The Scholar Gypsy

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"The Scholar Gipsy" 1853)) is a poem by Matthew Arnold, Arnold, based on a 17th-century Oxford story found Gipsy" (1853 in Joseph Glanvill' Glanvill's The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661, Dogmatizing  (1661, etc.). It has often been called one of the best and most popular of Arnold's poems, poems,

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and is also familiar to music-lovers through Ralph Vaughan Williams' Williams'

choral work An work An Oxford Elegy , which sets lines from this poem and from its companion-piece, "Thyrsis Thyrsis"".

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The original story

Arnold prefaces the poem with an extract from Glanvill which tells the story of an impoverished impoverished Oxford student who left his studies to join a band of  gipsies gipsies,, and so ingratiated himself with them that they told him many of the secrets of their trade. After some time he was discovered and recognised by two of his former Oxford associates, who learned from him that the gipsies "had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others." When he had learned everything that the gipsies could teach him, he said, he would leave them and give an account of these secrets to the world. In 1892 Marjorie Hope Nicolson identified the original of this mysterious figure as the Flemish alchemist [3] Francis Mercury van Helmont. Helmont . Synopsis

Arnold begins "The Scholar Gipsy" in pastoral in  pastoral mode, invoking a shepherd and describing the beauties of a rural scene, with Oxford in the distance. He then repeats the gist of Glanvill's story, but extends it with an account of rumours that the scholar gipsy was again seen from time to time around Oxford. Arnold imagines him as a shadowy figure who can even now be glimpsed in the Berkshire and Oxfordshire countryside, "waiting "waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall", fall" ,[4] and claims to have once seen him himself. He entertains a doubt as to the scholar gypsy's still being alive after two centuries, but then shakes off the thought. He cannot have died: For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls: 'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls, [5] And numb the elastic powers. powers . The scholar gipsy, having renounced such a life, is Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings ,[6] and is therefore not subject to ageing and death. Arnold describes this strange disease of modern life, [7] With its sick hurry, its divided aims, aims , and implores the scholar gipsy to avoid all who suffer from it, in case he too should be infected and die. Arnold ends with an extended simile of a Tyrian merchant seaman who flees from the irruption of Greek competitors to seek a new world in Iberia. Writing and publication

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"The Scholar Gipsy" was written in 1853 , probably immediately after "Sohrab and Rustum".[8] In an 1857 letter to his brother Tom, referring to their friendship with Theodore Walrond and the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, Arnold wrote that "The Scholar Gipsy" was "meant to fix the remembrance of those delightful [9] wanderings of ours in the Cumner hills before they were quite effaced". Arnold revisited these scenes many years later in his elegy for Arthur Hugh Clough, "Thyrsis", a companion-piece and, some would say,[10] a sequel to "The Scholar Gipsy". "The Scholar Gipsy", like "Requiescat" and "Sohrab and Rustum", first appeared in Arnold's Poems (1853), published by Longmans. During the 20th century it was many times published as a booklet, either  by itself or with "Thyrsis".[11] It appears in The Oxford Book of English Verse and in some editions of Palgrave's Golden Treasury despite its being, at 250 lines, considerably longer than most of the poems in either anthology. Critical opinions

Homer animates –   Shakespeare animates, in its poor way I think Sohrab and Rustum animates –  the "Gipsy Scholar" at best awakens a pleasing melancholy. But this is not what we want. The complaining millions of men Darken in labour and pain  –  what they want is something to animate and ennoble them  –  not merely to add zest to their melancholy or grace to their dreams. Matthew Arnold [12] We would ask Mr. Arnold to consider whether the acceptance this poem is sure to win, does not prove to him that it is better to forget all his poetic theories, ay, and Homer and Sophocles, Milton and Goethe too, and speak straight out of things which he has felt and tested on his own pulses. The North British Review [13] "The Scholar Gipsy" has sunk into the common consciousness; it is inseparable from Oxford; it is the  poetry of Oxford made, in some sense, complete. John William Mackail [14] "The Scholar Gipsy" represents very closely the ghost of each one of us, the living ghost, made up of many recollections and some wishes and promises; the excellence of the study is in part due to the poet's refusal to tie his wanderer to any actual gipsy camp or any invention resembling a plot. Edmund Blunden [15] What the poem actually offers is a charm of relaxation, a holiday from serious aims and exacting  business. And what the Scholar-Gipsy really symbolizes is Victorian poetry, vehicle (so often) of explicit intellectual and moral intentions, but unable to be in essence anything but relaxed, relaxing and anodyne. F. R. Leavis [16] Victorian Poetry © 1969 West Virginia University Press Abstract: "The Scholar-Gipsy" is an ambitious lyric with an intricate action. Although it begins lyrically and ends allusively, its crucial stanzas, fourteen through seventeen, are critical and argumentative. Arnold attempts to use the figure of the scholar as a "model" by which to criticize the strain and fatigue of modern life, but the process of preparing the scholar for his role is complex, and the poem uncovers the many difficulties attending this effort. Arnold tries first to tell the story of the scholar-gipsy and then to use it. This double

