The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

it has sometimes been misunderstood. He used the term to capture the qualities of

an open-minded intelligence (as described in "The Function of Criticism")�a refusal

to take things on authority. In this respect Arnold appears close to T. H. Huxley and

J. S. Mill. But the word also connotes a full awareness of humanity's past and a capacity to enjoy the best works of art, literature, history, and philosophy that have

come down to us from that past. As a way of viewing life in all its aspects, including

 .

135 4 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

the social, political, and religious, culture represents for Arnold the most effective

cure for the ills of a sick society. It is his principal prescription.

The attempt to define culture brings us to a final aspect of Arnold's career as a

critic: his writings on education, in which he sought to make cultural values, as he

said, "prevail." Most obviously these writings comprise his reply to Huxley (his admi

rably reasoned essay "Literature and Science," 1882) and his volumes of official

reports written as an inspector of schools. Less obviously, they comprise all his prose.

At their core is his belief that good education is the crucial need. Arnold was essen

tially a great teacher. He has the faults of a teacher�a tendency to repeat himself,

to lean too hard on formulaic phrases�and he displays something of the lectern

manner at times. He also has the great teacher's virtues, in particular the ability to

skillfully convey to us the conviction on which all his arguments are based. This

conviction is that the humanist tradition of which he is the expositor can enable the

individual man or woman to live life more fully and to change the course of society.

He believes that a democratic society can thrive only if its citizens become educated

in what he saw as the great Western tradition, "the best that is known and thought."

These values, which some readers find elitist, make Arnold both timely and contro

versial. Arnold fought for these values with the gloves on�kid gloves, his opponents

used to say�and he provided a lively exhibition of footwork that is a pleasure to

observe. Yet the gracefulness of the display should not obscure the fact that he lands

hard blows squarely on his opponents. Although his lifelong attacks against the inadequacies of Puritanism make Arnold

one of the most anti-Victorian figures of his age, behind his attacks is a characteris

tically Victorian assumption: that the Puritan middle classes can be changed, that

they are, as we would more clumsily say, educable. In 1852, writing to Clough on the

subject of equality (a political objective in which he believed by conviction if not by

instinct), Arnold observed: "I am more and more convinced that the world tends to

become more comfortable for the mass, and more uncomfortable for those of any

natural gift or distinction�and it is as well perhaps that it should be so�for hitherto

the gifted have astonished and delighted the world, but not trained or inspired or in

any real way changed it." Arnold's gifts as a poet and critic enabled him to do both:

to delight the world and to change it.

Isolation. To Marguerite1

We were apart; yet, day by day,

I bade my heart more constant be.

I bade it keep the world away,

And grow a home for only thee;

s Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,

Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.

The fault was grave! I might have known,

What far too soon, alas! I learned�

The heart can bind itself alone,

io And faith may oft be unreturned. Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell�

Thou lov'st no more�Farewell! Farewell!

1. Addressed to a woman Arnold is reputed to have been Mary Claude, a woman Arnold knew in have met in Switzerland in the 1840s. It has been England at this same period who, though English, commonly assumed that she was French or Swiss; had connections with Germany and had translated but some recent biographies speculate she might German prose and verse.

 .