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Page 48
"What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed."
And when a man does this in prose or in verse, in criticism or in
creation, he has his reward--a reward that no man can take away, even
if any one were disposed to try.
As a whole, _Mixed Essays_ itself, which followed _Last Essays
on Church and Religion_ at an interval of two years, is an almost
immeasurably livelier book than its predecessor, and to some judgments
at least seems to excel that predecessor in solid value as much as in
the graces. "Mixed" is perhaps not a strictly accurate title, for the
volume consists of two halves, the contents of each of which are
homogeneous enough, but which have next to nothing to do with each
other. But even in the non-literary essays we are out of "The
Wilderness" in its worst sense. Most of the essays had, as has just
been shown, appeared in different periodicals, while "Equality" was
also delivered as a lecture during the years 1877 and 1878. The
exception was the paper called "Democracy," which he reprinted from
his first work on Foreign Schools in 1861, where it had appeared as an
Introduction. The juxtaposition is by no means uninteresting or
uninstructive, though perhaps it is not entirely favourable to the
idea of Mr Arnold's development as a _zoon politicon_. It has
been said before that his earliest political writing is a good deal
less fantastic and more sane than that of his middle period, and
though "the last of life for which the first was made" was now
restoring to him much of his power in this direction, yet he was
always much joined to idols in matters political. In grasp "Democracy"
does not quite come up to its rather ambitious title; and a moment's
thought will show why. In 1861 Democracy was a very academic subject.
All projects for further Parliamentary Reform had failed utterly in
England; and nobody dreamt of what the next five or six years would
bring. In France there was what looked like a crushing military
despotism: in other Continental countries the repression which had
followed the outbreaks of 1848-49 was only just being relaxed, or not
relaxed at all. American democracy had not had its second baptism of
Civil War. The favourite fancies about the respective _ethos_ of
aristocracy, of the middle-class, and of the lower do indeed appear,
but for the most part Mr Arnold confines himself to the simple
question of State interference, for which in his own subject of
education he was so anxious, and which he would gladly have seen
extended. It has been more than once remarked already that he may
justly be regarded as a politician of more seriousness than he has
here been represented as possessing, if espousing the cause of the
things which actually happen is taken as the criterion. For State
interference has grown and is growing every day. But then it may be
held--and as a matter of principle he would not himself have contested
it--that a man's politics should be directed, not by what he thinks
will happen, but by what he thinks ought to happen. And some of us,
while not in love by any means with the middle-class Liberal ideas of
1830-1860, think that the saving grace of that day that is dead was
precisely its objection to State interference.
"Equality," which follows, and which starts what might be called at
the time of the book its contemporary interest, is much more
far-reaching and of greater curiosity; indeed, it may perhaps be held
to be the most curious, in a certain sense, of all its author's
writings, and to give, in a not fully satisfactory but suggestive
fashion, a key to his complex character which is supplied by no other
of his essays. That there was (in no silly or derogatory sense of an
often absurdly used word) a slightly un-English side to that
character, few acute judges would deny. But its results, in the
greater part of the works, are so diffused, and, as it were,
subterranean, that they are difficult to extract and concentrate. Here
we seem to get the spirit much nearer proof. For the Equality which Mr
Arnold here champions is not English but French equality; not
political and judicial equality before the law, but social equality
enforced by the law. He himself admits, and perhaps even a little
exaggerates, his attitude of _Athanasius contra mundum_ in this
respect, amassing with relish expressions, in the sense opposite to
his own, from such representative and yet essentially diverse
authorities as Lord Beaconsfield, Mr Gladstone, Sir Erskine May, Mr
Froude, and Mr Lowe. Against them he arrays Menander and George
Sand--a counter-championship not itself suggestive of Equality. This
may be "only his fun"--a famous utterance which it is never more
necessary to keep in mind than when speaking or writing of Mr Arnold,
for his fun, such as it was, was pervading, and occasionally rather
cryptic. But the bulk of the paper is perfectly serious. Social
equality, and its compulsory establishment by a law against free
bequest or by public opinion, these are his themes. He asserts that
the Continent is in favour of them; that the English colonies,
_ci-devant_ and actual, are in favour of them; that the Greeks were in
favour of them; that the Bible is in favour of them. He cites Mr
Hamerton as to the virtues of the French peasant. He renews his old
tilt at the manners of the English lower-middle class, at Messrs Moody
and Sankey, at the great "Jingo" song of twenty years ago (as to
which, by the way, a modern Fletcher of Saltoun might have something
to say to-day), at the Puritans, at Mr Goldwin Smith, at many things
and many persons.
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