MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD ON THE MODERN ELEMENT DT LITERATURE.
MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD has published in Macmillan's Magazine for February a demonstration that Athenian literature, in the age of Pericles, was much more modern than English literature in the age of Elizabeth, and we think we may add also, without endangering the least deviation from the accomplished author's real meaning and principle, than English literature in the present day. We need not say, therefore, that Mr. Arnold does not use the word "modern," as applied to literature, in the sense of advanced in the order of time. He uses ' modern ' in a peculiar sense. "A significant, a highly-developed, a culminating epoch, on the one hand,—a comprehensive, a commensurate, an adequate literature, on the other,—these will naturally be the objects of deepest interest to our modern p.p. Such a literature and such an epoch are in fact modern in the same sense in which our own age and literature are modern ; they are founded upon a rich past, and upon an instructive fullness of experience." But it is not the fullness of experience on which Mr. Arnold chiefly relies in his definition of the modern element in literature ; if we take him rightly, he thinks the thoroughly clear apprehension of a moderately rich experience contributes much more to what is properly the modern' element in literature, than a half-clear apprehension of a very much richer experience. He holds, for instance, that the great period of Rome was "the fullest, the most significant on record," that it was "a greater, a fuller period than the age of Pericles." "It is an infinitely larger school for the men reared in it ; the relations of life are immeasurably multiplied, the events which happen are on a grander scale. The facts, the spectacle of this Roman world, are immense,"—bui its literature is not so modern as the literature of Athens in the age of Pericles, for it interprets that immense spectacle, that rich life, far less clearly. The observing intellect was inadequate to the spectacle observed ; the form of its expression, therefore, was leas modern.' Hence, just as Mr. Arnold declares Virgil and Lucretius and Tacitus lees 'modern' than
Sophocles and Finder and Thucydides, so also he declares Sir Walter Raleigh, as an historian, far less moderdthan Thucydidea, —not far, perhaps, from the level of Herodotus,—and probably considers Shakespeare himself far less modern than Sophocles. To Mr. Arnold the ' modern' element in literature depends upon "that
harmonious acquiescence of mind which we feel in contemplating a
grand spectacle that is intelligible to ns,—when we have lost that impatient irritation of mind which we feel in presence of an immense, moving, confused spectacle, which, while it perpetually excites our curiosity, perpetually baffles our comprehension,"—.. when, in a word, literature interprets and reflects the spectacle of
a rich human life as calmly and clearly as astronomical science interprets and reflects the spectacle of a rich star-sown heaven. It is because Sophocles did this, that Mr. Arnold thinks him the most modern of poets, though he lived near 2,400 years ago. "The peculiar characteristic of the poetry of Sophocles," he says, "is its consummate, its unrivalled adequacy, that it represents the highly developed human nature of that age, —human nature developed in a number of directions, poli. tically, socially, religiously, morally developed,—in its completest and most harmonious development in all these directions ; while there is shed over his poetry the charm of that noble serenity which always accompanies true insight And, therefore, I have ventured to say of Sophocles that he 'saw life steadily and saw it whole." The 'modern element' in literature then depends, according to Mr. Arnold, on the complete translucency of the poet's insight into a rich life, even more than on the richness of that life,—on the wholeness and the lustre of the imaginative representation of the world around, even more than on the variety and fullness of the scene to be represented. If the literature of any day breaks into a hundred separate and partial pictures of the life of that day, then, however rich and complex that life is in reality, the literature is inadequate,' and so far not truly 'modern.' An age that is on the eve of disentangling great problems, that is struggling with its difficulties, that is rich in intellectual suggestion, but not tranquil in intellectual survey, that is awaiting new discoveries, not looking back on old achievements, is not in Mr. Arnold's sense a modern age, and its literature must be inadequate. Goethe, who said,— " The end is everywhere, Art still has truth, Take refuge there," was a true 'modern." Mr. Arnold himself, whose mood is almost always to proclaim the past oat of date' and 'the future not yet born,' who writes the epitaphs of departed faiths with a sadness and transparent grace that are full of 'serenity,' who sees all, at least, that he does see, 'steadily' and 'whole,' is, again, a true modern. But Tennyson, who throws the mystic cloud of hope round all his finest thoughts, filling them with "that far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves ;"—Browning, who moulds his materials with the half-recklessness of buoyant treat and genius ;—Buchanan, who fills the most piteous and miserable of his poetical children with vague snatches of triumph derived from a number of chords which vibrate with anything but serenity, and derived from all sorts of mysterious sources,—a mystic faith in the people,—a mystic faith in the future,—a mystic faith in God,—all these are not, in Mr. Arnold's sense, the true poets of a modern age at all. They may all of them be critics indeed, but the note of criticism is drowned in the note of mystery. 'Serenity,'—the sense of clearly apprehending and commanding the well-discerned movements of a complex humanity,—the cessation of that pain and trouble of spirit which springs from the sense of a clouded vision,—belong to none of thew poets. Half the spring of their poetry is a mystic spiritual instinct of which they can give little account. They all feel keenly the divergence between the tendencies of the modern science and the tendencies of the modern faith. None of them can reconcile these divergencies ; none of them can ignore them. In a certain sense, Shakespeare, who assumed the reconciliation of these tendencies, then barely known to be even apparently divergent, was more serene, more able to "see life steadily, and see it whole," than the higher imaginative writers of our own day,—or, in Mr. Arnold's sense, was more' modern' than the higher imaginative writers of our own day. Does not, indeed, Mr. Arnold's theory come to this,—that that literature can only be in his sense truly ' adequate ' which is the fruit of a period of perfect intellectual calm, and at the same time of practical and political vitality ; a period which is not one of decay,— for that brings with it restlessness, and cynicism, and despondent self-depreciation,—but which is also not a period of intellectual
debate and spiritual enthusiasm, for that again brings with it perturbation to the calm of speculative vision.
