Matthew Arnold

Excerpt from Matthew Arnold

To estimate that lucidit'y and magnanimity Of judgment which he possessed,' we should note, how entirely open minded he wasto the defects of those whom he most loved, and to the merits of those whom [he ichieflyl con demned. His ideal inpoetry'i's essentially Wordsworthian, yet how sternly and how honestly he marks the longueurs of Wordsworth, his flatness, his mass Of inferior work. Arnold's ideal of poetry essentially alien to Byron, whose vulgar, slipshod, rhetorical manner he detested, whilst he recognised Byron's Titanic 'our soul had felt'him. Like the thunder's roll. Arnold saw all the blun ders made by Dryden, by Pope, by Johnson, by Macau lay, by Coleridge, by Carlyleh - but ho'w heartily he can seize their real merits Though drawn by all his thoughts and tastes towards such writers as' Sénancour, Amiel,. Joubert, Heine, the Guerins, he does not affect to forget.

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