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Page 47
[4] "I do not like the course for the History School at all; nothing
but read, read, read, endless histories in English, many of them by
quite second-rate men; nothing to form the mind as reading really
great authors forms it, or even to exercise it as learning a new
language, or mathematics, or one of the natural sciences exercises
it."
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 rep�re_ 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 rep�re_ 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 _si�cle_ 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 rep�re_. 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
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