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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Matthew Arnold's prose style has been praised in the past by innumerable critics and by writers of today as different as T. S. Eliot and Somerset Maugham. His ideas about prose style still live; and, as the infatuation with eccentricity in art dies and the concern for sanity grows stronger, it may become more apparent that many of Arnold's comments on the art of prose lead to principles that have endured because they are sound. This paper is an analysis of Arnold's comments on the meaning and relationships of prose style and his formulation of the qualities of an “Attic” prose to express a sane national intelligence. Part one of this study examines the significance, part two the qualities that Arnold gave to prose style.
1 See T. S. Eliot, Essays Ancient and Modern (New York, 1936), pp. 42–43, and W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (New York, 1939), p. 36.
2 Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1926), i, 5.
3 EC3, p. 206. See Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time (London, 1850), p. 131.
4 S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (Everyman's Library), pp. 231–232.
5 The Plain Speaker (Everyman's Library), p. 346.
6 Table-Talk (Everyman's Library), p. 86.
7 De Quincey's Works (Edinburgh, 1862), x, 182–183.
8 Ibid., x, p. 197.
9 Critical and Historical Essays (Everyman's Library), i, 337–338.
10 The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., by Arthur P. Stanley, 2 vols, in one (New York, 1910), ii, 343. Nouveau Lundis, ix, 250.
11 Letters to Clough, p. 65.
12 Matthew Arnold (New York, 1939), p. 168.
13 Three Studies in Literature (New York, 1899), p. 160; cf. ME, p. 269: “Some moral qualities seem to be connected in a man with his power of style.”
14 EC2, p. 15.
15 Ibid., p. 16.
16 CL, p. 115.
17 EC3, p. 208.
18 EC2, p. 91.
19 “ Ibid., p. 111.
20 IE, p. 214.
21 Idem.
22 EC2, pp. 46–47.
23 EC1, p. 64.
24 EC2, p. 27.
25 DA, p. 159. In referring to prose, Arnold uses the termsíy/e in two different ways. In the quotation just given, style is the superior quality in the expression of the greatest prose; but the term is also used to mean simply the manner of expression, a manner that may be good, bad, or indifferent. See the article on style in the Dictionary of World Literature, edited by Joseph T. Shipley (New York, 1943).
26 Utters, i, 11.
27 ME, p. 67; Œuvres (Paris, 1817), xiv, 77.
28 Stanley, op. cit., ii, 342. The works of Guizot were studied by the scholars of Rugby in 1834. See the curriculum in Arnold Whitridge's Dr. Arnold of Rugby (New York, 1928).
29 Letters to Clough, pp. 64–65.
30 Goethes Samtliche Werke (Stuttgart und Berlin), xxxvi, 140.
31 Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, trs. by John Oxenford (Everyman's Library), p. 201.
32 Ibid., pp. 313–314.
33 Letters, i, 5.
34 Ibid., i, 217–218.
35 EC1, p. 56–60.
36 E Oxf, pp. 382–383.
37 EC2, p. 65.
38 Ibid., p. 28.
39 EC3, pp. 203–205.
40 Ibid., p. 210.
41 De Quincey, op. cit., x, 70.
42 “Of the literature of France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort.” EC1, p. 1.
43 Letters to Clough, pp. 72–73.
44 Les Essais, ii, chap. 10 (Librarie Flammarion), ii, 97.
45 E Oxf, p. 385.
46 Pensēes de J. Joubert (Paris, 1928), p. 62.
47 EC1, p. 285; Arnold had long been acquainted with the Pensēes; see Letters, ii, p. 213.
48 E Oxf, p. 285 and EC1, p. 1; cf. Causeries, ii, 287.
49 EC1, p. 25.
50 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
51 Sainte-Beuve uses the word désintéressé to mean lack of interest or impartiality. An example of the use of the word, as Arnold used it to mean impartial may be noted in Portraits Littéraires (Gamier Frères, Paris), i, p. 387, in his essay on Bayle. In introducing a study of M. de Pontmartin, Sainte-Beuve says, “Mon désir serait de le faire dans un parfait esprit d'impartialité. Nouveaux Lundis (Calmann-Lévy, Paris), i, p. 1.
52 EC3, p. 149 or E Oxf, p. 487. See Paul Furrer's Der Einfluss Sainte-Beuves auf die Kritik Matthew Arnolds (Zurich, 1920), pp. 41 and 53.
53 EC1, p. 38.
54 DA, p. 50.
55 Conversations with Goethe (op. cit., p. 56). The best work of the greatest writers, Arnold believes, is not inspired by disinterested curiosity, but by the desire to “Let the good prevail.” See his article on George Sand: Works, op. cit., iv, 246–247. This essay published in 1884 may be compared with an earlier article on Sand (1877) in which Arnold refers to “M. Victor Hugo, half genius, half charlatan, to M. Victor Hugo or even to one of those French declaimers in whom we come down to no genius and all charlatan.” ME, pp. 338–339. It is impossible for the “charlatan” to have a good style. Arnold, of course, has the concept of great writing as the echo of a great soul, a concept that Milton had and that may be traced back to Longinus and to Plato.
56 Stanley, op. cit., i, 334–335.
57 EC1, pp. 283–284.
58 Ibid., p. 352.
59 EC2, pp. 148–149.
60 Letters to Clough, p. 103.
61 IE, p. 298.
62 The History of Civilization from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution, tr. by William Hazlitt (New York, 1890), i, 38–39.
