Details
ARNOLD, MATTHEW. Autograph letter signed to the poet Roden Noel, Harrow, 2 February 1873. 2 pages, 8vo, on black-bordered mourning stationery, a small tear, integral blank second leaf mounted on larger sheet.
Responding to a book of poetry by Noel (probably The Red Flag, issued 1872): "As one gets older I find that one is more and more disposed simply to enjoy or to reject...the poetry of one's contemporaries, without discussing it and criticising it as one did when one was young. But I have read the volume you were kind enough to send me, read it nearly all through: certainly I have read the poems you name. I think you were right to give the book its title from the first poem, which has such marked palpability of subject and vigour of treatment. But I am not sure that what I read with most pleasure in the volume was not the end of the 'Water Nymph'...What you tell me of St.-Beuve [the great French critic Charles Augustus Sainte-Beuve] and your first volume is certainly interesting. I am going abroad for some months, and when I am in Paris I shall go and visit his grave..." See lot for note about Noel.
Responding to a book of poetry by Noel (probably The Red Flag, issued 1872): "As one gets older I find that one is more and more disposed simply to enjoy or to reject...the poetry of one's contemporaries, without discussing it and criticising it as one did when one was young. But I have read the volume you were kind enough to send me, read it nearly all through: certainly I have read the poems you name. I think you were right to give the book its title from the first poem, which has such marked palpability of subject and vigour of treatment. But I am not sure that what I read with most pleasure in the volume was not the end of the 'Water Nymph'...What you tell me of St.-Beuve [the great French critic Charles Augustus Sainte-Beuve] and your first volume is certainly interesting. I am going abroad for some months, and when I am in Paris I shall go and visit his grave..." See lot for note about Noel.