Matthew Arnold | Page 3

anti-popular. Much of his most elaborate work is in blank verse, and that in itself is a heavy draw-back. Much also is in exotic and unaccustomed metres, which to the great bulk of English readers must always be more of a discipline than of a delight. And, even when he wrote in our indigenous metres, his ear often played him false. His rhymes are sometimes only true to the eye, and his lines are over-crowded with jerking monosyllables. Let one glaring instance suffice--
Calm not life's crown, though calm is well.
The sentiment is true and even profound; but the expression is surely rugged and jolting to the last degree; and there are many lines nearly as ineuphonious. Here are some samples, collected by that fastidious critic, Mr. Frederic Harrison--
"The sandy spits, the shore-lock'd lakes."
"Could'st thou no better keep, O Abbey old?"
"The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky."
These Mr. Harrison cites as proof that, "where Nature has withheld the ear for music, no labour and no art can supply the want." And I think that even a lover may add to the collection--
As the punt's rope chops round.
But, after all these deductions and qualifications have been made, it remains true that Arnold was a poet, and that his poetic quality was pure and rare. His musings "on Man, on Nature, and on Human Life,"[2] are essentially and profoundly poetical. They have indeed a tragic inspiration. He is deeply imbued by the sense that human existence, at its best, is inadequate and disappointing. He feels, and submits to, its incompleteness and its limitations. With stately resignation he accepts the common fate, and turns a glance of calm disdain on all endeavours after a spurious consolation. All round him he sees
Uno'erleap'd Mountains of Necessity, Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.
He dismissed with a rather excessive contempt the idea that the dreams of childhood may be intimations of immortality; and the inspiration which poets of all ages have agreed to seek in the hope of endless renovation, he found in the immediate contemplation of present good. What his brother-poet called "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control," are the keynotes of that portion of his poetry which deals with the problems of human existence. When he handles these themes, he speaks to the innermost consciousness of his hearers, telling us what we know about ourselves, and have believed hidden from all others, or else putting into words of perfect suitableness what we have dimly felt, and have striven in vain to utter. It is then that, to use his own word, he is most "interpretative." It is this quality which makes such poems as Youth's Agitations, Youth and Calm, Self-dependence, and The Grande Chartreuse so precious a part of our intellectual heritage.
In 1873 he wrote to his sister: "I have a curious letter from the State of Maine in America, from a young man who wished to tell me that a friend of his, lately dead, had been especially fond of my poem, A Wish, and often had it read to him in his last illness. They were both of a class too poor to buy books, and had met with the poem in a newspaper."
It will be remembered that in A Wish, the poet, contemptuously discarding the conventional consolations of a death-bed, entreats his friends to place him at the open window, that he may see yet once again--
Bathed in the sacred dews of morn The wide aerial landscape spread-- The world which was ere I was born, The world which lasts when I am dead;
Which never was the friend of one, Nor promised love it could not give. But lit for all its generous sun, And lived itself, and made us live.
There let me gaze, till I become In soul, with what I gaze on, wed! To feel the universe my home; To have before my mind--instead
Of the sick room, the mortal strife, The turmoil for a little breath-- The pure eternal course of life, Not human combatings with death!
Thus feeling, gazing, might I grow Composed, refresh'd, ennobled, clear; Then willing let my spirit go To work or wait elsewhere or here!
This solemn love and reverence for the continuous life of the physical universe may remind us that Arnold's teaching about humanity, subtle and searching as it is, has done less to endear him to many of his disciples, than his feeling for Nature. His is the kind of Nature-worship which takes nothing at second-hand. He paid "the Mighty Mother" the only homage which is worthy of her acceptance, a minute and dutiful study of her moods and methods. He placed himself as a reverent learner at her feet before he presumed to go forth to the world as an exponent of her teaching. It is this exactness of observation which makes his touches of local colouring