ARNOLD, MATTnEw, a living English poet, the eldest son of the late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, was b. 24th Dec., 1822, and educated at Winchester and Rugby. In 1840 he was elected scholar of Balliol college, Oxford; in 1844 he obtained the Newdigate prize; and in 1845 he was elected a fellow of Oriel college. In 1851 he was appointed one of her majesty's inspectors of British schools. In 1857 he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, and in 1839-60 was sent to the continent by the English government as assistant to the commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of education in France, Germany, and Holland. In 1865 he again visited the continent on a like mission. A. holds the honorary degrees of Edinburgh and Oxford, and an Italian order.
Mr. A. was first known as a poet of classic taste and exquisite purity of imagination, but of late years he has almost exclusively betaken himself to prose. His chief pro ductions in verse are Poems (1853), containing, among other fine pieces, Sohrab and Rus tum; Tristram and Yseult, Balder, and 2lferope (1858), an attempt to naturalize in English literature the form of the Greek drama; and New Poems (1867). His prose writings are
growing numerous. Among the chief are his lectures on Translating Homer (1861); his Report on Education in France, Germany, and Holland (1861); A French Eton or Middle class Education and the State (1864); Essays on Criticism (1865); Lectures on the Study of Celtic Literature (1867); Schools and Universities of the Continent (1868); Culture and Anarchy, an Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869); and Higher Schools and Uni versities in Germany (1874). In St. Paul and Protestantism (1870), and still more in Literature and Dogma (1872), lie startled the public by his piercing and audacious appli cation of literary criticism to religion. In 1875, he published God and the Bible; in 1877, Last Essays on Church and Religion.