ABSTRACT
The work of Matthew Arnold as a critic of literature, politics, and social life would afford ample material for a separate study. I purpose here to speak only of his work as a poet-work of an earlier date and perhaps or a more enduring value than his work as a critic; and in the consideration of his poetry I purpose to apply some of his own principles, some of his own tests. He himself maintained that the poet is essentially a higher and deeper kind of critic, a critic of life who is eminently endowed with imagination and a love for what is beautiful and noble. ‘It is important,’ he said, ‘to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life-to the question: How to live.’ And elsewhere he asserted, that for poetry ‘the idea is everything,’ and that its great function is to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Instead, therefore, of wandering on the surface of his poems, I will strike at once for the centre, and put the question-What are the ideas which he has applied with power or beauty to life? How has he interpreted life for us? What sustenance, what consolation do we find in his verse?
