Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/20

x his colleagues at the famous college. After teaching the classics for a short time in the Fifth Form at Rugby, he was appointed Private Secretary to the Earl of Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council.

As early as 1848 he began to sound his trumpet against the fictitiousness of English manners and civility and to find in Greek serenity a lesson for all time. He clearly saw what civilization in England lacked, and he felt that he could add to the sum of happiness by stimulating his fellow-men to find in true culture a nobler ideal for their lives. Like other prophets and seers, he was misunderstood and cordially disliked by the very classes whom he wished to help. In 1849, while the world was in a state of ferment and revolution, he read Homer from beginning to end. He also published "The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems," in an edition of five hundred copies, the title-page having only the initial A. as indication of the authorship. It was withdrawn from circulation before many copies were sold; but all the poems it contained, with one exception, were afterwards reprinted.

In 1851 he found himself withdrawing more and more from society, despising modern literature, which he declared was "only what has been before and what will be again and not bracing or edifying in the least." For months he did not look at a newspaper.

But this same year he was appointed to an Inspectorship of Schools and married Frances Lucy, daughter of Mr. Justice Wightman. For him he often acted in the capacity of Marshal on the Circuits. This gave him an opportunity of seeing some of the most delightful parts of England, together with the most satisfying companionship.

The duties of his school-inspecting kept him constantly on the move. He found the work very oppressive, but his sense of duty was such that he never allowed the feeling to get too strong. His wife frequently accompanied him, and that was "the only thing that made this life anything but positive purgatory."

Such work was necessary, but, in view of Matthew Arnold's genius and his peculiarly lofty qualifications for statesmanship and the higher realms of literature, it makes one's heart bleed to read of his long years of comparatively unremunerative drudgery, of his having to apply that unrivalled mind to the pettiness of examining an average of sixty or more schoolboy compositions a day, of his "being driven furious by seven hundred