BOOKS.

MR. ARNOLD'S POEMS.*

MIGHT not the Court of Chancery be applied to, to restrain Mr. Arnold, in the interests of general literature, from shuffling his poems any further, and especially from reissuing old favourites in the travestie of a new dress? Those of his admirers who were his admirers from the beginning, and have always remained so, will be compelled, if they wish to have a complete edition, not only to possess triplicates of nearly all his poems and quadruplicates of some of them, but also to make for themselves an elaborate index for their own guidance, indicating in which of these various issues the poem is to be found in its completest shape ; nay, further, in which of them each verse of each poem is to be found in its completest shape. We shall need a register of which the following may be a specimen :—" ' Gipsy Child by the Seashore,' for the first verse, see 7'/is Strayed Reveller and other Poems, by A., p. 93; for any other verse, Poem by Matthew Arnold, second series (Longmans), p. 167, may be consulted ; but especially avoid the very unhappy recast in the volume of narrative and elegiac poems (Macmillan)" ; or, again, "'Sonnet on the Duke of Wellington,' see The Strayed Reveller and other Poems, by A. only,—never reprinted " ; or, again, " ' Sonnet on Shakespeare,' see The Strayed Reveller, &c., and also Poems by Matthew Arnold, first series (Longmans), one line of it quite spoiled in the later edition published by Macmillan." In a word, any really bond fide lover of Mr. Arnold's poetry has now to sort the poems out of seven volumes, instead of two,—the two volumes of poems by A., the two series of Matthew Arnold's poems (Longman), the "New Poems by Matthew Arnold (1867, Macmillan)," and the present two volumes, which republish most, though not all, of what had been published before, but some with such unfortunate doctoring,s, that we cannot dispense with the old editions; while, on the other hand, they contain at least one new poem never, we believe, before published, and one we should regret not to have. In spite of this new edition, which has just enough of new in it to make it desirable, not one of the older

volumes can be dispensed with ; and one, at least, of the most beautiful and characteristic of Mr. Arnold's poems has been put into the cauldron and recalled to life in a shape which makes it appear something between a degenerate descendant with ancestral tricks of feature, and a melancholy ghost revisiting in pain the glimpses of the moon. We refer to the once exquisite "Lines on a Gipsy Child by the Seashore, Douglas, Isle of Mau " ; and that we may justify our bitter spleen against Mr. Arnold for the fresh intricacy which he adds every year to the labyrinth in which he hides his muse, we will quote a part of the earliest and latest version (the whole is too long for quotation), and leave our readers to judge for themselves between them :—

" To A. Girsr CHILD BY THE SEASHORE, DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN.

'Who taught this pleading to unpractised eyes ?

Who hid such import in an infant's gloom ?

Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise ?

Who mass'd, round that slight brow, those clouds of doom ?

"Lo ! sails that gleam a moment and are gone ; The swinging waters, and the clustor'd pier.

Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on, Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

"lint thou, whom superfluity of joy Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,

Nor weariness, tlui full-fad soul's annoy ; Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain ; "Thou, drugging pain by patience ; half averse From thine own mother's breast, that knows not thee ; With eyes that sought thine eyes thou didst converse, And that soul-searching vision foil on me.

Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.

Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own : Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth.

"What mood wears like complexion to thy woo ? His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day, Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below ?

Ali! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.

"What exile's changing bitter thoughts with glad?

What seraph's in some alien planet born ?

No exile's dream was ever half so sad, Nor any angel's sorrow so forlorn."

"The port lies bright muter the August sun, Gay shine the waters and the el ustor'cl pier,

Blithely, this morn, old Ocean's work is done, Amid blithely do those son-birds hover near.

"Poor child, whom the light air of childish joy Wafts not from thine own thoughts, „ —of graver strain

Surely, than those which should thine ago employ,— A weight of meditation mixed with pain !

"Blithe all else stirs, thou stiffest not—averse From thine own mother's breast that knows not thee,

With eyes which seek thine eyes thou dont converse, And thy dark, mournful vision rests on mo.

"Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known,

Moods of fantastic. sadness nothing worth.

Musings that, ore they could grow ripe, wore flown,

And grief that healed at every smile of earth.

Whose mood shall fancy liken to thy woe ?

Some dreamer's who, far off, a summer's day,

Sits rapt and hears the battle break below ?

Ali! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.

'Some exile's mindful how his past was glad ? Some angel's in an alien planet born ?

Never was exile's memory half so sad, And never angel's sorrow so forlorn."

One can conceive the sort of criticism passed by the poet himself on certain deficiencies in the first form of his poem from which these alterations of the poet took their origin, though we can see no conceivable reason for the omission of the first fine verse, which strikes the key-note to the whole. We can understand why Mr. Arnold wished to substitute for his first meditative rendering of the external landscape as an almost subjective dream, a blither picture by which he hoped to bring out, as by a bright background, the gloom of his gips), child. But these attempts to alter in cold blood the words which a real poetic mood has suggested never answer ; and while he has succeeded in dispelling all the exquisite dreaminess of his earlier second verse, he has substituted one of infinitely earthier material, which, instead of casting the mind of the reader into a mood of questioning reverie,—the only mood suitable for the whole progress of the poem,—only inclines us to analyze and pull to pieces. The hovering of a sea bird is never blithe ; the dreamer watching it may well say, as Mr. Arnold first said, that it is not "idle," but the motion is peculiarly one which suggests and symbolizes reverie, possibly because it is a gently-swaying rest preceding movement still indeterminate, but anyhow, it certainly does seem expressly fitted to induce reverie. And again, though the sparkle of the ocean may seem blithe, we never get the notion of blitheness in connection with the work of the

ocean, which calls up to the mind the slow rising and falling of tides on a thousand shores, the bearing of vast fleets upon its bosom, and, on the whole, forces of far too mighty a sweep for the epithet "blithe." The "swinging waters" of Mr. Arnold's first version, and the "not idly" by which he instinctively described the dreamy effect produced on his imagination as he watched these ways of nature that are above our ways and thoughts above our thoughts, seem to us infinitely finer introductions to his fanciful re

verie than the laboured cheerfulness of the landscape which he tries to put in as his background in this recast. So we might go on carping at every change, even where we can see, or think we see, the reason which suggested it. But this would be to press too heavily on a

single error of judgment. Thus, much, however, we will say, that rarely if ever does any poet correct to advantage in cold blood, — not even though his criticism be true,—a poem written under the spell of a particular mood. Here, at all events, Mr. Arnold has failed miserably, and if only on account of this single poem,—in its

primitive version one of his finest and most characteristic poems,—

we could never accept these two volumes as the equivalents of his older ones. We may add, too, that while Mr. Arnold has corrected much which he should have let alone, he has not always been careful to correct obvious slips,—as, for instance, the following slip in that fine poem "The Sick King of Bokhara," which has always jarred upon us :

"Thou wast a sinner, thou, poor man ! Thou wast athirst, and didst not see That though we snatch what we desire, We must not snatch it eagerly."

How any one can " snatch " g thing, and not "snatch it eagerly," has always been a difficulty to us. To snatch is something more than even to "take eagerly." Mr. Arnold makes the sick king

say something even more eccentric than if he had told us that though we might be rash, we might not be inconsiderately rash.

Surely if Mr. Arnold's self-criticizing mood were so strong upon him as to make him throw the disjecta ?umbra of his poor gipsy

child into the cauldron, he might have substituted here a real discrimination for the false antithesis between " snatching " and "snatching eagerly."

Now that we have vented our spleen on Mr. Arnold, we will confess that any excuse for re-reading his poems is an excuse for one of the purest enjoyments of life ; and that, barring coldly

critical corrections, which are only really enraging in the case of the poem we have quoted, the new reprint is extremely beautiful in

form, and the one new piece we have discovered (in the Switzerland series, No. 6), is very characteristic, and marked by the peculiar beauty of Mr. Arnold's meditative strain.

