| | | | | | THE appearance of the name of a son of Dr. Arnold on the | title-page of a volume of poems, cannot but excite a kindly | interest in all those who admired, even when they could | not agree with, his well-known father. Our good-will, | moreover, is conciliated towards Mr. Arnold himself, by | the filial consideration for his father's name which has led | him to publish two smaller volumes anonymously, and to | reserve the avowal of his own authorship, till success, | important in its nature if moderate in amount, had shown | that he was not likely to discredit a name which | anyone | might be proud to bear. He is not without grounds for the | confidence he appears to have assumed. The volume | indeed is open on many points to critical remark; but | no-one | of any poetical feeling can peruse it without | recognising in the author the possession of remarkable | powers, even where a mistaken theory of poetry has | thwarted their development and cramped their exercise. | All persons of taste would not agree that it was a volume | throughout of remarkable excellence. We should not | ourselves be inclined to say so much. But we should think | little of the poetical sensibility of | anyone who could be | blind to the loveliness, or deaf to the harmony, of many of | the separate poems which it contains. | | No young poet, even if his powers are the greatest, can | ever shake himself free at first from the influence of his | forerunners and contemporaries. Originality of style, at | least where the style is good, comes late, and is the result | of mature taste and experienced powers. And this is | especially true of those greater and more cultivated | authors, whose genius is the healthiest, and whose own | style ultimately the most original. Penetrated with the | beauties of their favourite masters, which none can so | thoroughly appreciate as great disciples, the echoes of | their predecessors' strains may be caught lingering in their | own; and their manner takes the unconscious impress of | the models they have so reverently studied and so | profoundly admired. Take the early works of Shakspere | himself, and see how much of Marlow and of the still | older dramatic writers is to be found therein. It is, perhaps, | profitless to add examples after an instance so great and so | undeniable, yet Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge | and Tennyson, in their early works, exhibited traces of the | influence of their predecessors in the art. To go further | back, the whole range of Latin poets, with (perhaps) | scarcely | | an exception, in the great bulk of their productions, | formed their styles distinctly upon Greek models, which to | them were ancient, and occasionally descended to direct | verbal imitation. It is not therefore in the way of blame | that we note the influence of great masters upon Mr. | Arnold's style; but as a mark of his powers being yet | immature, and that it is at present impossible to predict | with any confidence the position in the poetical | commonwealth which he may be hereafter entitled to | assume. For at present even the best of his compositions, | with perhaps a single exception, are referable to some | well-known original, which the cadence of his verses, or | the general tone and spirit of his work, whether | intentionally or not, at least indisputably, recall. The | models are indeed various and good, but the imitation is | obvious though successful. Taste, therefore, rather than | power, is as yet the characteristic of Mr. Arnold's muse; | and he succeeds less in creating a fresh impression upon | his readers, than in reminding them of other great writers, | and in reproducing the effects which those writers have | already succeeded in creating. | | Take for instance the following passage from one of his | latest poems: ~~ | | | | This is a direct and very successful imitation of Milton's | manner; not only the general air has been cleverly caught, | but the very phrases and words are Miltonic. We have no | objection to the passage in itself, but we feel that the thing | has been done, and better done, before. Equally close and | equally successful is the imitation of a different model in | the passage we subjoin from an earlier poem on the | striking story of Mycerinus, as given in Herodotus: ~~ | | | | Who does not recognise in this passage an imitation of the | majestic music of Wordsworth's "Laodamia" by one who | has felt the beauty of that poem and has aimed at repeating | its effects? | | Once more, we find Mr. Arnold struck with the melody of | another considerable writer, and accurately reproducing it. | The passage we subjoin is from the conclusion of the same | poem of "Mycerinus," in which, if the rhyme be after | Wordsworth, in the blank verse he does homage to | Tennyson: ~~ | | | No reader of OEnone, or | Ulysses, or the | Morte d'Arthur, can have any doubt as to the original | which suggested these very picturesque and harmonious | lines. It is the manner of Mr. Tennyson, caught and | employed by a man of taste and