the studium would have been of little avail. Whatever may be said of the defects of English University training, its stimulating effect upon the mind can scarcely be denied. There is not very much of what is called "useful knowledge" in Homer, nor much exact science in Plato; but the man who has familiarized himself with these authors so as not only to understand their language but to think their thoughts and see the world as they saw it two or three thousand years ago, will, at least, have a mind prepared to grapple with most intellectual problems and, better still, open to the light from whatever quarter it may come. We see in Mr. Arnold a true son of Oxford; he reminds us of that venerable seat of learning both in what he is and in what he is not. But then not only were the genial and refining influences of Oxford thrown around his youth, but he was educated under the eye of one of the most sagacious and best furnished minds of England, that is to say his own father's, a man who, as an educator, won a reputation which has almost lessened by comparison his fame. as a scholar, historian and divine. To have had for father such a man as Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, was indeed an inestimable advantage; we naturally look for traces of the father's influence and a perpetuation of his qualities in the son, nor do we, in my opinion, look in vain. The sterling honesty, openness of heart and amiability of temper, as well as the firmness and sagacity of judgment which characterized the Head Master of Rugby and Professor of Modern History at Oxford, are honourably conspicuous in the poet and critic of to-day. To these are added a delicacy of taste peculiarly his own, together with a certain intellectual alertness, a faculty for seizing upon the best points of view, which, serviceable as it is to him in every way, is, in relation to criticism especially, a point of the very highest importance. It is time, however, that I should illustrate these remarks by examples; and, in order to exhibit first what may be regarded as an average poem of our author's, I will give the one entitled, "Lines Written in Kensington Gardens," published in the volume of "New Poems" before referred to: "In this lone open glade I lie, Screened by deep boughs on either hand, stand. "Birds here make song; each bird has his "Sometimes a child will cross the glade To take his nurse his broken toy ; Sometimes a thrush flit overhead, Deep in her unknown day's employ. "Here at my feet what wonders pass "In the huge world which roars hard by "I on men's impious uproar hurled Think often, as I hear them rave That peace has left the upper world And now keeps only in the grave. "Yet here is peace forever new ! When I, who watch them, am away, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day. "Then to their happy rest they pass "Calm soul of all things! make it mine "The will to neither strive nor cry, There are two or three things to be remarked about this poem. It affords evidence of a genuine love of nature on the part of the writer, a true delight in its beauty, its music and all its enlarging and tranquillizing influences but it does not suggest that acute sensibility to the forms and harmonies of outward things which we discern in those great authors with whom nature is not a study only but a passion. The description is well and adequately rendered, but there are none of those exquisite touches which Wordsworth for example would almost certainly have thrown into a similar piece. Mr. Amold makes no pretension to be a Wordsworth; his muse is thoroughly honest, and never affects what it does not feel, nor aims at what it cannot accomplish. It is not given to every man to penetrate the deepest secrets of nature, to seize her happiest combinations, to transfuse into words all the glory of her most golden moments; but still the great Mother never fails to reward sincere love and sympathy in whatever degree; and he who opens heart and eyes to take in what he can of her charm, carries away with him some token or other of his acceptance. He receives a message, a dispensation, and becomes, in his own measure, an interpreter of nature to others. And so it is in the And so it is in the present case; the impression we derive, through Mr. Arnold's verse, of the sylvan scene in which it was composed, is clear and vivid; we feel the freshness of the breeze. we hear the rustling of the leaves overhead; we see the waving of the grass. When we read the line "Deep in her unknown day's employ-" we find ourselves wondering, as in the woods we often have wondered, what the busy bird is doing in all her ceaseless flittings to and fro. It is further to be remarked that Mr. Arnold's verse produces its effect, which, to say the least, is a pleasing and satisfying one, by means of the most natural and everyday language. We encounter in his poems no laboriously formed compound epithets and none of that word-daubing by which some writers seek to make sound do the work of sense. He appears to have acted consciously or unconsciously, on the principle laid down by