His first volume of verse, ‘The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems,’ bears the date 1849; the second, ‘Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,’ 1852; the third, ‘Poems,’ made up mainly from the two former, was published in 1853, and thereafter he added little to his poetic work.  His first volume of similar significance in prose was ‘Essays in Criticism,’ issued in 1865.  Throughout his mature life he was a constant writer, and his collected works of all kinds now fill eleven volumes, exclusive of his letters.  In 1857 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and there began his career as a lecturer; and this method of public expression he employed often.  His life was thus one with many diverse activities, and filled with practical or literary affairs; and 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 great mission, and nobly characterized; but if criticism be so defined, it is criticism of a large mold.