ability. | | We do not desire to pursue Mr. Arnold through the various | poets of this volume merely for the purpose of showing | the originals to whom he is indebted. But in a right | estimate of his powers it ought not to be forgotten that he | is thus indebted and indebted | even to a greater degree than a careless perusal might | perhaps disclose. For not only in such passages as we have | quoted is the style and manner of another writer | unconsciously caught or directly imitated; but often where | the manner is his own, and the treatment appears to be | original, we may detect the recollection of some beautiful | passage lurking in Mr. Arnold's mind, and forming the | theme as it were for a graceful and melodious variation. | The following little poem, for instance, | is one of the sweetest in Mr. Arnold's whole volume: ~~ | | | Beautiful verses indeed. But would they have been written | but for the famous passage in | Christabel? ~~ | | | | | Here it is not tye manner of | Christabel which is | imitated, but the thought of Coleridge, which is suggested | by Mr. Arnold's poem. We could not carry on this kind of | examination in detail, without occupying a great deal | more space than is now at our disposal, for where the | likeness is not of style, but of thought, the parallel | passages require to be set out at length, and the attention | must be drawn to those parts which are intended to be | compared. In general, however, we may say that there are | but a few of Mr. Arnold's poems which do not inevitably | remind us of the works of some former writer, either in | their language, or in the thoughts of which their language | is the expression. In this, however, Mr. Arnold does not | differ from the multitude of Young verse-writers, of | whose productions "the public little knows, the publisher | too much," and who, after a certain period of friendly | praise and moderate social success, pass to the | trunkmakers, and are forgotten. He does differ from them | in the quantity of original matter which he blends with, or | superadds to the stores of others, and in the fine taste and | poetical feeling which all his productions display. He | differs from them also in the possession of a wide learning | and varied accomplishment, which furnish him with an | abundance of allusion, and a fertility of unexpected yet | appropriate illustration, no less interesting than delightful. | Above all, he stands alone in his sedulous cultivation of | the classical writers, as the best sources of poetical | inspiration, and the highest teachers of the poetical art. He | appears to be a finished scholar intimately acquainted with | the great works of Greece and Rome, and passionately | fond of their characteristic beauties. Homer, and the Attic | tragedians, especially Sophocles, are however those | amongst the classics whom he regards with the deepest | veneration; a veneration shown not only by an occasional | verse or stanza, but in | | elaborate attempts to reproduce their style, in a selection | of classical subjects for his own compositions, and a pretty | frequent adoption of classical epithets, or epithets formed | upon a classical analogy, into all his poems, whether of an | antique or modern cast. | | Mr. Arnold has not escaped the dangers inevitably | attendant on such a course. It is true that he has | occasionally transferred to his own poems some of the | great qualities which he so admires in his Greek models. | The clear descriptive epithets, the simple yet distinct | pictures of Greek poetry, are not unfrequently to be found | in Mr. Arnold. But his love of the ancients has led him | into many a harshness and obscurity, many a bald passage | intended to be austere, many a childish one intended to be | simple; and has filled his poems with, a multitude of | affectations quite fatal to the perfect enjoyment of them. A | Greek statue is a noble thing, and a portrait of a modern | gentleman by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a noble thing, and | both give pleasure to a cultivated mind; but it is an ignoble | thing, and does not give pleasure, to see an Englishman | straining after the postures, and attempting to wield the | weapons of a Grecian hero, and imagining that he attains | the faultless beauty of antique form, because he denudes | himself of modern drapery. It is true, that a classical | image, a heroic subject, a quaintly translated phrase from | a Greek or Latin writer, (e.g. "the ringing plains of windy | Troy;" "this way and that dividing the swift mind,") will, | when met with in a modern poem, often from association | and from an unexpected and pleasing strangeness, give | singular delight to a reader acquainted with the classics. | But such arts must be used sparingly, and with the skill | and taste of Mr. Tennyson, who perhaps of all great | modern writers most frequently employs them, or they | degenerate into grotesqueness and affectation, and ceasing | to be agreeable, become ridiculous. Mr. Tennyson always | takes care that bis antique subjects shall