The characteristic excellence of Mr. Arnold's poems from the earliest to the latest is always the same, namely, the most perfect

form of what he himself has termed 'a sad lucidity of soul' which our time has seen. Mr. Arnold's sentiment, his aspiration for life, is almost always in conflict with his critical perception of what life really is ; he never disguises the conflict; he gives both the sentiment and the intellectual perception the most refined and the most delicately

chiselled expression, and hence he hits exactly many of the moods of an age which finds its desires for faith in strong contrast with what it deems the inadequate justification for those desires. This is the real strain of thought running through " Empedocles on Etna," one of Mr. Arnold's earliest poems, and penetrating absolutely the exquisite lines from the Grande Chartreuse, and the second and very beautiful series of stanzas on the author of " Obermann," his latest and matureat poems. And through all these poems there runs, parallel with the moral antithesis we have mentioned, a current of intense delight in, and delicate critical power of delineating, the beauty of external nature, less terse, less vividly coloured, and less pictorial than Tennyson's, less meditative than Clough's, but more finely pencilled than either, more marked by critical discrimination than either, more the vision of a serene and lucid contemplation, which

dwells at length and with a rippling, liquid pertinacity on the distinctive features of the scenes it delights to observe, instead of

condensing them into a few massive, pictorial strokes, or dissolving

them in a mood of lyric regret. Mr. Arnold has never written anything more characteristic of both aides of his poetic genius,—

this lucidity of soul,' and the thirst which slakes itself in dwelling on the natural beauty of the universe,—though he has written things of greater power in themselves, than the following passage in that early poem called (or miscalled, we think) " Resignation," from which the phrase so descriptive of one characteristic of his own poetry is taken. It is easy to understand why the man one of whose earliest poems contained this exquisite analysis of the poet's delight in nature, has gained so completely the ear of our generation :—

" He sees the gentle stir of birth

When Morning purifies the earth ; He leans upon a gate, and sees The pastures, and the quiet trees.

Low woody hill, with gracious bound, Folds the still valley almost round ; The cuckoo, loud on some high lawn, Is answer'd from the depth of dawn ; In the hedge straggling to the stream, Pale, dew-drench'd, half-shut roses gleam ; But where the further side slopes down He sees the drowsy new-wak'd clown In his white quaint-embroider'd frock Make, whistling, towards his mist-wreath'd flock ; Slowly, behind the heavy tread, The wet flower'd grass heaves up its head.— Lean'd on his gate, he gazes : tears Are in his eyes, and in his ears The murmur of a thousand years : Before him he sees Life unroll, A placid and continuous whole ; That general Life, which does not cease, Whose secret is not joy, but peace; That Life, whose dumb wish is not miss'd If birth proceeds, if things subsist : The Life of plants, and stones, and rain : The Life ho craves ; if not in vain Fate gave, what Chance shall not controul, His sad lucidity of soul."

Perhaps, however, the characteristic of Mr. Arnold's poetry which has most advanced its popularity is the uniform depth of gentle sympathy which he feels and displays with the past, in its sharp contrast to his equally gentle but yet dictatorial rejection of any attempt to revive its claims. Nowhere does he display this lucidity of soul' with more mingled sweetness and firmness than in musing in the Grande Chartreuse on the two faiths, "one dead, the other powerless to be born," between which he hovers, divided between regret and hope, but never for a moment allowing his regret to assume the form of hope for a revivification of what he deems an extinguished faith, or his hope to take the form of regret for what he deems the inexorable conditions of intellectual progress. In his two finest poems, the two sets of stanzas on the author of Obermann, the same marked characteristic runs through them, — the tenderest sympathy with what he holds to be dying beliefs, and the most delicate insight into their shades of thought and feeling, but the most rigorous refusal to contemplate for an instant the prospect of reanimating them. We should differ profoundly from Mr. Arnold as to what is and what is not dead, as to what is and what is not the hope for the future ; but no one can ignore the ease and delicacy with which he combines his tribute to the past and his loyalty to the future, or what he deems the future ; no one can help admiring the art with which the two threads are interwoven, so that while no one can complain of any deficiency in his sympathy for the nobler feelings which he believes to be out of date, no one can ignore the peremptory lucidity of the eye which perceives the hopelessness of restoring them to their former empire. "But now," he cries,—and it is a cry that runs through all his poems : "But now the past is out of date, The future not yet born, And who can be alone elate, While the world lies forlorn?"

