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    1146 THE I/EADER, r [Saturday,

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    There is a series of little treatises an...

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    SCHOOLS OF POETS Y. Poems. By Matthew Ar...

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    In The Same Review There Is A Remarkable...

    the worse , we should say , has been the reason . From one father of the church we leam that God was obliged to make the human body cruciform , because the soul was to be redeemed upon the cross ; from another , that since there are but four quarters of the world from which the wind can set , there cannot be more than four gospels , to blow immortality on men . Mediaeval logicians explain the triplicity of the syllogism by . the three persons in the Trinity ; and there is no end to the things accounted for by the name and number of the . Apocalyptic beast . "

    1146 The I/Eader, R [Saturday,

    1146 THE I / EADER , r [ Saturday ,

    There Is A Series Of Little Treatises An...

    There is a series of little treatises announced for publication next year , Orr s Circle of the Sciences , to set forth in popular language the fundamental principles of the sciences ; the great name of Owen , and the respected names of Ansted , Jaediste , and . Tennant at once guarantee it as worthy of support . There is only one thing in the programme which looks suspicious , and that is the hint of making Science degenerate into the miserable twaddle called ] N " atural Theology—a suspicion which

    assumes a graver form in our minds from the fact of the editor talking in his prospectus of a " science of Teleology , or that which relates to the power and wisdom of a Personal Omnipotence . " If that is more than a perorating phrase , meant to flatter the prejudices of many , it betokens an alarming ignorance of what is science in an editor of a scientific series . We wish this Series to succeed ; the greater its success the more we shall rejoice j and because we wish it well , we indicate a danger .

    Schools Of Poets Y. Poems. By Matthew Ar...

    SCHOOLS OF POETS Y . Poems . By Matthew Arnold . A New Edition . Price 6 s . Longman and Co . It is with individuals as with nations , the baffled turbulence of Youth subsides into the calm acquiescence of Age , but in both the ideal is placed beyond the Present . Jean Paid has said , " Keiner ist mit der Zeit zuirieden : das heisst die Jiinglinge halten die Kiinftige fur idealer als die Gegenwartige , die Alten die Vergangene , " ( None are content with the age : the young believe the Future , the old the Past to be the ideal era . ) And with this we may connect what Groethe says of all men being Radicals in their youth , and Conservatives in their old age . " We see a Goethe and a Schiller escaping from the notoriety of the " storm and stress period" which they had created , into Grecian classicality , just as we see the unrestrained and " chartered libertinism" of the Elizabethan

    period changing to the cJassicality of Charles and Anne , which in its turn was to be set aside by a " new school ; " and that new school , now old , will perhaps have to give place to another revival of the classical : indications whereof-may be read in the vehement protests against Tennyson and Alexander Smith , as also in the artistic strivings of some poets , Arnold among the number . Scorn of the past we hold to bo " as unwise as scorn of " our wondrous Mother-Age ; " but with whatever reverence and retrospective longing the Past is regarded , it should always be regarded as past : it should have historical , not absolute significance : it is our Ancestiy , and not our Life . And as the retention in our organism of the elements which have lived is in itself a fatal source of destruction , poisoning the very life these elements once served , so in the onward progression of Humanity the old elements must pass away , transmitting to successors the work they had to perform :

    " Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt !" Matthew Arnold , in the Preface to this new edition of his poems , defends himself against those critics Avho bid him "leave the exhausted past , and fix his thoughts upon the present . " It seems to him that his critics know very little of what they are talking about . Whatever he may once have thought of " Our Age , " it is clear ha docs not now regard it as so fruitful in poetry as the olden time ; and all he says on this point is worthy of attention : — "What arc the eternal objects of Poctiy , among all nations , and at all times ? They are actions ; human actions ; posseting an inherent interest in themselves , and which arc to be communicated in an interesting mariner by the art of the Poet . Vainly will the latter imagine that he has everything in his own power ; that he can make an intrirmically inferior action equally delightful with a more excellent ono by Inn treatment of it : lie may indeed compel uh to admire his skill , but hi . s work will possess , within itself , : ui incurable defect

