Evolution challenged Christian ideas of the origin and end of mankind. Some, like
Tennyson, modified their belief in the existence of God and the special destiny of
humanity. Others, like Thomas Hardy, were left feeling defrauded. Darwin was not
a social critic, but his work had much influence, clearly seen in the novels of George
Eliot.Matthew Arnold
The last central Victorian thinker is Matthew Arnold(1822–1888), son of Dr
Thomas Arnold, the reforming headmaster of Rugby School. Matthew had his
father’s sense of obligation, but chose to conduct his own mission to educate the
middle class in a cooler tone, more French than British, or – to adopt the terms of
Culture and Anarchy –more Hellenic than Hebraic. He turned his talents away from
the writing of poetry to bear on the value of European and of biblical literature.
Arnold’s prose is, with Newman’s, among the most persuasive Victorian writing.
Arnold writes as a man of the world rather than a prophet; a critic, not a sage.
Wearing this urbane manner, he travelled the provinces for thirty-five years as an
Inspector of Schools. But the smiling public lecturer had a serious concern: he saw a
new ruling class obsessed with profit, use and morality, unnoticing of ugliness,
untouched by large ideas or fine ideals. In his polemical Culture and Anarchy he
dismisses the aristocracy as Barbarians, and ridicules the middle class as Philistines- a name offensive to Puritan belief in the English as a chosen race. His terms
‘culture’ and ‘Philistine’ gained lasting currency. His literary criticism will be
mentioned later, but his forecast that the consolations of religion would in future be
supplied by poetry deserves the final mention in an account of Victorian sages. His
successor, Walter Pater (1839–1894), discussed in Chapter 11, was a critic not of
society but of art and letters and the individual life.
nFurther reading
Gilmour, Robin,The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of Victorian
Literature, 1830–1890(London: Longman, 1993).
Holloway, J.,The Victorian Sage: Studies in Argument(London: Macmillan, 1953).
Houghton, W. E.,The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870(New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1957).
Young, G. M.,Victorian England: Portrait of an Age(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936;
annotated edn by G. K. Clark, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977).272 8 · THE AGE AND ITS SAGES
Matthew Arnold
(1822–1888) The Strayed
Reveller and Other Poems
(1849), Empedocles on Etna
(1852), Essays in Criticism
(1865, 1868), Schools and
Universities on the Continent
(1868), On the Study of Celtic
Literature(1867), Culture and
Anarchy(1869), Friendship’s
Garland(1871), Literature
and Dogma(1873).