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Page 55
It is not clear that quite such high praise can be given to the
execution, and the reason is plain: it was in the execution, not in
the composition and scheme, that the hard practical difficulties of
the task came in. Long harnessed official as he was, and preacher as
he was, in his critical character, of Law, Order, Restraint, Mr Arnold
was both too much of an Englishman and too much of a genius not to be
ill to ride with the curb. And, save perhaps in "Literature and
Science" (which was not at first written for an American audience at
all), the pressure of the curb--I had almost said of the twitch--is
too often evident, or at least suggested. This especially applies to
the first, the longest, the most ambitious, and, as its author would
say, most "nobly serious" of the three. There are quite admirable
things in "Numbers"; and the descant on the worship of the great
goddess Aselgeia, and its effect upon France, is not only nobly
serious from the point of view of morality, but is one of Mr Arnold's
best claims to the title of a political philosopher, and even of a
political prophet. But it is less easy to say that this passage
appears to be either specially in place or well composed with its
companions. Perhaps the same is true of the earlier part, and its
extensive dealings with Isaiah and Plato. As regards the prophet, it
is pretty certain that of Mr Arnold's hearers, the larger number did
not care to have Isaiah spoken about in that particular manner, while
some at least of the rest did not care to have him spoken about at
all. Of the philosopher, it is equally safe to say that the great
majority knew very little, and that of the small minority, some must
have had obstinate questionings connected with the appearance of Plato
as an authority on the moral health of nations, and with the
application of Mr Arnold's own very true and very noble doctrine about
Aselgeia. In fact, although the lecture is the most thoughtful, the
most serious in part, the most forcible, and the truest of all Mr
Arnold's political or social discourses, yet it shares with all of
them the reproach of a touch of desultory dilettantism.
The others, at least equally interesting in parts, are much better as
wholes. The opening of the "Emerson," with its fond reminiscence of
Oxford, is in a vein which Mr Arnold did not often work, but which
always yielded him gold. In the words about Newman, one seems to
recognise very much more than meets the ear--an explanation of much in
the Arnoldian gospel, on something like the principle of revulsion, of
soured love, which accounts for still more in the careers of his
contemporaries, Mr Pattison and Mr Froude. He is less happy on
Carlyle--he never was very happy on Carlyle, and for obvious
reasons--but here he jars less than usual. As for Emerson himself,
some readers have liked Emerson better than Carlyle at first, but have
found that Carlyle "wears" a great deal better than Emerson. It seems
to have been the other way with Mr Arnold; yet he is not uncritical
about Emerson himself. On Emerson's poetry he is even, as on his own
principles he was, perhaps, bound to be, rather hypercritical. Most of
it, no doubt, is not poetry at all; but it has "once in a hundred
years," as Mr O'Shaughnessy sang, the blossoming of the aloe, the
star-shower of poetic meteors. And while, with all reverence, one is
bound to say that his denying the title of "great writer" to Carlyle
is merely absurd--is one of those caprices which somebody once told us
are the eternal foes of art--he is not unjust in denying that title to
Emerson. But after justifying his policy of not "cracking up" by still
further denying his subject the title of a great philosophic thinker,
he proceeds to find a pedestal for him at last as a friend and leader
of those who would "live in the spirit." With such a judgment one has
no fault to find, because it must be in all cases an almost purely
personal one. To some Gautier, with his doctrine of
"Sculpte, lime, cis�le,"
as the great commandment of the creative artist, has been a friend and
leader in the life of the spirit: to Mr Arnold he was only a sort of
unspiritual innkeeper. To Mr Arnold, Maurice de Gu�rin, with his
second-hand Quinetism, was a friend and leader in the life of the
spirit; others scarcely find him so. "This is this to thee and that to
me."
The third (strictly the middle) piece fortunately requires no
allowances, and suffers from no drawbacks. "Literature and Science" is
an apology for a liberal education, and for a rationally ordered
hierarchy of human study, which it would be almost impossible to
improve, and respecting which it is difficult to think that it can
ever grow obsolete. Not only was Mr Arnold here on his own ground, but
he was fighting for his true mistress, with the lance and sword and
shield that he had proved. And the result is like that, of the
fortunate fights of romance: he thrusts his antagonists straight over
the crupper, he sends them rolling on the ground, and clutching its
sand with their fingers. Even Mr Huxley, stoutest and best of all the
Paynim knights, never succeeded in wiping off this defeat; and it is
tolerably certain that no one else will. The language of the piece is
unusually lacking in ornateness or fanciful digression; but the logic
is the strongest that Mr Arnold ever brought to bear.
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