63 IE, pp. 298–299.
64 Op. cit., i, 38–39.
65 EC1, pp. 66–67.
66 Matthew Arnold, p. 9.
67 Eckermann, op. cit., p. 56; Ruskin's “Lectures on Art” in The Works of John Ruskin, (London, 1903–12), xx, 74.
68 CL, p. 98.
69 Causeries, i, 172; cf. Pensées, p. 308.
70 EC1, p. 284.
71 Causeries, i, 172–173.
72 EC1, p. 284.
73 ME, p. 169 and p. 67.
74 Œuvres (Paris, 1817), xiv, p. 77. In an essay well known to Arnold, Sainte-Beuve writes: “la netteté est et sera toujours de première nécessité chez une nation prompte et pressée comme la nôtre, qui a besoin d'entendre vite et qui n'a pas la patience d'écouter longtemps.” Causeries, i, p. 93. De Quincy (op. cit., x, pp. 183–187) has a similar explanation of what he considered the single good quality of French prose.
75 EC3, p. 204.
76 Ibid., p. 210.
77 Letters to Clough, p. 144.
78 EC1, p. 58.
79 Letters, ii, 229: note also his admiration for Elizabethan diction.
80 E Oxf, p. 301, and Letters to Clough, p. 103.
81 Isaiah xl-lxvi with the Shorter Prophecies Allied to it (London, 1875), pp. 15–16.
82 Cf. I. E. Sells, Matthew Arnold and France (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 225–227, and Tinker and Lowry, The Poetry of Matthew Arnold (London, New York, Toronto, 1940), pp. 253–274.
83 Sénancour, Etienne Pivert de, Obermann (Paris, 1931), iv, vol. 1, p. 22.
84 Works, ii, 56. Cf. E. Oxf, p. 481.
85 ME, p. 200. In A. and M. Croiset's Histoire de la Littérature Grecque (Paris, 1921), iv, 329, Alfred Croiset, referring to Plato's style, writes: “L'atticisme est viril et robuste, même dans ses élégances les plus exquises.” Voltaire (Dict, philos., Goût) had this to say of Addison's Cato: “S'il avait su traiter les passions, si la chaleur de son ame eût répondu a la dignité de son style, il aurait réformé sa nation.”
86 CL, p. 118.
87 Works, iv, 246.
88 ME, pp. 338–339. Mr. Trilling (op. cit., p. 201) says that Arnold had not the “daintiness of Sainte-Beuve, for whom Balzac's vitality was suspect”; but that “vitality” was suspect for Arnold, too—not because of Arnold's “daintiness” but because Balzac's work was bound by his curiosity about the average sensual man and was not motivated by “The desire to let the good prevail.” See Works, iv, p. 247.
89 Letters to Clough, pp. 75 and 111.
90 DA, pp. 162–163 and p. 168.
91 Leiters, i, 125.
92 EC1, p. 350.
93 DA, p. 168.
94 Letters, i, 155. The praise of Arnold appeared in Sainte-Beuve's Chateaubriand et son groupe littéraire (Paris, 1861), i, pp. 355–356.
95 EC1, p. 94.
96 Joubert, op. cit., p. 306.
97 Causeries, i, 175.
98 EC1, p. 304.
99 Nouveaux Lundis, 8, p. 85.
100 Letters, 1, 129.
101 EC1, p. 46.
102 EC3, pp. 172 and 176.
103 Ibid., p. 177.
104 Leiters, 2, p. 184; see Renan's Discours et Conférences (Paris, Calmann-Lévy), p. 6.
105 See “Numbers” in DA, pp. 56–57, and Letters, 2, p. 414. See also Mr. Trilling's remarks, op. cit., pp. 345–346. Irving Babbitt in his edition of Renan's Souvenirs (Boston, New York, Chicago, 1902), pp. 244–245, has no fault to find with this “important discussion” of nature and chastity.
106 De Quincey (op. cit., pp. 45–49) uses the term Corinthian to describe Jeremy Taylor's “florid” prose that fluctuates between rhetoric and eloquence.
107 EC1, p. 76.
108 Arnold may have changed his mind about the supremacy of Burke: in his essay on Emerson, Swift is the only English writer that he names in the ranks of the “great.” EC1, pp. 62–71; cf. DA, pp. 166 and 175.
109 Sainte-Beuve has a similar verdict with regard to Pellison, who, he says, is a little provincial in certain of his judgments but not in his diction. Cf. Causeries, xiv, 197.
110 EC1, pp. 65 and 305.
111 CA. p. 279; ME, p. 238.
112 Causeries, xv, 403–405; see also Sainte-Beuve's definition of urbanité, ibid., iii, 68–69.
113 Compare Arnold's discussion (EC1, p. 67) with that of Sainte-Beuve.
114 IE, pp. 300–301. Cf. Aristotle's definition of tragedy in the Poetics, and this passage from Plato (Phaedrus, trs. by Fowler, London, and New York, 1919, p. 529): “Socrates. But I do think you will agree to this, that every discourse must be organised, like a living being, with a body of its own, as it were, so as not to be headless or footless, but to have a middle and members, composed in fitting relation to each other and to the whole.”
115 DA, p. 162.
116 Ibid., pp. 167–168.