Chapter V. The Last Decade.
It would be unhistorical to assert, and unphilosophical to assume, that in the change or reversion noted at the end of the last chapter, Mr Arnold had any consciousness of relinquishment, still more to hint any definite sense of failure on his part. He would probably have said (if any one had been impertinent enough to ask, and he had condescended to reply) that he had said his say, had shot his bolt, and might leave them to produce their effect. But that there was, if no repentance, a certain disgust, I cannot but believe. He must have seen — he almost acknowledges that he saw — that the work which he at least thought was conservative was being utilised by others in a purely destructive spirit; he must have found himself in very unwelcome alliances; and (which is worst of all to a delicate and sensitive spirit) he must constantly have found fools dotting his i’s and emphasising his innuendoes in their own clumsy and Philistine fashion. At any rate, it is purely historical to say that he did henceforward almost entirely change his main line of operation as to religious matters, and that though, as has been shown, he persisted, not too fortunately, in politics, his method of discussion in that likewise was altered. As we heard no more of the three Lord Shaftesburys, so Bottles and his unwelcome society were permitted to remain unchronicled. In the latter department seriousness came upon Mr Arnold; in the former, if not a total, yet a general and certainly most welcome silence.
Most welcome: for he was voiceful enough on other and his proper subjects. “Falkland,” which followed “A French Critic on Milton,” in March in the Fortnightly, and “George Sand,” which followed it, as has been said, in June in the Nineteenth Century, somewhat deserved the title (Mixed Essays) of the volume in which they were two years later reprinted. But the last essay of the year 1877, that on Mr Stopford Brooke’s Primer, was, like the “French Critic,” and even more than that, pure literature. “A French Critic on Goethe,” which appeared in the Quarterly Review for January 1878, followed next. The other pieces of this year, which also, with one exception, appeared in Mixed Essays, were, with that exception, evidences of a slight but venial relapse, or let us say of convalescence not yet quite turned into health. “Equality” (Fortnightly, March 1878), “Irish Catholicism and British Liberalism” (Fortnightly, July 1878), and “Porro Unum est Necessarium” (Fortnightly, November 1878), were, if not of “the utmost last provincial band,” yet not of the pure Quirites, the genuine citizens of the sacred city of Mr Arnold’s thought: and he seceded from this latter in not a few of those estimable but unimportant Irish essays which have been noticed in the last chapter.
But the literary contents of Mixed Essays are very interesting, and the Johnson paper (really a preface to the six selected lives, which he edited for Messrs Macmillan in 1878) is a most excellent piece of work. His selection of the Lives is perhaps not quite unerring. For he ought surely to have given the “Cowley,” with its (from his own point of view) invaluable point de repère in the estimate of the “metaphysicals.” And he might have missed the “Swift,” which, though extremely interesting as a personal study from its mixture of prejudice and constraint, its willingness to wound, and yet — not its fear but — its honest compunction at striking, is, for the purpose of the volume, misplaced. But he had a right to give what he chose: and his preface has points of the very highest value. The opening passage about the point de repère itself, the fixed halting-place to which we can always resort for fresh starts, fresh calculations, is one of the great critical loci of the world, and especially involves the main contribution of the nineteenth century to criticism if not to literature altogether. We may exalt, without very much doubt or dread, the positive achievements of the century of Tennyson and Browning, of Carlyle and Thackeray, of Heine and Hugo. But we have seen such strange revolutions in this respect that it may not do to be too confident. The glory of which no man can deprive our poor dying siècle is that not one, of all the others since history began, has taken such pains to understand those before it, has, in other words, so discovered and so utilised the value of points de repère. It may be that this value is, except in the rarest cases, all that a critic can ever pretend to — that he may be happy if, as few do, he reaches this. But in the formulation of the idea (for he did much more than merely borrow it from the French) Mr Arnold showed his genius, his faculty of putting
“What oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.”
And when a man does this in prose or in verse, in criticism or in creation, he has his reward — a reward that no man can take away, even if any one were disposed to try.
