MR. CLOTJGH'S LONG-VACATION PASTORAL.*

IT is no unmixed delight to read again the fresh and buoyant poem which thirteen years ago seethed to promise so vivid and great an in- tellectual career to the writer, now that that promise can never be fulfilled. Yet it is delightful reading, and would justify the same high estimate now, though we know that the estimate cannot be verified. The Long-Vacation Pastoral belongs to a class of poems that is scarcely naturalized in England—the class of which Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea" is, perhaps, the most perfect specimen, though in vigour and breadth of imagination Mr. Clough's pastoral is certainly not inferior. Goethe's influence over the school of poetry, of which Mr. Matthew Arnold and Mr. Clough have been the most eager English disciples, is very powerfully marked. There is the same longing after the old Homeric simplicity—less successful, perhaps, in a cultivated Englishman than in the more childlike German—the same love of homely naturalness of manner, of the wholesome flavour of earth—an even deeper desire to tame or exorcise all romance that is alien to common sense—and the same intellectual disposition to give common sense the casting vote wherever there seems to be a conflict between it and the thirst of their own natures for something deeper. Moreover, in Mr. Clough's poem there is the same underlying theme which haunted Goethe so constantly—the wish to analyze the true secret of womanly fascination ; and, finally, the key-note of the answer given in the Long-Vacation Pastoral is also the key-note of the "Hermann and Dorothea," that the highest charm of women consists in a certain union between homely usefulness and classical beauty, in the graceful cutting of bread-and-butter, like Werther's Charlotte, or graceful "potato-uprooting," like Philip's heroine in Mr. Clough's poem. Or, as one of Mr. Clough's characters ex- presses it:

"All Cathedrals are Christian, all Christians are Cathedrals, Such is the orthodox doctrine ; 'tie ours with a slight variation ; Even Woman is, or should be a Cathedral, Built on the ancient plan, a Cathedral pure and perfect, Built by that only law, that Use be suggestor of Beauty, Nought be concealed that is done, but all things done to adornment,

Meanest utilities seized as occasions to grace and embellish."

But if the school of art and the predominant thought which mark Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea," and Mr. Clough's poem are the same, if they both alike seek and find their ideal of woman in the "freshness of the early world," in some well-born or well-taught maiden- " Milking the kine in the field, like Rachel watering cattle,

Rachel, when at the well the predestined beheld and kissed her, Or, with pail upon head, like Dora beloved of Alexis, Comely, with well-poised pail over neck arching soft to the shoulders, Comely in gracefullest act, one arm uplifted to stay it, Home from the river or pump moving stately and calm to the laundry"— yet all the imaginative form and framework of Mr. Clough's poem are entirely his own, entirely original, and marked strongly with the stamp of its Oxford origin. The Homeric vigour with which all the characteristics of the reading party are dashed off, the genial humour with which their personal peculiarities are coloured in,—the buoyant life of the dis- cussions which arise among them,—the strength with which the Highland scenery is conceived and rendered in a few brilliant touches, —the tenderness and simplicity with which, now and then, the deeper pathos of life is allowed to be seen in glimpses 'through the intellectual play of the Fuxin, are all Mr. Clough's own. He is far more terse, far less prolix, than the great German poet in his style of painting homely nature. There is none of that relaxed fibre which makes scoffers say that Goethe is a little spooney on his Charlotte's bread-and-butter and his Dorothea's proficiency as a waggoner. Mr. Clough's poem is masculine throughout, though the sentiment is per-

. The Bothie of Toper-aa-Paosich: a Long-Vacation Pastoral. By Arthur Hugh

Clough. Second Edition. Oxford: Macpherson; London: Chapman and HalL

haps not entirely healthy; and the humour, therefore, is of a kind of which Goethe had little trace. Here, for example, is Airlie, the high dresser of the party : "Airlie descended the last, splendescent as god of Olympus; Blue, half-doubtfully blue, was the coat that had white silk facings, Waistcoat blue, coral-buttoned, the white-tie finely adjusted,

Coral moreover the studs on a shirt as of crochet of women : When for ten minutes already the fourwheel had stood at the gateway, He, like a god, came leaving his ample Olympian chamber."

And here is a Highland dance, in which Airlie again figures described with all the humour and force of a modern Homer : "Him rivalling Hobbes, briefest-kilted of heroes

Enters, 0 stoutest, 0 rashest of creatures, mere fool of a Saxon, Skill-less of philabeg, skill-less of reel too,—the whirl and the twirl o't : Him see I frisking, and whisking, and ever at swifter gyration Under brief curtain revealing broad acres—not of broad cloth. Him see I there and the Piper—the Piper what vision beholds not ? Him and his Honour and Arthur, with Janet our Piper, and is it, Is it, 0 marvel of marvels ! he too in the maze of the mazy, Skipping, and tripping, tho' stately, tho' languid, with head on one shoulder,

Airlie, with sight of the waistcoat the golden-haired Katie consoling ? Katie, who simple and comely, and smiling, and blushing as ever,

