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Laying Claim: George Saintsbury's Assessment of Matthew Arnold

Laying Claim: George Saintsbury's Assessment of Matthew Arnold ANTHONY KEARNEY mong those prominent in assessing Matthew Arnold's significance soon after his death in 1888, George Saintsbury was without doubt the most persistent. As he declared in one of his contributions to the subject, though he could not claim to be an exact contemporary of Arnold, since Arnold had graduated before he was even born, he could lay claim to having seen the birth of his popularity, its whole course till his death, the stationary state which preceded and succeeded that death, and something like a commencement of the usual depreciation and spoliation which so surely follows.1 Many others of course could say as much, but Saintsbury, as he showed by his various commentaries on Arnold in, for instance, Corrected Impressions (1895), A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1896), A Short History of English Literature (1898), Matthew Arnold (1899), A History of English Criticism (1911), and A Last Scrapbook (1924) clearly intended to provide the definitive account of the figure who loomed more importantly than any other in the minds of late Victorian literary critics. Most of these critics agreed that, in H. D. Traill's words, Arnold deserved "a permanent place in the history of English letters,"2 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Victorian Poetry West Virginia University Press

Laying Claim: George Saintsbury's Assessment of Matthew Arnold

Kearney, Anthony.
Victorian Poetry , Volume 48 (3) – Dec 3, 2010
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West Virginia University Press
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Copyright © West Virginia University Press
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1530-7190
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Abstract

ANTHONY KEARNEY mong those prominent in assessing Matthew Arnold's significance soon after his death in 1888, George Saintsbury was without doubt the most persistent. As he declared in one of his contributions to the subject, though he could not claim to be an exact contemporary of Arnold, since Arnold had graduated before he was even born, he could lay claim to having seen the birth of his popularity, its whole course till his death, the stationary state which preceded and succeeded that death, and something like a commencement of the usual depreciation and spoliation which so surely follows.1 Many others of course could say as much, but Saintsbury, as he showed by his various commentaries on Arnold in, for instance, Corrected Impressions (1895), A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1896), A Short History of English Literature (1898), Matthew Arnold (1899), A History of English Criticism (1911), and A Last Scrapbook (1924) clearly intended to provide the definitive account of the figure who loomed more importantly than any other in the minds of late Victorian literary critics. Most of these critics agreed that, in H. D. Traill's words, Arnold deserved "a permanent place in the history of English letters,"2

Journal

Victorian Poetry – West Virginia University Press

Published: Dec 3, 2010

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