Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3MATTHEW ARNOLD MATTHEW ARNOLD'S two best known poems, "The Scholar Gipsy" and "Thyrsis," have been accused of being too topographical, because they name so many places. But the accusation is needless. The mention of all those places at that time fameless has chiefly the effect of adding to the intimacy of the poems. In a way, it is a kind of artful naivete, expecting all the world either to know or to care what Eynsham or Sandford signifies. But, of course, it counts also to some extent, and safely, on the fact that this twelve-mile loop of the Thames, between the entrances of the Windrush and the Cher- well, and the hilly country enclosed by it, is exceptionally well known to a good sprinkling of Arnold's most likely readers. How Cambridge people or Newcastle people are reached by this " topography " I cannot say, but I doubt if it is at all necessary to be Oxonian to enjoy it. No doubt it touches Oxford men on a weak spot, and at times may have too much credit for doing so. The important thing, however, is that the intimacy implied by this naming goes well with the affection confessed in the poem, and helps the reader to take up the suggestions made by hills, trees, rivers and blossoms, and distant spires, and thus to compose a landscape which can exist without use ofmap or previous association. That is Arnold's country textit{par excellence. He was born at Laleham on the Thames, near Staines, in 1822. At eighteen he went up to Oxford as an undergraduate, and spent four years there. He returned at thirty-four as Professor of Poetry. The river and the riverside woods and hills were part of the scenery and the textit{dramatis personce of his life at three important periods. Though he left Laleham for Rugby at the age of five, he came back again two years later. Between thirteen and eighteen he was at ...