Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/27

Rh appeared in successive numbers of the Cornhill Magazine, and which attracted great attention, especially through his application of the phrase "Sweetness and Light." He was always most pleased when commendation of his works took this form: "the ideas of it are exactly what papa would have approved." This same year he was asked by the Italian Government to take charge of the young Duke of Genoa, Prince Thomas of Savoy, who was to study at Harrow, and the project greatly pleased him because of the Continental connection which it gave him. He found the Prince "a dear boy" and grew very fond of him. He stayed with the Arnolds until April, 1871, and then the King gave Matthew Arnold the Order of Commander of the Crown of Italy as a token of his good will.

His collected Poems came out in two pretty volumes. He says of them that they represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the preceding quarter-century. He thought that it might be fairly urged against them that he had less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigor and abundance than Browning. But he thought that, as he had "more of a fusion of the two than either of them and had more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development," he was likely to have his turn as they had theirs. He had practically ceased his career as a productive poet as early as 1869; between that date and his death scarcely more than half a dozen titles are added to the succeeding editions of his works. More and more he contented himself with his special function as censor of public morals, as lay preacher to an obdurate generation. He felt that this was his life work, and so sacrificed his predilections to his lofty sense of duty.

He was at this time considering the prospect of one of the three commissionerships under "the Endowed Schools Act," but Gladstone blocked his way, and he was not sorry, because it would have substituted administrative for literary work: literature being, as he felt, his true business. He was greatly pleased the following year by being made Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford. He had doubted if he should ever have that distinction, not having won high honors while there. "The position of a man of letters," he said, "is uncertain, and more uncertain in the eyes of his own University than anywhere else." When he went up to receive it, Lord Salisbury, the Chancellor, told him that some one suggested to him to address him as vir dulcissime et lucidissime, so much had his favorite expression "Sweetness and Light" impressed people.