71: 14.-" All thy blessed youth." See Measure for Measure, III. i. 36. 74:7.-Homer seemed to Sophocles. As regards the date of the Homeric poems, the view that the poems were essentially in their present condition before the historical period in Greece began, early in the eighth century B. C., is moderate." Sophocles lived from 495 to 406 B. C. 74: 28.-Pericles (495-429 B. C.). The statesman who ruled in Athens during the period of its greatest artistic glory. 77: 3. And this is what he knows! The climax is certainly effective. The reader should note the rhetorical ingenuity with which Professor Newman's incompetence is thrown into relief. Cf. the last sentence of this Selection, p. 82: "Terrible learning,-I cannot help in my turn exclaiming,-terrible learning, which discovers so much!" 79: 20.-Buttman, Mr. Malden, and M. Benfey. Three well-known Greek scholars. Buttmann (1764-1829) was librarian of the Royal Library at Berlin and the author of various Greek grammars. Mr. Malden (b. 1800) long held the chair of Greek in University College, London. Theodor Benfey (b. 1809) was the author of a Dictionary of Greek Roots (1839). 81: 5.-Milton's words. See Lycidas, 1. 124. 81: 23.-The father in Sheridan's play. See Sheridan's The Critic, II. ii : Governor: "No more; I would not have thee plead in vain : Is fix'd!" 81: 26.-Professor Max Müller. Corpus Professor of Comparative Philology and Fellow of All Souls College in the University of Oxford. His best known works are Lectures on the Science of Language (1859), and Chips from a German Workshop (1868–75). 83: 15.-Bonum est. From the Vulgate: Matthew, xvii. 4. The disciples are on the mount of transfiguration; Peter exclaims, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Arnold, in his Letters (i. 191), notes the fact that, when quoting from the Bible, he always uses the Vulgate Latin, in case he is "not earnestly serious." 83: 22.-Moriemini in peccatis vestris. From the Vulgate, John viii. 24. 84 1.- -་་ Standing on earth." From Milton's Paradise Lost, bk. vii. 23-26. 84: 13.-Definition. As regards Arnold's distrust of definitions and of all abstract discussions of literature, see Introduction, p. xliii. ff. 84: 22.-Bedeutendes. This word in the sense of noteworthy, or charged with significance, was a special favorite with Goethe, by whom it was really made current. See the very long list of quotations from Goethe in the Grimms' Deutsches Wörterbuch, under bedeutend. 855.-One poet. Shakespeare. Cf. the essay, A French Critic on Milton in Mixed Essays, p. 200: “Shakespeare himself, divine as are his gifts, has not, of the marks of the master, this one: perfect sureness of hand in his style." Cf. also Essays in Criticism, ii. 135: "Shakespeare frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite false, and which are entirely unworthy of him. But one can imagine his smiling if one could meet him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so; smiling and replying that he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it matter?" 87:4.-Young. His Complaint or Night Thoughts on “Life, Death, and Immortality," was published in 1742–45. 87:8.—aiwv dopaλǹs. See Pindar's Pythian Odes, iii. 11. 153-161. 88: 7.-Celtic source. Arnold delivered a series of lectures at Oxford in 1865-66, on the Study of Celtic Literature. These lectures were published in the Cornhill Magazine during the first half of 1866, and issued as a book in 1867. They are specially interesting as an attempt on Arnold's part to apply the historical method for the explanation of the characteristics of English literature. Arnold describes the typical Celt, Teuton, and Norman, and accounts for the typical Englishman as the resultant of these types. English literature he finds to be the direct imaginative expression of the various mental and moral qualities derived from these widely dissimilar sources. Despite, however, his nominal acceptance of the scientific and historical point of view, Arnold's method is largely one of divination and intuition, and his accounts of the various original types seem not to have been founded on any thorough study of early documents or historical facts. His philological mistakes, he has in several cases admitted in his notes. Notwithstanding such shortcomings this work of Arnold's has been influential in popularizing the view that accounts for literature scientifically as an expression of national characteristics. Taine's Histoire de la littérature anglaise had appeared in 1864. When Arnold wrote, Taine's book was-and indeed it long remained—the most considerable attempt to explain an entire national literature scientifically in terms of national life. 89: 7.