be treated in a | thoroughly modern fashion, that the mind of the present | day shall be distinctly seen moulding ancient stories and | associations to its own purposes; but never for a moment | striving really to imitate classical authors, or to reproduce | classical modes of thought. This blending of antiquity with | modernism constitutes the peculiar and unrivalled charm | of such pieces as The Lotos Eaters, | and OEnone, and above all, | Ulysses. Mr. Arnold has much of | his art to learn, and a great deal of tact and experience to | acquire, before he can safely indulge in so difficult and | delicate a style of composition: a style in which even | success is hazardous, and failure is fatal. | | Mr. Arnold, however, has not been content to allow his | | practice to speak for itself, and the faults and beauties of | his verses to stand upon their own merits, and to be found | out by his readers in the ordinary course. He has been | induced to write a Preface, in which he favours us with a | theory of poetry, which we take leave to think entirely | fallacious and inadequate, based upon untenable | assumptions, and conducting us to conclusions which we | utterly repudiate. As a general rule, it is a great mistake for | a poet to commit himself to a theory of poetry. To theorise | on poetry is not his vocation, and it is seldom that he has | the intellectual qualities requisite for the work. It may be a | fit and interesting subject for the critical faculty to discuss | the principles of art, and to endeavour to elicit from great | works the laws which guided their construction. But it is | the critic, not the artist, who is properly thus employed. In | all the highest qualities of his art, a great man seldom | works consciously by laws at all. Technical rules of course | there must he in all arts, such as the laws of metre, of | grammar, or of perspective; and a great artist will know all | these, and use them. as familiarly as we do our alphabet. | But these are not laws of construction or of treatment as | applied to the whole work, and the effect of any great | effort of genius taken as a whole, arises from no conscious | application of definite laws on the part of the artist, but | from something indefinable and inexpressible, which | distinguishes a great artist, a | or creator in any kind, from his fellow-men. No | artist worth a straw could tell us how his own great works | had been produced. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the foremost | artist-critic of modern times, analysed with acuteness, and | described with eloquence, styles wholly different from his | own. Inimitable and excellent as his own productions are, | they are utterly unlike those which it was the chief object | of his famous lectures to recommend. Wordsworth, again, | wrote a celebrated essay on poetical diction, which | contained a truth no doubt, but not the whole truth, and of | the theory of which all his own finest poems were more or | less violations. No compositions can be so flat as those | which are made up like a grammatical exercise as definite | examples of consciously-applied rules; while at the same | time to put forth a poetical theory, especially if it is one | which requires considerable power to fulfil it, is to | challenge for your poems an unusual severity of critical | examination, and to increase the disgrace of failure by | having openly proclaimed your own standard of success. | Few men's works fulfil the measure of their teaching: and | the self-confidence implied in prefixing to a man's poems | a kind of lecture on their characteristic excellences, and | on the somewhat novel principles of taste, according to | which they have been composed, and of which they are | put | | forward as examples, is not with most readers the safest or | best method of insuring, for the poems themselves a genial | and sympathetic perusal. We come to a poet to be moved | or delighted with his strains, and we do not want to be told | by him that we must admire his poems, because they are | written according to certain true and ancient laws, which it | seems have been forgotten by most great modern writers. | These very writers, nevertheless, ignorant readers have | persisted in admiring for those same qualities which a | truer view of the principles of poetry would, we are | assured, have shewn to be mere blemishes and mistakes. | | Of course, if a poet really happens to be a great critic, and | to hit upon a true theory of poetry, there can be no reason | why he should not communicate it. But the chances are | greatly against his doing so, and we cannot say that we | think Mr. Arnold has been lucky enough to form any | exception to the ordinary rule. It is not easy, | as everyone | will admit, to lay down with precision the objects, the | limits, the elements, or the laws of a thing so wide, so | various, so profound as poetry. The attempt to do so has, | in all ages, led to profitless discussions; such as, whether | satire is poetry, whether this or that writer is a poet; which | have