Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Arnold, Edwin
ARNOLD, Edwin, C.S.I., second son of Robert Coles Arnold, a magistrate for Sussex, born June 10, 1832, was educated at the King's School, Rochester, and King's College, London, and was elected to a scholarship at University College, Oxford. In 1852 he obtained the Newdigate prize for his English poem on the "Feast of Belshazzar," and was selected in 1853 to address the late Earl of Derby on his installation as Chancellor of the University. He graduated in honours in 1854. Upon quitting college, he was elected Second Master in the English Division of King Edward the Sixth's School, Birmingham, and subsequently appointed Principal of the Government Sanscrit College at Poona, in the Bombay Presidency, and Fellow of the University of Bombay, which offices he held during the mutiny, and resigned in 1861, after having twice received the thanks of the Governor-in-Council. He has contributed largely to critical and literary journals, and is the author of "Griselda, a Drama," and "Poems, Narrative and Lyrical;" with some prose works, among which are "Education in India," "The Euterpe of Herodotus,"—a translation from the Greek Text, with notes—"The Hitopades'a," with vocabulary in Sanscrit, English, and Murathi. The last two were published in India. Mr. Arnold has also published a metrical translation of the classical Sanscrit work "Hitopades'a" under the title of "The Book of Good Counsels;" a "History of the Administration of India under the late Marquis of Dalhousie" (1862–4); as well as a popular account, with translated passages, of "The Poets of Greece." Since 1861 he has been upon the editorial staff of the Daily Telegraph. On behalf of the proprietors of that journal, he arranged the first expedition of Mr. George Smith to Assyria, as well as that of Mr. Henry Stanley, who was sent by the same journal, in conjunction with the New York Herald, to complete the discoveries of Livingstone in Africa, a mission victoriously accomplished. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic and the Royal Geographical Society of London, and Honorary Correspondent of that of Marseilles. For his share in the happy results of Mr. Smith's researches he was publicly thanked by the Trustees of the British Museum. He published in 1874, "Hero and Leander," a translation in heroic verse, from the Greek of Musæeus; and in the following year "The Indian Song of Songs," being a metrical paraphrase from the Sanscrit of the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva. Upon the occasion of the proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India, on Jan. 1, 1877, he was named a Companion of the Star of India. In 1879 he produced "The Light of Asia," an Epic poem upon the Life and Teaching of Buddha, which has since passed through more than twenty editions in England and America. For this work the King of Siam decorated him with the Order of the White Elephant. In 1881, he published a volume of oriental verse under the title of "Indian Poetry," and he has printed several translations from the Sanscrit Epic the Mahábhárata, and in 1883 "Pearls of the Faith, or Islam's Rosary; being the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah, with comments in verse." Mr. Arnold received the Second Class of the Imperial Order of the Medjidie from the Sultan in 1876.