What though she wear on that neck a blue kerchief remembered as

Philip's,

Seems in her maidenly freedom to need small consolement of waistcoats 1" Or take the description of Sir Hector's speech at the Clansmen's dinner, which is rich in Homeric metaphor as well as modern humour : "Bid me not, grammar defying. repeat from grammar-defiers Long constructions strange and plusquam-thucydid4an, Tell, how as sudden torrent in time of speat in the mountain Hurries six ways at once, and takes at last to the roughest, Or as the practised rider at Astley's or Franconrs Skilfully, boldly bestrides many steeds at once in the gallop, Crossing from this to that, with one leg here, one yonder, So, less skilful, but equally bold, and wild as the torrent, All through sentences six at a time, unsuspecting of syntax,

Hurried the lively good-will and garrulous tale of Sir Hector." Not, however, by such passages as these can be measured the depth and fulness of Mr. Clough's poetic nature. We have said that in his dread of the romantic school, and his longing for that antique type of nobility in which the simpler and more homely tasks are assoeiated with classical grace and dignity, he had evidently borrowed much from Goethe. But his mind had been also deeply influenced by the very different poetry of Wordsworth, in this strong love of a frugal, hardy, and simple industry, RS the highest school of human character. And perhaps, too, in spite of his studied preference of Aristotle to Plato, of common sense to what he thought idealism, of what is common to what is high, the deep and sometimes transcen- dental musings of Wordsworth's meditative mind had a charm for him of which he was almost ashamed. At all events, there is a gleam of transcendental depth and subtlety here and again in this poem, shyly, almost apologetically put forth, and scarcely put forth but to be withdrawn. The lines in which Elspie confesses her love for Philip, the radical poet, are couched in a very different key from that of Goethe's naturalistic school,—a different and, we think, a

higher key : .

"Well,—she answered, Quietly, after her fashion, still knitting,—Well, I think of it. Yes,—I don't know, Mr. Philip,—but only it feels to me strangely Like to the high new bridge, they used to build at, below there, Over the burn and glen on the road. You won't understand me. But I keep saying in my mind—this long time slowly with trouble I have been building myself, up, up, and toilfully raising, Just like as if the bridge were to do itself without masons, Painfully getting myself upraised one stone on another, All one side I mean ; and now! see on the other

Just such another fabric uprising, better and stronger, . Close to me, coming to join me : and then I sometimes fancy,— Sometimes I find myself dreaming at nights about arches and bridges,— Sometimes I dream of a great invisible hand coming down, and Dropping the great key-stone in the middle : there in my dreaming, There I feel the great key-stone coming in and through it

Feel the other part—all the other stones of? the archway,

Joined into mine with a queer happy sense of completeness tingling All the way up from the other side's basement-stones in the water, Through the very grains of mine :—just like, when the steel, that you showed us Moved to the magnet, it seemed a feeling got hold of them both. But This is confusion and nonsense. I am mixing all things I can think of. And you won't understand me, Mr. Philip."

This is a definite addition to the great doctrine of the poem, that woman, like flowers, must be "rooted in earth" to be either beautiful or useful—a definite addition, and a noble addition ; here we have something of Wordsworth's conception of the poet : "The outward shows of sky and earth, • Of hill and valley he has viewed ;

And impulses of deeper birth

i Have come to him in solitude."

There are these "impulses of deeper birth," struggling with the sober naturalism of Mr. Clough's chosen school of thought, hire and there even in this poem, but far more markedly in the ".A.mba4.valia." Still, the great sea, and the wide omnipresent sunlight, are his fAvourite symbols of what is divine; what is broad, bright, and simple, rather than what is lofty, mysterious, and dim. There is no passage more 7 characteristic of the stately simplicity of his genius than the f 'wing noble lines, in which Philip describes in his turn the trans,'

effect 0. effect of the new influence on his heart : "But as the light of day enters some'populous city, Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly daystreak signal,

High and low, the misusers of night, shaming out the gas lamps,—

All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearness, Which, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous access Permeates far and pierces, to very cellars lying in Narrow high back-lane, and court and alley of alleys : He that goes forth to his walk, while speeding to the suburb, Sees sights only peaceful and pure ; as, labourers settling Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumber; Humble market-carts, corning-in, bringing-in, not only Flower, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the country Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers; soon after Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters Up at the windows or down, letting-in the air by the doorway ;

School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel,

fHampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly tripping; Early clerk anon turning out to stroll, or it may be Meet his sweetheart —waiting behind the garden-gate there ; Merchant on his grass-plat haply, bare-headed; and now by this time Little child bringing breakfast to father' that sits on the timber There by the scaffolding ; see, she waits for the can beside him : Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires :

So that the whole great wicked artificial civilized fabric,—

AU its unfinished houses, lots for sale, and railway outworks,— Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty : — —Such—in me, and to me, and on me the love of Elspie !"

Here we must close our notice of a truly noble poem—not without threads of unhealthy sentiment—but still broad, bright, buoyant, and tender. Reluctantly at last, and sadly, we must lay down the only adequate monument of an unexpanded genius,—the richest though not the most perfect specimen of that vein of simple, and yet deep, full music, of which so few snatches are now left us.