Ste. Beuve in writing to the young poet Baudelaire: "Ne craignez pas d'être trop commun; vous aurez toujours assez de votre finesse d'expression de quoi vous distinguer." Finesse d'expression is not only a mark of originality but may be said to be its measure; for before a man can express anything he must have been impressed by something, and his impressions will be true, vivid, clear, original just in proportion as his mind has preserved its originality, or, in other words, has cultivated the art of coming into direct contact with things, and seeing them as they are. The peaceful beauty of his leafy recess leads the poet to think by contrast of the "impious uproar " of that "6 huge world" from which he has escaped so short a distance. This new train of thought, coming across the tranquil current of his former meditations, for the moment disquiets and troubles him. For a moment only, for the reflection almost immediately occurs that, as, in the very heart of the city, there is a spot in which calm and quiet perpetually reign, so should there be in the heart of every man an inward peace which the turmoil of active life should be powerless to destroy. The idea is not a new one by any means; it was very familiar to the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and poets, and has been very beautifully expressed by more than one of them. Nowhere, however, has it been embodied in more striking or beautiful language than in a passage in the "Thoughts of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius." It is quite worth our while to read and ponder what the im perial sage ("purest of men," Mr. Arnold has elsewhere called him) has said upon this subject: "Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shore, and mountains; and thou too (addressing himself) art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power, whenever thou shalt choose, to retire into thyself. For nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity; and I affirm that tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest."* If we compare the last two verses of Mr. Arnold's poem with the passage just quoted we may take in at a glance the difference between the highest moral sentiment of the second and that of the nineteenth century of our era. The creed of Marcus Aurelius was Stoicism, tinged with a little more emotion than the Stoics usually allowed. It was a creed of self-repression, calling upon a man to fortify himself against the world by bringing his own nature into subjection. The moralist of to-day finds a support for his good resolutions in the very constitution of the universe. With the poet Tennyson he finds a "glory in the sum of things," which is at war with anything like settled gloom or despair. Or with Mr. Arnold he exclaims: "Calm soul of all things! make it mine That there abides a peace of thine The Stoic cultivated justice, but he did it in a spirit of pride and exclusiveness as something required by the dignity of his own nature; the world had to make a long * IV. 3: Long's translation, 2nd Ed., page 93. "The will to neither strive nor cry, These are lines which many a vext and restless soul will love to repeat; there is a music in them which soothes the heart, and an earnestness of aspiration which seems to give strength to the will. In very many places throughout his works do we find the poet giving expression to a longing for calm and quiet,-the calm and quiet not so much of outward circumstances He seems to find the as of the heart. chief source of this supreme blessing in the contemplation of nature; and his most earnest wish for his death-bed is that, instead of being pestered with doctors and priests, he may be allowed to gaze upon the serene face of that "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." I cannot do better, however, than quote the whole poem in which this verse occurs, as it is decidedly one of the best Mr. Arnold ever wrote: at once chaste and vigorous in expression and full of that noble faith which looks upon the universe as a divine work, and the destinies of man in the future as wholly beyond the power of any human agencies or artifices to control. A WISH. I ask not that my bed of death I ask not each kind soul to keep There are worse plagues on earth than tears. I ask but that my death may find Then, then, at last, to quit my side. Spare me the whispering, crowded room, The friends who come and gape and go; The ceremonious air of gloom, All that makes death a hideous show! Nor bring, to see one cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head and give The ill he cannot cure a name. Nor fetch to take the accustomed toll The future and its viewless things, Which one who feels death's winnowing wings Must needs read clearer sure than he ! Bring none of these! but let me be, Bathed in the sacred dews of morn Which never was the friend of one There let me gaze, till I become Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow To work or wait elsewhere or here! There is room for an interesting rapprochement between this poem and the concluding sentence of a book which Mr. Arnold confesses to have been a great favourite with himself-Obermann ; and as Obermann is a book not very frequently met with in these days, some of readers my may thank me for reproducing the passage :— "Si j'arrive à la vieillesse, si un jour, plein de pensées encore, mais renonçant à parler aux hommes, j'ai auprès de moi un ami pour recevoir mes adieux à la terre, qu'on place ma chaise sur l'herbe courte et que de tranquilles marguerites soient là devant moi, sous le soleil, sous le ciel immense, afin qu'en laissant la vie qui passe, je retrouve quelque chose de l'illusion infinie."