CHAPTER VIII

Matthew Arnold - The materials for his biography - His wishes -The main facts of his life - His letters - His character - His inspectorship-Distaste for official routine - His relations to managers -A school manager's recollections-The office of a School Inspector-Its opportunities of influence- The Revised Code Arnold's methods of work- Testimony of his assistant

DR. ARNOLD's eldest son, Matthew, has since occupied a larger space in the eyes of his contemporaries than the father had ever filled. He is known to the world as a littérateur of singular charm and insight, as a poet of unquestioned genius, and as one who criticised with keenness, but with a delicate and playful humour all his own, the literature, the social life, the religious world, and the political events of his day. In all these respects his career and influence differed substantially from those of his father. During thirty-five years of his life his official position was that of an Inspector of Schools, and the influence he exerted on public education was necessarily large. None hated more heartily than he the hybrid word "educationist," or would sooner have disavowed it as a designation for himself; but it was as an educationist that a large section of the public insisted on regarding him, and it is with his share in the history of public instruction, and in the formation of public opinion upon it, that we are here chiefly concerned.

It was his express wish that he might not be made the subject of a biography. That wish has been respected by his surviving relatives, and implies an equally binding obligation upon all those who knew and loved him. But it has not been held by those most competent to judge to be a reason for withholding the publication of a selection of his letters, which form, in fact, an autobiography. The two volumes of letters, published in 1895 under the skilful and sympathetic editorship of Mr. George Russell, cover, in fact, the whole period of Arnold's activity, from 1848 to the end of his life, and disclose as fully as any biography could do the main incidents of his career. From these volumes, from official reports which are publici juris, and from his numerous writings, aided in some small degree by my personal recollections of a colleague during nearly thirty years, it is not difficult to attempt some estimate of the influence which he exerted on his generation.

He was born in 1822, at Laleham, his father being then, as we have already seen, a clergyman without a benefice, occupied in preparing young pupils for the University. In 1836 he was sent to Winchester, the school of which his father always retained grateful recollections, the head master being Dr. Moberly, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. In the following year he was removed to Rugby, where he lived in his father's house. In 1840 he won an open scholarship at Balliol, and in 1841 a school exhibition. During his residence at Oxford he succeeded in obtaining a

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much coveted distinction - the Newdigate prize for his poem on Cromwell. One who knew him well, and was his constant companion at Oxford, said of him in those days: "His perfect self-possession, the sallies of his ready wit, the humorous turn which he could give to any subject that he handled, his gaiety, exuberance, versatility, audacity, and unfailing command of words, made him one of the most popular and successful undergraduates that Oxford has ever known." He took his degree in the Second Class in the Final Classical Schools in 1844, and obtained a fellowship at Oriel in the following year, just thirty years after the election of his father. Among his colleagues at Oriel were Dean Church, Dean Burgon, Fraser afterwards Bishop of Manchester, Buckle afterwards Canon of Wells, Earle afterwards Professor of Anglo-Saxon, and Arthur Hugh Clough.

After leaving Oxford, there was a brief period in which he assisted in the classical teaching at Rugby, and he was then appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Lord President of the Council in 1847. In 1851 Lord Lansdowne offered him an Inspectorship of Schools under the Privy Council, and in the same year he married Frances, daughter of Mr. Justice Wightman. This post he held up to the year 1886, when he retired from the public service. But on three several occasions, as we shall see hereafter, he was detached from the regular duties of the inspectorship for special services, and inquiries into the state of education in foreign countries. Of the public duties which he

undertook outside that of the Council Office, the most important were the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, which he held during two periods of five years each, from 1857 to 1867, and the lecturing tour he undertook in America in 1883. He did not long survive his retirement from the public service, but died suddenly on the 15th of April, 1888, a victim to an affection of the heart not unlike that which had proved fatal to his father and grandfather.

The two volumes of letters,1 from which these facts can be gleaned, have been edited with judicious and pious care by Mr. George W. E. Russell. They will hardly add much to Arnold's literary reputation; and, interesting as they are, they do not suffice to place him in the ranks of the great letter-writers. The peculiar charm which has in different ways given to the epistles of Cicero, of Erasmus, of Pope, of Cowper, of Madame de Sévigné, of Chesterfield, of Charles Lamb, and of Byron their right to a permanent place in epistolary literature, can scarcely be said to be possessed by these letters. They were evidently not written with even a remote view to their possible publication. They deal only incidentally and in a small degree with matters of public and historical interest, and they do not, to nearly the same extent as his father's, reveal his more matured and serious views on great questions. They disclose only the vie intime, and are addressed mainly to his mother, his wife, sisters, and daughters. Very few of them are

1 Letters of Matthew Arnold, 1848-1888. Collected and arranged by George W. E. Russell.

HIS LETTERS

addressed to public men or colleagues.

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Letters of

this latter kind doubtless exist, and would have added much to the value of the book had the editor felt at liberty to use them. But Mr. Russell, whose own fine insight, his literary gifts, and his affectionate relations with the writer of the letters would have specially qualified him to write a full biography, has treated the wishes of his friend as sacred; and valuable as are the materials which he has collected, they furnish only an inadequate picture of Matthew Arnold's life. Yet that picture is one of singular attractiveness. The letters enable the reader to trace the successive stages of a career of steadily increasing honour and public usefulness. They reveal a tender and home-loving nature, great fortitude under disappointment and losses, remarkable intellectual activity, a keen enjoyment of social life and of foreign travel, strong interest in public events, and an unaffected delight at the reception with which his own writings were welcomed by the reading public, and at the influence and fame which they brought to him.

The letters show also how singularly happy he was in his domestic relations, how mother, wife, sisters, and children were specially gifted with the power to evoke what was best in him, and to cheer and animate his life; and how the memory of his father, who had so early been removed from them, continued to hover over the home, to give a sacredness and dignity to the whole of the family history, and to ennoble the aims of all who were nearly connected with him.

M