MATTHEW ARNOLD'S POETRY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1205, 14 August 1911, Page 9

MATTHEW ARNOLD'S POETRY.

Mr. G. W. E. Russell discourses interestingly in the "Manchester Umudian" on Matthew Arnold. He suggs.-ts that Arnold would huve been a great, poot hml ho given his whole heart and life to poetry. Arnold himself said, when he wus thirty-five: To produce one's best i.-f no light matfor with an existence so hampered as mine i> , . . . . To attain or approach perfection in the region of thought and feeling, and to unite this with perfection of form, demands not merely an effort and a labour, but an actual tearing of one's self to pieces, unless one can devote one's whole life, to poetry. Wordsworth could give his whole life to it; Shelley and Byron both could, and were besides driven by their Demon to do su. Tennyson, a far inferior natural power lo either of the three, can; but of the modorns-Goetlia in the only one, I think, of those who had an "existence assujettie," who has thrown himself with a great result into poetry; and even ho could have done more, poetically, had he been freer.

The need for leisure was the more urgent in Arnold's case becaus-? it scums indisputable that he wrote with difficulty. His poetry has littlo ease, fluency, or spontaneous movement. It needed for its production the closest care, and, for its perfection, constant use of Hie labourists file. These things it is hard—almost impossible—for a man to give who is pressed by the thronging cares of a profession and a family. Some poets there have been —one imagines it of Shakespeare, we know it of Burns and Hyron and Swinburne—on whom tho genius of Foatry descended like a divine afflatus, and drove them whither it would. Such men wrote their best when they wrote at tho top of their speed; they had no need for leisure to consider and correct. Byron, indeed, had leisure, as Arnold pointed out; but ho used it for quite other purposes than those of literary self-discipline. He wrote in a hurry, and enjoyed himself at leisure.

But Arnold's genius was of a different type; and had the circumstances of his life eiven him full command of his time, his fame as a poet would stand higher than it does. In the first place, he would liavo written more; and, althougli quality is tho oiio thing needful, still quantity also has its uses in fixing a man's place among the Great Poets of the world. Again, nlmadant loisiu-e, with a brain unfatisued by distasteful drudgery, would have enabled him to correct somo obvious faults. His rhymes are oft?n only tnio to the eye, and his lines are over-crowded with jerking monosyllablesCalm's not life's crown, though calm is well. Th? sandy spits, the shore lock'd lalios. Coulil'ft thou no tatlft- keep. 0 abbey old ? The strange-serawl'd rocks, the lonely sky. These are samples of what I mean; and with more abundant leisure, they could have been reduced to more harmonions form. And yet once more, one fancies that, with larger liberty and less anxious cares, Arnold might have infused into his poetry a buoyancy and a joyanco which it singularly lacks. It is just that lack which has always prevented hiln from attaining popularity; for, as he himself, said, "the life of the people is such that in literature they require joy." In middle age Arnold wrote thus about his own performances— "My poems represent, on the whole, tho main movement of mind of the , last quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become, conscious to themselves of what that movement is; and interested in the literary productions which reflect it. It might, bo fairly urged that I have lew poetic sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning. Yet because I have perhaps inore of a fusion of the two than cither of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn, as they havo had theirs." The "last, quarter of a century" to which Arnold here refers ranges from 1815 to 1870—from tho collapse of the Tractariaii Tiiovement, with all its romantic ideals, to tho triumph of commercial Liberalism under Gladstone's first Administration. It was, indeed, as Arnold called it, "ah"'iron time"; its "doubts, disputes, distractions, fears" are only too faithfully reflected in his verse, and verse which reflects theso distressing elements in human life can never be popular." When he strikes n more confident note, as in "Rugby Chapel" and "The Last Word," he enn rally us all to his side; but such notes arc ail too rare, and his mind habitually, dwells on that , Stern law of every mortal lot,

Which man, proud man, finds hard to bearon the incompleteness of human life, and the insoluble problems of our destiny. But his genius had another, and a more attractive, side. It has always seemed to me that he wa.s, not only tff tho school, but of tho lineage, of Wordsworth; and it is curious to observe that in his "Memorial Verses'" he attributes to Wordsworth (his early friend and in some ways his master) exactly the function which he himself performed. Ho laid us as we lay at birth • On the cool flowery lap of earth, Smiles broke fromus and we had ease; The hills were round us, and the breeze Went o'er the sunlit fields again; Our foreheads felt the wind and rain. Our youth returned; for vhcro was shed On spirits that had long been dead, ■ Spirits dried up and closely fiirl'd, The freshness oE the early world. This is exactly what Arnold did for us when ho turned from perplexities and questions and forebodings, and all Ihe other torments of the mind, to tho worshipping enjoyment of Nature. Ho knew tho Mighty Mother as few people know her. Ho lived all his life in close communion with her, and placed himself as a reverent learnet at her feet, before ho ventured on interpreting her mcs?:igo to "the common heart of Man." When describing Nature, in her varying moods and aspects, he is always at his best. Whether tho scene, bo laid in, (h'c Alps or in tho Valley of the Thames, or amid the mountainstreams of his beloved Westmorland, his painting is equally true to life, and his verso abounds in felicities of description which haunt the grateful memory. In 1873 he wrote to his sister:— I have a curious letter from'the State of Maine, in America, from a young man w J ho wished to tell me that a friend of his, lately dead, had beon especially fond of my paom, "A Wish," anil often had i it read to him in his last illness. Theye were both—the writer and his friend—of a class too poor to buy books, and had met with (he poem in a newspaper. This story has always struck me as infinitely pathetic, and the pathos ia increased when we recall the poem. The speaker is contemplating Death, and rejects the common consolations of a deathbedBring none of these; bul lot me be, While all around in silence lies Moved to the window near, and see Once more, before my dying eyes,

Bathed in tho sacred dews of mora The wide aerial-landscnne spread— Tho 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, Bii't lit for all its generous sun, And lived itself, and made us live. Here let me' gaze, till J become In soul, with what I gaze on, wed! To feel the universe my home; To have before my mind—instead Of the sickroom, the mortal strife, The turmoil for a little breath— Th« pure eternal com , ?* of life. Not human combatings with death! Thus feeling, gazing, might T grow Cnrapovd, refresh'd, ennobled, clear; Then willing let my spirit <ro To work or wait elsewhere or bore!