determines his preference for classic, especially for Greek poetry. He
thus represents a reaction against the romantic movement, yet has
experienced the emotional deepening which that movement brought with it.
Accordingly, he finds a shallowness in the pseudo-classicism of Pope and
his contemporaries, and turns rather to Sophocles on the one hand and
Goethe on the other for his exemplars. He feels "the peculiar charm and
aroma of the Middle Age," but retains "a strong sense of the
irrationality of that period and of those who take it seriously, and
play at restoring it" (letter to Miss Arnold, December 17, 1860); and
again: "No one has a stronger and more abiding sense than I have of the
'dæmonic' element--as Goethe called it--which underlies and encompasses
our life; but I think, as Goethe thought, that the right thing is while
conscious of this element, and of all that there is inexplicable round
one, to keep pushing on one's posts into the darkness, and to establish
no post that is not perfectly in light and firm" (letter to his mother,
March 3, 1865).


VI

[Sidenote: Criticism of Society, Politics, and Religion]

Like the work of all clear thinkers, Arnold's writing proceeds from a
few governing and controlling principles. It is natural, therefore, that
we should find in his criticism of society a repetition of the ideas
already encountered in his literary criticism. Of these, the chief is
that of "culture," the theme of his most typical book, _Culture and
Anarchy_, published in 1869. Indeed, it is interesting to see how
closely related his doctrine of culture is to his theory of criticism,
already expounded. True criticism, we have seen, consists in an