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Replagegos Omnifurian Directory 14
Page 09
Besides "Tristram and Iseult," we select for especial mention out of this second volume, "A Farewell," "Self-Dependence," "Morality "; two very highly-finished pieces called "The Youth of Nature," and "The Youth of Man," expressing two opposite states of feeling, which we all of us recognize, and yet which, as far as we know, have never before found their way into language; and "A Summer Night," a small meditative poem, containing one passage, which, although not perfect--for, if the metre had been more exact, the effect would, in our opinion, have been very much enhanced--is, nevertheless, the finest that Mr. Arnold has yet written.
But while we allow with Mr. Arnold that the theory will best be learnt from the ancients, we cannot allow, as he seems to desire us to allow, that the practice of it was confined to them, or recommend as he does the disproportionate study, still less the disproportionate imitation of them. All great artists at all times have followed the same method, for greatness is impossible without it. The Italian painters are never weary of the Holy Family. The matter of Dante's poem lay before him in the creed of the whole of Europe. Shakespeare has not invented the substance of any one of his plays. And the "weighty experience" and "composure of judgment" with which the study of the ancients no doubt does furnish "those who habitually practise it," may be obtained we believe by the study of the thoughts of all great men of all ages; by the study of life in any age, so that our scope be broad enough.
There is something in the Anglo-Saxon temperament which is on the whole unfavourable to movements and groups; the great figures of the Victorian time in art and literature have been solitary men, anarchical as regards tradition, strongly individualistic, working on their own lines without much regard for schools or conventions. The Anglo-Saxon is deferential, but not imitative; he has a fancy for doing things in his own way. Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron-were there ever four contemporary poets so little affected by one another's work? Think of the phrase in which Scott summed up his artistic creed, saying that he had succeeded, in so far as he had succeeded, by a "hurried frankness of composition," which was meant to please young and eager people. It is true that Wordsworth had a solemn majesty about his work, practised a sort of priestly function, never averse to entertaining ardent visitors by conducting them about his grounds, and showing them where certain poems had been engendered. But Wordsworth, as Fitz-Gerald truly said, was proud, not vain--proud like the high-hung cloud or the solitary peak. He felt his responsibility, and desired to be felt rather than to be applauded.
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