A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold

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Summary: Lines of Influence
Review: This is a book for the generalist about Matthew Arnold's career in poetry. Things started out promisingly until he undertook to pursue his real vocation as an educational examiner too energetically to permit the gestation of poetic ideas and forms. Family and property concerns seemingly overtook him too.

His father, Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby, was a scholar of history, an expert on Thucydides. He was a contemporary of John Keble, the founder of the Oxford Movement. Thomas Arnold's vigorous activist brand of Christianity rather ran counter to the Oxford Movement. Matt had the disadvantage of never escaping the schoolmaster. The family had a vacation house in the Lake District. Friendships with Wordsworth and other poets were important to family members.

Matthew Arnold troubled his parents by seeming to never be serious. Sent to Winchester he was unpopular and set fire to his own gun. He returned to Rugby for the fifth and sixth forms. The boys considered him to be cool, detached. He gained entry to Baliol and, notwithstanding a second-class degree, won a Fellowship to Oriel.

At this stage Matthew Arnold became a close friend of Arthur Clough. Thomas Arnold died around 1842. Five weeks prior to his death he had been visited by Carlyle. Carlyle's quality of wild fire excited young readers. In 1845 Matthew Arnold was poised between dandyism and melancholia. He was thinking seriously he might be a poet. The novels of George Sand appealed to him. Matthew acquired a patron, Lord Lansdowne. Lord Landsdowne had more than one factotum. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Marquis was the last of a generation of remarkable statesment.

Matt journeyed to Thun, Switzerland to meet a mysterious woman, Marguerite, among other things. In the following year he courted Frances Wightman in London. He became an Inspector of Schools. His wedding ceremony took place at Teddington. His new life was hectic and obscure. In 1851 England had no system of state education. Arnold was one of twenty inspectors. He had a practice not to speak out against contemporaries although he thought Tennyson decorative, not penetrative. James Froude was a sympathetic reviewer of Arnold's poetry. He gained a five year Oxford Poetry Professorship. He wrote Rugby Chapel as a tribute to the memory of his father. In the 1860's Arnold built his reputation as a metropolitan savant.