Matthew Arnold

1. Matthew Arnold

2. The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand; Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. (“Dover Beach,” Paragraph 1)

3. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. (“Dover Beach,” Paragraph 2)

4. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. (“Dover Beach,” Paragraph 3)

5. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. (“Dover Beach,” Paragraph 4)

6. To narrow our range, and quit these considerations of the general march of genius and of society, considerations which are apt to become too abstract and impalpable,—every one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to know life and the world before dealing with them in poetry; and life and the world being, in modern times, very complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical effort behind it; else it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and short- lived affair. This is why Byron’s poetry had so little endurance in it, and Goethe’s so much; both Byron and Goethe had a great productive power, but Goethe’s was nourished by a great critical effort providing the true materials for it, and Byron’s was not; Goethe knew life and the world, the poet’s necessary subjects, much more comprehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a great deal more of them, and he knew them much more as they really are. (“The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” §6)

7. The English poetry of the first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Words- worth even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, and disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much that I cannot wish him different; and it is vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from what he is, to suppose that he could have been different; but surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater poet than he is,—his thought richer, and his influence of wider application,—was that he should have read more books, among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe whom he disparaged without reading him. (“The Function of Criticism,” §7)

8. If I have insisted so much on the course which criticism must take where politics and religion are con- cemed, it is because, where these burning matters are in question, it is most likely to go astray. In general, its course is determined for it by the idea which is the law of its being; the idea of a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and true ideas. (“The Function of Criticism,” §23)

9. There is so much inviting us! what are we to take? what will nourish us in growth towards perfection? That is the question which, with the immense field of life and of literature lying before him, the critic has to answer; for himself first, and afterwards for others. . . . I conclude with what I said at the beginning: to have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive, and it is not denied to criticism to have it; but then criticism must be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge. Then it may have, in no contemptible measure, a joyful sense of creative activity; a sense which a man of insight and conscience will prefer to what he might derive from a poor, starved, fragmentary, inadequate creation. And at some epochs no other creation is possible. (“The Function of Criticism,” §25–26)

10. Oscar Wilde

11. The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. . . . All art is quite useless. (Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

12. He did not wear his scarlet coat,     For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands     When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved,     And murdered in her bed. He walked amongst the Trial Men     In a suit of shabby gray; A cricket cap was on his head,     And his step seemed light and gay; But I never saw a man who looked     So wistfully at the day. I never saw a man who looked     With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue     Which prisoners call the sky, And at every drifting cloud that went     With sails of silver by. (The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1.1–18)

13. I walked, with other souls in pain,     Within another ring, And was wondering if the man had done     A great or little thing, When a voice behind me whispered low, “That fellow's got to swing.” Dear Christ! the very prison walls     Suddenly seemed to reel, And the sky above my head became     Like a casque of scorching steel; And, though I was a soul in pain,     My pain I could not feel. I only knew what hunted thought     Quickened his step, and why He looked upon the garish day     With such a wistful eye; The man had killed the thing he loved,     And so he had to die. (The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1.19–36)

14. Yet each man kills the thing he loves,     By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look,     Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss,     The brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young,     And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust,     Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because     The dead so soon grow cold. Some love too little, some too long,     Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears,     And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves,     Yet each man does not die. (The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1.37–54)