    "The Poet , then , has in the fiint place to select an excellent action ; and what actions an ; the most excellent ? Those , certainly , which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human aflectionM : to those elementary feelings which HuuBiat permanently in the race , and which arc independent of time . These feelings aro permanent and the . same ; that which interests them iH permanent and tho same also . The inodernnesK or antiquity of an action , therefore , haa nothing to do with its fitness for poetical representation ; this depends upon its inherent ciualitieH the of nature

    To elementary part our , to our passions , that which in grail , andpas-Hionate is eternally intending ; and interesting solel y in proportion to its greatness and to itH passion . A . great human action of a thousand yearn ago in more interesting to it than a Hinaller human action of to-day , even though upon the representation of tins last tho moot consummate skill inay have been expended and though it lias the advantage of appealing by its modern lanmu . go familiar manners , anil contemporary allusions , to all our transient feelinfs ' and interesta These , however , have no right to demand of a poetical work that it Hhall Katisfy them ; their claims are to be directed elsewhere . IV . etical works belong to tho domain of our permanent passions : lot them interest these , and the voice of all subordinate claims upon them is at once silenced

    " Achilles , rrometbous , CJlytcnmestra , Dido what modern poem preHonts nor-HonageHas interesting , even to us modern ,- ) , as those personages of an ' oxliaiisted p . iHtr We have the donieHtio epio dealing with tint details of modern life which P » hh daily under our eyon ; avo have poems repnw-nting modern p . irHonarfes in contact with the probleiim of modern life , moral , intellectual , and social thoHo works have been produced hjr poets tho most distinguished of their nation and time ; yet I fuarleiwly assert , that Hermann and Dorothea , Ohildc Harold Joceivn Tho Excursion , leave the reader cold in comparison with tho effect produced uimn him by the latter hooks of tho Iliad , by ( he Orestea , or by tho episode of Di , | o And why iH this ? Simply bociuino in the three latter case ' s the action is greater tho personages nobler , tho situations more intense : and this is tho true baais of tho intercut in u poetical work , and this alone .

    "It may bo urged , howovor , that past actions may bo interesting in thonuiolvcH but that they aro not to bo adopted by the modern ' . Poet , because it in impossible for him to havo thorn clearly present to law own mind , and he cannot therefore

    feel them deeply , nor represent them forcibly . But this is not necesaarily the case . The externals of a past action , indeed , he cannot know with the precision of a contemporary ; but his business is with its essentials . The outward man of CEdipus or of Macbeth , the houses in which they lived , the ceremonies of their courts , he cannot accurately figure to himself ; but neither do they essentially concern him . His business is with their inward man ; with their . feelings aiid behaviour in certain tragic situations , which , engage their passions as men ; these have in . them nothing local and casual : they are as accessible to the modern Poet as to a contemporary . ¦

    " The date of an action , then , signifies nothing : the action itself , its selection and construction , this is what is all-important . This the Greeks understood far more clearly than we do . The radical difference between their poetical theory and ours consists , as it appears to me , in this : that , with them , the poetical character of the action in itself , and the conduct of it , was the first consideration ; with us attention is fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action . They regarded the whole ; we regard the parts . With them , the action predominated over the expression of it ; with us the expression predominates over the action . Not that they failed in expression or were inattentive to it ; on the contrary , they are the highest models of expression , the unapproached masters of the grand style : but their expression is so excellent because it is so admirably kept in its right degree of prominence ; because it is so simple and so well subordinated ; because it draws its force directly from the pregnancy of the matter which it conveys . "

