A BOOK OF THE MOMENT.
UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
WE are very grateful to Mr. Arnold Whitridge for giving us this extremely interesting little volume of Matthew Arnold's letters, for Matthew Arnold, though his fame as a critic and as a prose writer is high at the moment, and will, we believe, be higher still in another generation, is not regarded as among the great letter-waters. This is owing partly to a certain fastidiousness in him, but still more to the fact noted in the Introduction that his letters, collected and arranged by Mr. George Russell, did not give an adequate impression of Arnold's personality. We hope, therefore, that this volume is only a prelude on the part of* Mr. Whitridge to an enlarged and complete collection of his grandfather's letters. Such a book may not be popular with the many, but for those who know and love the author it will be a volume beyond price. On this point there is a very just observation in the introduction :— " Possibly the present collection, slight as it is, may catch some- thing of the charm that was so vivid and so omnipresent to the members of his immediate family. It is the fashion in these days for authors to dispense their individuality as a conquering feudal baron scattered largesse. Every page must be saturated with intimacy. Matthew Arnold was incapable of this literary dishabille, but for readers who are not dependent on being button- holed he still has something to say. Olympian he may be, but in an age when everyone has some culture and when superiorities are discountenanced,' it is well to remember that there is one man, and a Victorian at that, who never succumbed to the facile charms of mediocrity."
Let Mr. Whitridge go forward in this spirit, and also let him, in the spirit of his countrymen, " hurry up." _The present writer has a very good reason for this last admonition. He is deeply anxious to see the volume, and does not forget that for men over sixty time is of the essence of the contract.
The first letter in the volume is characteristic of Matthew Arnold's spirit—it is dated London, 1849: " More and more I think ill of the great people here : that is their two capital faults, stupidity and hardness of heart become more and more clear to me. Their faults of character seem to me, as I watch the people in the park, to be the grand impairers of English beauty. In the men certainly ; for the faces of the handsomest express either a stupid pride, or the stupidity without the pride, and the half alive look of many pretty faces among the women, so different from the southern languor, points to some- thing very like stupidity. And a proud looking Englishwoman Is the hardest looking thing I know in the world. So I should not be sorry to get away, but I still accustom myself to feel that we should pity these people rather than be angry with them. I do not think any fruitful revolution can come in my time ; and meanwhile, thank God, there are many honest people on earth, and the month of May comes every year. . . . Good-bye ; this Is rather a sombre letter, but I have not breakfasted and it is 111, which is perhaps the reason. I have many poetical schemes, but am fermenting too much about poetry in general to do any- thing satisfactory. My last volume I have got absolutely to dislike."
The criticism of his own country is too strong, as Matthew Arnold would have been the first to admit, but how delightfully it is taken back at the end of the letter I Though there are no explosive or sensational literary criticisms in this little volume, it is strewn with poignant and luciferous remarks. For example, Arnold tells us that he feels bent against the modern English habit of " using poetry as a channel for thinking aloud instead of making anything." How many of us, if we are not armoured with the shield of our own conceit and pomposity, may here feel the rapier run clean through our
bodies
By the way, there are some pleasant references to the Spectator in the letters, including one inevitable postscript : " I eanir, after all, find last week's Spectator." Who can ?
Here is a very profound passage in regard to tragedy applied to his own classical play, Merope :— " There is a kind of pity and fear (Kotzebue is a great master of it) which cannot be purified, it is the most agitating and over- whelming, certainly, but, for the sake of a higher result, we must renounce this. Pity and fear of a certain kind—say commiseration and awe and you will perhaps better feel what I mean—I think Merope does excite—as does Greek tragedy in general ; I allow, however, that the problem for the poet is, or should be, to unite the highest degree of agitatingness on the part of his subject- matter, with the highest degree of controul and assuagement on the part of his own exhibition of it—Shakespeare, under immense difficulties, goes further in this respect than the Greeks, and so far he is an advance upon them."
In a passage near this he drops a very curious remark about the conventional ideas entertained as to the treatment of women by the Greeks. " The influence of women in Greece: was immense." Matthew Arnold was always very good about France, and here is a passage written in a letter from Pro-. vence, where he had been seeing Nimes, Arles and Avignon :- " The French build beautifully, a thousand times better than we do—but in all they do, and they are doing a wonderful deal, there is something `coquet' in the grace and beauty which is utterly beneath the Roman dignity—which is quite Gaulish, in the spirit of that very clever people for whom many centuries ago Caesar, who beat them so soundly, bad evidently with all his appreciation of their cleverness so deep-rooted a contempt. But they have improved since that time with all the mixture of race they have had, and are certainly now a very wonderful people, though not the least Roman. Their prosperity and improvement is wonderful the state of cultivation of this south of France, the exquisite order and perfection of its vast olive and vine erops, strike eyes even as ignorant as mine—and the one thing the people desire is to carry on this material improvement without anarchy and at the same time without any restoration of feudalism. You ask me whether they are attached to the present government ; they are sincerely grateful to it for having restored order—I saw to-day at Arles on the Roman obelisk an inscription to Louis Napoleon with the simple words vous a sauvd de l'Anarchie —which you may depend upon it expresses the sincere feeling of the industrious classes. But above all the French peasant (who feeds the army and is the real power of France) sticks to this man and is disposed to maintain him because he is the symbol, after all, of that final breach with the past and with a feudal aristo- cracy by means of which the peasant has become a personage and which he is firmly resolved shall never be filled up. In his mind both branches of the Bourbons are connected with the revolutionary system, and that is why they are both antipathic to him. And there is a good deal of truth 111 the French peasant's view ; Louis Napoleon is as little connected with the past as the French peasant —he has the ideas of the modern world in which he was long knocked about in a way which the members of the old royal races —our Queen or the Emperors of Russia and Austria cannot have them—in a way in which even the old aristocracies cannot have them. His uncle had them too, and was a man of genius which this man is not—but he went off his centre with success and dashed himself to pieces. But you may depend upon it that it is a ' mot ' of the first Napoleon's which is now inspiring this second Napoleon that the sovereign who put himself at the head of the cause of the peoples of Europe would be the master of the future."
Of course, there is some wrong-headedness, but there is also great insight here. Incidentally, this same letter contains a memorable contrast between Lord Lansdowne, to whom Matthew Arnold bad been private secretary, and the great Lord Derby, the Rupert of debate. Lord Derby, according to Matthew Arnold, is " the true type of the British political nobleman—with eloquence, high feeling and good intentions— but the ideas of a schoolboy."
We wish we had time to quote more, but we have quoted enough to show that this is a fascinating little book.
If Mr. Whitridge does not do what we want him to do, and do it now—that is, bring out a complete set of Matthew Arnold's letters, we shall never forgive him. Above all, do not let him be put off by the tiresome people who are sure to tell him that the letters are only of family importance and would be of no interest to the present generation. Of such people I shall only say what Dr. Johnson said of Mr. Pott
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