It was a perfectly natural thing for an ancient to be pessimistic. He saw the world as a place of blind cruelty, the battle-ground of forces which he did not understand; and what guarantee could he have that the feeble intellect of man would ever tame these giants? So he made for himself a philosophy of stern resignation, and an art of beautiful but mournful despair. The scholars and lovers of old things have identified themselves and their reputations with these ancient dignities and renunciations, these tender and touching griefs; and how shall they express their irritation when bumptious youth arises, and proceeds to take charge of life, to abolish pestilence and famine, poverty, war, crime--and perhaps, in the end, even old age and death? All this is preliminary to the introduction of another Victorian poet; one who moved me deeply in my youth, and still holds my undimmed affection. I would choose Matthew Arnold as the perfect exemplar of the “classical” attitude toward life; that is, resignation, at once pathetic and heroic, to the pitiful fate of mankind on earth. Listen to him at his best: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. The author of these lines was the son of a great teacher, and therefore had no money. He spent thirty years of his life as an inspector of schools; a most pitiful destiny for a poet--traveling all over England to hear little children recite the list of the kings and the counties, and tell the number of legs on a spider. The fountain of his poetry dried up, and he became a critic, not merely of English letters but of English life; in many ways the most radical and most intelligent critic that Victorian England had. He preached the gospel of sweetness and light; also, alas, he went on the war-path against an infamous bill which was being agitated in Parliament, to permit a man to violate the old Mosaic code by marrying the sister of his deceased wife! Matthew Arnold insisted that it wasn’t on account of Moses, but on account of a thing he called “delicacy.” You cannot travel in Victorian England without encountering phenomena like this. You will be introduced to what appears to you a perfectly sane and self-contained and cultivated gentleman, wearing exactly the correct frock-coat and tie; but then, you will happen to touch one of his tribal taboos, and suddenly he will shriek, and tear off his shirt, and pull out a sharp knife, and begin to slash himself, and dance and whirl in a holy frenzy.