precious speciality, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, and yet be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements?genuine observation, humour, and passion. But it is precisely this absence of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute technique is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, 'Moi, aussi, je joue de la flute;'8?a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of 'silly novels by lady novelists.'
1856 1856
7. Proverbs 14.23. 8. I also play the flute (French). Jean de La Fontaine (1621?1695), French author of beast fables.
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MATTHEW ARNOLD
1822-1888
How is a full and enjoyable life to be lived in a modern industrial society? This was
the recurrent topic in the poetry and prose of Matthew Arnold. In his poetry the
question itself is raised; in his prose some answers are attempted. 'The misapprehen
siveness [wrongheadedness] of his age is exactly what a poet is sent to remedy,' wrote
Robert Browning, and yet it is to Arnold's work, not Browning's, that the statement
seems more applicable. In response to rapid and potentially dislocating social
changes, Arnold strove to help his contemporaries achieve a richer intellectual and
emotional existence. Matthew Arnold was born in Laleham, a village in the valley of the Thames. It
seems appropriate that his childhood was spent near a river, for clear-flowing streams
were later to appear in his poems as symbols of serenity. At the age of six, Arnold was
moved to Rugby School, where his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, had become head
master. As a clergyman Dr. Arnold was a leader of the liberal or Broad Church and
hence one of the principal opponents of John Henry Newman. As a headmaster he
became famous as an educational reformer, a teacher who instilled in his pupils an
earnest preoccupation with moral and social issues and also an awareness of the
connection between liberal studies and modern life. At Rugby his eldest son, Mat
thew, was directly exposed to the powerful force of the father's mind and character.
The son's attitude toward this force was a mixture of attraction and repulsion. That
he was permanently influenced by his father is evident in his poems and in his writings
on religion, education, and politics; but like many sons of clergymen, he made a
determined effort in his youth to be different. As a student at Oxford he behaved like
a dandy. Elegantly and colorfully dressed, alternately languid or merry in manner, he
refused to be serious and irritated more solemn undergraduate friends and acquain
tances with his irreverent jokes. 'His manner displeases, from its seeming foppery,'
wrote Charlotte Bronte after talking with the young man in later years. 'The shade
of Dr. Arnold,' she added, 'seemed to me to frown on his young representative.' The
son of Dr. Arnold thus appeared to have no connection with Rugby School's standards
of earnestness. Even his studies did not seem to occupy him seriously. By a session
of cramming, he managed to earn second-class honors in his final examinations, a
near disaster that was redeemed by his election to a fellowship at Oriel College. Arnold's biographers usually dismiss his youthful frivolity of spirit as only a tem
porary pose or mask, but it permanently colored his prose style, brightening his most
serious criticism with geniality and wit. For most readers the jauntiness of his prose
is a virtue, though others find it offensive. Anyone suspicious of urbanity and irony
would applaud Walt Whitman's sour comment that Arnold is 'one of the dudes [dan
dies, or city slickers] of literature.' A more appropriate estimate of his manner is
provided by Arnold's own description of the French writer Charles-Augustin Sainte-