ended in nothing, but occasionally narrowing the | sphere of natural and legitimate admiration and delight, by | the imposition of unnatural and arbitrary rules. We are not | about to follow examples which we condemn, and to add | another instance of failure in the attempt to describe the | indefinite, and to place bounds upon the illimitable. From | the sublime strains of Hebrew prophets down to the latest | and most artificial rhymers of these last ages, there is, | amidst the infinite variety of gifts, and diversity of powers, | something in common which separates the poet from the | mass of his fellow-men, and enables him to impart delight | to their minds and gratification to their taste. A great poet, | like a great orator or a great philosopher, will undoubtedly | do much more than this; a poet, however, differs from. | them not, in the thoughts which he creates, but in the dress | wherewith he clothes them. In their appeal to the sense of | harmony and beauty which all men possess, in the | imaginative and musical vehicle which they employ, | Homer and Horace, Anacreon and Virgil, Shakspere and | Burns, may be classed together. A theory which rejects | Dryden and Pope, nay even the still more technical writers | of French literature, such, for instance, as Racine, from | the rank of poet, is as unsatisfactory, and as far from | meeting all the facts of the case, as one which would | throw doubts on Wordsworth, or question the claims of | Shelley or of Keats. It is simply idle to say that poetry is | this or that, when it really pervades the universe; or to | | lay down that this or that is its peculiar province, when | there is scarcely a subject or an object which it cannot | make its own. It is, as it were, the medium through which | the poet sees, and by which he speaks, which colours | everything he beholds, and robes in splendour or in beauty | every creation of his mind. | | We do not pretend to say that this is definite or technical, | and we should very much doubt the truth of my statement | of the nature and objects of poetry which pretended to be | either. But beyond most such statements which we have | seen, that of Mr. Arnold appears to be altogether | inadequate, and to result in conclusions which the | common feeling of mankind will agree to reject with | something akin to indignation. | | | says Mr. Arnold, | He then proceeds to argue | that time is unessential, and that a great action of a | thousand years ago is more interesting and fitter for poetry | than a small one of yesterday. From this he arrives, by a | curious sort of logic, at the conclusion that ancient | subjects are in themselves fitter | for poetical handling; and that | to use his words, | | Amongst ancient subjects he classes, as we | understand him, such essentially different ones as | Macbeth and OEdipus; and by the selection of such | examples altogether baffles our best endeavours to | comprehend the meaning of his rule. Ancient subjects, | however, whatever those may be, are to be preferred, and, | as we gather, almost exclusively preferred, to those of | modern times. It follows from this, that as human action is | the only object of poetry, human action, to admit of proper | treatment, should be concerned with grand characters, and | far removed from us in point of time; and as the classical | writers of Greece and Rome selected antique subjects, and | treated them in the grand style, a modern poet should go to | them as models, and study them ,is the true originals of | art, whose perfections it is hopeless to surpass, and | difficult to rival. No modern writer, however great, no | modern subject, however good, is to compare, in Mr. | Arnold's view of the poetical art, with Sophocles and | Homer, with Dido and Achilles. | | | Such is the theory, which we have endeavoured fairly to | represent, although it suffers much by not being given to | the reader in the remarkably choice and vigorous prose of | Mr. Arnold himself; nor is there anything in what we may | call the positive half of it to which we desire to object. So | far forth as Mr. Arnold recommends the study of classical | writers, and celebrates the intellectual and moral benefits | derivable therefrom; so far as he does justice to their | calmness and simplicity, their dignity and pathos, their | refined and severe sense of art, we go along with him | entirely. We do not doubt the truth of what he says, that | | | We subscribe to all this; but we fail to apprehend how it | leads to the conclusion that an Englishman should write of | Medea or of Empedocles in preference to Mary Queen of | Scots or Cromwell; that an English poet's allusions should | be to classical events, or to the heroes of the ancient | world, his style be formed upon that of writers in a foreign | language, and his thoughts moulded upon those of | believers in a heathen creed. | | We will not waste our space, nor our readers' time, with | discussing at length the strictures which Mr. Arnold passes | upon all modern writers, including Shakspere. However | necessary