Ex-lib. Pem West ( )

[From A Writer’s Notebook, Doubleday & Company, 1949, “1901”, pp. 62-3:]

Matthew Arnold’s style. It is an admirable instrument for the presentation of thought. It is clear, simple and precise. It runs like a smooth, limpid river – with almost too tranquil a stream. If style resembles the clothes of a well-dressed man, which attract no attention, but when by chance examined are found seemly, then Arnold’s style is perfect. It is never obtrusive, never by a vivid phrase or a picturesque epithet distracts attention from the matter; but when one scrutinises it, one discovers how carefully balanced are the sentences, how harmonious, graceful and elegant is the rhythm. One perceives the felicity with which the words are put together and is a little astonished that so great an effect can be obtained by the use of words which are quite homely and in common use. Arnold gives distinction to everything he touches. […] It is a method rather than an art. No one more than I can realise what immense labour it must have needed to acquire that mellifluous cold brilliance. It is a platitude that simplicity is the latest acquired of all qualities, and one can see sometimes in passages of Matthew Arnold traces of the constant effort, of the constrained he must have put upon himself, before the fashion of writing he had adopted became a habit. […] Whatever he writes about, his style is the same. And it is to this, perhaps, as much as to his classicism, that is due the frequent reproach of impersonality. But to me Arnold’s style is just as personal as that of Pater or Carlyle. Indeed it seems to express very clearly his character, slightly feminine, pettish, a little magisterial, cold, but redeemed by a wonderful grace, agility of thought and unfailing elegance.