Matthew Arnold"s Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems.
by Matthew Arnold.
INTRODUCTION
A SHORT LIFE OF ARNOLD
Matthew Arnold, poet and critic, was born in the village of Laleham, Middles.e.x County, England, December 24, 1822. He was the son of Dr.
Thomas Arnold, best remembered as the great Head Master at Rugby and in later years distinguished also as a historian of Rome, and of Mary Penrose Arnold, a woman of remarkable character and intellect.
Devoid of stirring incident, and, on the whole, free from the eccentricities so common to men of genius, the story of Arnold"s life is soon told. As a boy he lived the life of the normal English lad, with its healthy routine of task and play. He was at school at both Laleham and Winchester, then at Rugby, where he attracted attention as a student and won a prize for poetry. In 1840 he was elected to an open scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, and the next year matriculated for his university work. Arnold"s career at Oxford was a memorable one. While here he was a.s.sociated with such men as John Duke Coleridge, John Shairp, Dean Fraser, Dean Church, John Henry Newman, Thomas Hughes, the Froudes, and, closest of all, with Arthur Hugh Clough, whose early death he lamented in his exquisite elegiac poem--_Thyrsis_. Among this brilliant company Arnold moved with ease, the recognized favorite. Having taken the Newdigate prize for English verse, and also having won a scholarship, he was graduated with honors in 1844, and in March of the following year had the additional distinction of being elected a Fellow of Oriel, the crowning glory of an Oxford graduate. He afterward taught cla.s.sics for a short time at Rugby, then in 1847 accepted the post of private secretary to the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council, which position he occupied until 1851, when he was appointed Lay Inspector of Schools by the Committee on Education. The same year he married Frances Lucy Wightman, daughter of Sir William Wightman, judge of the Court of the Queen"s Bench.
Arnold"s record as an educator is unparalleled in the history of England"s public schools. For more than thirty-five years he served as inspector and commissioner, which offices he filled with efficiency.
As inspector he was earnest, conscientious, versatile; beloved alike by teachers and pupils. The Dean of Salisbury likened his appearance to inspect the school at Kiddermaster, to the admission of a ray of light when a shutter is suddenly opened in a darkened room.
All-in-all, he valued happy-appearing children, and kindly sympathetic teachers, more than excellence in grade reports. In connection with the duties of his office as commissioner, he travelled frequently on the Continent to inquire into foreign methods of primary and secondary education. Here he found much that was worth while, and often carried back to London larger suggestions and ideas than the national mind was ready to accept. Under his supervision, however, the school system of England was extensively revised and improved. He resigned his position under the Committee of Council on Education, in 1886, two years before his death.
In the meantime Arnold"s pen had not been idle. His first volume of verse, _The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems_, appeared (1848), and although quietly received, slowly won its way into public favor. The next year the narrative poem, _The Sick King in Bokhara_, came out, and was followed in turn by a third volume in 1853, under the t.i.tle of _Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems_. By this time Arnold"s reputation as a poet was established, and in 1857 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, where he began his career as a lecturer, in which capacity he twice visited America. _Merope, a Tragedy_ (1856) and a volume under the t.i.tle of _New Poems_ (1869) finish the list of his poetical works, with the exception of occasional verses.
Arnold"s prose works, aside from his letters, consist wholly of critical essays, in which he has dealt fearlessly with the greater issues of his day. As will be seen by their t.i.tles (see page x.x.xviii of this volume), the subject-matter of these essays is of very great scope, embracing in theme literature, politics, social conduct, and popular religion. By them Arnold has exerted a remarkable influence on public thought and stamped himself as one of the ablest critics and reformers of the last century. Arnold"s life was thus one of many widely diverse activities and was at all times deeply concerned with practical as well as with literary affairs; and on no side was it deficient in human sympathies and relations. He won respect and reputation while he lived, and his works continue to attract men"s minds, although with much unevenness. It has been said of him that, of all the modern poets, except Goethe, he was the best critic, and of all the modern critics, with the same exception, he was the best poet.
He died at Liverpool, where he had gone to meet his daughter returning from America, April 15, 1888. By his death the world lost an acute and cultured critic, a refined writer, an earnest educational reformer, and a n.o.ble man. He was buried in his native town, Laleham.
