Matthew Arnolds Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems | Page 7

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 Attitude toward Nature=.--In his attitude 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 association, 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 pass from the feverish, wasting, and
ephemeral struggle of human passions and desire, into an atmosphere
that shames its heat and fume by an immemorial coolness and repose;"
and the same comparison constitutes 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 God; 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 God.
=Arnold's Attitude toward Life=.--Arnold's attitude 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 fortitude 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 institutions, 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 entitled 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
The following extracts on Arnold as a critic are quoted from
well-known authorities.
"Arnold's prose has little trace of the wistful melancholy of his verse. It
is almost always urbane, vivacious, light-hearted. The classical bent of
his mind shows itself here, unmixed with the inheritance of romantic
feeling which colors his poetry. Not only is his prose classical in
quality, by virtue of its restraint, of its definite aim, and of the dry
white light of intellect which suffuses it; but the doctrine which he
spent his life in preaching is based upon a classical ideal, the ideal of
symmetry, wholeness, or, as he daringly called it, perfection....
Wherever, in religion, politics, education,