1883)--Punch speculated on the anomaly of a proponent of "light" and "beauty" preferring darkness and soot and chided "Mellifluous Matthew" for so free a play of mind that he romanticizes a London noted for its pea-soup fogs, inclement weather, mud, and suffocating smoke. What emerges from this versified gibe at Arnold's nostalgia is precisely the spirit of self-criticism he hoped to engender by his lectures: beginning as an attack on the prophet for not practicing what he preaches, "A Critic (Very Much) Abroad" becomes a complaint about urban problems.

Oh, Culture's apostle, your notions must jostle,
Upset by that tossing Atlantic--Atlantic,
Or is it that travel cool reason can gravel,

And finical judgments drive frantic--drive frantic?
To think--oh, good gracious!--that you saponaceous
Belauder of Sweetness and Light, are so undone
As thus to go raising our danders by praising

That Bogey-hole "smoky old London"--old London!

Dear MATTHEW, remember we're close on November,
And fogs foul, pea-soupy, and sooty-- and sooty,
Are gathering round us to choke and confound us,
And rob us of comfort and beauty--and beauty.
And 'tis at this season you, friend of pure reason,
To Yankee reporters go prating--go prating,

In terms eulogistic, but false and sophistic,

Of London! Pray stick to your slating--your slating.

Mellifluous MATTHEW, when on the war-path you
Are noted for slyness sardonic--sardonic;
But drollery cranky that "stuffs" the 'cute Yankee
In this wise is quite too ironic--ironic.
What will you be saying, your consciousness playing,
With freedom that distance enhances --enhances,
About the old City, in which--more's the pity,

We linger as winter advances--advances.

Wilt chuckle its slime at, and gush of its climate,
And chant its perfections of paving--of paving?
Or, laudably humble, sing paeans to Bumble,

His prowess in sweeping and laving--and laving?
Wilt paint rosy pictures, unchequered by strictures,
Of Mud-Salad Market in August--in August;
Or pour song's oblations to bleak railway stations,
Saharas of dust cloud and raw gust--and raw gust?

Wilt say loving prank meant to bless the Embankment
With smoke-reek that savours of Tophet--of Tophet?
Nor launch satire's bolt on sleek STIFF and

shrewd DOULTON,

The potters who turn stink to profit--to profit?
Wilt deem him a pessimist who Lambeth's messy mist,
Streaming away o'er the river--the river,

Considers a scandal from which he'd command all
The Bigwigs JOHN BULL to deliver--deliver?

Oh, come, now you're joking! It's really provoking
To Cockneys half-choked and neuralgic--neuralgic.
Why should you talk rot so? Or if it is not so,
You must be extremely nostalgic--nostalgic.
Discourser on "Dogma," a true London fog may
To one who is home-sick, or sea-ditto--sea-ditto,
Seem almost pleasant; yet were you here present
You'd vote it atrocious, and we ditto--we ditto.

It's just aberglaube you're diddled, I trow, by,

But sage though you be you shan't fiddle us--fiddle us.
Not you plus COLERIDGE! A home-sick mole her ridge
Might esteem worthy of Daedalus--Daedalus.

But we assure you one week here would cure you
Of bosh about Fogdom's deserving--deserving;
You'd soon cut your lucky to Maine or Kentucky,
Or star to far 'Frisco with IRVING--with IRVING!

Both the Boston Glode and Life introduced Arnold to their readers in an unflattering but comic light. The Globe included him in its series of mock "telephonic interviews on 27 Nov. 1883 (p.2); his

rhetoric is unwieldy and his supersubtle philosophy incapable of handling the prosaic reality of railroad schedules and fish balls. A sketch of a youthful-looking Arnold holding a telephone receiver accompanies the "interview" (Fig. 1), part of which follows:

TELEPHONIC INTERVIEW WITH M. A.

Editor--Why did you choose the subject of "Numbers"?

M.A.... one thing that struck me very forcibly as I passed through your principal thoroughfares was the numbers of street cars I saw waiting for passengers, particularly in the business portions of the city. . . As I saw so few passengers in them, I thought they must have been waiting for a

load, especially as I watched them for over an hour one day, and they made no visible progress. So I thought to myself, what numbers of strange people there must be in this city to give up their principal streets almost entirely to street-cars. If you had read my lecture understandingly you would have seen my ulterior object was to express my surprise at that very peculiarity.

