admired; but he also draws on his own bond with particular landscapes, especially
those associated with his youth and early adulthood. The stanzas of 'The Scholar
Gypsy' (1853), for instance?suffused in a deep familiarity with the changing pat
terns of the rural scene, from the 'frail-leafed, white anemone' and 'dark bluebells
drenched with dews' of May to the 'scarlet poppies' and 'pale pink convolvulus' of
August?record with sensuous care the distinct seasons of the English countryside
and Arnold's nostalgic memories of the rambles of his Oxford days. Arnold's own verdict on the qualities of his poetry is interesting. In an 1869 letter
to his mother, he writes:
My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last
quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become
conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the
literary productions which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less
poetical sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigor and abundance
than Browning; yet, because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than
either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of
.
1 35 2 / MATTHEW ARNOLD
modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had
theirs.
The emphasis in the letter on 'movement of mind' suggests that Arnold's poetry and
prose should be studied together. Such an approach can be fruitful provided that it
does not obscure the important difference between Arnold the poet and Arnold the
critic. T. S. Eliot once said of his own writings that 'in one's prose reflections one
may be legitimately occupied with ideals, whereas in the writing of verse, one can
deal only with actuality.' Arnold's writings offer a nice verification of Eliot's seeming
paradox. As a poet he usually records his own experiences, his own feelings of lone
liness and isolation as a lover, his longing for a serenity that he cannot find, his
melancholy sense of the passing of youth (more than for many men, Arnold's thirtieth
birthday was an awe-inspiring landmark after which he felt, he said, 'three parts iced
over'). Above all he records his despair in a universe in which humanity's role seemed
an incongruous as it was later to seem to Thomas Hardy. In a memorable passage of
his 'Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse' (1855), he describes himself as 'Wander
ing between two worlds, one dead, / The other powerless to be born.' And addressing
the representatives of a faith that seems to him dead, he cries: 'Take me, cowled
forms, and fence me round, / Till I possess my soul again.' As a poet, then, like T. S.
Eliot and W. H. Auden, Arnold provides a record of a troubled individual in a troubled
society. This was 'actuality' as he experienced it?an actuality, like Eliot's and
Auden's, representative of his era. As a prose writer, a formulator of 'ideals,' he seeks
a different role?to be what Auden calls the 'healer' of a diseased society, or as he
himself called Goethe, the 'Physician of the iron age.' And in this difference we have
a clue to answering the question of why Arnold virtually abandoned the writing of
poetry to move into criticism. One reason was his dissatisfaction with the kind of
poetry he was writing. In one of his fascinating letters to his friend Arthur Hugh Clough in the 1850s
(letters that provide the best insight we have into Arnold's mind and tastes), this note
of dissatisfaction is struck: 'I am glad you like the Gypsy Scholar?but what does it
do for you? Homer animates?Shakespeare animates?in its poor way I think Sohrah
and Rustum animates?the Gypsy Scholar at best awakens a pleasing melancholy. But
this is not what we want.' It is evident that early in his career Arnold had evolved a
theory of what poetry should do for its readers, a theory based, in part, on his impres
