The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

What (and how) does Arnold argue about the importance of criticism in his time? Consider here what he says about BOTH literature and society.

It sounds like critics have almost been left by the wayside at his time with the way he takes it. Arnold thinks this is a travesty, using a quote from himself stating that “almost the last thing for which one would come to English literature is just that very thing which Europe most desires- criticism” The funny fact of this though is that criticism was almost too harsh in the past era and has seemed to of gone to another extreme from the way Arnold puts it. I mean, I’m drawing a blank on whom, though I want to say Keats, but I remember specifically that it was thought that harsh criticism it what weakened him and lead to his death. We know how much he respects Wordsworth, but this prose shows his honesty as he blatantly disagrees with the man. He mentioned Wordsworth feelings against criticism, “Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, indefinitely lower than inventive; and he said today that if the quantity of times consumed in writing critiques on the works of others were given to original composition… it would be much better employed” but Arnold counters, bringing up that Wordsworth himself was a critic as well as poet. Arnold suggests that Wordsworth wasn’t again criticism as much as harsh criticism, “However, everybody would admit that a false or malicious criticism had better never been written.” Arnold is very much in favor or criticism, but I feel he wishes for honesty, rather than simply harsh words meant to injure. Again, he also mentions Goethe as a fine critic, which considering the opinion of him mentioned in Memorial Verses makes excellent sense. Arnold felt that Goethe could pinpoint problems easily and tell it how it was. I think Arnold felt that proper criticism and a wider range of reading experience during the previous era would have helped the writers of the time. He doesn’t dislike the writers, he specifically says of Wordsworth that “I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much that I cannot wish him different; and it is vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from what he is, to suppose that he could have been different.” It doesn’t stop him from wondering what Wordsworth could have done were he a more read man or what he might have taken from criticism were he again a more read man. Really, much of society could have been changed for the sake of being more well read.