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of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. He has been sent twice 

 to the continent by the Government to enquire into and report 

 npon the state of education in France and Germany. In 1849 

 he pubhshed, anonymously, his first book, Tlie Strayed Reveller, 

 and other Poems : in 1852, a])])ea:Ved Empedocles on FAna, and other 

 Poems ; and in 1853, Poems, the lirst work to whicJi his name 

 was attached. Since then his poems have been frequently issued, 

 with additions and in several forms. His prose works include 

 Essays in Criticism, 1865; On Translatiny Homer, 1861; On the 

 Study of Celtic Literature, 1867; Onlture and Anarchy, 1869; 

 St. Paul and Protestantism, 1870 ; Literature and Thyma, 1873 ; 

 and Lectures in America, 1884. Mr. Arnold was Professor of 

 Poetry at Oxford from 1857 to 1869. 



As Mr. Arnold's writings have ranged over many themes, it 

 is impossible to specify all his leading views, but something may 

 be said to show the spirit in which he works. He sets himself 

 forth rather as an enquirer and student than a teacher or apostle 

 — a searcher who tries to approach Truth on one side after 

 another without violence or self- will, convinced that it is only 

 thus "mortals may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious 

 Goddess, whom we shall never see except in outline, and only 

 thus even in outline." Accordingly he has never been able, he 

 says, "to hit it off happily with the logicians. They imagine 

 truth something to be manufactured, I as something to be 

 found ; they something to be proved, I as something to be 

 seen." Partly as a consequence of this attitude he is a censor as 

 well as a student and enquirer. He is a censor of our literature, 

 our modes of thought and life, our social customs, our methods 

 of education, and of our theology. He thinks the mental range 

 of the English people is narrow ; that their besetting fault, 

 much pandered to by public speakers, newspapers, and Lord 

 Macaulays, is an overweening satisfaction with their position 

 and achievements ; that their narrowness is an enemy to their 

 advancement in all that is worth living for and striving after ; 

 and that it has its origin in a deficiency of culture. Culture is 

 not, as Mr. John Bright defined it, " a smattering of the two dead 

 languages of Greek and Latin." In Mr. Arnold's acceptation 

 and use of the word. Culture has its origin in the love of per- 

 fection ; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not 

 merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, 

 but also of the moral and social passion for doing good. The 

 finely tempered man, the man of Culture, is he who tends to 

 sweetness and light ; the coarsely tempered man, the man of 

 narrow mind and inaccessible to ideas is a Philistine. Mr. 

 Arnold holds that the true rule which Criticism should follow is 

 disinterestedness. It should allow a free play of the mind on all 

 subjects that it touches, and seek to discover and to know the 



