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Fallacies of Real Estimates: and The Personal Estimate, Both of Which Are Fallacious'

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Ali Abbas

Arnold argues that personal and historical biases can distort an accurate assessment of poetry. The "real estimate" considers a work's excellence and ability to provide strength and joy. Arnold praises Chaucer's style but says he lacks the seriousness of classics. Dryden and Pope were "prose classics" of their era rather than poetic ones. Gray was the only 18th century classic due to studying Greek poetry. Burns also lacked seriousness but showed poetic truth, largeness, and sympathy. Shakespeare alone achieved a balance of mind through genius. However, Arnold's views were sometimes naive or lacking disinterestedness. His definition of poetry as criticism of life added nothing new.

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Fallacies of Real Estimates: and The Personal Estimate, Both of Which Are Fallacious'

Uploaded by

Ali Abbas
434 views8 pages
Arnold argues that personal and historical biases can distort an accurate assessment of poetry. The "real estimate" considers a work's excellence and ability to provide strength and joy. Arnold praises Chaucer's style but says he lacks the seriousness of classics. Dryden and Pope were "prose classics" of their era rather than poetic ones. Gray was the only 18th century classic due to studying Greek poetry. Burns also lacked seriousness but showed poetic truth, largeness, and sympathy. Shakespeare alone achieved a balance of mind through genius. However, Arnold's views were sometimes naive or lacking disinterestedness. His definition of poetry as criticism of life added nothing new.

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Arnold argues that personal and historical biases can distort an accurate assessment of poetry. The "real estimate" considers a work's excellence and ability to provide strength and joy. Arnold praises Chaucer's style but says he lacks the seriousness of classics. Dryden and Pope were "prose classics" of their era rather than poetic ones. Gray was the only 18th century classic due to studying Greek poetry. Burns also lacked seriousness but showed poetic truth, largeness, and sympathy. Shakespeare alone achieved a balance of mind through genius. However, Arnold's views were sometimes naive or lacking disinterestedness. His definition of poetry as criticism of life added nothing new.

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© All Rights Reserved
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434 views8 pages

Fallacies of Real Estimates: and The Personal Estimate, Both of Which Are Fallacious'

Uploaded by

Ali Abbas
Arnold argues that personal and historical biases can distort an accurate assessment of poetry. The "real estimate" considers a work's excellence and ability to provide strength and joy. Arnold praises Chaucer's style but says he lacks the seriousness of classics. Dryden and Pope were "prose classics" of their era rather than poetic ones. Gray was the only 18th century classic due to studying Greek poetry. Burns also lacked seriousness but showed poetic truth, largeness, and sympathy. Shakespeare alone achieved a balance of mind through genius. However, Arnold's views were sometimes naive or lacking disinterestedness. His definition of poetry as criticism of life added nothing new.

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Fallacies of Real Estimates

Arnold while giving his touchstone method makes


reader aware about the fallacy in judgement . He is of
the view that historical fallacy and personal fallacy mars
the real estimate of poetry. While expressing his views
of historic, the personal, the Real he writes that ‘…. In
reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really excellent,
and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should
be present in our minds and should govern our estimate
of what we read. But this real estimate, the only true
one, is liable to be superseded, if we are not watchful,
by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate
and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious’.
On Chaucer
 Arnold praises Chaucer’s excellent style and
manner, but says that Chaucer cannot be
called a classic since, unlike Homer, Virgil and
Shakespeare, his poetry does not have the
high poetic seriousness which Aristotle
regards as a mark of its superiority over the
other arts.
On Dryden and Pope
 Hence we can regard Dryden as the glorious
founder, and pope as the splendid high
priest, of the age of prose and reason, our
indispensible 18th century. Their poetry was
that of the builders of an age of prose and
reason. Arnold says that Pope and Dryden are
not poet classics, but the ‘prose classics’ of the
18th century.
On Thomas gray
 As for poetry, he considers Gray to be the only
classic of the 18th century. Gray constantly
studied and enjoyed Greek poetry and thus
inherited their poetic point of view and their
application of poetry to life. But he is the
‘scantiest, frailest classic’ since his output was
small.
On Robert Burns
 Like Chaucer, Burns lacks high poetic seriousness though
his poems have poetic truth in diction and movement.
 Also like Chaucer, Burns possesses largeness, benignity,
freedom and spontaneity. But instead of Chaucer’s fluidity,
we find in Burns a springing bounding energy. Chaucer’s
benignity deepens in Burns into a sense of sympathy for
both human as well as non-human things, but Chaucer’s
world is richer and fairer than that of Burns.
 Sometimes Burn’s poetic genius is unmatched by anyone.
He is even better than Goethe at times and he is unrivalled
by anyone except Shakespeare.
On Shakespeare
 Praising Shakespeare, Arnold says in England there
needs a miracle of genius like Shakespeare’s to
produce a balance of mind. This is praise tempered
by a critical sense. In a letter he writes. ‘I keep
saying Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is’.
 In his sonnet on Shakespeare he says;
‘Others abide our question. Thou are free./ we ask
and ask – Thou smilest and art still,/ Out-topping
knowledge’.
Criticism of his viewpoint
 Arnold’s criticism of life is often marred by his naive moralizing, by
his inadequate perception of the relation between art and morality,
and by his uncritical admiration of what he regarded as the golden
sanity of the ancient Greeks.
 For all his championing of disinterestedness, Arnold was unable to
practice disinterestedness in all his essays.
 In his essays on Shelley particularly, he displayed a lamentable lack
of disinterestedness. Shelley’s moral views were too much for the
Victorian Arnold.
 In his essay on Keats too Arnold failed to be disinterested. The
sentimental letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne were too much for
him. But Arnold’s insistence on the standards and his concern over
the relation between poetry and life make him one of the great
modern critics.
Criticism of his view point
 George Sainsbury : A history Of English Criticism:
“all literature is the application of ideas of life and
to say that poetry is the application of ideas to
life under conditions fixed for poetry, is simply a
vain repetition.”
 T. S. Eliot :
‘His observation that poetry is criticism of life is
repeating Aristotle. Nothing novel is contributed
as a critic.’

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