to his theory, they are so little creditable to his | taste, that we cannot help feeling they would hardly have | been ventured upon except under the stimulus of | thoroughly defending a thesis, which, from the time of | Aristotle, has made men intellectually unscrupulous. Even | in this portion of his Preface, however, there is much | which is sensible and true. He contrasts the simplicity of | classical writers with the fussiness of many moderns, who | loudly talk of their mission, and of interpreting the age, | and of the coming poet. The comparison is fair enough, | and doubtless greatly to the disadvantage of our | contemporaries. But when Mr. Arnold comes to use it as | an argument in support of his theory, the matter changes. | Does he suppose that there was no cant in the days of | Plato, or that because men now write nonsense in | multitudes, therefore Burke and Wordsworth are not fit to | rank with the greatest authors of any age or any country? | He compares the small men of the present day with the | great men of antiquity; and though the victory is easy, the | terms of the conflict are manifestly unjust. In our day, as | in theirs, the calling of a great poet is not to interpret | | an age, but to affect a people; and he would be a bold man | who should deny to the great singers of our time an | influence as wide and deep as ever was exerted at any | period of the world's history by the great masters of their | art. He would be a yet bolder, in our judgment, who would | place such poems as Wordsworth's "Triad," or his famous | "Ode," such compositions as "The Cenci," or "King Lear," | in point of mere artistic skill, at all below any single | composition of the Greek or Roman minds. | | But the whole breaks down together as a theory of poetry. | It is not by straining after one model or another, nor yet by | definite and conscious effort, that great poems are | produced. Homer, it has been finely said ~~ | | and there is so much of gift and inspiration in every great | poet, that his best works are written, his greatest efforts | achieved, in a simple, half unconscious fashion, by means | often the most homely and ordinary, by appeals to those | emotions of the heart which are, indeed, all-powerful, but | all-pervading, which all men share in common, and in | which one age does not differ from another. Subjects | thoroughly known, illustrations universally understood, | are perhaps essential to the construction of the greatest | poems, certainly to the construction of those which | acquire, the most enduring fame. Disguised, therefore, in a | robe of lofty pretensions and severe requirements, it is, in | reality, a low and narrow view of poetic art that would | make it serve for the delight and instruction of the rich and | highly educated alone, and which would exclude | altogether the generality of women from its highest | enjoyments. Yet this must be the inevitable result of a | theory which proposes to a poet as his best subject a story | of classical times, to be treated in a classical style, and | adorned with classical illustrations. If the best poetry is | not to be understood without a profound acquaintance | with, and, relish for, the classics, the best poetry is to be | written for a hundred or two of the male sex only out of | the whole population of a great country. And if it be true | that grandiose human action is the proper object of poetry, | what becomes of Milton, and Spenser, and the Georgics, | and Horace, and Lucretius, and Catullus, and Simonides, | and Cowper, and Wordsworth, and a list of writers as long | as Mr. Arnold's Preface, whom | no-one ever yet thought of | banishing from the catalogue of great poets, and whose | works all mankind have agreed to consider as poetry of the | highest order? | | Mr. Arnold's practice has not at all tended to reconcile us | to his theory. Those are by far his best poems in which he | has trusted most exclusively to himself, and those portions | of his poems the most striking in which he has been | contented to be | | original and modern. for this reason we cannot, on the | whole, admire the long blank verse poem of | Sohrab and Rustum, a composition | evidently put together upon the theory which we have just | been discussing. The story of the Persian Hercules slaying | his son in single combat, and the discovery of their | relationship after the fatal blow has been given, is, indeed, | a very solemn and pathetic subject, and much of Mr. | Arnold's poem is written in a strain of deep yet subdued | feeling worthy of the occasion. The imitation of Homer | and Milton is, however, too palpable throughout; the | numerous similes elaborately worked out into distinct | pictures, and the minute descriptions, remind us of the | former; the language is obviously and intentionally | imitated from the latter, as we showed some pages back. If | from the style we go to the treatment, we are under some | embarrassment from not being sure how much of it is Mr. | Arnold's own. The subject itself, it is well known, is from | Firdousi. But