THE WORKSHOP OF A GREAT CRITIC.* THE great interest and
the high literary value that attach to this little book—a book which reveals to a degree almost hitherto unknown in literature the mind of the critic and the heart of the man at their point of union—force its reader to regret that Mrs. Wodehouse ere she gave it to the world did not make it as complete and full of revelation as was in her
power. It is perhaps ungracious to mar gratitude for so delightful a gift by the suggestion that the giver has been niggardly in the giving, yet we cannot but feel that the whole of Matthew Arnold's note-books, in so far as they were of the type of the selections here printed, should have been given us. Mrs. Arnold, we are told, had trans. cribed a great part of the contents before her death; we take it that Mrs. Wodehouse has completed this work, and that these invaluable records of some of the daily reading of the greatest English critic of the nineteenth century are avail- able for publication. In these circumstances, we cannot but hope that Mrs. Wodehouse will before long give to the ever- widening circle of those who love her father's works at least a larger selection from his note-books. These diaries—.
" extend over a period of thirty-seven years. They are little long, narrow books. The space in them is limited, and they served, not only as his record of official engagements, but as his literary note-books, in which were entered any passages that struck him in his daily reading. Certain favourite quotations appear and reappear, and they furnish living illustrations of many of the principles again and again insisted upon in his prose writings. 'One must, I think,' he says in his Preface to the first edition of Culture and Anarchy," be struck more and more the longer one lives, to find how much, in our present society, a man's life of each day depends for its solidity and value on whether he reads during that day, and, far more still, on what he reads during it.' The dictum first laid down in the Essays in Criticism' (Preface), and constantly repeated in some form or other, that it is the business of criticism to know and make known the best that is known and thought in the world, is here shown to be his life-long practice. The quotations are in English, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek."
Mrs. Wodehouse has given us from this revealing record of wise reading only the entries for five full years-1863, 1868, 1873, 1878, 1883—and has added the" brief and irregular" entries
made between 1852 and 1861, and the entries for the spring of 1888,—the year of the poet4s death. It is insufficient, but we trust that when the Oliver Twists of the literary world hungrily ask for more the -editor will not refuse it. Out- second complaint is one that, though it amounts to a very considerable confession Of ignorance on our part, we make without apology. It is that Mrs. Wodehouse should have supplied us with references identifying her quotations.
We admit that the labour would have been great, but it would
• Matthew Arnold's Note-heolca. 'With .a Preface by the Hbn. Mm Weli• house, and altortrait. - London: Smith, Eiden and Co t4C61.3
lave been amply -repaid :by- the increased interest, of the look.
• The book, however, as it stands illuminates, as we have said, 'both the man and the critic. Mr. Arnold's great decade of *try, 1848 to 1858, had, passed before the practice of record- Ting his reading was taken up,' and we find -in the extrActs com- paratively little, to indicate_ that the note-maker was a great rd. The Hits of books to be read, for the year are given at the end of ' the quotations_ for 1868 :and 1883. The poets 'actually read in 1868 were Herbert and Wordsworth. Lear aa lienry'n, Shelley's Pi.ometheus Unbound, and Ritson's Metrical Romances were put down for reading, but were left unread. In 1888 the poet proposed to read Chaucer's Parson's Tale and The Dream, part of the Faery Queen, Tinton of Athens, 'Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Every Man in
Itennour and other works by Ben jonson, part of
Paradise *Lost," the " Danciad," part of the "Prelude," Some of Keats's work, and the whole of Shelley and Rossetti. Of all this list the "Prelude" alone was read; that, two books by Cooper, and Mrs. Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere were all he read in English, apart from the Bible and the Apocrypha, in that last spring. The return to poetry alter the storm and stress of thirty years is noticeable, but the amount proposed to be read is not out of proportion to the vast number of books that Mr. Arnold had set down for perusal in this final Year. In reading the list the mind feels the irony of one of the last of his quotations : "pour executer de grandes chose, ii faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir." The width of his reading and of his literary sympathy up; to the very last is shown by the list of books actually read before that sad spring Sunday, April 15th, when he died in a moment in Liverpool on the way to meet his daughter from America. The Greek Anthology is struck out of the list as read, two books of the Aeneid, the second book of the Imitatio Christi, a part of the Pensieri of Leopardi, Bourget's L'Irreparable, works by La Bruyere, Madame de Steel, Nicole, and Bourdaloue, the English poetry and prose already mentioned, and also Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, and Luke. This last list in its extra- ordinary variety of subjects and authors is a record in six languages of that unusual combination of versatility and thoroughness which is conspicuous in every aspect of Mr. 'Arnold's literary life.