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aim accounts, in part, for the poem's movement from pastoral, topographical meditation and fantasy to systematic argument. Beginning with stanza fourteen, the poem's action passes through a set of  propositions that serve to locate the scholar-gipsy. By the end of stanza seventeen, the scholar has ostensibly been accommodated, and he then becomes the object of the critical discourse which follows as modern man becomes its subject. However, the accommodation exacts a price, for the argument Arnold constructs to prepare the scholar as a proper model is flawed. The fact that there is, indisputably, an argument at the center of the poem and that it fails is the best signal we have that Arnold's original idea of the scholar-gipsy was the source of his trouble. The fact that Arnold kept the figure he had initially chosen is one source of the poem's strength, for the difficulties he has with the scholar gipsy become a formal reflection of the stated problems of modern man. The poem is an elegy for elegies. It not only  proclaims the immortality of its subject but also shows how immortality is poetically conferred. In its ancient Greece ‘elegy’ used to denote a kind of poetry dealing with the subject matter of change and loss. As a humanist Arnold was very much concerned about t he gaining of supremacy of science, theology and natural philosophy over arts, poetry, and moral philosophy as academic subjects. This passionate sense of loss and the concern for rapid shifting in the taste of his people are strongly evident in the poems of Matthew Arnold. His best of poems comes when he is this brooding mood. As a poet Arnold provides a record of a sick society. In the Scholar Gypsy (1867) Arnold’s attitude to t he gypsy is closely analogous to that of an adult towards child. He appreciates even envies its innocence, but realizes that there is no return to such state is possible for himself. The child loses its ‘innocence’ not by some act of sin or by a defect of intellect, but merely by gaining experience and developing into an adult. The realities of adult life turn out to be less agreeable. The gypsy, like a child, is the embodiment of a good lost, not of a good temporarily or culpably mislaid. When Arnold contrasts the gypsy’s serenity with the disquiets and perplexities of his own age, he is not satirizing the nineteenth century, or renouncing it, or criticizing it, or suggesting a remedy, he is rather, exploring its spiritual and emotional losses, and the stoic readjustment which this will entail for it: —No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours! For what wears out of the life of mortal men? “Tis that form change to change their bearing rolls; The poem starts with description of the lethargic setting of the Oxfords hire countryside. The setting prepares us of the... Mathew Arnold was one of the great posts of the Victorian Age. The main characteristics of this age were social unrest and political fermentation. In this poem, Ar nold contrasts "this strange disease of modern life" with the life of the Scholar Gypsy who had "one aim, one business, one desire" in life. He also contrasts the peace and permanence of nature with the turmoil and tumult of human life. The poet asks his friend to come to him so that he may read to him the story of the Scholar Gypsy. He was a brilliant but poor scholar. He could not meet the educational expenses of the Oxford University. So, he left it and joined a caravan of gypsies. He learned the art of hypnotism. Then he went from place to place and showed his art to the people. In spring he was seen at t he alehouse. But he shunned the "smock-frocked boors". In summer nights he was seen by the Ox ford riders, but he avoided them too. In May, he gave flowers to the maidens but spoke no words. Thus he wondered here and there to learn

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and teach the Gypsies arts to rule man's brain. But it needed "heaven-sent moments" for t his skill. His incessant wandering was, perhaps, to search and see k these sacred moments.