Agreeably to his own request, Arnold has never been made the subject for a biography. By means of his letters, his official reports, and statements of his friends, however, one is able to trace the successive stages of his career, as he steadily grew in honor and public usefulness. Though somewhat inadequate, the picture thus presented is singularly pleasing and attractive. The subjoined appreciations have been selected with a view of giving the student a glimpse of Arnold as he appeared to unprejudiced minds.
One who knew him at Oxford wrote of him as follows: "His perfect self-possession, the sallies of his ready wit, the humorous turn which he could give to any subject that he handled, his gaiety, audacity, and unfailing command of words, made him one of the most popular and successful undergraduates that Oxford has ever known."
"He was beautiful as a young man, strong and manly, yet full of dreams and schemes. His Olympian manners began even at Oxford: there was no harm in them: they were natural, not put on. The very sound of his voice and wave of his arm were Jove-like."--PROFESSOR MAX MuLLER.
"He was most distinctly on the side of human enjoyment. He conspired and contrived to make things pleasant. Pedantry he abhorred. He was a man of this life and this world. A severe critic of this world he indeed was; but, finding himself in it, and not precisely knowing what is beyond it, like a brave and true-hearted man, he set himself to make the best of it. Its sights and sounds were dear to him. The "uncrumpling fern, the eternal moonlit snow," the red grouse springing at our sound, the tinkling bells of the "high-pasturing kine," the vagaries of men, of women, and dogs, their odd ways and tricks, whether of mind or manner, all delighted, amused, tickled him.
"In a sense of the word which is n.o.ble and blessed, he was of the earth earthy.... His mind was based on the plainest possible things.
What he hated most was the fantastic--the far-fetched, all-elaborated fancies and strained interpretations. He stuck to the beaten track of human experience, and the broader the better. He was a plain-sailing man. This is his true note."--MR. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.
"He was incapable of sacrificing the smallest interest of anybody to his own; he had not a spark of envy or jealousy; he stood well aloof from all the bustlings and jostlings by which selfish men push on; he bore life"s disappointments--and he was disappointed in some reasonable hopes--with good nature and fort.i.tude; he cast no burden upon others, and never shrank from bearing his own share of the daily load to the last ounce of it; he took the deepest, sincerest, and most active interest in the well-being of his country and his countrymen."--MR. JOHN MORLEY.
In his essay on Arnold, George E. Woodberry speaks of the poet"s personality as revealed by his letters in the following beautiful manner: "Few who did not know Arnold could have been prepared for the revelation of a nature so true, so amiable, so dutiful. In every relation of private life he is shown to have been a man of exceptional constancy and plainness.... Every one must take delight in the mental a.s.sociation with Arnold in the scenes of his existence ... and in his family affections. A nature warm to its own, kindly to all, cheerful, fond of sport and fun, and always fed from pure fountains, and with it a character so founded upon the rock, so humbly serviceable, so continuing in power and grace, must wake in all the responses of happy appreciation and leave the charm of memory.
"He did his duty as naturally as if it required neither resolve nor effort, nor thought of any kind for the morrow, and he never failed, seemingly, in act or word of sympathy, in little or great things; and when to this one adds the clear ether of the intellectual life where he habitually moved in his own life apart, and the humanity of his home, the gift that these letters bring may be appreciated. That gift is the man himself, but set in the atmosphere of home, with sonship and fatherhood, sisters and brothers, with the bereavements of years fully accomplished, and those of babyhood and boyhood--a sweet and wholesome English home, with all the cloud and sunshine of the English world drifting over its roof-trees, and the soil of England beneath its stones, and English duties for the breath of its being. To add such a home to the household rights of English Literature is perhaps something from which Arnold would have shrunk, but it endears his memory."
"It may be overmuch He shunned the common stain and s.m.u.tch, From soilure of ign.o.ble touch Too grandly free, Too loftily secure in such Cold purity; But he preserved from chance control The fortress of his established soul, In all things sought to see the whole; Brooked no disguise, And set his heart upon the goal, Not on the prize."
--MR. WILLIAM WATSON, _In Laleham Churchyard_.
