© 1995 by Cambridge Quarterly
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Matthew Arnold and the Idea of the Modern
This piece originally formed one of a series of lectures given in the Cambridge English Faculty in 1986 on the theme of education in the modern period It followed lectures by an educationalist and a historian—one speaking on such matters as the texts actually taught in the Victorian classrooms, the other focusing on the 1870 Education Act and Matthew Arnold's part in bringing about the changes of principle and practice embodied in this key piece of Victorian legislation My role was necessarily less professional By concentrating on Culture and Anarchy I wanted to reflect on ‘education’ in another sense The ironies will be plain Arnold did not believe that England had a structure of higher education worth the name, so he had to show what it was to be educated.
The lecture is deeply indebted to H A Mason When he heard what I was up to, Mason positively took me in hand and insisted on satisfying himself that I had some notion of what the task required The lecture is the outcome of several conversations which proved to be working sessions of the most demanding kind Everything I knew or thought I had wanted to say was turned roundabout and inside out, in the manner familiar to anyone who knew Harold Mason—with a characteristically steely regard for truth and delight in teasing out the unexpected I cannot claim that this piece is collaborative for I have no sense of its doing justice to what was being asked of me, but it would have been nothing like its present form without those well-spent afternoons of talk I hear Harold's voice at every point
The lecture was written straight out of these talks, and I think I have never enjoyed writing anything so much I hope something of the pleasure comes through, as a tribute to the experience of finding myself in the hands of a consummate teacher On this occasion, Harold Mason was the genial and liberating guide who in talking of Matthew Arnold permitted glimpses of his own arts and stratagems of discourse a true representative of sweetness and light. His own work is witness to the way these qualities may prevail against the ‘Hebraising’ of a later day