Matthew Arnold | Page 3

poet, is that he is not, and never
could be, a poet of the multitude. His verse lacks all popular fibre. It is
the delight of scholars, of philosophers, of men who live by silent
introspection or quiet communing with nature. But it is altogether
remote from the stir and stress of popular life and struggle. Then, again,
his tone is profoundly, though not morbidly, melancholy, and this is
fatal to popularity. As he himself said, "The life of the people is such
that in literature they require joy." But not only his thought, his very
style, is 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