ARNOLD THE POET
Matthew Arnold was essentially a man of the intellect. No other author of modern times, perhaps no other English author of any time, appeals so directly as he to the educated cla.s.ses. Even a cursory reading of his pages, prose or verse, reveals the scholar and the critic. He is always thinking, always brilliant, never lacks for a word or phrase; and on the whole, his judgments are good. Between his prose and verse, however, there is a marked difference, both in tone and spiritual quality. True, each possesses the note of a lofty, though stoical courage; reveals the same grace of finish and exactness of phrase and manner; and is, in equal degree, the output of a singularly sane and n.o.ble nature; but here the comparison ends; for, while his prose is often stormy and contentious, his poetry has always about it an atmosphere of entire repose. The cause of this difference is not far to seek. His poetry, written in early manhood, reflects his inner self, the more lovable side of his nature; while his prose presents the critic and the reformer, pointing out the good and bad, and permitting at times a spirit of bitterness to creep in, as he endeavors to arouse men out of their easy contentment with themselves and their surroundings.
With the exception of occasional verses, Arnold"s poetical career began and ended inside of twenty years. The reason for this can only be conjectured, and need not be dwelt upon here. But although his poetic life was brief, it was of a very high order, his poems ranking well up among the literary productions of the last century. As a popular poet, however, he will probably never cla.s.s with Tennyson or Longfellow. His poems are too coldly cla.s.sical and too unattractive in subject to appeal to the casual reader, who is, generally speaking, inclined toward poetry of the emotions rather than of the intellect--Arnold"s usual kind. That he recognized this himself, witness the following quiet statements made in letters to his friends: "My poems are making their way, I think, though slowly, and are perhaps never to make way very far. There must always be some people, however, to whom the literalness and sincerity of them has a charm....
They represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day, as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions which reflect it." Time has verified the accuracy of this judgment. In short, Arnold has made a profound rather than a wide impression. To a few, however, of each generation, he will continue to be a "voice oracular,"--a poet with a purpose and a message.
=Arnold"s Poetic Culture=.--Obviously, the sources of Arnold"s culture were cla.s.sical. As one critic has tersely said, "He turned over his Greek models by day and by night." Here he found his ideal standards, and here he brought for comparison all questions that engrossed his thoughts. Homer (he replied to an inquirer) and Epictetus (of mood congenial with his own) were props of his mind, as were Sophocles, "who saw life steadily and saw it whole," and Marcus Aurelius, whom he called the purest of men. These like natures afforded him repose and consolation. Greek epic and dramatic poetry and Greek philosophy appealed profoundly to him. Of the Greek poets he wrote: "No other poets have lived so much by the imaginative reason; no other poets have made their works so well balanced; no other poets have so well satisfied the thinking power; have so well satisfied the religious sense." More than any other English poet he prized the qualities of measure, proportion, and restraint; and to him lucidity, austerity, and high seriousness, conspicuous elements of cla.s.sic verse, were the substance of true poetry. In explaining his own position as to his art, he says: "In the sincere endeavor to learn and practise, amid the bewildering confusion of our times, what is sound and true in poetic art, I seem, to myself to find the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted in Art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism." And again: "The radical difference between the poetic theory of the Greeks and our own is this: that with them, the poetical character of the action in itself, and the conduct of it, was the first consideration; with us, attention is fixed mainly on the value of separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action. They regard the whole; we regard the parts. We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and pa.s.sages, and not for the sake of producing any total impression. We have critics who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions, to the language about the action, not the action itself.
I verily believe that the majority of them do not believe that there is such a thing as a total impression to be derived from a poem at all, or to be demanded from a poet. They will permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing, and with a show of isolated thoughts and images; that is, they permit him to leave their poetic sense ungratified, provided that he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity."
Arnold has ill.u.s.trated, with remarkable success, his ideas of that unity which gratifies the poetical sense, and has approached very close to his Greek models in numerous instances; most notably so in his great epic or narrative poem, _Sohrab and Rustum_, which is dealt with elsewhere in this introduction. Perhaps we could not do better than to quote for our consideration at this time, a fine synthesis of Mr. Arthur Galton. He says: "In Matthew Arnold"s style and in his manner, he seems to me to recall the great masters, and this in a striking and in an abiding way.... To recall them at all is a rare gift, but to recall them naturally, and with no strained sense nor jarring note of imitation, is a gift so exceedingly rare that it is almost enough in itself to place a writer among the great masters; to proclaim that he is one of them. To recall them at all is a rare gift, though not a unique gift; a few other modern poets recall them too; but with these, with every one of them, it is the exception when they resemble the great masters. They have their own styles, which abide with them; it is only now and then, by a flash of genius, that they break through their own styles, and attain the one immortal style.
