it best represented "the main movement of mind" in his time. "It might be fairly urged," he said, "that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigor and abundance than Browning; yet, because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had theirs." He has had his turn, not as a poet equal to Tennyson and Browning (a position that he did not claim), but as an outstanding if not the "best" representative in poetry of the "main movement of mind" in the third quarter of the century. The trend of that period was intellectual. As Arnold himself pointed out in his essays, the poetry of the earlier nineteenth century had been relatively wanting in substance; splendid in energy and aspiration, the "Romantic" poets from Wordsworth to Keats really did not think enough, did not know enough. The Oxford Movement in the second quarter of the century, again, despite its profound sense of the needs of the human spirit, seemed to turn its back to the triumphing advance of reason. Both Tennyson and Browning, however, contributed largely to the intellectual solidity of poetry, and so prepared a way for writers like Clough and Arnold, whose verse, while it is too uniformly reflective and speculative, for that very reason serves as a clear mirror of the mind of the age in which it was produced. It was an age of science (Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in the middle of Arnold's poetic period) and of the scientific mind, observant, exploratory, logical. This is the mind of Arnold, or, rather, the form and habit of his mind. For, while accepting the current mode of thought, Arnold infused in it much of the best feeling and thought of the past. Alien from the Oxford movement, he nevertheless manifests its backward regard. He is far from being a mere advocate of reason, for his mind lived in the processes of history, seeking light and discipline in racial experience; and finding it, especially, in the Bible and the institutional life of the church, on the one hand, and in the beauty He and harmony of the ancient Greek civilization on the other. Assured that the claims of reason must be met, he was equally assured that the apparently divergent claims of imagination, of feeling, of the moral sense must also be met. was clear-sighted enough to know that his own attempt to reconcile them must be premature; but dealing with the highest matters in the spirit of the judge, he admirably stated the problem. Arnold's intellectual growth, even more than Clough's shows the influence of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, — his father. Through that earnest Puritan and sound classical scholar, Arnold was early brought into vital contact with the two great traditions, Christian and classical, that were to provide most of the substance of his thought. They were both still regnant at Oxford, whither he proceeded in 1841, having won, like Clough four years earlier, a scholarship at Balliol College; and after graduation he was elected, like Clough, to an Oriel fellowship. After a short period of teaching at Rugby, and a brief term of service as secretary to Lord Lansdowne, the Liberal leader, he became in 1851 an Inspector of Schools. This position he held for virtually the remainder of his life, more than three decades, visiting schools in England and on the Continent, working hard and conscientiously in an occupation that, whatever its importance, seems in his case to have meant a deplorable misdirection of energies, under the plain need of a livelihood. His family and social life, at the same time, was peculiarly gracious. What lay in him of higher powers, we may infer from his poems, his critical essays (mainly the product of his professorship of poetry at Oxford, which he held for ten years), and his books in criticism of society and religion. Of all of these, save perhaps his poems, it may be said that, excellent as they are, they would have been better had he been less hampered by a body-and-mind wearying routine. As for the poems, they were largely the work of his youth, and his last volume appeared in 1867. Whatever the causes diminishing emotion and imagination, the growth of his critical powers, absorption in the problems of his age, public service in the cause of education - the fact is plain that Arnold at length abandoned the craft of the poet; returning to it only occasionally, as if for the expression of a part of his nature that, while suffering neglect, could never die. THE FORSAKEN MERMAN This poem suffices to show that Arnold could give beautiful shape to material with only the slightest intellectual content. His material in this case an old legend that may be found in the ballads of many nations suggests the magically indefinite treatment that it might have received at the hands of the author of the "Ancient Mariner," or of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," or of "The Lady of Shalott." But Arnold, with his leaning toward classical art, avoids the indefinite; he desires to see the thing as it plainly is to see and present his narrative, his characters, his setting, faithfully and simply, without admixture of highly colored images, and of complex, elusive turns of phrase and feeling. And pictorial though his handling is, he seeks to fuse all the elements of the picture with the character of the Merman and his children. These mythical beings, while they remain alien from humanity, are themselves humanized, conceived with such emotions such attachments, such pathetic experience as will serve to bring them within the range of human sympathy. The conclusion of the poem, where the tenser emotion is represented by shorter lines, has a particularly captivating melody. QUIET