As a whole, Mixed Essays itself, which followed Last Essays on Church and Religion at an interval of two years, is an almost immeasurably livelier book than its predecessor, and to some judgments at least seems to excel that predecessor in solid value as much as in the graces. “Mixed” is perhaps not a strictly accurate title, for the volume consists of two halves, the contents of each of which are homogeneous enough, but which have next to nothing to do with each other. But even in the non-literary essays we are out of “The Wilderness” in its worst sense. Most of the essays had, as has just been shown, appeared in different periodicals, while “Equality” was also delivered as a lecture during the years 1877 and 1878. The exception was the paper called “Democracy,” which he reprinted from his first work on Foreign Schools in 1861, where it had appeared as an Introduction. The juxtaposition is by no means uninteresting or uninstructive, though perhaps it is not entirely favourable to the idea of Mr Arnold’s development as a zoon politicon. It has been said before that his earliest political writing is a good deal less fantastic and more sane than that of his middle period, and though “the last of life for which the first was made” was now restoring to him much of his power in this direction, yet he was always much joined to idols in matters political. In grasp “Democracy” does not quite come up to its rather ambitious title; and a moment’s thought will show why. In 1861 Democracy was a very academic subject. All projects for further Parliamentary Reform had failed utterly in England; and nobody dreamt of what the next five or six years would bring. In France there was what looked like a crushing military despotism: in other Continental countries the repression which had followed the outbreaks of 1848-49 was only just being relaxed, or not relaxed at all. American democracy had not had its second baptism of Civil War. The favourite fancies about the respective ethos of aristocracy, of the middle-class, and of the lower do indeed appear, but for the most part Mr Arnold confines himself to the simple question of State interference, for which in his own subject of education he was so anxious, and which he would gladly have seen extended. It has been more than once remarked already that he may justly be regarded as a politician of more seriousness than he has here been represented as possessing, if espousing the cause of the things which actually happen is taken as the criterion. For State interference has grown and is growing every day. But then it may be held — and as a matter of principle he would not himself have contested it — that a man’s politics should be directed, not by what he thinks will happen, but by what he thinks ought to happen. And some of us, while not in love by any means with the middle-class Liberal ideas of 1830-1860, think that the saving grace of that day that is dead was precisely its objection to State interference.
“Equality,” which follows, and which starts what might be called at the time of the book its contemporary interest, is much more far-reaching and of greater curiosity; indeed, it may perhaps be held to be the most curious, in a certain sense, of all its author’s writings, and to give, in a not fully satisfactory but suggestive fashion, a key to his complex character which is supplied by no other of his essays. That there was (in no silly or derogatory sense of an often absurdly used word) a slightly un-English side to that character, few acute judges would deny. But its results, in the greater part of the works, are so diffused, and, as it were, subterranean, that they are difficult to extract and concentrate. Here we seem to get the spirit much nearer proof. For the Equality which Mr Ar
nold here champions is not English but French equality; not political and judicial equality before the law, but social equality enforced by the law. He himself admits, and perhaps even a little exaggerates, his attitude of Athanasius contra mundum in this respect, amassing with relish expressions, in the sense opposite to his own, from such representative and yet essentially diverse authorities as Lord Beaconsfield, Mr Gladstone, Sir Erskine May, Mr Froude, and Mr Lowe. Against them he arrays Menander and George Sand — a counter-championship not itself suggestive of Equality. This may be “only his fun” — a famous utterance which it is never more necessary to keep in mind than when speaking or writing of Mr Arnold, for his fun, such as it was, was pervading, and occasionally rather cryptic. But the bulk of the paper is perfectly serious. Social equality, and its compulsory establishment by a law against free bequest or by public opinion, these are his themes. He asserts that the Continent is in favour of them; that the English colonies, ci-devant and actual, are in favour of them; that the Greeks were in favour of them; that the Bible is in favour of them. He cites Mr Hamerton as to the virtues of the French peasant. He renews his old tilt at the manners of the English lower-middle class, at Messrs Moody and Sankey, at the great “Jingo” song of twenty years ago (as to which, by the way, a modern Fletcher of Saltoun might have something to say to-day), at the Puritans, at Mr Goldwin Smith, at many things and many persons.