The book from end to end is Matthew Arnold. It shows us the man at work in his workshop, with his material rough-hewn around him, already bearing the impress of his genius. The very act of selection seems in a curious way to have made the various passages his own. Phrases gathered from the four corners of the world of thought appear to take to themselves new and unexpected meanings as part of the terminology or machinery of a new, serene, but urgent philosophy. We see here the principles of his critical work taking form. As early as 1857 we find the phrase, swayer aliquid certi proponen- dam est. It is repeated in 1859, 1863, 1868, and 1883. It seems to lie at the very heart of Arnold's philosophy of life, and inspired the attack on both Philistinism and provincialism. Again, in the year (1858) that he wrote " Merope " he dwells on" that composure of mind which the Greeks deemed in- dispensable to the enjoyment of a work of art " ; while five years later he is still developing the Greek conception of art, and examining the relation of the "grand style" to perfection in literature. " Aimer le beau," he quotes, " avec passion, et par in beaute atteindre it In grandeur!" and again: " Polyg- note, qni precede Phidias, aim moms loin que lui : ii eut le grand style, mais non cette souplesse divine qui constitue la perfection." Is this quotation the origin from which he drew his phrase "tile .grand style," used in the famous preface to the 1853 edition of his poems, and dwelt on in the incomparable lectures "On Translating Homer" P We find, moreover, the critic's conception of art developing from the mere idea of style as a thing in itself into the idea of style as an instrument of progress and religion. "Le but essentiel de rart," he notes in 1868, " est d'elever rhomme an-dessus de la vie vulgaire, et de reveiller en lui le sentiment de son origine celeste"; and he records "la condition essentielle de Fart classique—un cadre fin!, laissant place is tontes les 'delicatesses de rexecution. L'avenir eat de ce cote,' can ainsi eat appele at provoqne le progres de tons lea arts."- And again :—" L'art etait Pour rItalie In realisallon du beau,non nu caprice futile. Avant tout autre pays en Europe, Mane attache tin seas an Mot de glolfe, et travailla pour la posteriti." In all this we see that art :tint style were to the critic an aliquid certi always present-and driving men forward. Indeed, it is impossible not to feel that Arnold, who in 1858 notes in his diary that." science le:the edifice of the world in the human mind," must in 1868 believed that art and religion form the edifice of the world 11 the human heart.
It would be easy to develop from these notes most, if not all, of the many aspects of the critic as the world knows 'him, as well as of the man who was personally loved by so m_any. We may take, for example, one aspect common to theeritic and the man,—his belief in the urgency of work. In 1858 he notes "the three pillars of learning : seeing much, suffering much, and studying much." Ten years later we find: "How much more time than is necessary do we spend in sleep, for- getting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave." In the Same year he adds : "True piety is acting what one lcnews" ; "slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep, and an idle soul shall suffer hunger " ; "rest is a crime in one who has promised to labour all the days of his life" ; and "should one not labour day and night, and deny inclination, in order to develop and work out reality and tight?" Again, in 1878 we read : " Rien n'augmente autant le decouragement que roisivete." In 1883 he notes the wise saying, "On n'est pas ne pour la gloire, lorsqu'on no connait pas le prix du temps."
. But with Matthew Arnold the urgency of work did not stand alone. As in Sophocles, serenity of mind must accom- pany rigour: "He that believeth shall not make haste." The end and aim of serene urgency is the elevation of our souls "veil; celui qui represente dans nos pensees rideale justice et rinfatigable amour ! " (1878). Certainly the man attained, if the theological critic did noti to that elevation and to the burning faith which that elevation involves. We realise this when, after the death of little Basil in 1868, he enters ia his diary the words : " Deheret se in Dec homo taliter firmare, ut non esset ei necesse- multas humanas consolationes qumrere." The' same note is struck when he writes, on the death of yet a second son in the same fatal year, those wonder- ful sentences of comfort: "Leva igitur faciem tuam in coelum"; "Awake, thou lute and harp: I myself will awake right early"; "For I sent you out with mourning and weeping; but God will give you to me again with joy and gladness for ever (Barnch)"; "Blessed are they that saw thee, and slept in love; for 'we shall surely live." Nor was this elevation of soul found lacking in the latter days. The entries in the diary for 1 4: are full of prophetic tears and joy: "Mane nobiscum, Domine, quoniam advesperascit " ; " Enfin apres quelques postes, je the laissai eller ii la beaute du jour " ; "Le jour augments par degree dans rhorizon de rime comme dans l'horizon terrestre " ; "0 religion de Jesus-Christ! 8 cults en esprit! 6 paisible et silencieux asile des 4Faes ! " The last entries were, by a 'strange coincidence, made for the days of his death and burial,—passages from Ecclesiasticus, sombre yet full of tender significance, in which the poet bids us comfort ourselves and be comforted for him who has passed from sight. These last words strike with final fulness the continuous note of the book,—the comfort that lives in noble works, their curative force for the heartaches of a world. Long musing with a book such as this enables the mind to realise what Matthew Arnold meant when he wrote: -"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,
Who finds himself, loses his misery."
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