Matthew Arnold and The Eighteenth Century

ARNOLD AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 203 its poets and essayists, its style and .temper, may prevent improper inferences from Arnold's indictment of Romanticism. I The period from 1660 to 1800 seemed to Arnold to have exhausted most of its literary energy and tact in one great achieve~ ment: the formation of an admirable prose style. It is astonishing that in his introduction to Johnson's Dots of Ihe Poels, in an edition intended for use in schools, his stress falls heavily upon the prose style of the eighteenth century. He must have known that to .the readers for whom the book was printed Johnson's approach to poetry would be disturbing; but nowhere in his introduction does he either join battle with Johnson or suggest what common ground in judging poetry might exist for a Victorian student and "our foremost man of letters of the eighteenth century." Instead, his talk is of the elements and history of good prose style. He quotes with approval Burnet's account of the transformation of prose at the Restoration: "The King had little or no literature, but true and good sense, and had got a right notion of style; for he was in France at the time when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon appeared that he had a true taste. So this helped to raise the value of these men [Tillotson and others] when the king approved of the style their discourses generally ran in, which was clear, plain, and short." The last phrase struck fire on such a lover of critical formulae as Arnold; and all that remained was to find an explanation in social terms for the sudden emergence in Charles II's time of the first English prose idiom appropriate to civilized communication. Arnold supplies a simple-seeming explanation: a good prose idiom originates, he says, in Iia peopJe·s growth in practical life, and its native turn for developing this life and for making progress in it." France had such a "turn," he believes, and accordingly anticipated England (and Germany) in forming a sound prose idiom. Why England developed one in the later part of the seventeen th century he does not clearly say: he leaves us to suppose that a combination of French influence and a maturing in practical life led the English to rej ect the old style, "long and heavy," as Burnet calls it, and to evolve the new style, clear, plain, and short. Of this new style Addison is the most accomplished example: he is " Attic"; his idiom is "classical English, perfect in lucidity, measure and propriety," an exquisite organ, committed unfortunately to a mind which had nothing of importance to express. ARNOLD AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 203 its poets and essayists, its style and .temper, may prevent improper inferences from Arnold's indictment of Romanticism. I The period from 1660 to 1800 seemed to Arnold to have exhausted most of its literary energy and tact in one great achieve~ ment: the formation of an admirable prose style. It is astonishing that in his introduction to Johnson's Dots of Ihe Poels, in an edition intended for use in schools, his stress falls heavily upon the prose style of the eighteenth century. He must have known that to .the readers for whom the book was printed Johnson's approach to poetry would be disturbing; but nowhere in his introduction does he either join battle with Johnson or suggest what common ground in judging poetry might exist for a Victorian student and "our foremost man of letters of the eighteenth century." Instead, his talk is of the elements and history of good prose style. He quotes with approval Burnet's account of the transformation of prose at the Restoration: "The King had little or no literature, but true and good sense, and had got a right notion of style; for he was in France at the time when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon appeared that he had a true taste. So this helped to raise the value of these men [Tillotson and others] when the king approved of the style their discourses generally ran in, which...