Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was an English poet and literary critic. While his poems were generally well regarded in his lifetime and are considered a leading example of Victorian-era lyric poetry, he is now best known…
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Homer
Homer (8th century B.C.E) was the ancient Greek figure credited with composing The Odyssey and The Iliad, epic poems that are considered foundational works in Western culture. For Matthew Arnold, Homer’s works are…
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Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was an Italian poet and the author of The Divine Comedy, a narrative poem that is considered the greatest poetic work in the Italian language. According to Matthew Arnold, Dante’s…
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William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright who is often considered the supreme poet and dramatist of the English language. Matthew Arnold produces extracts from Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Hamlet as examples of…
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John Milton
John Milton (1608–1674) was an English poet and the author of Paradise Lost, a foundational work of English poetry. Milton is held out by Matthew Arnold as an example of an undisputed classic poet—a…
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William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English poet of the Romantic period. Matthew Arnold is complimentary of Wordsworth’s poetry but stops short of praising it outright. Arnold uses Wordsworth’s definition of poetry—namely, that it is the…
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Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340s–1400) was an English poet and the author of the Canterbury Tales. A highly regarded poet in the English canon, Chaucer is used by Matthew Arnold as a test case for arriving…
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Robert Burns
Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a Scottish poet who is considered the national poet of Scotland. Matthew Arnold looks closely at Burns’s verse, which he clearly admires, and explains why it falls short of the high…
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Minor Characters
Saint Beuve
Saint Beuve (1804–1869) was a French literary critic. Matthew Arnold uses the example of Saint Beuve’s conversation with Napoleon Bonaparte to introduce the idea that poetry is no place for charlatanism.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was Emperor of the French. Matthew Arnold writes of Napoleon in connection with Saint Beuve to demonstrate that, in contrast to politics, the realm of poetry does not welcome charlatans.
Charles d’Héricault
Charles d’Héricault (1823–1899) was a French literary critic. Matthew Arnold rejects d’Héricault’s idea that readers should strive to strip great poets of their deity-like status. On the contrary, Arnold argues, readers should appreciate the difference between the truly great poets and the others.
M. Vitet
Ludovic Vitet (1802–1873) was a French politician and literary critic. Matthew Arnold dismisses Vitet’s praise of the Song of Roland as excessive, an example of the fallacy of the historic estimate supplanting the real estimate of a poem.
John Dryden
John Dryden (1631–1700) was an English poet and literary critic. Matthew Arnold professes admiration for Dryden’s verse, which he praises as exemplary verse for the epoch of prose, before concluding that it falls short of the standard of classic poetry.
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was an English poet. Like John Dryden, Pope is considered by Matthew Arnold to be an exemplary poet of the prose era, but not a truly great poet.
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray (1716–1771) was an English poet. Matthew Arnold admits that Gray approaches the standard of the great poets, specifically because he models his verse so closely on theirs.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was an English poet of the Romantic era. Matthew Arnold mentions Shelley as an example of a poet who, being so close in time to Arnold’s present, was likely to be read under the influence of the personal estimate instead of the real estimate.
Lord Byron
Lord Byron (1788–1824) was an English poet of the Romantic era. Like Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth, Lord Byron is considered too close to the present time (in Matthew Arnold’s day) to safely arrive at a real estimate of his poetry.
