; and in 1883-84 he came to the United States as a lecturer. The visit to America was repeated in 1886. He died April 15, 1888, and was buried in the churchyard of All Saints at Laleham.

Like Dryden and Coleridge, Arnold gained high distinction both as critic and as poet. Even his prize poems, though scarce foreshadowing his later work, display more talent than is usual with a poet's first efforts. In "Alaric at Rome" (Rugby, 1840; reprinted, 1893), a difficult stanza is managed with skill; and the heroic verse of "Cromwell" is smooth and agreeable. In 1849, under the initial "A." he published The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, containing the beautiful "Mycerinus" and "The Forsaken Merman." This volume was followed, still under 'A,' by Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852), where first appeared the narrative "Tristram and Iseult," and several lovely lyrics, as "A Summer Night," "The Youth of Nature," "The Youth of Man," and "Faded Leaves." In 1853, Arnold threw off the mask of anonymity. The Poems of that year (3d ed., 1857) include "Sohrab and Rustum," his popular poem, founded upon a story in Firdausi's Shah-Nameh; "Requieseat," "The Scholar-Gipsy," and many pieces from the earlier collections. "Empedocles," however, was omitted as structurally weak. Time now singles it out as one of Arnold's most attractive dramatic poems. The songs of Callicles, the harp-player, are among his choicest lyrics. The volume was prefaced with an admirable statement of the author's, aim — an essay since famous not only for its brilliancy but also as indicating another field in which Arnold was to become well known. Arnold's other volumes of verse comprise Poems, Second Series (1855), of which the chief new poem is the magnificent episode "Balder Dead," and in which four of the songs of Callicles are grouped as "The Harp-Player on Etna"; Merope, a rather frigid tragedy (1858); New Poems (1867), memorable for "Thyrsis," and containing "Empedocles on Etna" revived; Poems (the first collected edition, 1869; reissued, 1877), in which was included "Rugby Chapel," that noble elegy on the death' of his father; and a fine edition complete in three volumes (1885), containing "Westminster Abbey," a splendid elegy on Dean Stanley. In this edition Arnold classified his poems as Early Poems, Narrative Poems, Sonnets, Lyric Poems, Elegiac Poems, Dramatic Poems, and Later Poems — a division since carefully observed by editors.

It will be noted that the bulk of Arnold's verse is relatively small — a fact doubtless to be attributed to the preoccupation of official duties. It is equally notable that throughout his body of verse a level of excellence is maintained so nearly invariable that at most there are perhaps not more than a round dozen titles which one would not regret to see removed. Although it can not now with accuracy be said that Arnold is not a popular poet, it is nevertheless true that he does not appeal to the wide audience of Tennyson and Browning. His poetical work will, it is certain, have always a peculiar grace for not a few. In its grave and noble music, in its stoic austerity, it will claim its own fit audience.

But it is a question whether Arnold will not in time take a place in the general mind as the third great poet of the Victorian age. On this point Arnold himself wrote: "My poems represent on the whole the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century; and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions that reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigor and abundance than Browning: yet because I have, perhaps, more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had theirs."

Among Arnold's prose writings are: On Translating Homer (1861-62), and the Study of Celtic Literature (1867), both redactions of Oxford lectures; Essays in Criticism (1865); Culture and Anarchy (1869); Saint Paul and Protestant-