I feel that history has given me at the moment rather an unfair advantage over Mr Arnold here. One could always pick plenty of holes in “Equality,” could suggest that the Greeks did not make such a very good thing of it with their equality (which included slavery); that the Biblical point is far from past argument; that M. Zola, for instance, supplies an interesting commentary on Mr Hamerton’s rose-coloured pictures of the French peasantry; that whatever Mr Arnold’s own lot may have been, others who have lived in small French towns with the commis voyageur have not found his manners so greatly superior to those of the English bagman. But just at this moment, and, in fact, in an increasing degree ever since Mr Arnold wrote, the glorification of France has become difficult or impossible. Sir Erskine May, it seems, had warned him in vain about the political effect of French Equality even at that time: but one need not confine oneself to politics. At the end of the nineteenth century France has enjoyed the blessings of social equality, enforced by compulsory division of estates, for a hundred years and more. Perhaps equality has nothing to do with the decadence of her literature, with that state of morals which Mr Arnold himself deplored with almost Puritan emphasis, with the state of religion which he holds up as an awful example, fit to warn England to flee to the refuge of his own undogmatic Nephelococcygia, with the ineffable scandals of Panama and the Dreyfus case, with the mixture of blind illucidity and febrile passion which characterises the French press. Only, what is left? Where are the improvements due to this great influence? They are, according to Mr Arnold, in the amiable dignity of the French peasant and the polished refinement of the French middle-class. Frankly, one may prefer Hodge and Bottles.
“Irish Catholicism and British Liberalism” has less actuality, and, moreover, it belongs to a group of which enough has been said in reference to the Irish Essays. But “Porro Unum est Necessarium” possesses not merely an accidental but a real claim to fresh attention, not merely at the moment when there is at last some chance of the dream of Mr Arnold’s life, the interference of the State in English secondary education, being realised, but because it is one of the expressions of that dream which was in his life so important. It consists partly of statistics and partly of a moan over the fact that, in the heat and heyday of Mr Gladstone’s levée en masse against the Tory Government of 1874-80, the Liberal programme contained nothing about this darling object. And the superiority of France is trotted out again; but it would be cruel to insist any more. Yet at last Mr Arnold becomes practical, and contends for pretty much the substance of present Secondary Education Reform schemes — limited inspection, qualification of masters, leaving certificates, &c. “It do not over-stimulate,” to quote an author to whom Mr Arnold was shortly to devote much attention; but we leave the political or semi-political batch in considerably greater charity with the author than his prose volumes for years past had rendered possible.
No reserves, no allowances of the least importance are necessary in dealing with the rest of the volume. I do not think it fanciful to discern a sort of involuntary or rather unconscious “Ouf!” of relief in the first, the “Guide to English Literature,” on the subject, as has been said, of Mr Stopford Brooke’s always excellent and then novel Primer. A tribute to duty is, indeed, paid at starting: we are told sternly that we must not laugh (as it is to be feared too many of us did and do) at the famous boast of the French Minister, as to all the boys in France learning the same lesson at the same hour. For this was the result of State interference: and all the works of State interference are blessing and blessed. But, this due rite paid, Mr Arnold gives himself up to enjoyment, laudation, and a few good-natured and, for the most part, extremely judicious proposals for making the good better still. Even if this last characteristic were not present, it would be unjust to call the article a puff. Besides, are puffs so wholly bad? A man may be not very fond of sweets, and yet think a good puff now and then, a puff with its three corners just hot from the oven, full of jam, light, artistically frothed, to be a very pleasing thing. And, as I have said, Mr Arnold’s review is much more than a puff. Once, indeed, there is even a hypercriticism, due to that slight want of familiarity with literary history proper which has been noticed more than once. Mr Arnold finds fault with Mr Brooke for adopting, as one of his chapter divisions, “from the Restoration to George III.” He objects to this that “George III. has nothing to do with literature,” and suggests “to the Death of Pope and Swift.” This is a curious mistake, of a kind which lesser critics have often repeated. Perhaps George III. had nothing to do with literature; but his accession immediately preceded, and may even, as the beginning of a pure English régime, have done something to produce, numerous appearances of the Romantic revival — Percy’s Reliques, Hurd’s Essays, Macpherson’s Ossian, The Castle of Otranto, and others. The deaths of Pope and Swift have no such synchronism. They mark, indeed, the disappearance of the strongest men of the old school, but not the appearance of even the weakest and most infantine of the new. Still this, though interesting in itself, is a trifle, and the whole paper, short as it is, is a sort of Nunc Dimittis in a new sense, a hymn of praise for dismissal, not from but to work — to the singer’s proper function, from which he has been long divorced.
