from above Hinksey, who know the Fyfield elm in May, and have "trailed their fingers in the stripling Thames" at Bablockhithe,-may be granted. But in the name of Bandusia and of Gargarus, what offence can these things give to any worthy wight who by his ill luck has not seen them with eyes? The objection is so apt to suggest a suspicion, as illiberal almost as itself, that one had better not dwell on it.
Let us hope that there are after all few to whom it has presented itself-that most, even if they be not sons by actual matriculation of Oxford, feel that, as of other "Cities of God," they are citizens of her by spiritual adoption, and by the welcome accorded in all such cities to God's children. But if the scholar had been an alumnus of Timbuctoo, and for Cumnor and Godstow had been substituted strange places in -wa and -ja, I cannot think that, even to those who are of Oxford, the intrinsic greatness of this noble poem would be much affected, though it might lose a separable charm. For it has everything-a sufficient scheme, a definite meaning and purpose, a sustained and adequate command of poetical presentation, and passages and phrases of the most exquisite beauty. Although it begins as a pastoral, the mere traditional and conventional frippery of that form is by no means so prominent in it as in the later (and, I think, less consummate) companion and sequel Thyrsis. With hardly an exception, the poet throughout escapes in his phraseology the two main dangers which so constantly beset him-too great stiffness and too great simplicity. His "Graian" personification is not overdone; his landscape is exquisite; the stately stanza not merely sweeps, but sways and swings, with as much grace as state. And therefore the Arnoldian "note"-the special form of the maladie du siècle which, as we have seen, this poet chooses to celebrate-acquires for once the full and due poetic expression and music, both symphonic and in such special clangours as the never-to-be-too-often-quoted distich-
"Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade"-
which marks the highest point of the composition.
The only part on which there may be some difference between admirers is the final simile of the Tyrian trader. This finishes off the piece in nineteen lines, of which the poet was-and justly-proud, which are quite admirable by themselves, but which cannot perhaps produce any very clear evidences of right to be where they are. No ingenuity can work out the parallel between the "uncloudedly joyous" scholar who is bid avoid the palsied, diseased enfants du siècle, and the grave Tyrian who was indignant at the competition of the merry Greek, and shook out more sail to seek fresh markets. It is, once more, simply an instance of Mr Arnold's fancy for an end-note of relief, of cheer, of pleasant contrast. On his own most rigid principles, I fear it would have to go as a mere sewn-on patch of purple: on mine, I welcome it as one of the most engaging passages of a poem delightful throughout, and at its very best the equal of anything that was written in its author's lifetime, fertile as that was in poetry.
He himself, though he was but just over thirty when this poem appeared, and though his life was to last for a longer period than had passed since his birth to 1853, was to make few further contributions to poetry itself. The reasons of this comparative sterility are interesting, and not quite so obvious as they may appear. It is true, indeed,-it is an arch-truth which has been too rarely recognised,-that something like complete idleness, or at any rate complete freedom from regular mental occupation, is necessary to the man who is to do poetic work great in quality and in quantity at once. The hardest occupation-and Mr Arnold's, though hard, was not exactly that-will indeed leave a man sufficient time, so far as mere time is concerned, to turn out as much verse as the most fertile of poets has ever produced. But then that will scarcely do. The Muses are feminine-and it has been observed that you cannot make up even to the most amiable and reasonable of that sex for refusing to attend to her at the minute when she wants you, by devoting even hours, even days, when you are at leisure for her. To put the thing more seriously, though perhaps not more truly, the human brain is not so constituted that you can ride or drive or "train" from school to school, examining as you go, for half-a-dozen or half-a-score hours a-day, or that you can devote the same time to the weariest and dreariest of all businesses, the reading of hundreds of all but identical answers to the same stock questions, and yet be fresh and fertile for imaginative composition. The nearest contradictory instances to this proposition are those of Scott and Southey, and they are, in more ways than one or two, very damaging instances-exceptions which, in a rather horrible manner, do prove the rule. To less harassing, and especially less peremptory, work than Mr Arnold's, as well as far more literary in kind, Scott sacrificed the minor literary graces, Southey immolated the choicer fruits of genius which he undoubtedly possessed the power of producing; and both "died from the top downward."
But there was something more than this. Mr Arnold's poetic ambition, as we have seen, did not aim at very long and elaborate works. His forte was the occasional piece-which might still suggest itself and be completed-which, as we shall see, did sometimes suggest itself and was completed-in the intervals, the holidays, the relaxations of his task. And if these lucid and lucent intervals, though existent, were so rare, their existence and their rarity together suggest that something more than untoward circumstance is to blame for the fact that they did not show themselves oftener. A full and constant tide of inspiration is imperative; it will not be denied; it may kill the poet if he cannot or will not give vent to it, but it will not be patient of repression-quietly content to appear now and then, even on such occasions as the deaths of a Clough and a Stanley. Nor is it against charity or liberality, while it is in the highest degree consonant with reason and criticism, to infer that Mr Arnold's poetic vein was not very full-blooded, that it was patient of refusal to indulge it, that his poetry, in nearly the happiest of his master's phrases, was not exactly "inevitable," despite the exquisiteness of its quality on occasion.
It is fortunate for the biographer that this earliest part of Mr Arnold's life is so fertile in poetry, for otherwise, in the dearth of information, it would be a terribly barren subject. The thirty years of life yield us hardly twenty pages of letters, of which the first, with its already cited sketch of Laleham, is perhaps the most interesting. At the Trafalgar Square riots of March 1848 the writer is convinced that "the hour of the hereditary peerage and eldest sonship and immense properties has struck"; sees "a wave of more than American vulgarity, moral, intellectual, and social, preparing to break over us"; and already holds that strange delusion of his that "the French are the most civilised of European peoples." He develops this on the strength of "the intelligence of their idea-moved classes" in a letter to his sister; meets Emerson in April; goes to a Chartist "convention," and has a pleasant legend for Miss Martineau that the late Lord Houghton "refused to be sworn in as a special constable, that he might be free to assume the post of President of the Republic at a moment's notice." He continues to despair of his country as hopelessly as the Tuxford waiter;[8] finds Bournemouth "a very stupid place"-which is distressing; it is a stupid place enough now, but it was not then: "a great moorland covered with furze and low pine coming down to the sea" could never be that-and meets Miss Brontë, "past thirty and plain, with expressive grey eyes though." The rest we must imagine.
Chapter II.
Table of Contents Life from 1851-62-Second Series of Poems-Merope-On Translating Homer.
Table of Contents We must now return a little and give some account of Mr Arnold's actual life, from a period somewhat before that reached at the end of the last chapter. The account need not be long, for the life, as has been said, was not in the ordinary sense eventful; but it is necessary, and can be in this chapter usefully interspersed with an account of his work, which, for nine of the eleven years we shall cover, was, though interesting, of much less interest than that of those immediately before and those immediately succeeding.
One understands at least part of the reason for the gradual drying up of his poetic vein from a sentence of his in a letter of 1858, when he and his wife at last took a house in Chester Square: "It will be something to unpack one's portmanteau for the first time since I was married, nearly seven years ago." "Something," indeed; and one's only wonder is how he, and still more Mrs Arnold (especially as they now had three children), could have endured the other thing so long. There is no direct information in the Letters as to the reason of this nomadic existence, the only headquarters of which appear to have been the residence of Mrs Arnold's father, the judge, in Eaton Place, with flights to friends' houses and to lodgings at the places of inspection and others, especially Dover and Brighton. And guesswork is nowhere more unprofitable than in cases where private matters of income, taste, and other things are...
