BIB_ID
80326
Accession number
MA 8816
Creator
Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888.
Display Date
[1857] December 28.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 18.1 x 11.4 cm
Notes
Arnold's "Merope" was published in 1858.
Written from "9, Wilton Place"
Year of writing from published letter.
Written from "9, Wilton Place"
Year of writing from published letter.
Summary
Discussing the "...great transformation in the intellectual nature of the English, and consequently, in their estimate of their own writers...;" expressing his happiness that his brother knows about Merope and adding "There are so few people in England who have ever read Alfieri or heard of Maffei that I must ask you, at the risk of insulting you, how you came to know that each had composed a "Merope". Your savoir I knew, but not that it extended to such matters, on which even the most cultivated English are generally so ignorant;" commenting on Voltaire's "Merope" and saying he believes "Maffei's poetically the best tragedy of the three, as you will see by my Preface which I think you will find interesting;" discussing the popularity of Wordsworth, Shelley and Coleridge and comparing the poetry in the time of Pope to the present time; saying "...our time is a first class one - an infinitely fuller richer age than Pope's; but our poetry is not adequate to it: it interests therefore only a small body of sectaries; hundreds of cultivated & intelligent men find nothing that speaks to them in it. But it is a hard thing to make poetry adequate to a first-class epoch;" comparing the literature of the "Greece of Pericles" to Shakespeare and commenting on Voltaire & Goethe; adding that he expects to discuss all of this in his "inaugural lecture & the debating of which will be continued in the two next. I have a vow against sending MSS to anyone: the disadvantage to a work in being read in MSS is so incredibly great, according to my own feeling - but you shall have the three lectures printed, if we all live, in June or July next;" asking that he tell him "...what you think of "Merope": in literary matters we may still have strong sympathy."
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