Matthew Arnold

REVIEWS 467 which defies the classical in its inward essence and repeatedly conditions the evolution of the century's art and letters. On these questions we cannot pause here. Nor does Professor Allen, who rather eschews the larger connections of his subject, do more at this point than scratch the surface. In .the last third of the century he emphasizes the divergence of architecture and poetry. The mediaeval revivat continues to affect them both, but the resurgence of classical influences in the arts finds, in his view, little response in literature-a conclusion which might perhaps be modified by further research. Professor Allen's clear exposition is supplemented; and the interest of the volumes greatly enhanced, by the inclusion of eighty carefully selected plates. It is the mark of true productive scholarship that it should first of all yield an immediate return in illumination; and, secondly, that it should point a way for future study, either by the material uncovered or the method employed. All four works survive the first test, and two of them come triumphantly through the second. Mr Tillotson has given us a model for the critical examination of a paees aims and techniques. Professor Allen has blazed a trail through the background of eighteenth-century letters, which constantly invites elaboration and extension. It is sad that he should not have been spared for a time to direct the work in person. MATTHEW ARNOLD' HOWARD F. LOWRY The Alexander Lectures in English, delivered at the University of Toronto in 1938 by the scholarly President of Dalhousie University , perform an estimable service. They will probably secure many new readers for both the poetry and prose of .Matthew Arnold; and they will lead students of English literature to reconsider many judgments on Arnold both as a writer 'and as a man. Mr Stanley gives a cursory critical examination of the entire body of Arnold's work. The necessary pressure of time and space causes some matters to be treated slightly, indeed. The running fire of opinion, however, even when it is most rapid, makes an >II Mot/hew An1old. by Carleton Stanley. The University of Toronto Press. 1938, $1.50. 468 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY interesting game in itself and becomes a stimulating challenge to the reader. It is a valuable procedure, which revivifies an author, particularly when the critic is as cultivated, sensitive and wise as Mr Stanley often shows himself to be. Re sa.ys many things that need to be said. Students of Arnold will be grateful for his admirable praise of the still too much neglected Preface of 1853; for his fine and sensitive appreciation of such poems as "Thyrsis," "The Forsaken Merman," and "Obermann Once More;" for the proper emphasis on Arnold's social and political work; and for the repeated demonstration-perhaps the major thesis of these lectures-that Arnold's multifold activities are simply the rich and natural result of a unified life on the grand plan, and not, as they have often been described, the separate and disjointed work of a poet who has abandoned poetry. One rejoices to hear Arnold's writing on Ireland praised as "sheer genius," rich in a human wisdom that is more than transient and contemporary. The reader may naturally quarrel, as this reviewer does, with some of Mr Stanley's judgments-his tendency to underrate, for example, such poems as "Empedocles on Etna," "Tristram and Iseult," and "Bacchanalia.'! "St. Brandan" is frail, but it can hardly be dismissed as "a silly poem." However, one does not want better informal criticism than that contained in the general summary of Arnold's .work as a poet. And few simpler and wiser things have recently been said than this: "The best commentary on any poem of Matthew Arnold is the rest of Arnold's poetry." The original subject proposed to Mr Stanley was the Greek i~fluence on English poetry. He gives us, in passing, some digressions on this subject. Fortunately he elected to confine himself to Arnold. In doing so he still retained ample opportunity to pay enormous tribute to the Greek spirit and to its power upon the writer of the nineteenth century who embodied...