SOURCE: Bryant, Hallman. “‘Honor Thy Father.’” South Carolina Review 33, no. 1 (fall 2000): 213-19.

In the following review of A Gift Imprisoned, Bryant comments that Hamilton's central thesis on Arnold is convincing, but that he provides no new biographical information on the poet. Bryant praises Hamilton's brief commentaries on specific poems by Arnold.

The title of Ian Hamilton's study of Matthew Arnold's poetry is taken from a poem by W. H. Auden that probes the reason why Arnold “thrust his (poetic) gift in prison till it died.” Auden's diagnosis is that Arnold's allegiance to his dead father's memory caused him to turn away from the life of the contemplative poet and become a man of action, who would use his pen to write polemical prose advocating a gospel of culture.

[In A Gift Imprisoned] Hamilton thus follows Auden in seeking the reasons for the collapse of Arnold's career as a...