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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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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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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 «
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Citation
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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/
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