The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

so far as the present age can supply such actions, they will gladly make use of

them; but that an age wanting in moral grandeur can with difficulty supply

such, and an age of spiritual discomfort with difficulty be powerfully and

delightfully affected by them.

A host of voices will indignantly rejoin that the present age is inferior to the

past neither in moral grandeur nor in spiritual health. He who possesses the

discipline I speak of will content himself with remembering the judgments

passed upon the present age, in this respect, by the two men, the one of

strongest head, the other of widest culture, whom it has produced; by Goethe

and by Niebuhr.3 It will be sufficient for him that he knows the opinions held

by these two great men respecting the present age and its literature; and that

he feels assured in his own mind that their aims and demands upon life were

such as he would wish, at any rate, his own to be; and their judgment as to

what is impeding and disabling such as he may safely follow. He will not,

however, maintain a hostile attitude towards the false pretensions of his age:

he will content himself with not being overwhelmed by them. He will esteem

himself fortunate if he can succeed in banishing from his mind all feelings of

contradiction, and irritation, and impatience; in order to delight himself with

the contemplation of some noble action of a heroic time, and to enable others,

through his representation of it, to delight in it also. I am far indeed from making any claim, for myself, that I possess this dis

cipline; or for the following poems, that they breathe its spirit. But I say, that

in the sincere endeavor to learn and practice, amid the bewildering confusion

of our times, what is sound and true in poetical art, I seemed to myself to find

the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at

any rate, knew what they wanted in art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty

which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism. How often have I felt this

when reading words of disparagement or of cavil: that it is the uncertainty as

to what is really to be aimed at which makes our difficulty, not the dissatis

faction of the critic, who himself suffers from the same uncertainty. Non me

tua fervida terrent Dicta; . . . Dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis.4

Two kinds of dilettanti, says Goethe, there are in poetry: he who neglects

the indispensable mechanical part, and thinks he has done enough if he shows

spirituality and feeling; and he who seeks to arrive at poetry merely by mech

anism, in which he can acquire an artisan's readiness, and is without soul and

matter.5 And he adds, that the first does most harm to art, and the last to

himself. If we must be dilettanti; if it is impossible for us, under the circum

3. B. G. Niebuhr (1776-1831), German histo-Turnus, a warrior abandoned by the gods, is replyrian. Both writers felt that their own age had added ing to Aeneas, who has taunted him with being little to the store of great literature. afraid. 4. The gods frighten me, and [having] Jupiter as 5. See "Concerning the So-called Dilettantism" an enemy (Latin); from Virgil's Aeneid 12.894�95. (1799) in his Werke (1833) 44.281.

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1384 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

stances amidst which we live, to think clearly, to feel nobly, and to delineate

firmly; if we cannot attain to the mastery of the great artists; let us, at least,

have so much respect for our art as to prefer it to ourselves. Let us not bewilder

our successors; let us transmit to them the practice of poetry, with its bound

aries and wholesome regulative laws, under which excellent works may again,

perhaps, at some future time, be produced, not yet fallen into oblivion through

our neglect, not yet condemned and canceled by the influence of their eternal

enemy, caprice.

1853

From The Function of Criticism at the Present Time1

Many objections have been made to a proposition which, in some remarks

of mine on translating Homer,2 I ventured to put forth; a proposition about

criticism, and its importance at the present day. I said: "Of the literature of

France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort,

for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavor, in all branches

of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as

in itself it really is." I added, that owing to the operation in English literature

of certain causes, "almost the last thing for which one would come to English

literature is just that very thing which now Europe most desires�criticism";

and that the power and value of English literature was thereby impaired. More

than one rejoinder declared that the importance I here assigned to criticism

was excessive, and asserted the inherent superiority of the creative effort of

the human spirit over its critical effort. And the other day, having been led by

a Mr. Shairp's excellent notice of Wordsworth3 to turn again to his biography,

1 found, in the words of this great man, whom I, for one, must always listen