[Footnote 3: See p. 207. Philip Henry, 5th Earl Stanhope (1805-1875),
Historian, and Patron of Letters.]

[Illustration: Laleham Ferry

Matthew Arnold was born on Christmas Eve, 1822, at Laleham, near
Staines.

_Photo H.W. Taunt_]




CHAPTER II

METHOD


The Matthew Arnold whom we know begins in 1848; and, when we first make
his acquaintance, in his earliest letters to his mother and his eldest
sister, he is already a Critic. He is only twenty-five years old, and he
is writing in the year of Revolution. Thrones are going down with a
crash all over Europe; the voices of triumphant freedom are in the air;
the long-deferred millennium of peace and brotherhood seems to be just
on the eve of realization. But, amid all this glorious hurly-burly, this
"joy of eventful living," the young philosopher stands calm and
unshaken; interested indeed, and to some extent sympathetic, but wholly
detached and impartially critical. He thinks that the fall of the French
Monarchy is likely to produce social changes here, for "no one looks on,
seeing his neighbour mending, without asking himself if he cannot mend