The Strayed Reveller

Introdudlion.
arise as Arnold thought, from a special infirmity in the
age, whose imperfections he greatly exaggerated, but
from the abuse of what was best in it. The infinite
significance of even the humblest human life was
beginning to be recognized as it had never been before,
but a discovery invaluable in the social sphere had not
unnaturally generated the dangerous artistic heresy
that what is good enough for a novel is also good
enough for a poem. 1853, the date of Arnold's
memorable preface, was also the period, not indeed of
the culminating, but of the too exclusive influence of
Shelley and Keats, who were receiving their long
withheld recompense with usury. These great poets,
in their more mature productions, rather surpass than
fall short of the ordinary English standard of symmetrical
construction, but their architecture is obscured
by the splendour of their painting, and too
many had come to confound the art of poetry with
the art of phrasing. To such Matthew Arnold's
remonstrance came like an exorcism, and its weight
was greatly enhanced by the method of its delivery;
not poured as from a vase into the turbid torrent of
periodical criticism, but prefixed as a confession
of faith to a volume of poetry designed for and destined
to endurance.
It is a great reinforcement to the weight of poetical
criticism when the critic is himself a recognized poet.
The Goddess of Wisdom herself is not recorded to
have lectured to the Muses, and the precepts of mere
prose writers, however excellent, have something of the
air of instructions to Hannibal in the art of war. Even
ix