WORK Arnold's carefully controlled poetic energy did not require the concentrating limits of the sonnet, but found that form, along with ode and elegy, a congenial mode of expression. This sonnet and the one that follows give the essentials of his philosophy of nature. They contain his answer to the question brought to the foreground of our modern consciousness by Wordsworth and his contemporaries - the question of the relation of man and nature. Deeply responsive to Wordsworth, as he shows in his poems and in his essay on Wordsworth in Essays in Criticism (which the student of Arnold should not fail to read), he is a disciple with a difference. And the difference is fundamental. The title of the present sonnet phrases the "two duties" of line 3. The union of the two may have been suggested by Goethe's well-known precept: "Ohne Hast ohne Rast" (Without haste, without rest.). (498.) 11. thy sleepless ministers move on: the active principle is nature. IN HARMONY WITH NATURE A Here, retaining (line 4) the moral lesson of quiet work, Arnold views at large man's relation to nature, emphasizing the differences. To Wordsworth, nature had been "the soul Of all my moral being" ("Tintern Abbey," lines 110-111, page 8). To Arnold, however, nature is not parallel to man, much less equivalent to man. great deal may be learned from her quiet orderliness, in our age of haste and restlessness; but there is a point where she ends and human nature passes beyond. Her being is in man, but there is more in man, a moral potentiality of which she knows nothing, and upon which depends his attainment of his highest good. The sentimental devotees of nature (many of whom in the middle century were professed Wordsworthians) forget this; falsely enamoured of nature, they are really her slaves (line 14). Originally the sonnet was inscribed "To an Independent Preacher, who preached that we should be ‘in Harmony with Nature.'" of the European coast to the Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor opposite"; and that the name Asia, literally “marshy," was suggested to the Greeks by "the muddy fens of the rivers of Asia Minor." Tmolus hill is a mountain range near Smyrna, one of the cities that claimed to be the birthplace of blind Homer. (499.) 6-8. that halting slave shamed him: Epictetus, the great, lame Roman philosopher, who had been a slave. When Vespasian's son Domitian exiled the philosophers from Rome in 89 A.D., he proceeded to Nicopolis. His pupil Arrian compiled the Discourses of Stoical doctrine that Arnold loved; their tone is vigorous and cheerful. 9-14. My special thanks and its child: Sophocles; the last, and in Arnold's view the greatest, of the three chief Athenian dramatists, notable for his ideal harmony. He composed dramas for some sixty years, writing "Oedipus at Colonus" in his ninetieth year (line 10). He was a native of Colonus (line 14). The frequently quoted twelfth line of the sonnet, a succinct expression of the spirit of Arnold's own outlook on the world, claims rather too much for the master of tragedy, whose vision was steady but perhaps scarcely whole. minds of thinking men with fresh vividness. These two sonnets state Arnold's thought during the crisis, and also his prevailing view of society. Complementary to each other, the one showing the sound element in liberalism, the other the sound element in conservatism, they indicate the conflict in the poet's mind; and through their arrangement - conservatism saying the last word they manifest the issue of that conflict. - For Arnold's view of the English political parties - the Conservatives, with their mental inflexibility, and the Liberals, especially the radical Liberals, with their devotion to abstract rights and their materialistic objects — the reader should turn to the fine prose work, Culture and Anarchy, 1869. RELIGIOUS ISOLATION (500.) 5. Too fearful or too fond to play alone: Children may be forgiven (line 1) if, too fearful or too foolish to play alone, they seek to win the interest of the abstracted adult standing by. So we adults as Arnold pursues the idea are childishly fearful or foolish if we look to find in nature the same "holy secret" (line 9), the same "law" (line 12), that dwells in man. 14. Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers: With this thought, which sums up the poem, compare Emerson's lines: "There are two laws discrete, Law for man, and law for thing.” MEMORIAL VERSES For Arnold, the death of Wordsworth in 1850 was a momentous event. As a boy he had spent many holidays at his father's place on the Rotha stream near Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived. Early attached to that lovely country, he was later deeply stirred by the poetry of this man of quiet joy among so many melancholy contemporary poets. He acknowledged his debt in an essay on Wordsworth (see the note under "Quiet Work," above); in his selection of Wordsworth's poems, done with a fine critical sense; and in these "Memorial Verses." (500.) 