Sunday, April 15, 2018

"Lycidas is dead, and hath not left his peer!"

Matthew Arnold
(1822-1888)

On this day...in 1888
Matthew Arnold dies

Six years after Matthew Arnold passed into "quiet realms Elysian," Florence Earle Coates dedicated her pen in tribute to her friend and mentor, Matthew Arnold—British poet and cultural critic.  Coates and Arnold first met in New York in 1883 at the home of Andrew Carnegie, and soon formed a lasting friendship.  Arnold's last letter to Mrs. Coates is dated February 24, 1888, in which he speaks of his remembrance of his last visit to Philadelphia, and of her tulip-trees and maples.

Matthew Arnold
by Florence Earle Coates
The Century Magazine, April 1894: 931-7.

IT is told of one of our poets that, when in England, he was asked who took Matthew Arnold's place in America, and he answered, "Matthew Arnold." The reply would still be just, and, excepting as he fills it, the place of Matthew Arnold must long continue vacant. Men of genius are not replaced, and if, dying, they leave their work half done, the loss is irreparable. But Arnold's message was delivered, whether in verse or prose, with an amplitude and distinctness to which few messages may lay claim, and is "full of foretastes of the morrow." [read more...]

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