Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/29

Rh In 1882 he announced his intention of retiring from his office as one of her majesty's Lay Inspectors of Schools; he felt that his life was drawing to an end, and as Gladstone, he knew, would never promote the author of "Literature and Dogma," he had "no wish to execute the Dance of Death in an elementary school."

The following year he was asked to give a series of lectures in the United States, and he also received, to his surprise, the offer of a pension of £250 "as a public recognition of service to the poetry and literature of England." But he was inclined to refuse it on the ground that, as the fund available for such purposes was small, it would not look well if a man drawing from the public purse nearly £1000 a year took such a material increase; but his friends were so urgent that at last he yielded, and only the Echo sneeringly called him a "a very Bonaparte" for rapacity.

Before he came to America he had to a considerable extent formed his judgment of this country. This is a rather dangerous but quite natural way of doing. It is easy afterwards to make what one sees confirm the prejudice. As early as June, 1883, he wrote to his friend, the Reverend F. B. Zincke:—

"You are very favorable to the Americans, but it is undoubtedly true that the owning and cultivating one's own land as they do is the wholesomest condition for mankind. And you bring out what is most important, that the real America is made up of families and owners and cultivators of this kind. I hope this is true; one hears so much of the cities which do not seem tempting, and of the tendency of every American, farmer or not, to turn into a trader, and a trader of the 'cutest and hardest kind.

"I do not think the bulk of the American nation at present gives one the impression of being made up of fine enough clay to serve the highest purposes of civilization in the way you expect; they are what I call Philistines, I suspect, too many of them. But the condition of life of the majority there is the wholesome and good one; there is immense hope for the future in that fact."

In October, after a stormy but "splendid" passage, he landed in New York, "the blatant publicity" of which confirmed his worst fears. But he soon found how well known he was, and it modified his ideas of American philistinism to have hotel barbers and porters reverencing him as a poet and asking for his autograph. Dr. Holmes, whom he called a dear little old man, introduced