Mr. Matthew Arnold, like other good men of our times, disliked the
idea of being made the subject of a regular biography; and the only
official and authoritative sources of information as to the details of
his life are the _Letters_ published by his family, under the
editorship of Mr G.W.E. Russell (2 vols., London, 1895)[1]. To these,
therefore, it seems to be a duty to confine oneself, as far as such
details are concerned, save as regards a very few additional facts
which are public property. But very few more facts can really be
wanted except by curiosity; for in the life of no recent person of
distinction did things literary play so large a part as in Mr
Arnold's: of no one could it be said with so much truth that, family
affections and necessary avocations apart, he was _totus in
illis_. And these things we have in abundance.[2] If the following
pages seem to discuss them too minutely, it can only be pleaded that
those to whom it seems so are hardly in sympathy with Matthew Arnold
himself. And if the discussion seems to any one too often to take the
form of a critical examination, let him remember Mr. Arnold's own
words in comparing the treatment of Milton by Macaulay and by M.
Scherer:--

"Whoever comes to the _Essay on Milton_ with the desire to get
at the real truth about Milton, whether as a man or a poet, will
feel that the essay in nowise helps him. A reader who only wants
rhetoric, a reader who wants a panegyric on Milton, a panegyric on
the Puritans, will find what he wants. A reader who wants criticism
will be disappointed."

I have endeavoured, in dealing with the master of all English critics
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, to "help the reader who