-Nor sometimes forget. See Milton's Paradise Lost, iii. 11. 32-35. 89 12.-Es bildet ein Talent. See Goethe's Tasso, I. ii. 90: 2.-Menander (ca. 340-ca. 290 B. C.). He was the foremost representative of the "New Comedy" in Greece. He kept close in his art to real life and portrayed it with great truth and subtlety. Of preceding dramatists Euripides most influenced him. "O Life and Menander," exclaimed the Grammarian Aristophanes, "which of you two imitated the other?" For an excellent contrast between the Old and the New Comedy, see Coleridge's Lectures on Shakspere, ed. 1890, p. 191. See also Mr. Churton Collins's Essays and Studies (London, 1895) and Mr George Meredith's The Comic Spirit (London, 1897). 92: 15.-Bossuet (1627-1704). The famous Bishop of Meaux, called because of his eloquence the "Eagle of Meaux." Cf. Arnold's translation (Essays, i. 295) of Joubert's characterization of Bossuet's style : "Bossuet employs all our idioms, as Homer employed all the dialects. The language of kings, of statesmen, and of warriors; the language of the people and of the student, of the country and of the schools, of the sanctuary and of the courts of law; the old and the new, the trivial and the stately, the quiet and the resounding, he turns all to his use; and out of all this he makes a style, simple, grave, majestic. His ideas are, like his words, varied,-common and sublime together. Times and doctrines in all their multitude were ever before his spirit, as things and words in all their multitude were ever before it. He is not so much a man as a human nature, with the temperance of a saint, the justice of a bishop, the prudence of a doctor, and the might of a great spirit." 92: 15.-Bolingbroke. Henry St. John (1678-1751), Viscount Bolingbroke, the famous Tory statesman of the time of Queen Anne. He was a distinguished patron of literature, an intimate friend of Pope's, who addresses him in the opening lines of the Epistle on Man, and a versatile writer on political, historical, and pseudo-philosophical topics. His written style is conspicuous for its easy strength, its well-bred colloquialism, and its union of adroitness with apparent negligence. Of his style as an orator, Arnold speaks incidentally in his Celtic Literature: "Stafford, Bolingbroke, the two Pitts, Fox,-to cite no other names,-I imagine few will dispute that these call up the notion of an oratory, in kind, in extent, in power, coming nearer than any other body of modern oratory to the oratory of Greece and Rome." Celtic Literature, p. 89. 66 93: 22.-Rhyme. At present, scholars are pretty well agreed that rhyme comes into our poetry" from Provençal verse and the lyrics of the “Norman minstrels." See Gummere's Handbook of Poetics, 153-154. Cf. Schipper's Englische Metrik, i. 30-38. 945.--Gwydion. See Math the son of Mathonwy in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, ed. 1849, iii. 239. 94: 20.-Olwen. See Kilhwch and Olwen, as above, ii. 275. 94: 28.-Peredur. See Peredur the Son of Evrawc, as above, i. 324. 95: 13.-Geraint and Enid. See Geraint the Son of Erbin, as above, ii. 112. 96: 26.-In diesen Dichtungen, etc. These poems are full of a weird moodiness, and show a marvelous sympathy with nature, especially with plants and stones. The reader feels as if he were in a magic forest; he hears hidden springs musically purling; mystical wild flowers gaze at him with strange wistful eyes; invisible lips kiss his cheeks with teasing tenderness; great funguses, like golden bells, spring up musically at the foot of the trees.' probably to the famous stanza in the Solitary Reaper: "A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, The Poetical Works of Wordsworth, ed. John Morley, p. 192. Cf. Selections, p. 103. Possibly, however, Arnold has in mind the poem To the Cuckoo; two of its most "magical" stanzas run as follows: "Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; |