* There is one little poem of our author's which I can never read without pain; there are two in fact: "Growing Old" and "Youth's Agitations." We should not, I know, construe all that a poet says au pied de la lettre, but I challenge any one to read the poems I have mentioned and not fall under the impression that the poet has there placed on record his own strong, instinctive shrinking from the thought of old age. One cannot therefore help asking whether a philosophy that raises a man above the fear of death, but fills him with gloomy apprehensions and nervous shrinkings at the thought of life's decline, is anything to boast of after all. Fear is bondage, no matter what its object may be; and to escape one bondage only to run into another and less rational one is certainly no great gain. And * The following version though somewhat free represents perhaps with sufficient faithfulness the general sense of this beautiful passage:- "If I should arrive at old age with faculties still unimpaired, and, though living apart from men, should have one friend by my side to receive my farewells to the world, let my chair be placed out upon the turf, where my eyes may rest upon the quiet daisies ; and there, under the light of the sun, under the boundless vault of heaven, let my soul be filled, as it quits this transitory life, with an overflowing sense of the infinite and eternal. yet" Growing Old" with all its morbid feeling is a poem of great beauty and force, and I feel that I must quote it, both on that account and also as showing into what very low spirits Mr. Arnold's generally cheerful musesometimes falls. "What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, Thy lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? Yes but not this alone. "Is it to feel our strength, Not our bloom only but our strength decay? Grow stiffer, every function less exact, "Yes, this and more! but not, Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow A golden day's decline! ""Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep and feel the fulness of the past, The years that are no more! "It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young; In the hot prison of the present, month "It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion-none. "It is last stage of all When we are frozen up within and quite To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost How different from these "muliebria lamenta" is Robert Browning's noble poem "Rabbi Ben Ezra !" What manly courage, what rational faith breathes in its opening lines ! "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life for which the first was made. Our times are in His hand Who saith: "A whole I planned Youth shows but half: trust God nor be afraid." No doubt there is truth in Mr. Arnold's presentation of the subject as well as in Mr. Browning's; but the difference is here: Mr. Arnold's truth is truth to fact (i.e., old age is actually in many cases such as he describes it, a cheerless, joyless, comfortless thing, a period in which the restlessness of youth and the eager action of manhood are succeeded, not by rest and peace, but by a dull torpidity); Mr. Browning's truth is truth to the higher tendencies and capabilities of human nature: man has a capacity for faith, for disinterestedness and for sympathy, and in these lie the sources of a tranquil joy that triumphs over all changes of time and circumstance. Need we ask which of these two kinds of truth more worthily employs the poet's pen? I should like to bring home one objection to Mr. Arnold against this use of his muse, drawn from his own writings. In his essay on Joubert, he quotes with approval a sentence from that writer, in which condemnation is passed upon all works which compel the soul to cry out "You hurt me." The sentence in question, Mr. Arnold says, is worthy of Goethe, and well adapted "to clear the air at one's entrance into literature." Well then, let me tell him this poem of his -"Growing Old" causes the soul to cry out in no unreal anguish, "You hurt me!" To borrow an expression from one of Mr. Arnold's own poems it "saddens the soul with its chill," giving as it does a picture of unredeemed misery and weakness, and that not by way of warning, or for any moral purpose, but in a spirit of sheer rebellion and despair. Unfortunately the spirit which these lines display mars, not unfrequently, the pleasure we derive from Mr. Arnold's poetry. Doubtless there is evil and enough and to spare in |