6. Byron's - - death: When a youth, Arnold responded, like the boy Tennyson, to the poetic passion of Byron; and he ever retained an interest in characters who, like Byron, expressed the disillusionment of the times. On the other hand, in his late essay on Byron, he quoted approvingly Goethe's remark that "the moment he begins to reflect he is a child," a judgment more mildly stated in line 8 of this poem. 15. Goethe's death: In a letter written in 1864 Arnold links Goethe with Wordsworth and Byron, as in this poem; Goethe, he says, is great "in the line of human thought, Wordsworth in contemplation, Byron in that of passion." And in one of his essays he writes: "Goethe knew life and the world . . . much more comprehensively than Byron. He knew a great deal more of them, and he knew them much more as they really are." Goethe had large experience, large powers of observation, and deep critical insight; in the shifting age in which he lived (his years were 1749-1832) he was the sage "physician" (line 17), unerringly diagnosing its ailments (lines 20-22), and proposing as a refuge the high truth of art (line 28). His was the happiness of the majestic intellect, described by Arnold in lines (29-33) reminiscent of Virgil's lines (Georgics, II, 490-492) beginning "Felix qui potuit. . .," which may be translated: "Happy is he who has come to know the causes of things, and is thus above all fear and the dread march of fate and the roar of greedy Acheron." 38-39. song of Orpheus gloom: See note under Browning's “Eurydice to Orpheus," page 751, above. 48. as we lay at birth: Neither here nor in his essay on Wordsworth does Arnold regard his beloved poet as a great intellect or mystic or prophet: his distinction is his "healing power" (line 63), like that of nature herself. Moral and spiritual and supremely human — light and strength Arnold found in other "props" (see the sonnet "To a Friend," page 499, and the note). In Wordsworth he found simple, natural feeling, like that of childhood and youth the wonder of our "early world" (line 57), not the spiritual insight In his youth Arnold was drawn toward the disillusioned spirits- Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Byron, etc.— of the age out of which his own age developed. One of these writers was Senancour, a disciple of Rousseau, who died in 1846. He wrote Obermann, 1804, a romance in the form of letters, in which the hero expresses with great clearness the "malady of the age" (maladie du siècle): its emotional introversion, its desolating sense of spiritual emptiness, its vague but terrible melancholy. Himself more than touched with this malady, Arnold by self-discipline and "quiet work" rose above it to resignation and a courageous, if somewhat gray, faith in the spirit. 3. rack: broken clouds. 5-9. baths the Rhone: "This poem was conceived, and partly composed," says Arnold, "in the valley going down from the foot of the Gemmi Pass towards the Rhone." The Baths of Leuk are referred to. 47. but two: Compare the view of Wordsworth and Goethe in "Memorial Verses" (page 500). 58. Nature's plan: not merely of external nature, but rather of the Universe, the whole of reality. (502.) 89. the son of Thetis: Achilles. 103. the world's life: the higher, universal plane of life, attained by the impersonal study of self and of humanity. The phrase intends a contrast with the sense of the word "world" in the preceding stanza. 112. healing sights: sights of nature (such as those in the ensuing stanzas), bringing balm to wounded spirits, Cf. "Wordsworth's healing power" in "Memorial Verses," line 63 (page 501). (502.) 121. Lake Leman's waters: Lake Geneva; the Latin name, as in Byron and other poets. 132. Half of my life: the solitary life of reflection, in contrast with active life "in the world" (line 136). (503.) 143. Children of the Second Birth: See John, III, 1-21. But Arnold uses the image with what difference in denotation that appears from lines 143-155? 179. Capital of Pleasure: Paris. PROGRESS This is Arnold's comment on a hasty and wholesale rejection of traditional Christianity in the name of "progress." It should be compared with Clough's "Easter Day" poems. The modern short-sighted reason and addiction to action (lines 1720) are criticized by Arnold himself (the "some one" of line 21), willing that the Cross (line 27) should be abandoned as of old the carved gods were abandoned, but only in favor of a religion deeper even than traditional Christianity. Another voice, that of Jesus, follows, announcing a divine tolerance of any religion that really demands self-conquest and regeneration. Does our age, with its "pride of life” (line 46), possess such a religion? REVOLUTIONS The theme is the deepest of all revolutions, those in men's thoughts, ever changing and creating new civilizations. Compare the last stanza of Clough's "Ah! Yet Consider It Again!" (page 491). Each age states its conception of truth, contributing something but never grasping reality as a whole. Living in an age of rapid transition, Arnold was impressed with the impermanence of forms of thought. THE SECOND BEST The fifth stanza expresses Arnold's elevated critical sense, the final stanza his dominant criteria. What "first best" is implied by the title? life, With this poem compare the preceding, line 76 to the end. What is it that Arnold, contemplating the wonderful activity of nature (lines 13-14), seeks in the outer world? Is nature, to him, a refuge from an escape from the human problem, or what? To what extent does his attitude repeat that of Wordsworth? Recall particular passages in Wordsworth. 23-24. in my helpless cradle rural Pan: Arnold was born at Laleham, amid the simple lovely landscapes of the Thames valley. (507.) 41-42. The will · feel with others give: Here Arnold places side by side the idea of stoical resignation and the idea of a sympathetic bond between men. For Arnold's sympathies with men, see also "To a Republican Friend" (page 499); for Clough's, see "Dipsychus," Part Second, scene 2 (page 488). SELF-DEPENDENCE Compare with the foregoing poem, and with "Religious Isolation" (page 500). MORALITY The first two stanzas set forth the relation of spiritual insight and moral work. Then the poet contrasts the joyous activity of nature with man's earnest, even gloomy, striving; and finally, beneath this contrast, suggests an original kinship between man |