in the first volume of the | Causeries du Lundi by Sainte Beuve, there is a | review of M. Mohl's translation of Firdousi; and some of | the passages given by Sainte Beuve from M. Mohl's | version, are simply translated, and very closely translated, | by Mr. Arnold. We give one of them, that our readers may | judge for themselves: ~~ | | | The following is from M. Mohl's version of Firdousi: ~~ | | | Sometimes the translation is literal, as for example ~~ | | | which is a mere literal rendering of ~~ | | | | This is not the only passage furnished by the short paper | we have referred to which has been similarly transferred, | and it at | | once leaves us in uncertainty whether the whole work of | M. Mohl, which we have never seen, may not have been | used throughout, and the study of antiquity carried so far | as simply to reproduce an ancient poem as well as an | ancient subject. For Mr. Arnold has not thought fit to offer | a single syllable of acknowledgment to an author to whom | he has been manifestly very largely indebted. | | We must not, however, leave Rustum | without an extract, which, if the language is a little | affected, is yet very beautiful: ~~ | | This certainly is a very noble picture. Our readers will, we | are sure, feel also the solemn beauty of this conclusion, | reminded perhaps, as we have been throughout the poem, by | its similarity to a beautiful composition on the story of | Atys and Adrastus in Herodotus, published several years | ago by Mr. Faber, under the title of The | Dream of King Croesus. | | | We have seen the river objected to as being out of place, | and distracting the attention from the action and the | persons. We do not think so. Independently of the | remarkable power of the passage, as a piece of poetical | geography, it seems to carry us out of the blood and | sorrow of the terrible story into light and peace, and | concludes the poem quietly and sweetly, without an | attitude or a peroration. It is the way with many great lyric | masters, and has for us an especial charm. | Everyone | knows the quiet conclusion of Horace's noble Ode on the | story of Regulus, which we have always thought singularly | happy, in spite of much criticism to the contrary: ~~ | | | | | | Thus far nothing can be objected on the score of style to | Mr. Arnold's imitations of the classical authorities. Nor | would it be possible to find a more graceful passage than | the following, on a Greek legend from the poem of | Empedocles, which poem Mr. Arnold has excluded | (except this passage) from the volume before us.~~ | | | | The poem of The Forsaken Merman, | however, has much more a character of its own, and | though reminding us of Mr. Tennyson, has a sharpness and | rapidity which he never gives us. It is the song of a Sea | King deserted, together with his children, by his human | wife, whom he seeks to regain, but who will not | | leave earth and her Christian-worship any more. Its | singular vigour and sweetness are very striking. The wife | has gone away, and the Merman wants her: ~~ | | | The two concluding stanzas are very beautiful: ~~ | | | Reminding us perhaps a little of Schiller, yet with a | character of its own too, is the poem of | The Church of Brou, in three parts. The first | describes the Duke and Duchess, a happy bride and | bridegroom, the death of the Duke out hunting, the | building of the church and of Monuments for herself and | her husband by the Duchess, and her death. The second | describes the church; | | the third, the tomb. The last two parts are lovely, their | tender feeling and perfect finish alike admirable. We give | the second part: ~~ | | | But of all Mr. Arnold's poems, our favourite by far is | and still more in | other books of the same class, how lax in this respect was | the morality of knighthood, and how venial such offences | were deemed by those who lived virtuously themselves. | We must append a passage to justify our encomium; a | passage of almost perfect beauty: ~~ | | | | One final passage, to show Mr, Arnold's mastery over a | common yet very difficult metre. It is the conclusion of | the whole poem, the story which Iseult tells her children, | walking with them along the heaths of the coast of | Brittany: ~~ | | | | It will be seen, that in all these passages there is but little | of the ancients; that the beauty, great as it is, is of a | thoroughly modern cast; and farther, that the man who | composed them, is undoubtedly capable if he does justice | to his genius, and is not led astray by any false or affected | theory of art, of taking a high rank among modern poets. | We do not mean to say, that the whole volume can be | judged of by the extracts we have given. There are a | number of rhymeless lyrics which are mere prose, printed | in varying-sized lines; and a whole poem called | The Strayed Reveller, written in | imitation of the Greek, which is about as like an ode of | Pindar, or a chorus,of AEschylus or Sophocles, as the | banquet after the manner of the ancients in | Peregrine Pickle, was an