"To find a stronger faith his own, And power was with him in the night Though doubt was characteristic of him, and was from the nature of his mental constitution inevitable, he could not, like Montaigne, "se reposer tranquillement sur l'oreiller du doute." His mind was averse from suspense, and after much effort he laid hold firmly on the central truths of the Christian revelation, a hold never abandoned or relaxed. Perhaps in arriving at this result he was helped most by Hooker and Butler, whom to the last he held in higher estimation than any other of the English divines, even than Jeremy Taylor, whose genius, no less than his devout aspirations after holiness, he greatly admired. He certainly owed little to Paley's evidences, or any of the colder evidential theology of the eighteenth century. Very sadly, he said in late life in reference to his youthful studies: 'There appears to me in the English divines a want of believing or of disbelieving anything, because it is true or false. It is a question which does not seem to occur to them." This sentence is characteristic of the impatience with which he always treated what seemed to him insincere or half-hearted attempts to defend the Christian faith. His passionate desire to see clearly into the truth of things, and to brush away all hindrances and prejudices by which counsel might 1 In Memoriam. 2 Stanley, Letter CLII. HIS INTELLECTUAL OUTFIT 13 be darkened, alarmed the more timid and orthodox of his companions, but nevertheless led some of them to admit that one had better have Arnold's doubts than most men's certainties. Thus the environment of his early years and the mental and spiritual outfit with which he entered upon the duties of his life were in many ways happily adapted to the part he was destined to play in the world. Without fortune, but with all the comforts and shelter of a godly home, he was free from any temptation to idleness or extravagance, and conscious from the first that his future was to be assured only by his own strenuous effort. Without patronage or the help of influential friends, he was enabled to breathe the atmosphere of a renowned public school, and to make valuable friendships there. With tastes especially directed towards history and language, and to ethical and political problems, his studies were precisely such as had the closest relation to a profession in which the formation of character is of no less importance than the communication of knowledge. And the fact that his religious convictions had been reached after dearly bought spiritual experience, helped all through life to place him in sympathy with young and earnest enquirers, to make him understand their difficulties and to qualify him for the office of a teacher and a guide. To be fortunate in the circumstances and in the discipline of early life is the lot of many men. But it is the lot of comparatively few to find in later days such singular opportunities as Arnold enjoyed of turning this discipline to useful account, or to be so strongly and so early penetrated with a sense. of the obligation which the possession of privileges entails. CHAPTER II Residence at Oxford - Arnold's friends and associates - Marriage and settlement at Laleham - Life as a private tutor - Studies and literary work - Aims and aspirations - Appointment to Rugby THE period of Arnold's residence at Oxford – 1811-1820- was one of great intellectual activity and even of unrest. It was indeed anterior to the time of Royal Commissions and of schemes for academic reorganization, for the revival of the professoriate, or for the introduction of new systems of graduation and examination. The importunate claims of the physical sciences for fuller recognition, either in the teaching or the examinations of the Universities, had not yet been urged, and had they been put forth at the time would have met with scant sympathy, either from the most influential leaders of thought in academic circles, or from Arnold himself. He had been elected scholar at Corpus Christi College on his admission to the University; but after taking his degree in the first class in 1814, he became a Fellow of Oriel, and it was in this college that his chief academic friendships were formed. Dean Boyle, in his Reminiscences, says, "Many years ago Matthew Arnold said to me that he had been very much struck, in reading again Stanley's life of his father, with the high-minded religious tone of the Corpus set, as 1 they were called, and the great interest shown by them in literature." Whately, Copleston, Davison, Keble, Hawkins, and Hampden were among the Fellows of Oriel. Arnold obtained the Chancellor's prize for two University essays, Latin and English, but failed to obtain the prize for verse. What are now called educational problems did not possess very great interest in such a society. The principles of political and theological science, and their application to the social problems and the moral needs of the people, were, it would seem, the dominant subjects of thought and discussion in the common room at Oriel. Many of the residents were, as Sir John Coleridge said: "For the most part Tories in Church and State, great respecters of things as they were, and not very tolerant of the disposition which Arnold brought with him to question their wisdom. Many and long were the conflicts we had and with unequal numbers. There can be little doubt that his rather pugnacious Radicalism and his hatred of the corrupt French Aristocracy often betrayed him into intemperate speech, and placed him out of sympathy with many of his associates, but as he afterwards said, 'All the associations of Oxford, which I loved exceedingly, blew my Jacobinism to pieces.' And in a letter to Mr. Tucker 2 he afterwards said: "The benefits which I have received from my Oxford friendships have been so invaluable, as relating to points of the highest importance, that it is impossible for me ever to forget them, or to cease to look on them as the greatest blessings I have ever yet enjoyed in life." 1 Reminiscences of Dean Boyle, p. 129. 2 Stanley, Letter IV. |