llili! I ^!}^: J. Ill THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE SELECTED WRITINGS OF WILLIAM SHARP UNIFORM EDITION ARRANGED BY MRS. WILLIAM SHARP VOLUME III PAPERS CRITICAL AND REMINISCENT BY WILLIAM SHARP SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY MRS. WILLIAM SHARP NEW YORK DUFFIELD y COMPANY 1912 CONTENTS PAGE ON MATTHEW ARNOLD i ROBERT BROWNING i8 ROSSETTI IN PROSE AND VERSE 38 SOME REMINISCENCES OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI 66 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 104 SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES 144 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF WALTER PATER 187 " " MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 229 THOMAS HARDY AND HIS NOVELS (1892) 241 GEORGE MEREDITH : AN ESTIMATE OF HIS WORK IN PROSE AND VERSE (1899) 265 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1901) 281 EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON (1903) 321 THE HOTEL OF THE BEAUTIFUL STAR 348 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 373 Vll ON MATTHEW ARNOLD When Matthew Arnold died, one of the greatest of his contemporaries said of him, " There goes our last Greek." In the sense in which it was uttered, the saying was singularly apt. The most English of Englishmen was, in his genius recognisably, in his temperament distinc- tively, and in his natural outlook upon the essential aspects, conditions, and facts of life, Hellenic. Nevertheless, Arnold is, in the narrow interpretation, pre - eminently the typical English writer of our century. There are three great groups into which British authors segregate : the distinctively Anglo-Saxon, the distinctively Anglo-Celtic, and the distinctively English. The third is but the parochial part of the first : the dis- engaged, the national in the strictly local and limited sense. In our own day Matthew Arnold is its foremost representative. Robert Browning, William Morris, and Thomas Hardy are typical exponents of the first ; Alfred Tennyson, Algernon Charles III I A On Matthew Arnold Swinburne, and George Meredith, of the second. Of the third there are few eminent, though innumerable minor, exemplars. The point of view is here of less importance than the approach. No one could have a saner, a more serene, a wider outlook than Arnold had. It was in the method of his approach to his subjects that he displayed how merely temperamental was his Hellenism, how accidental his inclination towards the poles of Athens and Paris, how saturated with nationality his nature. The poet, the high -priest of Culture, the interpreter, the critic of literature and thought, the educationist, the politician : Matthew Arnold was all these. As a politician, in other than the parliamentary sense, and as an interested observer in the science of contemporary sociology, his in- sight was notably deficient and his point of view parochial rather than imperial. In all his best work the poet in him came to the " " rescue of the son of Dr. Arnold : as, in his life as a man, the innate Matthew Arnold habitually revealed itself through his crust of caste-prejudice and family- pride. He was made up of contradictions as are all strongly individual natures. It would be difficult, for example, to indicate On Matthew Arnold any great writer of our time less likely to understand the depth and potency of the Celtic element in our national life. Yet, we are confronted by the fact that it was Matthew Arnold who first disclosed to his countrymen not only the beauty and the charm of Celtic literature, but the need of a more intimate understanding of, a livelier sympathy with, Celtic life and thought. Here we have the poet : whose functions, as ever, are those of the seer and interpreter as well as of the singer. It was not the outer, the accidental Matthew Arnold, but the man of genius—child of the land where there is no nationality—who saw in a flash, from a leading article in the Times in dis- paragement of the Celtic idea, that here, in the prevalent unimaginative insularity of mind and judgment, lies our real difficulty in the government of Ireland. The time has not yet come for a proper estimate of the prose writings and influence of Matthew Arnold. It is more than likely that much of his argumentative work will be found to be of its time and for its time only : and that of his many critical and interpretative studies only those which deal with literature per se, and pre-eminently the Celtic Essay, will survive. He was, above 3 Oil Mattheiv Arnold all else—that is, as an essayist—an illumin ator. In this respect he was more akin to Renan than to his acknowledged master, Sainte-Beuve. Sainte-Beuve's strength lies in analysis and exposition. Renan's in syn- thesis and illumination. It was to Renan, moreover, that he owed his sudden and vivid interest in Celtic literature : so that, indirectly, it is to Ernest Renan we are indebted for the famous Celtic Essay, that unmistakable offspring of La Poesic des Races Celtiqucs. Renan's essay in France and Germany, and Matthew Arnold's in this country and in America, were the torches which have lit so many Celtic brands, or, let us say, were the two winds which fanned the Celtic flame which is now one of the most potent influences in contemporary literature. The mainsprings of contemporary Celticism (apart from philology) are in Macpherson's Ossian and in the Mabinogion of Lady Charlotte Guest ; but the influence of these was waning, along with the great romantic movement which they had helped to inspire or sustain, when, in France, La Poesie dcs Races Celtiqucs appeared, and, about ten years later, in England, Matthew Arnold's famous essay. Arnold's prose writings are familiar to all 4 On Matthew Arnold lovers of literature for their lucidity of thought, their pure and limpid st^de, and their distinctive charm. Whether or not they become part of enduring literature, this is certain : that their influence has been, and probably will continue to be, one of pro- found value. Arnold's moderation, sanity, reticence, and dignity, with his sunny geniality, render him an invaluable model. He will, for his fellow-craftsmen at any rate, and indeed for all who love literature, remain one of the most tonic writers of the Victorian age. The Celtic essay, however, is of particular interest : for here is the prose-bridge which ^^ leads us to the poetry of Matthew Arnold. All lovers of poetry know the remoteness of Arnold from " that diviner air that poets breathe," in his appreciations of Keats and Shelley : but here, certainly, we recognise in what Dryden calls "the other harmony," the voice which we listen to with so much pleasure when it comes vivid in music and light —the voice that began with the haunt- ing strains of The Strayed Reveller and closed in the anthem-tones of a noble ode. The news of Matthew Arnold's death caused a thrill of poignant regret, not only throughout these islands, but among all 5 On Matthew Arnold English-speaking peoples. As a literary and philosophical critic he had so long been one of the most familiar figures in our midst, he had so greatly moulded and influenced the finer minds of two generations, and he had so identified himself with the great con- servative movement—for such it really was—of culture versus radically democratic tendencies, that to many it seemed as if the helmsman had left the vessel which he, and he alone, had been able skilfully to pilot. And yet Matthew Arnold was not in the truest sense a popular man. He did not influence, and never could have influenced, the mass of the people. He wished to be a social regenerator, but, consciously or un- consciously, he always stood aloof from, always showed his superiority to, those whom he wished to help and uplift. Two or three years before his death he received a letter from a working man, in which it was pointed out to him that the reason why his words received so little attention among the masses, the reason why his gospel of " sweetness and light " was so much ignored, was that both man and gospel seemed too far removed from common humanity. The author of Culture and Anarchy could not see this. He had always been so keenly 6 On Matthew Arnold interested in everything appertaining to the welfare of his species that to be told he was a mere doctrinaire was something he did not at all relish. But he wrote to his corre- spondent, and assured him that he was mistaken, adding for himself that the longer he lived, and the more he thought over the problems of life, the more fully he recognised that the aims of democracy were futile and its methods harmful, and that the only hope of the elevation of the masses, as the hackneyed phrase runs, lay in a gradual growth of culture. Arnold omitted to explain what he meant by culture, and probably his correspondent remained as much in the dark as before. This omission .^ was very characteristic of the man. He was , ever addicted to over-confidence in, to self- satisfaction with, words which he stamped more or less with a special significance of " " his own—" culture," sweetness," light," " Philistine," and the like. He was unable, latterly at any rate, to perceive that " Culture " was a mere empty shibboleth to many people. He hoped and believed that " it had all the magic properties of Open Sesame." To him it meant so much, em- braced so much, that he could not under- stand how it could to some signify nothing 7 — On Matthew Arnold in particular—perhaps at most a good general education. It was this intellectual aloofness, combined with the always per- ceptible keenly critical spirit, and the prevailing conception of him as a serene but unenthusiastic mentor, that made him admired more than loved.