Touchstone Method. Matthew Arnold

To find which poetry is the best, Arnold suggests a method known as touchstone method. This method was introduced into literature by Matthew Arnold in his work “The Study of Poetry”. Touchstone is a stone on which gold is rubbed to test its quality. In a metaphorical usage Arnold says that the great masters of the past are suitable touchstones to test the quality of the poems of the coming generations. Some model lines from Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton will be used as touchstones to test new poems. It uses the method of comparing and evaluating. The lines may be different but there is one thing common in them, “the very highest poetic quality”.

He quotes, from Homer: “In his will is our peace”. From Shakespeare, “If though didst ever held me in thy heart/Absent thee from felicity awhile, /And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/To tell my story….. :(Dying words of Hamlet to Horatio) and from Milton, “And the courage never to submit or yield/And what is else not to be overcome….” (Paradise Lost Book,) etc.

These few lines can guide us properly to judge our own and others poems properly. From these great masters we can understand how they beautifully express the meaning in fine structure and diction.

Thus according to this method Chaucer, Dryden, Pope and Shelley fall short of the best, because they lack high seriousness. Arnold’s ideal poets are Homer and Sophocles in the ancient world, Dante and Milton and among moderns Goethe and Wordsworth. He puts Wordsworth in the front rank not for his poetry but for his criticism of life.