Editor--It is very annoying to many of our businessmen. Could you suggest a remedy?

M.A.--It would take a long study of your local laws, but I might in time. I would suggest, however, meanwhile, that a circulating library be established, supported by the street car companies, to furnish reading material for the improvement of the time spent by the passengers during these blockades. Of course, there should be all of my works, and such others as John Stuart Mills' [sic] "Essays," Gibbon's "Roman Empire," Fox's "Martyrs," etc., as the mind would have plenty of time to digest the most ponderous platitudes of theological or political dogmatics during such sequestration. The doctrine of the remnant by which I meant to infer those endeavoring to cross the street at imminent danger of their lives and those obliged to walk, being in a hurry, would be to idealize the fanaticism of preponderating cynics who object to widening your great thoroughfares at the risk of slicing a portion from that palladium of your liberties you call "The Common.

Editor--Your views are very lucid for a non-resident . . . What is your opinion of the products of this part of the country?

M. A. -- I find your table amply supplied with all known delicacies. One of your culinary products in particular I admired greatly.

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Pray, what was that?

Editor M. A. At an admirable breakfast in a private family one Sabbath morning, a charming dish of baked beans was my especial favorite, accompanied by a certain kind of bread I had never before chanced to find on my travels. These, together with a peculiar combination of marine and vegetable products, by some means unknown to me prepared in shape not unlike billiard balls, but of a beautiful shade of seal brown on the outside, constituted our breakfast. My modesty prevented my inquiring the appellation by which they were designated, but I have since learned their vulgar cognoment to be simply fish balls.

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Editor Why, sir, the dishes you mention form the staple Sabbath breakfast of at least four-fifths of the population of New England.

M. A. -- You surprise me greatly! Your people, then, must be far more advanced in practical aesthetics than I had imagined, for surely a more practical and yet thoroughly poetic [collection] of ingredients for a delightful breakfast was never concocted.

The piece continues with Arnold's coy refusal to admit to the authorship of "Bread-Winners,' a popular short story published anonymously in the Century, and ends with his "latest," a spurious four-stanza verse.

Life, in "Triplicate Philosophy" published on 20 Dec. 1883 (pp. 314-15),4 supposes that Arnold in fact never left his library, but instead hired three "sad-eyed and intellectual men of lean habit" to deliver his lectures. The satire is pointed directly at Arnold's need for money, a theme which aroused considerable antagonism in the American press, partly because his indictment of the "Hebraistic" equation between salvation and economic success could not be reconciled with his own apparent money-grubbing. Thus Life's picture of a slyboots entrepreneur hiring three impersonators at ±4 a week to fulfill simultaneous speaking engagements in the United States, Australia, and India, and then enjoying his spoils--"the gold of three continents heaped upon his library table"--seemed to satisfy public expectation.

The satire indirectly attacks Arnold for a supercilious manner and for failing to prepare his lectures thoughtfully. He is portrayed with a "cold smile [which] played over his lips" as he decides to dupe the Yankees; when he addresses his impersonators, he says, " 'since you strikingly resemble me, I may safely call you gentlemen.' "Even worse, he is made to confess his own ignorance:

I have prepared three lectures, which I wrote when I was an undergraduate; the first being upon a subject of which I know very little and the world knows nothing; the second on a subject of which the world knows very little and I know nothing; and the third is upon a subject of which neither I, nor the world know anything whatever.

Far from being jejune productions, the lectures were, of course, products of mature experiences: "Literature and Science" was delivered as a Rede lecture at Oxford on 14 June 1882 and then revised for American consumption; "Numbers" was an elaboration of an idea which appeared in the 25 Mar. 1876 review of Adolphus Ward's translation of Curtius; and "Emerson," written during the tour, was in final proof form less than two weeks before its first presentation on 1 Dec. 1883.5

Although Arnold had given all three lectures at least once by the time "Triplicate Philosophy" was published, only "numbers" and "Emerson" are dealt with directly. One impersonator delivers a talk on "Lubricity" in Sidney, Australia; his attention to his "printed notes" is characteristic of the portrait sketched by a New York Herald