What Mr. Arnold seems to us to demand as the condition of a truly modern or adequate literature, is the very unusual combination of a satisfied and resting imagination with a hopeful and energetic practical life. That is what he conceives to have been represented by the poetry of Sophocles at least,— hardly, we should have thought, by that of Aschylus : that is what he denies to the English literature of the age of Elizabeth ; that is what we think he might with almost greater force deny to the English literature of the reign of Victoria. It is perfectly true that the historians of our own day do know how to separate their knowledge from their ignorance, do not confuse and mix the regions of legend and historical evidence, as Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance, confused them, and are, in this respect, much more like Thucydides than like historians of the age of Shakespeare. But the critical faculty is only one root of the modern spirit according to Mr. Arnold. The power to see life steadily, and see it whole,' is not stimulated, but probably weakened, by the critical spirit. Had Sophocles had the critical spirit as fully -as Thucydides, he might have seen life " steadily," but he would net have seen seen it "whole." Mr. Arnold himself only sees life steadily at the cost of seeing it whole. He sees little bits of it with very perfect vision indeed, but his power of integrating life by his imagination,—we apologize for a pedantic and detestable word,— is not large, not nearly so large as that of those who have less of the critical faculty than he, and more of the instinctive. It was in the spirit of a faith, not, indeed, very forward-looking, somewhat -antique and melancholy with all its serenity, touched more with awe than with trust, but still of a faith, which the critical gaze of the subsequent philosophy of Greece began to dissipate, that Sophocles found a framework for his visions. Without that faith,—such as it was,—the poetry of Sophocles would not have been what Mr. Arnold calls adequate.' It was precisely its absence which prevented the poetry of Virgil and Lucretius from being adequate.' It is precisely its absence which prevents _Mr. Arnold's own poetry from being 'adequate,' and which stamped a certain inadequacy on Goethe, who had to revive a sort of liellenistm—which to him was false, though beautiful,— before he could get even an artistic unity for his finest compositions. Great masses of Goethe's writings fall asunder, into loose grains of sand, for want of this real ground of unity ; -and, as a rule, we suspect that the exact condition which Mr. Arnold demands for a truly adequate and modern literature,—faith enough to give wholeness and steadiness to the general imaginative seene,--not enough to overpower or subdue, or even set up a -conflict with the critical faculty,—is a rare accident of any age, and by no means a characteristic of our own modern age. We are disposed to think that the only modern' literature,—judged by Mr. Arnold's standard,—is the Athenian ; that the only perfectly modern author is Sophocles,—surely rather a reductio ad absurdum. Shakespeare assuredly was not half as modern in this sense as -Sophocles. His energy, his buoyancy, his abundant emotion and -sympathy are far deeper, richer, and more diversified ; but his lucidity of definition, his dearness of outline, are far lees, because the world he reproduced was infinitely richer, denser, and more complex. Moreover, Shakespeare had not the critical faculty in Mr. Arnold's sense. Had he had it, it would have gone far to decompose the wholeness of his poetry. Shakespeare's faith is assumed, not reasoned, not even deeply meditated, mach less analyzed.
Indeed, we are strongly disposed to think that what Mr. Arnold is so much in love with as the 'modern element in literature,' is either not properly modern at all, or else not properly literary. He confuses, we think, the simplifying tendency of the modern critical intellect, with the severe simplicity of classical art and taste. The art of Sophocles was sculpturesque, was severe, was simple, in great measure because the life he knew had so much unity and so little complexity in it ; because it was, as compared with what we know now, or what even the Romans knew, all in one intellectual plane ; because the civilization he understood, compared with that of later ages, was like a wild flower compared with a rich garden flower ; because there had been no great convergence of different races and different nations and different wants in Athens, as there was in Rome and has been in Europe ; because Athens knew so little of Hebrew prophecy, or African passion, or Teutonic affection. Mr. Arnold seems to us to confuse simplicity of this kind, arising from the absence of any high -complexity of element, with the simplicity of modern criticism, of modern analysis which arises from the tendency to -abstraction, to resolve back the complexity of life into dis tinct phases of law,--into distinct phases of speculation. But this last tendency, so far from being one that tends to make as see life "whole," tends to make us see life in parts and in very superficial phases. The true poetic " adequacy " is derived from the power to recombine the richness and complexity of life in imagination ; but this is, we believe, inconsistent with the critical faculty, the mere explanatory faculty, the ordering and scientific faculty, with which Mr. Arnold seems to confound it. The modern critic and the modern poet, especially if he be a great poet, take more and more divergent paths. Mr. Arnold himself, it is true, is both a fine critic and a fine poet, but then he contrives to be both, only by confining his poetry to the most delicate films of life,—by utterly abandoning any pretence at "wholeness," substituting for it mere completeness in the finest and most fragile phases of human nature. But we are fully persuaded that the simplicity of classical art, and the simplicity of the modern spirit, are simplicities wholly different in origin. The one is artistic simplicity arising from simplicity of type ; the other is an analytic simplicity arising from scientific analysis. The latter kind of simplicity can never produce an 'adequate' literature ;—and the former could not, where the life to be represented is not simple in type, but like our modern life, the rich conglomerate of a hundred types. `Phu poet who can ' adequately ' see our modern life at once 'steadily' and whole' would necessarily rest upon a much deeper and more mysterious faith than that of Sophocles ; his 'adequacy' could not very well be described as harmonious acquiescence of mind in a grand spectacle that is intelligible' to him ;—for that would be scientific apprehension, not imaginative grasp. The true ' modern ' spirit in literature can never be, we are convinced, classical in its type.
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