MATHEW ARNOLD (1822- 1888)

Mathew Arnold as a critic

• Arnold had written some poetry before he turned to criticism. His criticism is the criticism of a man who
had personal experience of what he was writing about.

• Arnold’s critical Works—Preface to the Poems of 1853, On Translating Homer, The Study of Celtic
Literature, Essays in Criticism I & II
His Views on Poetry

• 1. Classicism

• There was a group of poets in the Victorian Age who came to be called Spasmodics.

• The more prominent among them were P.J. Bailey, Sydney Dobell, and Alexander Smith. They believed that
poetry was the ‘expression of the state of one’s own mind’.

• This led to extravagance of thought and emotion and to use of excess metaphor. It was to combat the
spasmodic tendency that Arnold wrote the Preface to the Poems of 1853.

• He omitted his poem ‘Empedocles on Aetna’ from the collection as he thought that the poem was Spasmodic.
Empedocles suffers and ends his life by jumping into the volcano Aetna.

• He does nothing but suffer. Arnold thought that the theme was not suitable for poetry. All art must be
dedicated to Joy. Even the suffering in tragedy brings joy.
• What are the subjects of great poetry?

• The Spasmodics believed that the ancient subjects had lost their importance and the poet must concentrate on new subjects. Arnold
thought otherwise. The business of the poet is not to praise their Age, but to afford greatest pleasure to the men who live in it.

• Passing actions have only passing value and the Greeks left them to be treated by the comic poet. For tragedy, which Greeks
considered the highest form of poetry, they chose actions that please always and please all. Arnold argued that the subject of poetry
whether they are ancient or modern must satisfy this test that they must please the reader. Poetry aims higher—it is cathartic.

• The Spasmodics believed that they could make for the inferiority of their subjects by their superior treatment of them. That was why
they pressed metaphor and simile into their service. No amount of make up can for long hide the ugliness of the substance beneath.
With the Greeks the poetical character of the action was more important than the treatment. The action must be one in which part is
coordinated with part to form a single, unified whole.

• Arnold was dissatisfied with the poetry of his age. He turned to models like Shakespeare—‘a name never to be mentioned without
reverence’. Shakespeare chose excellent subjects. He had such an unbridled expression, a gift of happy phrase that he was unable to
say anything plainly in the ‘directest’ language. Arnold did not consider this a ‘safe model’ for the Victorian poet, whose weakness
was the same. To undo this ‘mischief’ there was no other way than to turn to the ancients—to the ‘admirable treatise of Aristotle and
the unrivalled works of their poets’. This therefore is his criterion of great poetry: that it gives joy even when the situation is painful,
that it treats of action rather than thought, that it pleases as a whole and not merely in parts, and that its highest models are the ancient
classics.
• 2. The Grand Style

• Arnold believed that the grand style of the Greeks was superior to the colourful style of the English. He said
that the grand style of Homer ennobles poetry and ennobles life. Arnold explains the grand style thus: ‘it
arises in poetry when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or severity a serious subject’.
Arnold finds only three masters of the grand style, Homer, Milton and Dante. The utterance of these poets is
sublime and sublimity of utterance comes only with sublimity of soul. Their subjects were for all ages.

• 3. Criticism of Life

• Arnold considered poetry as a serious occupation like the art of living itself. What is said was of as much
consequence as how it is said . In English poetry he found more shape than substance, more style than matter.
Modern poetry can only subsist by its contents: by becoming complete ‘magister vitae’ (director of life) like
the poetry of the ancients.
On Criticism

• 1. Creative and Critical Faculties

• Arnold admits that the critical faculty is lower than the creative. The exercise of creative power is the highest
function of man. Creative power should coincide with a creative epoch to produce great works of literature.
Unless a poet finds himself in a creative epoch, he would end up as a failure. Gray is a case in point. With all
his poetical gifts, he could not flower ‘because a spiritual east wind was at that time blowing’. He belonged to
an age of prose not of poetry.

• The word ‘disinterestedness’ is the key in Arnold’s criticism. Arnold considered criticism as the handmaid of
culture—personal, social, and literary. Criticism should remain above all party considerations or sectarian
point of views. Personal considerations hindered ‘a free disinterested play of mind’. Unless a critic freed his
mind from all such considerations, he could not discharge his duty truly, which is ‘to see the object as in itself
it really is’.
• 2. The Touchstone Method

• Arnold considers judgement of literature as the time-honoured function of criticism. In order to find out whether a poem
belongs to the class of the truly excellent, it is advised to compare it with the great lines and expressions from the great
masters. These lines from the great are used as touchstones to measure the quality of poetry. Arnold keeps a few widely
different passages from Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton as truly excellent.

• Arnold gives no reason as to why he considers the selected lines as great. But he hints elsewhere that the lines are noted
for higher truth and higher seriousness.

• 3. False Standards of Judgement

• The personal estimate and the historic estimate are considered to be two false kinds of estimates.

• Our personal affinities, likings, and circumstances have great power to control our estimate of this or that poet’s work,
and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses. Much of Burn’s poetry is praised
for Scotch drink, Scotch religion, Scotch manners. These are elements of personal estimate.

• The historic estimate lays more emphasis on the circumstances in which the author wrote—the state of life and literature
in his day, his opportunities and limitations, the labour needed by the work, and so on. Such historic estimate is also
misleading.
The Value of his Criticism

• Arnold is an over -praised critic. Neither in his observations on poetry nor in those on the critical art can he be said to
say anything of his own. He just reminds his age of the ideas of Aristotle and Longinus.

• In some of his observations he follows the classical line. His ‘touchstone method’ is but a modified version of
Longinus’s test of poetic greatness.

• Arnold is also an ‘interested’ critic like those he condemns. There is a strong moral bias in his critical utterances.

• Arnold rescued criticism from the disorganised state into which it had fallen. He offered it a system in critical
judgement. This he found in the rules of the Ancients which had stood the test of time.

• He also waged a relentless battle against the intrusion of personal, religious, or political considerations in the judgement
of authors and works.

• Lastly, he raised criticism to a higher level than was ever thought of by making it the care-taker of literature in epochs
unfavourable to its growth.