"OF THAT UNRETURNING DAY"




"We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless,
yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for something
beyond--_tendentemque manus ripæ ulterioris amore_."--_Essays in
Criticism_.




PREFACE


It may be thought that some apology is needed for the production of yet
another book about Matthew Arnold. If so, that apology is to be found in
the fact that nothing has yet been written which covers exactly the
ground assigned to me in the present volume.

It was Arnold's express wish that he should not be made the subject of a
Biography. This rendered it impossible to produce the sort of book by
which an eminent man is usually commemorated--at once a history of his
life, an estimate of his work, and an analysis of his character and
opinions. But though a Biography was forbidden, Arnold's family felt
sure that he would not have objected to the publication of a selection
from his correspondence; and it became my happy task to collect, and in
some sense to edit, the two volumes of his Letters which were published