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Page 62
The most noticeable, the most easily imitated, and the most doubtful
of his mannerisms was, of course, the famous iteration, which was
probably at first natural, but which, as we see from the
_Letters_, he afterwards deliberately fostered and accentuated,
in order, as he thought, the better to get his new ideas into the
heads of what the type-writer sometimes calls the "Br_u_tish"
public. That it became at times extremely teasing is beyond argument,
and I should be rather afraid that Prince Posterity will be even more
teased by it than we are, because to him the ideas it enforces will
be, and will have been ever since he can remember, obvious and
common-place enough. But when this and some other peccadillos (on
which it is unnecessary to dwell, lest we imitate the
composition-books aforesaid) were absent or even moderately present,
sometimes even in spite of their intrusion, Mr Arnold's style was of a
curiously fascinating character. I have often thought that, in the
good sense of that unlucky word "genteel," this style deserves it far
more than the style either of Shaftesbury or of Temple; while in its
different and nineteenth-century way, it is as much a model of the
"middle" style, neither very plain nor very ornate, but "elegant," as
Addison's own. Yet it is observable that all the three writers just
mentioned keep their place, except with deliberate students of the
subject, rather by courtesy or prescription than by actual conviction
and relish on the part of readers: and it is possible that something
of the same kind may happen in Mr Arnold's case also, when his claims
come to be considered by other generations from the merely formal
point of view. Nor can those claims be said to be very securely based
in respect of matter. It is impossible to believe that posterity will
trouble itself about the dreary apologetics of undogmatism on which he
wasted so much precious time and energy; they will have been arranged
by the Prince's governor on the shelves, with Hobbes's mathematics and
Southey's political essays. "But the criticism," it will be said,
"_that_ ought to endure." No doubt from some points of view it ought,
but will it? So long, or as soon, as English literature is
intelligently taught in universities, it is sure of its place in any
decently arranged course of Higher Rhetoric; so long, or as soon, as
critics consider themselves bound to study the history and documents
of their business, it will be read by them. But what hold does this
give it? Certainly not a stronger hold than that of Dryden's _Essay of
Dramatic Poesy_, which, though some of us may know it by heart, can
scarcely be said to be a commonly read classic.
The fact is--and no one knew this fact more thoroughly, or would have
acknowledged it more frankly, than Mr Arnold himself--that criticism
has, of all literature that is really literature, the most precarious
existence. Each generation likes, and is hardly wrong in liking, to
create for itself in this province, to which creation is so scornfully
denied by some; and old critics are to all but experts (and apparently
to some of them) as useless as old moons. Nor can one help regretting
that so long a time has been lost in putting before the public a
cheap, complete, handy, and fairly handsome edition of the whole of Mr
Arnold's prose. There is no doubt at all that the existence of such an
edition, even before his death, was part cause, and a large part of
the cause, of the great and continued popularity of De Quincey; and it
is a thousand pities that, before a generation arises which knows him
not, Mr Arnold is not allowed the same chance. As it is, not a little
of his work has never been reprinted at all; some of the rest is
difficult of access, and what there is exists in numerous volumes of
different forms, some cheap, some dear, the whole cumbersome. And if
his prose work seems to me inferior to his poetical in absolute and
perennial value, its value is still very great. Not so much English
prose has that character of grace, of elegance, which has been
vindicated for this, that we can afford to lay aside or to forget such
consummate examples of it. Academic urbanity is not so universal a
feature of our race--the constant endeavour at least to "live by the
law of the _peras_," to observe lucidity, to shun exaggeration,
is scarcely so endemic. Let it be added, too, that if not as the sole,
yet as the chief, herald and champion of the new criticism, as a
front-fighter in the revolutions of literary view which have
distinguished the latter half of the nineteenth century in England, Mr
Arnold will be forgotten or neglected at the peril of the generations
and the individuals that forget or neglect him.
Little need be added about the loss of actual artistic pleasure which
such neglect must bring. Mr Arnold may never, in prose, be read with
quite the same keenness of delight with which we read him in poetry;
but he will yield delight more surely. His manner, except in his rare
"thorn-crackling" moments, and sometimes even then, will carry off
even the less agreeable matter; with matter at all agreeable, it has a
hardly to be exaggerated charm.
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