Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 401 pages of information about Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.

Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 401 pages of information about Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.

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[135] Reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine, vol.  VIII, August, 1863, in Essays in Criticism, 1st series, 1865.

[136] Written from Paris, March 30, 1855.  See Heine’s Memoirs, ed. 1910, II, 270.

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[137] The German Romantic school of Tieck (1773-1853), Novalis (1772-1801), and Richter (1763-1825) followed the classical school of Schiller and Goethe.  It was characterized by a return to individualism, subjectivity, and the supernatural.  Carlyle translated extracts from Tieck and Richter in his German Romance (1827), and his Critical and Miscellaneous Essays contain essays on Richter and Novalis.

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[138] From English Fragments; Conclusion, in Pictures of Travel, ed. 1891, Leland’s translation, Works, III, 466-67.

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[139] Heine’s birthplace was not Hamburg, but Duesseldorf.

[140] Philistinism.  In German university slang the term Philister was applied to townsmen by students, and corresponded to the English university “snob.”  Hence it came to mean a person devoid of culture and enlightenment, and is used in this sense by Goethe in 1773.  Heine was especially instrumental in popularizing the expression outside of Germany.  Carlyle first introduced it into English literature in 1827.  In a note to the discussion of Goethe in the second edition of German Romance, he speaks of a Philistine as one who “judged of Brunswick mum, by its utility.”  He adds:  “Stray specimens of the Philistine nation are said to exist in our own Islands; but we have no name for them like the Germans.”  The term occurs also in Carlyle’s essays on The State of German Literature, 1827, and Historic Survey of German Poetry, 1831.  Arnold, however, has done most to establish the word in English usage.  He applies it especially to members of the middle class who are swayed chiefly by material interests and are blind to the force of ideas and the value of culture.  Leslie Stephen, who is always ready to plead the cause of the Philistine, remarks:  “As a clergyman always calls every one from whom he differs an atheist, and a bargee has one or two favorite but unmentionable expressions for the same purpose, so a prig always calls his adversary a Philistine.” Mr. Matthew Arnold and the Church of England, Fraser’s Magazine, October, 1870.

[141] The word solecism is derived from[Greek:  soloi], in Cilicia, owing to the corruption of the Attic dialect among the Athenian colonists of that place.

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[142] The “gig” as Carlyle’s symbol of philistinism takes its origin from a dialogue which took place in Thurtell’s trial:  “I always thought him a respectable man.”  “What do you mean by ’respectable’?” “He kept a gig.”  From this he coins the words “gigman,” “gigmanity,” “gigmania,” which are of frequent occurrence in his writings.

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Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.