for two trivial and very venial offences. Arnold, who had confidently expected absolute acquittal, was inflamed with a burning anger that even Washington’s kindly reprimand, couched almost in words of praise, could not subdue.
It was now apparently that he first conceived the plan of betraying some important post to the British. With this in view he sought and obtained from Washington (August 1780) command of West Point, the key to the Hudson River Valley. Arnold’s offers now became more explicit, and, in order to perfect the details of the plot, Clinton’s adjutant-general, Major John André, met him near Stony Point on the night of the 21st of September. On the 23rd, while returning by land, André with incriminating papers was captured, and the officer to whom he was entrusted unsuspectingly sent information of his capture to Arnold, who was thus enabled to escape to the British lines. Arnold, commissioned a brigadier-general in the British army, received £6315 in compensation for his property losses, and was employed in leading an expedition into Virginia which burned Richmond, and in an attack upon New London (q.v.) in September 1781. In December 1781 he removed to London and was consulted on American affairs by the king and ministry, but could obtain no further employment in the active service. Disappointed at the failure of his plans and embittered by the neglect and scorn which he met in England, he spent the years 1787–1791 at St John, New Brunswick, once more engaging in the West India trade, but in 1791 he returned to London, and after war had broken out between Great Britain and France, was active in fitting out privateers. Gradually sinking into melancholia, worn down by depression, and suffering from a nervous disease, he died at London on the 14th of June 1801.
Arnold had three sons—Benedict, Richard and Henry—by his first wife, and four sons—Edward Shippen, James Robertson, George and William Fitch—by his second wife; five of them, and one grandson, served in the British army. Benedict (1768–1795) was an officer of the artillery and was mortally wounded in the West Indies. Edward Shippen (1780–1813) became lieutenant of the Sixth Bengal Cavalry and later paymaster at Muttra, India. James Robertson (1781–1854) entered the corps of Royal Engineers in 1798, served in the Napoleonic wars, in Egypt and in the West Indies, and rose to the rank of lieutenant-general, was an aide-de-camp to William IV., and was created a knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic order and a knight of the Crescent. George (1787–1828) was a lieutenant-colonel in the Second Bengal Cavalry at the time of his death. William Fitch (1794–1828) became a captain in the Nineteenth Royal Lancers; his son, William Trail (1826–1855) served in the Crimean War as captain of the Fourth Regiment of Foot and was killed during the siege of Sevastopol.
Bibliography.—Jared Sparks’ Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold (Boston, 1835), in his “Library of American Biography,” is biassed and unfair. The best general account is Isaac Newton Arnold’s Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880), which, while offering no apologies or defence of his treason, lays perhaps too great emphasis on his provocations. Charles Burr Todd’s The Real Benedict Arnold (New York, 1903) is a curious attempt to make Arnold’s wife wholly responsible for his defection. François de Barbé-Marbois’s Complot d’Arnold et de Sir H. Clinton contre les États-Unis (Paris, 1816) contains much interesting material, but is inaccurate. Two good accounts of the Canadian Expedition are Justin H. Smith’s Arnold’s March from Cambridge to Quebec (New York, 1903), which contains a reprint of Arnold’s journal of the expedition; and John Codman’s Arnold’s Expedition to Quebec (New York, 1901). Arnold’s Letters on the Expedition to Canada were printed in the Maine Historical Society’s Collections for 1831 (repr. 1865). See also William Abbatt, The Crisis of the Revolution (New York, 1899); The Northern Invasion of 1780 (Bradford Club Series, No. 6, New York, 1866); “The Treason of Benedict Arnold” (letters of Sir Henry Clinton to Lord George Germaine) in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. xxii. (Philadelphia, 1898); and Proceedings of a General Court Martial for the Trial of Major-General Arnold (Philadelphia, 1780; reprinted with introduction and notes, New York, 1865).
ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN (1832–1904), British poet and journalist, was born on the 10th of June 1832, and was educated at the King’s school, Rochester; King’s College, London; and University College, Oxford, where in 1852 he gained the Newdigate prize for a poem on Belshazzar’s feast. On leaving Oxford he became a schoolmaster, and went to India as principal of the government Sanskrit College at Poona, a post which he held during the mutiny of 1857, when he was able to render services for which he was publicly thanked by Lord Elphinstone in the Bombay council. Returning to England in 1861 he worked as a journalist on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper with which he continued to be associated for more than forty years. It was he who, on behalf of the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph in conjunction with the New York Herald, arranged for the journey of H. M. Stanley to Africa to discover the course of the Congo, and Stanley named after him a mountain to the north-east of Albert Edward Nyanza. Arnold must also be credited with the first idea of a great trunk line traversing the entire African continent, for in 1874 he first employed the phrase “a Cape to Cairo railway” subsequently popularized by Cecil Rhodes. It was, however, as a poet that he was best known to his contemporaries. The Light of Asia appeared in 1879 and won an immediate success, going through numerous editions both in England and America. It is an Indian epic, dealing with the life and teaching of Buddha, which are expounded with much wealth of local colour and not a little felicity of versification. The poem contains many lines of unquestionable beauty; and its immediate popularity was rather increased than diminished by the twofold criticism to which it was subjected. On the one hand it was held by Oriental scholars to give a false impression of Buddhist doctrine; while, on the other, the suggested analogy between Sakyamuni and Christ offended the taste of some devout Christians. The latter criticism probably suggested to Arnold the idea of attempting a second narrative poem of which the central figure should be the founder of Christianity, as the founder of Buddhism had been that of the first. But though The Light of the World (1891), in which this idea took shape, had considerable poetic merit, it lacked the novelty of theme and setting which had given the earlier poem much of its attractiveness; and it failed to repeat the success attained by The Light of Asia. Arnold’s other principal volumes of poetry were Indian Song of Songs (1875), Pearls of the Faith (1883), The Song Celestial (1885), With Sadi in the Garden (1888), Potiphar’s Wife (1892) and Adzuma (1893). In his later years Arnold resided for some time in Japan, and his third wife was a Japanese lady. In Seas and Lands (1891) and Japonica (1892) he gives an interesting study of Japanese life. He received the order of C.S.I. on the occasion of the proclamation of Queen Victoria as empress of India in 1877, and in 1888 was created K.C.I.E. He also possessed decorations conferred by the rulers of Japan, Persia, Turkey and Siam. Sir Edwin Arnold died on the 24th of March 1904.
ARNOLD, GOTTFRIED (1666–1714), German Protestant divine, was born at Annaberg, in Saxony, where his father was a schoolmaster. In 1682 he went to the Gymnasium at Gera, and three years later to the university of Wittenberg. Here he made a special study of theology and history, and afterwards, through the influence of P. J. Spener, “the father of pietism,” he became tutor in Quedlinburg. His first work, Die Erste Liebe zu Christo, to which in modern times attention was again directed by Leo Tolstoy, appeared in 1696. It went through five editions before 1728, and gained the author much reputation. In the year after its publication he was invited to Giessen as professor of church history. The life and work here, however, proved so distasteful to him that he resigned in 1698, and returned to Quedlinburg. In 1699 he began to publish his largest work, described by Tolstoy (The Kingdom of God is within You, chap, iii.) as “remarkable, although little known,” Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, in which he has been thought by some to show more impartiality towards heresy than towards the Church (cp. Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, p. 277). His next work, Geheimniss der göttlichen Sophia, published in 1700, seemed to indicate that he had developed a form of mysticism. Soon afterwards, however, his acceptance of a pastorate marked a change, and he produced a number of noteworthy works on practical theology. He was also known as the author
