nd on no
side was it deficient in human relations. He won respect and reputation
while he lived; and his works continue to attract men's minds, although
with much unevenness. He died at Liverpool, on April 15th, 1888.

[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD]

That considerable portion of Arnold's writings which was concerned with
education and politics, or with phases of theological thought and
religious tendency, however valuable in contemporary discussion, and
to men and movements of the third quarter of the century, must be set on
one side. It is not because of anything there contained that he has
become a permanent figure of his time, or is of interest in literature.
He achieved distinction as a critic and as a poet; but although he was
earlier in the field as a poet, he was recognized by the public at large
first as a critic. The union of the two functions is not unusual in the
history of literature; but where success has been attained in both, the
critic has commonly sprung from the poet in the man, and his range and
quality have been limited thereby. It was so with Dryden and Wordsworth,
and, less obviously, with Landor and Lowell. In Arnold's case there is
no such growth: the two modes of writing, prose and verse, were
disconnected. One could read his essays without suspecting a poet, and
his poems without discerning a critic, except so far as one finds the
moralist there. In fact, Arnold's critical faculty belonged rather to
the practical side of his life, and was a part of his talents as a
public man.

This appears by the very definitions that he gave, and by the turn of
his phrase, which always keeps an audience rather than a meditative
reader in view. "What is the function of criticism at the present time?"
he asks, and answers--"A disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate
the best that is known and thought in the world." That is a wide
warrant. The writer who exercises his critical function under it,
however, is plainly a reformer at heart, and labors for the social
welfare. He is not an analyst of the form of art for its own sake, or a
contemplator of its substance of wisdom or beauty merely. He is not
limited to literature or the other arts of expression, but the
world--the intellectual world--is all before him where to choose; and
having learned the best that is known and thought, his second and
manifestly not inferior duty is to go into all nations, a messenger of
the propaganda of intelligence. It is a g