NOTES





INTRODUCTION


I

[Sidenote: Life and Personality]

"The gray hairs on my head are becoming more and more numerous, and I
sometimes grow impatient of getting old amidst a press of occupations
and labor for which, after all, I was not born. But we are not here to
have facilities found us for doing the work we like, but to make them."
This sentence, written in a letter to his mother in his fortieth year,
admirably expresses Arnold's courage, cheerfulness, and devotion in the
midst of an exacting round of commonplace duties, and at the same time
the energy and determination with which he responded to the imperative
need of liberating work of a higher order, that he might keep himself,
as he says in another letter, "from feeling starved and shrunk up." The
two feelings directed the course of his life to the end, a life
characterized no less by allegiance to "the lowliest duties" than by
brilliant success in a more attractive field.

Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham, December 24, 1822, the eldest son of
Thomas Arnold, the great head master of Rugby. He was educated at