est, sincerest, and
most active interest in the well-being of his country and his
countrymen."--MR. JOHN MORLEY.

In his essay on Arnold, George E. Woodberry speaks of the poet's
personality as revealed by his letters in the following beautiful
manner: "Few who did not know Arnold could have been prepared for
the revelation of a nature so true, so amiable, so dutiful. In every
relation of private life he is shown to have been a man of exceptional
constancy and plainness.... Every one must take delight in the mental
association with Arnold in the scenes of his existence ... and in his
family affections. A nature warm to its own, kindly to all, cheerful,
fond of sport and fun, and always fed from pure fountains, and with
it a character so founded upon the rock, so humbly serviceable, so
continuing in power and grace, must wake in all the responses of happy
appreciation and leave the charm of memory.

"He did his duty as naturally as if it required neither resolve nor
effort, nor thought of any kind for the morrow, and he never failed,
seemingly, in act or word of sympathy, in little or great things; and
when to this one adds the clear ether of the intellectual life where
he habitually moved in his own life apart, and the humanity of his
home, the gift that these letters bring may be appreciated. That gift
is the man himself, but set in the atmosphere of home, with sonship
and fatherhood, sisters and brothers, with the bereavements of years
fully accomplished, and those of babyhood and boyhood--a sweet and
wholesome English home, with all the cloud and sunshine of the English
world drifting over its roof-trees, and the soil of England beneath
its stones, and English duties for the breath of its being. To add
such a home to the household rights of English Literature is perhaps
something from which Arnold would have shrunk, but it endears his
memory."

"It may be overmuch
He shunned the common stain and smutch,
From soilure of ignoble touch
Too grandly free,
Too loftily secure in such
Cold purity;
But he preserved from chance control
The fortress of his established soul,
In all things sought to see the whole;
Brooked no disguise,
And set his heart upon the goal,
Not on the prize."

--MR. WILLIAM WATSON, _In Laleham Churchyard_.

ARNOLD THE POET

Matthew Arnold was essentially a man of the intellect. No other author
of modern times