adequate | representation of Lucullus's supper in the Hall of Apollo. | Mr. Arnold will drop these disagreeable eccentricities | from succeeding editions of his poems, as he has already | excluded several earlier compositions from this volume, to | its great and decided benefit. It would be well if he carried | the process of weeding still farther, and as he has dropped | Empedocles, would drop sundry other moral and quasi-religious | musings, which are very painful if they represent | the author's real opinions, and hardly ought to be | published if they do not. | | Any student of Mr. Arnold's poems can hardly fail to be | struck with the genuine love of nature, and the accurate | and picturesque delineation of its beauties, which the best | of them contain. All her aspects are familiar to him, and | have been comprehended by him. But they seem to teach | him nothing. The beauties which he sees begin and end in | themselves. | | There is no reference to the hand that made them, no | intimation of those lessons which they were appointed to | convey. In the many melancholy and pathetic passages in | which natural images are introduced, there is no | suggestion of the comfort to be derived from them, no | such use of them as Scripture and great Christian poets | have abundantly sanctioned. It has been nobly said by one | of them, that the purpose of the glories of the heavens is to | remind man of his appointed home: ~~ | | | | Such feelings find no answering voice in Mr. Arnold's | Muse. His descriptions of nature are like those of Keats | and Shelley, full of loveliness, but devoid of soul. With | another writer it might perhaps be unreasonable to | imagine that he had of set purpose restrained a natural | impulse, from a manly repugnance to join in a practice | which the mawkish imitations of Cowper and Wordsworth | are fast rendering a merely sentimental and insincere | fashion. In him, however, it is clearly part of a system of | writing which deliberately rejects all such considerations, | either as inartistic or as untrue. It is not from a dislike of | pretended sentiment, but from a repugnance to the | sentiment itself, that he never connects nature with her | Creator and her God. | | In Mr. Arnold's earlier volumes, the unsatisfactory and | depressing tone of his writing was more conspicuous, and | consequently more disagreeable, than in this. Many of the | more gloomy and desponding poems are rejected from this | collection; and we would fain hope that those which are | preserved will in process of time disappear in like manner. | But enough remains to render the volume a really painful | one to those who do not think the destiny or the duty of | man a doubtful question; and who feel, as we feel, the | incalculable mischief of a sceptical and irreligious train of | thought when presented to the mind in melodious verse, | and clothed with the graces of a refined and scholarlike | diction. Mr. Arnold, for instance, is asked, "Who prop in | these bad days his mind?" and he answers in a sonnet, that | he finds consolation for his spiritual doubts and moral | questionings in Homer, Sophocles, and Epicetetus. In | another sonnet he extravagantly eulogises Mr. Emerson, | and appears to think highly of religious isolation. | Elsewhere he speaks of our | | of our | and of how we pine, | | | | And he has selected as a motto to his whole book, a | beautiful fragment of Choerilus of Samos, the utterance of | a repining and weary soul, coming naturally enough from | a Greek in the train of Lysander, at the close of the | Peloponnesian war, but not the key-note we should have | desired for the songs of a Christian Englishman at the | present day. | | The prevalence of a literature, the writers of which appear | to think themselves justified in standing | ab extra to Christianity, is one of the most difficult | and dangerous intellectual problems with which we have | to deal. It is not easy to comprehend the state, of mind in | which a believer can feel secure in taking up such a | position. So it is, however; and for the most part these | writers adopt one of two modes of dealing with religion. | Sometimes they patronise the Christian revelation, point | out its philosophical coherence, translate its dogmas into | popular phraseology, get rid of some of its stern precepts | as a little out of date, and produce it to the world as really | after all a very reasonable scheme, by no means | objectionable, when rightly understood, and when | modified by the intelligence of the nineteenth century. | Sometimes they simply pass it by on the other side. They | leave it out, observe a perfect silence on the subject, and | discuss questions, which, if it be true, it has for ever | settled, as if they were open questions, and admitted of | discussion. It may be true, apparently, or it may not; but it | would excite prejudice to discuss such a point as this, and | meanwhile the sensible man will go on exactly as if it | were not true. Then we have the influence of nature, the | cultivation of art, a right