Research Paper on:
Victorian Critic and Poet Matthew Arnold

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  Matthew Arnold, the Victorian poet and critic, was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed head of Rugby School. During his early years, he demonstrated what might have  been considered a somewhat frivolous attitude to life and to literature, although in 1845 he was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, a considerable academic distinction. In 1847 he became  secretary to Lord Lansdowne, and later became an Inspector of Schools: he was also Professor of Poetry at Oxford for ten years.  Brought up to take a liberal perspective on religion, he regarded the Christian scriptures as wholly metaphorical, centred on recording the  hopes and aspirations of human beings rather than denoting historical facts and events. He left the Christian faith whilst still young and became an agnostic: as Landow (2001) points out,  he spent much of his life trying to tell others about it in a gentle, gentlemanly way that would not upset them too much (Landow, 2001, PG). Arnold was not  noted for acerbity or harshness in his work; even though he was in many respects critical of the way in which contemporary society was developing, he tended to look towards  the ways in which humanistic principles and the philosophy of self could be employed in place of religious dogma in order to develop ethical and cultural values.  He rejected much of traditional theology as being basically meaningless and saw the