Just the contrary of this is true of Matthew Arnold. It is his own, his usual, and his most natural style which recalls the great masters; and only when he does not write like himself, does he cease to resemble them.... No man who attains to this great style can fail to have a distinguished function; and Matthew Arnold, like Milton, will be "a leaven and a power," because he, too, has made the great style current in English. With his desire for culture and for perfection, there is no destiny he would prefer to this, for which his nature, his training, and his sympathies, all prepared him. To convey the message of those ancients whom he loved so well, in that English tongue which he was taught by them to use so perfectly;--to serve as an eternal protest against charlatanism and vulgarity;--is exactly the mission he would have chosen for himself.... The few writers of our language, therefore, who give us "an ideal of excellence, the most high and the most rare," have an important function; we should study their works continually, and it should be a matter of pa.s.sionate concern with us, that the "ideals," that is, the definite and perfect models, should abide with us forever." The Greeks recognized three kinds of poetry,--Lyric, Dramatic, and Epic. Arnold tried all three. First, then, as a lyricist.
=Arnold as a Lyricist=.--Lyric poetry is the artistic expression of the poet"s individual sentiments and emotions, hence it is subjective.
The action is usually vapid, the verse musical, the time quick. Unlike the Epic and Drama, it has no preferred verse or meter, but leaves the poet free to choose or invent appropriate forms. In this species of verse Arnold was not wholly at ease. As has been said, one searches in vain through the whole course of his poetry for a blithe, musical, gay or serious, offhand poem, the true lyric kind. The reason for this is soon discovered. Obviously, it lies in the fundamental qualities of the poet"s mind and temperament. Though by no means lacking in emotional sensibility, Arnold was too intellectually self-conscious to be carried away by the impulsiveness common to the lyrical moods. With him the intellect was always master; the emotions, subordinate. With the lyricist, the order is, in the main, at least, reversed. The poet throws off intellectual restraint, and "lets his illumined being o"errun" with music and song. This Arnold could not or would not do. Then, too, Arnold"s lyrics are often at fault metrically.
This, combined with frequent questionable rhymes, argues a not too discriminating poetical ear. He also lacked genius in inventing verse forms, and hence found himself under the necessity of employing or adapting those already in use. In this respect he was notably inferior to Tennyson, many of whose measures are wholly his own. Again, considerable portions of his lyric verse consist merely of prose, cut into lines of different length, in imitation of the unrhymed measures of the Greek poet, Pindar. The Bishop of Derry, commenting on these rhythmic novelties, likens them to the sound of a stick drawn by a city gamin sharply across the area railings,--a not inapt comparison.
That they were not always successful, witness the following stanza from _Merope_:--
"Thou confessest the prize In the rushing, blundering, mad, Cloud-enveloped, obscure, Unapplauded, unsung Race of Calamity, mine!"
Surely this is but the baldest prose. At intervals, however, Arnold was n.o.bly lyrical, and strangely, too, at times, in those same uneven measures in which are found his most signal failures--the unrhymed Pindaric. _Philomela_ written in this style is one of the most exquisite bits of verse in the language. As one critic has put it, "It ought to be written in silver and bound in gold." In urbanity of phrase and in depth of genuine pathos it is unsurpa.s.sed and shows Arnold at his best. _Rugby Chapel, The Youth of Nature, The Youth of Man_, and _A Dream_ are good examples of his longer efforts in this verse form. In the more common lyric measures, Arnold was, at times, equally successful. Saintsbury, commenting on _Requiescat_, says that the poet has "here achieved the triple union of simplicity, pathos, and (in the best sense) elegance"; and adds that there is not a false note in the poem. He also speaks enthusiastically of the "honey-dropping trochees" of the _New Sirens_, and of the "chiselled and cla.s.sic perfection" of the lines of _Resignation_. Herbert W.
Paul, writing of _Mycerinus_, declares that no such verse has been written in England since Wordsworth"s _Laodamia_; and continues, "The poem abounds in single lines of haunting charm." Among his more successful longer lyrics are _The Sick King in Bokhara, Switzerland, Faded Leaves_, and _Tristram and Iseult_, and _Epilogue to Lessing"s Laoc.o.o.n_, included in this volume.