“Falkland,” which follows, is less purely literary, but yet closely connected with literature. One thinks with some ruth of its original text, which was a discourse on Falkland by that modern Lucius Gary, the late Lord Carnarvon — the most curious and pathetic instance of a man of the nineteenth century speaking of one who was almost his exact prototype, in virtues and graces as in weaknesses and disabilities of temperament, during the seventeenth. It would, of course, have been indecent for Mr Arnold to bring this parallel out, writing as he did in his own name and at the moment, and I do not find any reference to it in the Letters; but I can remember how strongly it was felt at the time. His own interest in Falkland as the martyr of Sweetness and Light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper, was most natural, and its sources most obvious. It would be cruel, and is quite unnecessary, to insist on the too certain fact that, in this instance at any rate, these excellent qualities were accompanied by a distinct weakness of will, by a mania for sitting between two stools, and by that — it may be lovable, it may be even estimable — incapacity to think, to speak, to behave like a man of this world, which besets the conscientious idealist who is not a fanatic. On the contrary, let us not grudge Mr Arnold a hero so congenial to himself, and so little repulsive to any of us. He could not have had a better subject; nor can Falkland ever hope for a vates better consecrated, by taste, temper, and ability, to sing his praises.
Then we are back again in pure literature, with the two notable Quarterly articles, already glanced at, on M. Scherer as “A French Critic on Milton” and “A French Critic on Goethe.” There was a very strong sympathy, creditable to both, between the two. M. Scherer went further than Mr Arnold in the negative character of his views on religion; but they agreed as to dogma. His literary criticism was somewhat harder and drier than Mr Arnold’s; but the two agreed in acuteness, lucidity, and a wide, if not quite a thoroughgoing, use of the comparative method. Both were absolutely at one in their uncompromising exaltation of “conduct.” So that Mr Arnold was writing quite con amore when he took up his pen to recommend M. Scherer to the British public, which mostly knew him not at that time.
But he did not begin directly with his main subject. He had always, as we have seen, had a particular grudge at Macaulay, who indeed represented in many ways the tendencies which Mr Arnold was born to oppose. Now just at this time certain younger critics, while by no means championing Macaulay generally, had raised pretty loud and repeated protests against Mr Arnold’s exaggerated depreciation of the Lays as “pinchbeck”; and I am rather disposed to think that he took this opportunity for a sort of sally in flank. He fastens on one of Macaulay’s weakest points, a point the weakness of which was admitted by Macaulay himself — the “gaudily and ungracefully ornamented” (as its author calls it) Essay on Milton. And he points out, with truth enough, that its “gaudy and ungraceful ornament” is by no means its only fault — that it is bad as criticism, that it shows no clear grasp of Milton’s real merits, that it ignores his faults, that it attributes to him qualities which were the very reverse of his real qualities. He next deals slighter but still telling blows at Addison, defends Johnson, in passing, as only negatively deficient in the necessary qualifications, not positively conventional like Addison, or rhetorical like Macaulay, and then with a turn, itself excellently rhetorical in the good sense, passes to M. Scherer’s own dealings with the subject. Thenceforward he rather effaces himself, and chiefly abstracts and summarises the “French Critic’s” deliverances, laying special stress on the encomiums given to Milton’s style. The piece is one of his most artfully constructed; and I do not anywhere know a better example of ingenious and attractive introduction of a friend, as we may call it, to a new society.
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 122