Nor is it only in relation to the past and the future that he paints us this contrast. In the exquisite lines, "Written by a Death-Bed," he draws the same inexorable contrast between the youthful craving for excitement and that calm or freedom from even the wish for excitement which is the best compromise between youthful hopes and their actual disappointments, to which man attains. With his usual lucidity of soul,' he refuses to admit that calm is what we really seek for, though it be, as be even asserts, the best we can ever reach :— "Youth hears a voice within it tell, Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well,—

It may be all that man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires."

There is always in Mr. Arnold this constant wish for vivid insight and gentle emotion, a constant dread of the stupifying power of haste and labour, and a constant recognition that the actual best we can reach is a compromise between that which we desire and that which we dread,—an insight less vivid, an emotion less sweet than the poet dreams, but a tranquillity more lucid than any which the mere practical man' can ever attain. The occasional felicity of Mr. Arnold's expression, which is of the highest of its kind, corresponds very closely to the peculiarlY

blended tone of regretful emotion and peremptory intellectual control in his thought. There is a sharp intellectual definition about his words which always implies a lucid eye, but there is at the same time a gentleness of movement in his style which makes the transitions gradual and the atmosphere of his poems soft. He is more simple, there is more of cool in his sentiment, more of lucid freshness in his style, though less of richness, of weight, of gravity, than in Tennyson. Compare Mr. Arnold's pictorial style with Tennyson's. Here is a picture of the former's drawn near Cette, on the Mediterranean :—

"The sandy spits, the shore-lockod lakes

Melt into open, moonlit sea; The soft Mediterranean breaks At my feet free."

Compare this with Tennyson's couplet in the " Morte d'Arthur :"— "When, on a sudden, lo ! the level lake

And the long glories of the winter moon !"

That has something of the difference between an exquisite water colour and a rich oil. The "long glories" has a fullness and richness and concentration of manner curiously in contrast with the liquid current of Mr. Arnold's verse. When Mr. Arnold is happiest in phrase, you always seem to see not so much a stroke of inspiration as a well-meditated discrimination. There is real criticism in his greatest touches,—as, for example:—

"What helps it now that Byron bore,

With haughty scorn which mocked the smart, Through Europe to the /Etolian shore, The pageant of his Weeding heart."

That last noble line contains a weight of the finest criticism on Byron. So, too, the exquisite choice of phrase in the noble sonnet on Sophoeles "Whose even-balanced soul Business could not make dull, nor passion wild ;

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole,—

The mellow glory of the Attic stage, Singer of sweet Colonus and his child,"

Is wholly a success of critical discrimination. A liquid and tender atmosphere of feeling, with finely-chiselled critical definition,—that is Mr. Arnold's secret of verbal felicity. Sometimes his criticism is given without the atmosphere of feeling, and then it passes into harsh prose, as in a few of the stanzas of the otherwise very fine poem on Heine ; sometimes the feeling is given without the clearly-defined intellectual view, and then it has a tendency to become slightly maudlin, as in some of the lines to Marguerite, especially those ending, "Quick thy tablets, memory!" But when the two are combined, as they always are in Mr. Arnold's finer expressions, there is an inexpressible charm in the combination, the greater perhaps that it is the combination for which our generation longs, —lucid insight and tender feeling, neither giving place to the other.