The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

scribes false aims.�"A true allegory of the state of one's own mind in a rep

resentative history," the poet is told, "is perhaps the highest thing that one can

attempt in the way of poetry."' And accordingly he attempts it. An allegory of

the state of one's own mind, the highest problem of an art which imitates

actions! No assuredly, it is not, it never can be so: no great poetical work has

ever been produced with such an aim. Faust itself, in which something of the

kind is attempted, wonderful passages as it contains, and in spite of the unsur

passed beauty of the scenes which relate to Margaret, Faust itself, judged as

a whole, and judged strictly as a poetical work, is defective: its illustrious

author, the greatest poet of modern times, the greatest critic of all times, would

have been the first to acknowledge it; he only defended his work, indeed, by

asserting it to be "something incommensurable."2 The confusion of the present times is great, the multitude of voices coun

seling different things bewildering, the number of existing works capable of

attracting a young writer's attention and of becoming his models, immense.

What he wants is a hand to guide him through the confusion, a voice to

prescribe to him the aim which he should keep in view, and to explain to him

that the value of the literary works which offer themselves to his attention is

relative to their power of helping him forward on his road towards this aim.

Such a guide the English writer at the present day will nowhere find. Failing

this, all that can be looked for, all indeed that can be desired is, that his

attention should be fixed on excellent models; that he may reproduce, at any

rate, something of their excellence, by penetrating himself with their works

and by catching their spirit, if he cannot be taught to produce what is excellent

independently. 1. North British Revieiv 19 (Aug. 1853): 180 (U.S. edition). Arnold seems not to have noticed that Goethe (a critic he revered) had been cited earlier eralization. 2. J. Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, )an. 3, 1830. in the article as the authority for this critical gen

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138 0 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

Foremost among these models for the English writer stands Shakespeare: a

name the greatest perhaps of all poetical names; a name never to be mentioned

without reverence. I will venture, however, to express a doubt, whether the

influence of his works, excellent and fruitful for the readers of poetry, for the

great majority, has been of unmixed advantage to the writers of it. Shakespeare

indeed chose excellent subjects; the world could afford no better than Mac

beth, or Romeo and Juliet, or Othello: he had no theory respecting the neces

sity of choosing subjects of present import, or the paramount interest attaching

to allegories of the state of one's own mind; like all great poets, he knew well

what constituted a poetical action; like them, wherever he found such an

action, he took it; like them, too, he found his best in past times. Rut to these

general characteristics of all great poets he added a special one of his own; a

gift, namely, of happy, abundant, and ingenious expression, eminent and unri

valed: so eminent as irresistibly to strike the attention first in him, and even

to throw into comparative shade his other excellences as a poet. Here has been

the mischief. These other excellences were his fundamental excellences as a

poet; what distinguishes the artist from the mere amateur, says Goethe, is

Architectonice in the highest sense;' that power of execution, which creates,

forms, and constitutes: not the profoundness of single thoughts, not the rich

ness of imagery, not the abundance of illustration. Rut these attractive acces

sories of a poetical work being more easily seized than the spirit of the whole,

and these accessories being possessed by Shakespeare in an unequaled degree,

a young writer having recourse to Shakespeare as his model runs great risk of

being vanquished and absorbed by them, and, in consequence, of reproducing,

according to the measure of his power, these, and these alone.4 Of this pre

ponderating quality of Shakespeare's genius, accordingly almost the whole of

modern English poetry has, it appears to me, felt the influence. To the exclu

sive attention on the part of his imitators to this it is in a great degree owing,

that of the majority of modern poetical works the details alone are valuable,

the composition worthless. In reading them one is perpetually reminded of

that terrible sentence on a modern French poet: II dit tout ce qu'il veut, mais

malheureusement il n'a rien a dire.5

Let me give an instance of what I mean. I will take it from the works of the

very chief among those who seem to have been formed in the school of Shake

speare: of one whose exquisite genius and pathetic death render him forever

interesting. I will take the poem of Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, by Keats. I

choose this rather than the Endymion, because the latter work (which a mod