ABSTRACT
It was undoubtedly one of those happy coincidences which, according to the optimist, happen to all of us who really deserve them, that just after the reading public had awakened to the sense that there was a very piquant and remarkable writer of English prose wrapped in the coat of one whom it had hitherto regarded, if at all, as a composer of elegant, but rather academic verse, the great political change of 1867 happened, and a reign of sharp social and political changes began. I do not think myself that the revolution of 1868-1874 has ever been fully estimated, and I have always thought it half an advantage and half a disadvantage that I was myself resident out of London during the whole of that time. The looker-on sees the drift of the game more clearly, but he appreciates the motives and aims of those who take part in it less fully than the players. During these years Mr Arnold seemed to have a great part before him. Everything (following his father’s famous definition of Liberalism) ‘was an open question,’ and the Apostle of Culture with his bland conviction, first, that most things were wrong in England, and, secondly, that he was born to set them right, and with a singularly stimulating and piquant style to help him, had an unusually clear field.
