Matthew Arnold was an English poet and critic of the Victorian period. Born in Middlesex in 1822, Matthew was the son of Thomas Arnold the famous headmaster of Rugby School, which he attended before studying at Oxford, where he was a notorious fop. In 1851, he became a school inspector to finance his marriage and continued for the next 35 years, travelling around the country and overseas to compare education on the continent. His reports attracted wide attention. He published several volumes of poetry before becoming a critic of literature and society and finally developing an interest in religion. Arnold died suddenly of heart failure, in Liverpool in 1888.
Arnold’s collections of verse include The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems. By A. (1849) followed by Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems (1852.) In a later volume, he excluded "Empedocles" arguing that it was a dramatic poem with no action to counteract the angst. This reflects his beliefs in classical poetic virtues of harmony, objectivity, universality, and the power of grandeur, looking to classical masterpieces as ideals in an era “wanting in moral grandeur.” He wrote a classical tragedy Merope (1858) and New Poems (1867) but barely wrote any verse again. Whilst he called for the serene detached grandeur of a classical poetry, his creations are personal and romantic, expressing a sentimental sadness and melancholy longing. Only his better works such as “Dover Beach” and “The Scholar Gypsy” succeed in achieving this stylistic richness and detached contemplation; both express a yearning to escape the frenzy and uncertainty of a modern world. "Dover Beach" expresses his view that faith in the UK was in decline, a view supported by rapidly declining church service attendance.
Arnold was elected to the Oxford chair of poetry in 1857 and revolutionized the post. In his inaugural lecture: “On the Modern Element in Literature”, he argued that the “modern” spirit was one that amidst the infinite intricacy of existence, seeks moral and intellectual liberation. In this sense, the classical ancient Greeks were “modern.” In lectures such as On Translating Homer (1861) and On the Study of Celtic Literature, (1867) he again looked to the past as a symbol of creativity, and noble simplicity, a cure for the hurried, confused modern world. These ideas were developed into critical essays, most notably in the volumes Essays in Criticism (1865 and 1888). These expanded criticism to function as a form of education, a propagator of knowledge and new ideas. He believed that England lagged behind Germany and France intellectually and suffered from provinciality and complacency and critics needed to be aware of European literatures and standards. In his 1888 essay “The Study of Poetry”, he argued that with the crumbling of spiritual belief, poetry would have to replace religion as a way “to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.” Culture and Anarchy (1869) expressed his views on Victorian society and manners, claiming that by his classical standards the aristocracy were “Barbarians” and the commercial middle class were culturally ignorant “Philistines.”
Q.
Matthew Arnold was convinced that religion would maintain its importance within British society.