Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was an English poet and critic, the son of the headmaster of Rugby School. His poem Dover Beach expressed the loss of faith of the Victorian age, and his essays, especially Culture and Anarchy, made him the most influential critic of his time.
Rugby and Oxford
Matthew Arnold was born on 24 December 1822 at Laleham, on the Thames, the eldest son of Thomas Arnold, the reforming headmaster of Rugby School. He studied at Rugby, Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry.
Cultivating the pose of a dandy, he surprised his friends by his serious poetry. His first collection, The Strayed Reveller, appeared in 1849.
Inspector of schools
In 1851 he became an inspector of schools, a post he held for thirty-five years, travelling across England and visiting schools in France, Germany and Switzerland to report on their systems.
From 1857 to 1867 he was professor of poetry at Oxford, the first to lecture in English rather than Latin.
The critic
After New Poems (1867), with Dover Beach, Arnold wrote mostly prose: Essays in Criticism (1865), Culture and Anarchy (1869), Literature and Dogma (1873). He defined culture as the pursuit of 'the best which has been thought and said'.
He made two lecture tours in the United States. He died suddenly in Liverpool on 15 April 1888, while running to catch a tram to meet his daughter, returning from America.
Anecdotes
Philistines
Arnold popularised the word 'Philistines' for the narrow-minded middle classes indifferent to culture, borrowing it from German students' slang.
Sweetness and light
In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold borrowed from Jonathan Swift the phrase 'sweetness and light' to describe the aims of culture: beauty and intelligence.
Frequently asked questions
What is Dover Beach about?
A man by the sea at Dover, at night, hears the tide withdraw and compares it to the retreat of religious faith from the modern world.
What was Arnold's job?
He was an inspector of schools for thirty-five years, and professor of poetry at Oxford from 1857 to 1867.
What is Culture and Anarchy?
A book of essays of 1869 in which Arnold argues that culture, 'the best which has been thought and said', can save society from narrowness and disorder.