The Good, the True, the Beautiful

Now Matthew Arnold was a liberal—in the older sense. And how different his liberalism was from what we must deal with in our colleges today. I call attention here to an all-but-forgotten essay of his, a minor masterpiece called “An Eton Boy,” about a young graduate of Eton, Lieutenant Arthur Clynton Baskerville Mynors, who died in South Africa during the Zulu War of 1879. The essay celebrates Mynors as the perfection of an English type, and it follows him through his letters and diary from the time he and his regiment sailed from England.

“When we started we were lustily cheered by crowds on the shore; the band played ‘Should old acquaintance,’ etc., and we soon lost sight of England . . . Saturday, in the Bay of Biscay, it was awful; the waves were mountains high . . . Have the hounds had any sport, and how are grandpapa and grandmama? . . . There are no end of porpoises and dolphins all along the coast.”

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Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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Now Matthew Arnold was a liberal—in the older sense. And how different his liberalism was from what we must deal with in our colleges today. I call attention here to an all-but-forgotten essay of his, a minor masterpiece called “An Eton Boy,” about a young graduate of Eton, Lieutenant Arthur Clynton Baskerville Mynors, who died in South Africa during the Zulu War of 1879. The essay celebrates Mynors as the perfection of an English type, and it follows him through his letters and diary from the time he and his regiment sailed from England.

“When we started we were lustily cheered by crowds on the shore; the band played ‘Should old acquaintance,’ etc., and we soon lost sight of England . . . Saturday, in the Bay of Biscay, it was awful; the waves were mountains high . . . Have the hounds had any sport, and how are grandpapa and grandmama? . . . There are no end of porpoises and dolphins all along the coast.”