Bishop Wilson
The first person to appear by name in the text is Bishop Wilson. The first third of the Preface is essentially a laudatory commemoration of Thomas Wilson who served as Bishop of Sodor and Man throughout the first half of the 18th century. As part of the celebratory remembrance, Arnold becomes almost a wild-eyed reviewer of Wilson’s book, Maxims of Piety and Christianity. Out of print at the time, Arnold first makes the case for reprinting efforts to begin and then goes on to explain how this text informs much of what is to come. Wilson will be quoted directly several times throughout the successive chapters.
Mr. Bright
Referred to only as Mr. Bright or just plain Bright, the historical reference here is to John Bright. Bright served as a member of Parliament representing the Liberal party. Bright actually enjoys a distinctive reputation as one of the finest orators of his time as he forthrightly campaigned in favor of the rights of the middle class and against the consequence of aristocratic privilege. This seems to be his primary failing in the eyes of Arnold who takes Mr. Bright to task for being too much a representative of the Philistinism of the middle class too wrapped up in conceptualization of personality liberties (doing as one pleases) to contribute to culture.
Frederic Harrison
Harrison was an author who regularly published radical texts which critiqued hot button issues of the day in politics, religion and society. Harrison is portrayed as too much the apostle of the anti-culture “machinery.” In other words, Harrison’s attachment to certain political and social ideologies target him as an opponent to culture because an adherence to systems is inwardly an act open hostility to everything that Arnold deems necessary to creating culture.