=Arnold as a Dramatist=.--The drama is imitated human action, and is intended to exhibit a picture of human life by means of dialogue, acting, and stage accessories. In nature, it partakes of both lyric and epic, thus uniting sentiment and action with narration. Characters live and act before us, and speak in our presence, the interest being kept up by constantly shifting situations tending toward some striking result. As a dramatist, Arnold achieved no great success. Again the fundamental qualities of his mind stood in the way. An author so subjective, so absorbed in self-scrutiny and introspection as he, is seldom able to project himself into the minds of others to any considerable extent. His dramas are brilliant with beautiful phrases, his pictures of landscapes and of nature in her various aspects approach perfection; but in the main, he fails to handle his plots in a dramatic manner and, as a result, does not secure the totality of impression so vital to the drama. Frequently, too, his characters are tedious, and in their dialogue manage to be provokingly unnatural or insipid. They also lack in individuality and independence in speech and action. Many of his situations, likewise, are at fault. For instance, one can scarcely conceive of such characters as Ulysses and Circe playing the subordinate roles a.s.signed to them in _The Strayed Reveller_. A true dramatist would hardly have committed so flagrant a blunder. _Merope_ is written in imitation of the Greek tragedians. It has dignity of subject, n.o.bility of sentiment, and a cla.s.sic brevity of style; but it is frigid and artificial, and fails in the most essential function of drama--to stir the reader"s emotions.
_Empedocles on Etna_, a half-autobiographical drama, is in some respects a striking poem. It is replete with brilliant pa.s.sages, and contains some of Arnold"s best lyric verses and most beautiful nature pictures; but the dialogue is colorless, the rhymes poor, the plot, such as it contains, but indifferently handled, and even Empedocles, the princ.i.p.al character, is frequently tedious and unnatural. Arnold"s dramas show that his forte was not in character-drawing nor in dialogue.
=Arnold as a Writer of Epic and Elegy=.--Epic poetry narrates in grand style the achievements of heroes--the poet telling the story as if present. It is simple in construction and uniform in meter, yet it admits of the dialogue and the episode, and though not enforcing a moral it may hold one in solution. Elegiac poetry is plaintive in tone and expresses sorrow or lamentation. Both epic and elegy are inevitably serious in mood, and slow and stately in action. In these two forms of verse Arnold was at his best. Stockton p.r.o.nounced _Sohrab and Rustum_ the n.o.blest poem in the English language. Another critic has said that "it is the nearest a.n.a.logue in English to the rapidity of action, plainness of thought, plainness of diction, and n.o.bleness of Homer." Combining, as it does, cla.s.sic purity of style with romantic ardor of feeling, it stands a direct exemplification of Arnold"s poetic theories, as set forth in the preface of his volume of 1853. Especially is it successful in emphasizing his idea of unity of impression; "while the truth of its oriental color, the deep pathos of the situation, the fire and intensity of the action, the strong conception of character, and the full, solemn music of the verse, make it unquestionably the masterpiece of Arnold"s longer poems, among which it is the largest in bulk and also the most ambitious in scheme." _Balder Dead_, a characteristic Arnoldian production, founded upon the Norse legend of Balder, Lok, and Hader, though not so great as _Sohrab and Rustum_, has much poetic worth and ranks high among its kind; and _Tristram and Iseult_, with its infinite tragedy, and _The Sick King in Bokhara_, gorgeous in oriental color, are rare examples of the lyrical epic. _The Forsaken Merman_ and _Saint Brandan_, which are dealt with elsewhere in this volume, are good examples of his shorter narrative poems. In _Thyrsis_, the beautiful threnody in which he celebrated his dead friend, Clough, Arnold gave to the world one of its greatest elegies. One finds in this poem and its companion piece, _The Scholar-Gipsy_, the same unity of cla.s.sic form with romantic feeling present in _Sohrab and Rustum_. Both are crystal-clear without coldness, and restrained without loss of a full volume of power.
Mr. Saintsbury, writing of _The Scholar-Gipsy_, says: "It has everything--a sufficient scheme, a definite meaning and purpose, a sustained and adequate command of poetical presentation, and pa.s.sages and phrases of the most exquisite beauty;" and no less praise is due _Thyrsis_. Other of his elegiac poems are _Heine"s Grave, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann,"
Obermann Once More, Rugby Chapel_, and _Memorial Verses_, the two last named being included in this volume. In such measures as are used in these poems, in the long, stately, swelling measures, whose graver movements accord with a serious and elevated purpose, Arnold was most at ease.
