Arnold, Matthew (1822–1888)

English poet and critic. His poem ‘Dover Beach’ (1867) was widely regarded as one of the most eloquent expressions of the spiritual anxieties of Victorian England. In his highly influential critical essays collected in Culture and Anarchy (1869), he attacked the smugness and ignorance of the Victorian middle classes, and argued for a new culture based on the pursuit of artistic and intellectual values.

Arnold was the son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby school. He was born in Laleham, Middlesex, and educated at Rugby School, Winchester, and Oxford University, where he won the Newdigate prize in 1843 with a poem on the former English Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. He published two unsuccessful volumes of anonymous poetry, but two further publications in his name were published in 1853 and 1855. He was appointed professor of poetry at Oxford University in 1857. After leaving this post in 1867, he concentrated on prose writing. In 1883 he received an annual pension of £250, and the same year lectured in the USA. He died in Liverpool, and was buried in Laleham.

Arnold's poems, characterized by their elegiac, mournful mood and pastoral themes, also include ‘The Forsaken Merman’ (1849), ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ (1853), ‘Thyrsis’ (1867), and ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’ (1853). His Essays in Criticism were published in 1865 and 1888, and Literature and Dogma, on biblical interpretation, in 1872. Arnold served as an inspector of schools from 1851 to 1886 and many of his advocated reforms were carried out in schools and universities. Arnold first used the word ‘philistine’ in its present sense in his attack on the cultural values of the middle classes. The term has come to mean someone who is ignorant and uncultured.