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Page 8
"She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea."
Here the poet's poetry has come to its own.
_In Utrumque Paratus_ sounds the note again, and has one exceedingly
fine stanza:--
"Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow,
And faint the city gleams;
Rare the lone pastoral huts--marvel not thou!
The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams;
Alone the sun arises, and alone
Spring the great streams."
But _Resignation_, the last poem in the book, goes far higher. Again,
it is too long; and, as is not the case in the _Merman_, or even in
_The Strayed Reveller_ itself, the _general_ drift of the poem, the
allegory (if it be an allegory) of the two treadings of "the self-same
road" with Fausta and so forth, is unnecessarily obscure, and does not
tempt one to spend much trouble in penetrating its obscurity. But the
splendid passage beginning--
"The Poet to whose mighty heart,"
and ending--
"His sad lucidity of soul,"
has far more interest than concerns the mere introduction, in this
last line itself, of one of the famous Arnoldian catchwords of later
years. It has far more than lies even in its repetition, with fuller
detail, of what has been called the author's main poetic note of
half-melancholy contemplation of life. It has, once more, the interest
of _poetry_--of poetical presentation, which is independent of any
subject or intention, which is capable of being adapted perhaps to
all, certainly to most, which lies in form, in sound, in metre, in
imagery, in language, in suggestion--rather than in matter, in sense,
in definite purpose or scheme.
It is one of the heaviest indictments against the criticism of the
mid-nineteenth century that this remarkable book--the most remarkable
first book of verse that appeared between Tennyson's and Browning's in
the early thirties and _The Defence of Guenevere_ in 1858--seems to
have attracted next to no notice at all. It received neither the
ungenerous and purblind, though not wholly unjust, abuse which in the
long--run did so much good to Tennyson himself, nor the absurd and
pernicious bleatings of praise which have greeted certain novices of
late years. It seems to have been simply let alone, or else made the
subject of quite insignificant comments.
In the same year (1849) Mr Arnold was represented in the _Examiner_ of
July 21 by a sonnet to the Hungarian nation, which he never included
in any book, and which remained peacefully in the dust-bin till a
reference in his _Letters_ quite recently set the ruthless reprinter
on its track. Except for an ending, itself not very good, the thing is
quite valueless: the author himself says to his mother, "it is not
worth much." And three years passed before he followed up his first
volume with a second, which should still more clearly have warned the
intelligent critic that here was somebody, though such a critic would
not have been guilty of undue hedging if he had professed himself
still unable to decide whether a new great poet had arisen or not.
This volume was _Empedodes on Etna and other Poems_, [still] _By A._
London: Fellowes, 1852. It contained two attempts--the title-piece and
_Tristram and Iseult_--much longer and more ambitious than anything
that the poet had yet done, and thirty-three smaller poems, of which
two--_Destiny_ and _Courage_--were never reprinted. It was again very
unequal--perhaps more so than the earlier volume, though it went
higher and oftener high. But the author became dissatisfied with it
very shortly after its appearance in the month of October, and
withdrew it when, as is said, less than fifty copies had been sold.
One may perhaps not impertinently doubt whether the critical reason,
_v. infra_--in itself a just and penetrating one, as well as admirably
expressed--which, in the Preface of the 1853 collection, the poet gave
for its exclusion (save in very small part) from that volume tells the
whole truth. At any rate, I think most good judges quarrel with
_Empedodes_, not because the situation is unmanageable, but because
the poet has not managed it. The contrast, in dramatic trio, of the
world-worn and disappointed philosopher, the practical and rather
prosaic physician, and the fresh gifts and unspoilt gusto of the
youthful poet, is neither impossible nor unpromising. Perhaps, as a
situation, it is a little nearer than Mr Arnold quite knew to that of
_Paracelsus_, and it is handled with less force, if with more
clearness, than Browning's piece. But one does not know what is more
amiss with it than is amiss with most of its author's longer
pieces--namely, that neither story nor character-drawing was his
_forte_, that the dialogue is too colourless, and that though the
description is often charming, it is seldom masterly. As before, there
are jarring rhymes--"school" and "oracle," "Faun" and "scorn."
Empedocles himself is sometimes dreadfully tedious; but the part of
Callicles throughout is lavishly poetical. Not merely the show
passages--that which the Roman father,
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