=Greek Spirit in Arnold=.--But it is not alone in the fact that he selects cla.s.sic subjects, and writes after the manner of the great masters, that Arnold"s affinity with the Greeks is manifested. His poems in spirit, as in form, reflect the moods common to the ancient h.e.l.lenes, "One feels the (Greek) quality," writes George E. Woodberry, "not as a source, but as a presence. In Tennyson, Keats, and Sh.e.l.ley there was Greek influence, but in them the result was modern. In Arnold the antiquity remains--remains in mood, just as in Landor it remains in form. The Greek twilight broods over all his poetry. It is pagan in philosophic spirit, not Attic, but of later and stoical time; with the patience, endurance, suffering, not in the Christian types, but as they now seem to a post-Christian imagination, looking back to the past." Even when his poems treat of modern or romantic subjects, one is impressed with the feeling that he presents them with the same quality of imagination as would the Greek masters themselves: and in the same form.
=Arnold"s Att.i.tude toward Nature=.--In his att.i.tude toward Nature Arnold is often compared to Wordsworth. A close study, however, reveals a wide difference, both in the way Nature appealed to them and in their mood in her presence. To Arnold she offered a temporary refuge from the doubts and distractions of our modern life,--a soothing, consoling, uplifting power; to Wordsworth she was an inspiration,--a presence that disturbed him "with the joy of elevated thoughts." Conscious of the help he found in her a.s.sociation, Arnold urged all men to follow Nature"s example; to possess their souls in quietude, despite the storm and turmoil without. Pancoast says: "He delights in leading us to contemplate the infinite calm of Nature, beside which man"s transitory woes are reduced to a mere fretful insignificance. All the beautiful poem of _Tristram and Iseult_ is built upon the skilful alternation of two themes. We pa.s.s from the feverish, wasting, and ephemeral struggle of human pa.s.sions and desire, into an atmosphere that shames its heat and fume by an immemorial coolness and repose;" and the same comparison const.i.tutes the theme for a considerable portion of his poetical work. In his method of approaching Nature, Arnold also differed widely from Wordsworth, in that he saw with the outward eye, that is objectively; while Wordsworth saw rather with the inward eye, or subjectively.
In this Arnold is essentially Greek and more Tennysonian than Wordsworthian. Many of his poems, in full or in part, are mere nature pictures, and are artistic in the extreme. The pictures of the Oxus stream at the close of _Sohrab and Rustum_; the English garden in _Thyrsis_; and the hunter on the arras, in _Tristram and Iseult_, are all notable examples. This pictorial method Wordsworth seldom used.
In spirit, too, the poets differed widely. To Wordsworth, Nature was, first of all, the abiding place of G.o.d; but Arnold "finds in the wood and field no streaming forth of beauty and wisdom from the fountainhead of beauty," no habitancy of Nature"s G.o.d.
=Arnold"s Att.i.tude toward Life=.--Arnold"s att.i.tude toward life has been dwelt upon in the appreciations under the biographical sketch in this volume and need only briefly be summed up here. To him, human life in its higher developments presented itself as a stern and strenuous affair; but he never faltered nor sought to escape from his share of the burden. "On the contrary, the prevailing note of his poetry is self-reliance; help must come from the soul itself, for
"The fountains of life are all within."
He preaches fort.i.tude and courage in the face of the mysterious and the inevitable--a courage, indeed, forlorn and pathetic in the eyes of many--and he constantly takes refuge from the choking cares of life, in a kind of stoical resignation." As a reformer, his function was especially to stir people up, to make them dissatisfied with themselves and their inst.i.tutions, and to force them to think, to become individual. Everywhere in his works one is confronted by his unvarying insistence upon the supremacy of conduct and duty. The modern tendency to drift away from the old, established religious faith was a matter of serious thought to him and led him to give to the world a rational creed that would satisfy the sceptics and attract the indifferent. We cannot do better than quote for our closing thought the following pregnant lines from the author"s sonnet ent.i.tled _The Better Part_:--
"Hath man no second life? _Pitch this one high!_ Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see?
_More strictly, then, the inward judge obey_!
Was Christ a man like us? _Ah! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he!_"
ARNOLD THE CRITIC