understanding of the dignity of | man, the arguments of philosophers upon the nature of the | soul, put forward as the means by which poor human kind | can be regenerated, and the life of man rounded to that | complete and perfect whole of temperate and satisfactory | enjoyment, which in this philosophy is the very highest | object we can attain. | | Anyone , | however slightly acquainted with the literature, | especially the poetical literature, of the day, cannot fail to | have been struck with the fact we have described. It is | perhaps hard to say which of the two methods of handling | religion is the more offensive; but it is not the | offensiveness, so much as the practical mischief which | results from them, which makes it necessary to notice | them. We live in an age, not infidel indeed in profession, | not without its strong religious feeling, and great religious | works, yet penetrated, especially amongst the more highly | educated classes, with an infidel and worldly spirit, which | | often employs those who are by no means infidels as allies | in its assaults on the fortress of religion. The strongholds | of Christianity are no longer beleaguered by open | enemies, and exposed to unconcealed attacks. The method | now is to sap their foundations in time of peace, and gain | entrance among the unsuspicious garrison in the guise of | friends. And many an unwary and careless person suffers | himself to be betrayed by fashion into proceedings really | hurtful to the truth, which he never would adopt if he | clearly saw the full consequences of what he does. These | are, indeed, days of doubt and pain, when the dangers of | society and the temptations of individuals multiply day by | day. | of whom | Mr. Arnold speaks, may any day be upon us, brutalized by | the physical and social depravity in which they have been | permitted to welter, trained on an openly profligate and | infidel literature which circulates amongst them by | millions of copies, and ready, in course of years, for any | savage and fierce excesses which their excited and | degraded natures may suggest. It is not for us to blame | or to condemn them. To a great extent we have made them | what they are. But if anything is to be done it must be | done by Christianity alone, by Christian institutions, | Christian charity, Christian self-devotion. A lazy | philosophical literature, which looks at these things as | curious social problems, and proposes to meet the world's | wickedness with the precepts of Epictetus, must, if | possible, be disdainfully swept away as an incumbrance | and obstruction in the path of those who are going forth in | God's name to fight the battles of Our Lord. | | We must sincerely apologize to Mr. Arnold for seeming to | include him personally in the scope of these remarks. We | have no reason to believe, and we do not, in fact, believe | that, except as a writer, he is obnoxious to them. Indeed, | upon him, in his individual relations, it would be | impertinence to observe; and we make this disclaimer in | truth and sincerity, only lest our words should be taken by | others in a sense they were never meant to bear. As an | author, however, we conceive him to be open on this score | to great and grave objection. It may be, it very likely is, | that according to his theory of art, and along with his study | of the antique, this is the attitude which he deems it fitting | that a poet should assume towards the Gospel scheme; this | the sort of counsel he should give to a baptized people. | Poetry, perhaps, is to be high, distant, and apart from the | turmoil of sinful life, and the everlasting conflict of Our | Lord with Satan. We do not the least agree with him. To | us this sort of feeling appears to be as bad in art as it is | mischievous to religion and to truth. The art that has no | relevancy to actual life; that passes by God's truth and the | facts of man's nature as | | if they had no existence the art that does not seek to | ennoble and purify and help us in our life-long struggle | with sin and evil, however beautiful, however outwardly | serene and majestic, is false, and poor, and contemptible. | It is not worth the serious attention of a man in earnest. | All noble and true and manly art is concerned with God's | glory and man's true benefit; and we do not believe that | the grave and severe artists of Mr. Arnold's favourite | Greece, if they had known of the Christian revelation, and | if they had believed that in it God had spoken to mankind, | would have passed it by in silence and neglect, and | attempted to feed the yearning hearts of their countrymen | upon the miserable dregs of some Egyptian superstition, or | the more refined and intellectual mistakes of the Magian | philosophy. If they had known where the problem of man's | existence was solved for | ever, and where the guide of man's conduct was infallibly | to he found, they would have led their disciples to those | glorious sources, and have raised their own loftiest strains | to celebrate the virtues of the River of Life.