‘The Scholar Gipsy’ is based on a story about a scholar who abandoned academic life to join a band of gipsies. The taken from ‘The Vanity of Dogmatizing’, an attack on scholasticism, by J. Glanvil. The various places and landmarks mentioned in the poem are all actual ones situated around Oxford. The Shepherd is summoned to the hills to untie the wattled cotes: sheepfolds built of wattles or interwoven twigs; neither to leave his wistful flock unfed nor let his bawling fellows neither rack their throats nor allow the cropped grasses shoot another head. However, when the fields are calm and still and tired men and dogs all gone to r est, one can see only the white sheep cross the strips of the moon blanched green, the Shepherd must again renew the quest; the search for the Scholar Gipsy believed to be still haunting the vicinity. The nook is screened over the high yet half reaped field and till the sun down will the narrator be peeping through the thick corn of the scarlet poppies. The round green roots and yellow stalks of pale pink Convolvulus; a flower; in tendrils creep, while the air-swept lindens yield their scent and rustle down their perfumed showers of bloom on the bent grass. The August sun with shade provides a beautiful view down to Oxford towers. The narrator read the story about the Oxford Scholar from the Glanvil’s Book about pregnant parts; inventive faculties; who got tired of knocking at the Preferment’s door and one summer morning forsook his friends and went to learn the Gipsy-lore. He roamed the world along with that wild brotherhood and never ret urned to Oxford again. Still rumours hung around the country side that the lost scholar was seen straying the neighbourhood, by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied folks. He wore a hat of antique shape and a grey cloak just like the gipsies do. Many Shepherds had met him on the hurst of spring at some secluded alehouse in the Berkshire moors on the warm ingle bench; bench in the chimney corner; the smock-frocked boors had found him seated as they entered. The Scholar Gipsy loved the retired ground the most. He met the Oxford riders, while they were returning home on the summer nights, at the ferry, after crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe. He trailed the cool stream with his wet fingers and the slow punt swings round; the S cholar Gipsy is seen reposing in a boat moored to the bank. The ‘punt’ or ferry boat is pulled across the stream by a rope, and the boat moves in a kind of curve. The rope ‘chops’ or suddenly shifts with the wind or the current; which leaned backwards in a pensive dream and fostering in his lap a heap of flowers plucked in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers and his eyes resting on the moonlit stream. Above Godstow Bridge in the heat of June, men who returned from those wide fields of breezy grass, where the black winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames come to bathe at the abandoned lasher; pool below or dam, have often passed him by sitting upon the bank. With scarlet patches tagged and shreds of grey; the bright-coloured and patched garments of the gipsies were hung on the bushes; above the forest ground of Thessaly, the black bird picks up its food, sees the scholar gipsy, but does not stop its meal nor fears him at all. So it often past him stray, rapt twirling a withered spray in his hand and waiting for the spark from heaven to fall. The line of festal light in Christ Church Hall; the dining hall at Christ Church College, Oxford; then sought his straw in some sequester grange. The Scholar Gipsy has not felt the lapse of hours nor the things that wears out the life of mortal men which exhaust the energy of strongest souls till having used their nerves with bliss and teen; sorrow; to the just pausing Genius; the spirit, both judge and protector, that accompanies a man throughout life. All his store of sad experience he lays bare of wretched days; the intellectual king laying bare his

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‘store of sad experience’ is contrasted with the scholar-gipsy distributing his ‘store of flowers’ to the maidens who danced around the Fyfield elm. On some wild pastoral slope emerge and resting on the moonlit pales; the stakes of a fence; freshens his flowers as in former years with dew or listen with enchanted ears from the dark dingles; wooded dells; to the nightingales. The Tyrian trader; associated with Carthaginian trading voyages (Carthage was founded as a Tyrian colony); lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily, the fringes of a southward facing brow among the Aegean Isles. Outside the Western Straits and unbent sails, there were down cloudy cliffs through sheets o f foam, the Shy traffickers; shy in their manner of trading rather than shy to trade; the dark Iberians come and on the beach undid his corded bales.

Scholar Gypsy : Matthew Arnold I've been reading up on Matthew Arnold's work as a school inspector, and came across some of his poetic works. Having only thought of Arnold as a cultural critic, I was surprised to find his poetry to be so highly regarded as well. Stefan Collini has praised Arnold as ranking amongst Browing and Tennyson as  being "one of the three pinnacles of Victorian Verse" ( Matthew Arnold: A Critical Portrait 2). His poems centre mainly around reflective thought, doubts and intellect. The following extract is Arnold's most lucid poetic interpretation of Victorian Higher Education. From the towers of an Oxford University Arnold demonstrates a disregard for logic in favour of free spirited knowledge. The Scholar Gipsy (1853) is a poem that tells the story of a Scholar who leaves the Oxford and formal education to live out in the wild and learn instead from gypsies. The poem tells how the gypsies "had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others." F.R Leavis has argued "what the poem actually offers is a charm of relaxation, a holiday from serious aims and exacting business. And what the Scholar-Gipsy symbolizes is Victorian poetry, vehicle (so often) of explicit intellectual and moral intentions, but unable to be in essence anything but relaxed, relaxing and anodyne" (100).

I am unsure whether Leavis has given enough credit to Arnold's poem, which rather than being relaxing is melancholy and essentially disturbed. The Scholar Gipsy may have a pastoral and gentle wrapping, but is nonetheless a clear cut criticism of regimented learning.

You can read the poem in its entirety here. G Wilson Knight gives a typically New Critical reading of the poem on JSTOR  here I was most struck however with lines 201 - 210 which bitterly talks of modern life as "sick hurry" (204).

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,  And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life,

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With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife — Fly hence, our contact fear! Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!  Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.

The poem is set whole action of the poem is within sight of "Oxford's towers," therefore Arnold leaves little doubt that the narrator's first-person plural refers to the scholarly community of the university. Arnold attended Balliol College at Oxford himself from 1841 - 1853, graduating with a 2nd Class Honours degree in "Greats." The poem was published ten years after this date and perhaps reflects a mature retrospective view of the university.