Matthew Arnold

Victorian-era poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888) was the son of Thomas Arnold, the legendary headmaster of Rugby School who was celebrated in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.

Matthew Arnold himself attended Rugby and then Oxford University (Balliol College). He wrote most of his best-known poetry before the age of forty, after which he turned to literary and cultural criticism. His poem "Dover Beach", with its depiction of a nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have receded, is sometimes held up as an early, if not the first, example of the modern sensibility. In a famous preface to a selection of the poems of William Wordsworth, Arnold identified himself, a little ironically, as a "Wordsworthian." The influence of Wordsworth, both in ideas and in diction, is unmistakable in Arnold's best poetry.

He was led on from literary criticism to a more general critique of the spirit of his age. Between 1867 and 1869 he wote Culture and Anarchy, famous for the term he popularised for a section of the Victorian population: "Philistines", a word which derives its modern cultural meaning from him.

His niece (daughter of his younger brother Thomas), Mary Augusta Arnold, was a novelist under her married name of Mrs Humphry Ward.

Modern Usage: Matthew Arnold

Domain

Usage

Clever

Greatness is a spiritual condition. (references; author: Matthew Arnold)

Journalism is literature in a hurry. (references; author: Matthew Arnold)

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. (references; author: Matthew Arnold)

Be neither saint nor sophist led, but be a man. (references; author: Matthew Arnold)

Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair. (references; author: Matthew Arnold)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Commercial Usage: Matthew Arnold

Domain	Title
Books	Friendship's Garland: Being the conversations, Letters and Opinions of the Late Arminius, Baron von Thunder-ten-Tronckh; Collected and Edited with a Dedicatory Letter to Adolescens Leo, Esq., of "The Daily Telegraph" (Collected Works of Matthew Arnold) (reference) The Strict Metrical Tradition: Variations in the Literary Iambic Pentameter from Sidney and Spenser to Matthew Arnold (reference) Philistinism in England and America (The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, Vol 10) (reference) The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (Collected Works of Matthew Arnold) (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Familiar Quotations: Matthew Arnold

Author	Quotation
Matthew Arnold	Greatness is a spiritual condition.
	Journalism is literature in a hurry.
	Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
	Be neither saint nor sophist led, but be a man.
	Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
	The paramount virtue of religion is that it has lighted up morality.
	The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
	Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.
	This strange disease of modern life with its brisk hurry and divided aims.
	Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Non-Fiction Usage: Matthew Arnold

Subject	Topic	Quote
Lexicography	Devil's Dictionary	PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic. The editor of an English magazine having received a letter pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed "Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter: "I don't agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

Frequency of Internet Keywords: Matthew Arnold

Anagrams: Matthew Arnold

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-d-e-h-l-m-n-o-r-t-t-w"
	-3 letters: alderwoman, motherland.
	-4 letters: ealdorman, handwrote, heartland, montadale.
	-5 letters: alderman, alterant, amaretto, antheral, atheroma, attorned, damewort, danewort, earthman, emanator, homeland, homeward, hotelman, leadwort, maltreat, mandator, marathon, maternal, matronal, meltdown, methadon, methanol, narwhale, tarletan, teardown, teratoma, thraldom, throated, thwarted, tolerant, trawlnet, waterman, whaleman.
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