ABSTRACT
Perhaps the time of Arnold’s birth helped to make him the special exponent of the thought of the middle of the century. The early attrac tion of Tennyson to Byron showed that he at any rate had come under the sway of earlier forces as Arnold never did. It is true, Arnold all through life admired Byron; but he was never led away to imitate him. Browning from the first showed by his vast schemes, as revealed in Pauline and Paracelsus, and by his absorption in the study of character, that he must overleap the limits of the age. Arnold stood in years just far enough away from the forces which had their birth in the Revolution, and which he saw working themselves out, to be an observer interested in but not dominated by them. It was his fortune to belong to that English University which had the greatest share in shaping the thoughts of the generation then rising, and to be connected by blood and friendship with men who played a great part in so shaping them. And he brought with him just the disposition necessary to observe and to note the working of those forces and thoughts. Critic always, Arnold is never more a critic than in his verse. I do not refer merely to verses such as the ‘Epilogue to Lessing’s Laocoön,’ in which he gives utterance to literary criticism without losing the accent of exquisite poetry. There are more such pieces in Arnold than perhaps in any other poet; and he has more skilfully than any other combined the critical with the poetic spirit. But that spirit is far more widely spread through his poetry; it is indeed everywhere. Nor without reason did he define poetry as ‘the criticism of life’. This, with the added proviso that it was particularly life in his own century that he criticised, was specially Arnold’s work. Not unnaturally too he held that the thing which Europe in his day most desired was criticism. There was great truth in the view; and if there was also some exaggeration it was the natural exaggeration of the man who unconsciously exalts that which he has to give.