    There is excellent matter amid some that is questionable here . "We remark , in passing , that he maintains opinions respecting the Greek and Latin poets , which are traditional , but which , to our experience , are very far removed from the truth . We will not , however , encumber the argument by questioning his illustrations ; let us grant for a moment that the Greeks are what he describes , and quote his criticism on the contrasted defects of modern poets : —^ " We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and pasages ; not for the sake of producing any total-rmpresssion . We have critics who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions , to the language about the action , not to the action itself . I verily think that the majority pfthem do not in their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total-impression to be derived from a poem at all , or to be demanded from a poet ; they think the term

    a commonplace of metaphysical criticism . They will permit the Poet to select any action he pleases , and to suffer that action to go as it will , provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing , and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images . That is , they permit him to leave their poetical sense ungratified , provided that he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity . Of his neglecting to gratify these , there is little danger ; he needs rather to he warned against the danger of attempting to gratify these alone ; he needs rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to everything else ; so to treat Jhis , as to permit its inherent excellences to develope themselves , without interruption from the intrusion of his personal peculiarities : most fortunate , when he most entirely succeeds in effacing himself , and in enabling a noble action to subsist as it did in nature . "

    True , most true , and needful to be said . But when he lays it down aB a canon that the " highest problem of an art is to imitate actions , " he seems to us either to employ an abusive extension of the term " action , " or else to misconceive the problem and the function of Art . Indeed , one may say that Art is only an imitation of actions in its earliest and rudest forms . He himself is forced to admit that according to this canon l ^ aust is not a great work of Art : — "Wonderful passages as it contains , and in spite of the unsurpassed beauty of the scenes which relate to Margaret , Faust itself , judged as a whole , and judged strictly as a poetical work , is defective : its illustrious author , the greatest poet of modern times , the greatest critic of all times , would have been the first to acknowledge it ; he only defended his work , indeed , by asserting it to be ' something incommensurable . '"

    A canon which excludesJFaust , must ipso facto bo suspicious . But Mr . Arnold ' s friends , the Ancients , will also fare badly if this rule be applied to them ; even among the dramatists , in spito of action being the principium et fons of the drama , one meets with a JPhiloetetes for example , of which no ono will say that the interest or beauty lies in the action ; and if wo turn to the Divine Comedy we shall find it aa defective as Faust according to this rule . Actions arc not ends in Art , but means to an end ; they arc not for their own sake , but for the sake of the thoughts and emotions they excite in us . Admirable as means , they aro still only means . If tho poot can reach his end through other moans we do not tell him he has sinned against Art .

    Turn to the other forma of Art , and the incorrectness of the canon will he obvious : it ia not through action that Music readies its effect ; it is not through the representation of any story that Sculpture ; necessarily excites in uh tho emotions proper to it . Titian's portrait of a " Young Man with a Glove" is a liner work of Art than llaydon ' s " Judgment of Solomon ; " although one has no story , no action , tho other a noble story , and a situation of deep intercut . It may be answered that liny don has ill-executed his idea ; but this drawn tho question from tho " choice of a subject , " to thai ; of " representation ; " ami while it is a truism to assert that execution being equal , rank will depend on tho greutnosB ot the thing represented , it in a falsiKin to assert that the rank of a work ot Art depends on its idea—its conception . Not that Mr . Arnold asserts this , but others do who start , from the hiiikio point .

    Tfc is to tho classics Mr . Arnold would havo our poets turn for guidance . ' Dissatisfied with tho Present , and having no vision of it / an an ideal life , 1 »« is also dissatisfied , with its utterances in Art : All ! how unliko To that largo utterance of the early gods ! Overlooking tho fact that if a man has something of his n . go to Hay or fling , Home expression by which ho can make articulate whul ; is iimrtioulaio ia tho mass or class of which ho is ono , lie will imperiously say or «»«• # it without much regard to " models" at all , Mr . Arnold tolls us :

    " Tho oonfusion of the present , times iH groat , tho multitude of voiooh coun-Holling ( lifFuront things bewildering , tho nunihur of existing works capable <> attracting a young writer ' h attention and of becoming his models , immense : y ! ' ho wants in a hand to guide him through the eonf union , a voico to proscribe toJ 1 " 11 the jiim which he should keep in view , and to explain to him that the- value ol »•' literary worka which offer thoinnolvefl to his attention is relative to their powor «

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 26, 1853, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_26111853/page/18/