Why is Matthew Arnold a prominent poet?

               Matthew Arnold made multiple contributions to English literature. He was a poet, essayist and critic. Matthew Arnold was born in Laleham, on December 24th, 1822. He began his literary career by writing poetry.

               ‘Empedocles on Etna’, and ‘Poems’, gained him fame as a poet. Psychological isolation is a recurring theme in his poems. ‘In Dover Beach’, one of his famous poems, Arnold blames this isolation on the loss of religious faith. His poetry is meditative and rhetorical.

               Arnold’s poetry often wrestles with problems of psychological Isolation. In ‘To Marguerite: Continued’, for example, Arnold revises Donne’s assertion that “No man is an island”, suggesting that we “mortals” are indeed “in the sea of life enisled”. ‘Preface to the Poems’, which was published in 1853, was his first work as a literary critic. Another major work of literary criticism is ‘Essays in Criticism’, which has not lost its importance even today.

               Arnold was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford. He was the first to lecture in English, instead of Latin.

               Matthew Arnold passed on April 15th, 1888.