The hot baboon and ape
Climb chattering to the bush.
Climb chattering to the bush.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v02 - Aqu to Bag
" and therewith loosed
The victim's bonds, none staying him, so great
His presence was. Then, craving leave, he spake
## p. 829 (#247) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
829
Of life, which all can take, but none can give,
Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep,
Wonderful, dear and pleasant unto each,
Even to the meanest; yea, a boon to all
Where pity is, for pity makes the world
Soft to the weak and noble for the strong.
Unto the dumb lips of his flock he lent
Sad, pleading words, showing how man, who prays
For mercy to the 'gods, is merciless,
Being as god to those; albeit all life
Is linked and kin, and what we slay have given
Meek tribute of the milk and wool, and set
Fast trust upon the hands which murder them.
Also he spake of what the holy books
Do surely teach, how that at death some sink
To bird and beast, and these rise up to man
In wanderings of the spark which grows purged flame.
So were the sacrifice new sin, if so
The fated passage of a soul be stayed.
Nor, spake he, shall one wash his spirit clean
By blood; nor gladden gods, being good, with blood;
Nor bribe them, being evil; nay, nor lay
Upon the brow of innocent bound beasts
One hair's weight of that answer all must give
For all things done amiss or wrongfully,
Alone, each for himself, reckoning with that
The fixed arithmetic of the universe,
Which meteth good for good and ill or ill,
Measure for measure, unto deeds, words, thoughts;
Watchful, aware, implacable, unmoved;
Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.
Thus spake he, breathing words so piteous
With such high lordliness of ruth and right,
The priests drew back their garments o'er the hands
Crimsoned with slaughter, and the King came near,
Standing with clasped palms reverencing Buddha;
While still our Lord went on, teaching how fair
This earth were if all living things be linked
In friendliness of common use of foods,
Bloodless and pure; the golden grain, bright fruits,
Sweet herbs which grow for all, the waters wan,
Sufficient drinks and meats. Which, when these heard,
The might of gentleness so conquered them,
The priests themselves scattered their altar-flames
## p. 830 (#248) ############################################
830
EDWIN ARNOLD
And flung away the steel of sacrifice;
And through the land next day passed a decree
Proclaimed by criers, and in this wise graved
On rock and column:-" Thus the King's will is:
There hath been slaughter for the sacrifice
And slaying for the meat, but henceforth none
Shall spill the blood of life nor taste of flesh,
Seeing that knowledge grows, and life is one,
And mercy cometh to the merciful. "
So ran the edict, and from those days forth
Sweet peace hath spread between all living kind,
Man and the beasts which serve him, and the birds,
Of all those banks of Gunga where our Lord
Taught with his saintly pity and soft speech.
THE FAITHFULNESS OF YUDHISTHIRA
From The Great Journey,' in the Mahâbhârata
THE
HENCEFORTH alone the long-armed monarch strode,
Not looking back, - nay, not for Bhima's sake,-
But walking with his face set for the mount;
And the hound followed him, only the hound.
-
After the deathly sands, the Mount; and lo!
Sâkra shone forth, the God, filling the earth
And heavens with thunder of his chariot-wheels.
"Ascend," he said, "with me, Pritha's great son! "
But Yudhisthira answered, sore at heart
For those his kinsfolk, fallen on the way:-
"O Thousand-eyed, O Lord of all the gods,
Give that my brothers come with me, who fell!
Not without them is Swarga sweet to me.
She, too, the dear and kind and queenly, — she
Whose perfect virtue Paradise must crown,
Grant her to come with us! Dost thou grant this? "
-
—
-
The God replied: "In heaven thou shalt see
Thy kinsman and the Queen - these will attain
And Krishna. Grieve no longer for thy dead,
Thou chief of men! their mortal covering stripped,
These have their places: but to thee the gods
Allot an unknown grace; Thou shalt go up,
Living and in thy form, to the immortal homes. "
## p. 831 (#249) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
831
But the King answered:-"O thou Wisest One,
Who know'st what was, and is, and is to be,
Still one more grace! This hound hath ate with me,
Followed me, loved me: must I leave him now? »
"Monarch. " spake Indra. "thou art now as we,
Deathless, divine; thou art become a god;
Glory and power and gifts celestial,
And all the joys of heaven are thine for aye:
What hath a beast with these? Leave here thy hound. "
Yet Yudhisthira answered:-"O Most High,
O, Thousand-eyed and wisest! can it be
That one exalted should seem pitiless?
Nay, let me lose such glory: for its sake
I cannot leave one living thing I loved. "
Then sternly Indra spake:-"He is unclean,
And into Swarga such shall enter not.
The Krodhavasha's wrath destroys the fruits
Of sacrifice, if dogs defile the fire.
Bethink thee, Dharmaraj; quit now this beast!
That which is seemly is not hard of heart. "
Still he replied: "'Tis written that to spurn
A suppliant equals in offense to slay
A twice-born; wherefore, not for Swarga's bliss
Quit I, Mahendra, this poor clinging dog,-
So without any hope or friend save me,
So wistful, fawning for my faithfulness;
So agonized to die, unless I help
Who among men was called steadfast and just. "
-
Quoth Indra:-"Nay, the altar-flame is foul
Where a dog passeth; angry angels sweep
The ascending smoke aside, and all the fruits
Of offering, and the merit of the prayer
Of him whom a hound toucheth. Leave it here!
He that will enter heaven must enter pure.
Why didst thou quit thy brethren on the way,
And Krishna, and the dear-loved Draupadí,
Attaining, firm and glorious, to this Mount
Through perfect deeds, to linger for a brute?
Hath Yudhisthira vanquished self, to melt
With one poor passion at the door of bliss?
-
## p. 832 (#250) ############################################
832
EDWIN ARNOLD
Stay'st thou for this, who didst not stay for them,-
Draupadí, Bhima? »
But the King yet spake :-
"Tis known that none can hurt or help the dead.
They, the delightful ones, who sank and died,
Following my footsteps, could not live again
Though I had turned, therefore I did not turn;
But could help profit, I had stayed to help.
There be four sins, O Sâkra, grievous sins:
The first is making suppliants despair,
The second is to slay a nursing wife,
The third is spoiling Brahmans' goods by force,
The fourth is injuring an ancient friend.
These four I deem not direr than the crime,
If one, in coming forth from woe to weal,
Abandon any meanest comrade then. "
―――
Straight as he spake, brightly great Indra smiled;
Vanished the hound, and in its stead stood there
The Lord of Death and Justice, Dharma's self!
Sweet were the words which fell from those dread lips,
Precious the lovely praise:-"O thou true King,
Thou that dost bring to harvest the good seed
Of Pandu's righteousness; thou that hast ruth
As he before, on all which lives! -O son!
I tried thee in the Dwaita wood, what time
They smote thy brothers, bringing water; then
Thou prayedst for Nakula's life-tender and just-
Nor Bhima's nor Arjuna's, true to both,
To Madri as to Kunti, to both queens.
Hear thou my word! Because thou didst not mount
This car divine, lest the poor hound be shent
Who looked to thee, lo! there is none in heaven
Shall sit above thee, King! - Bhârata's son!
Enter thou now to the eternal joys,
Living and in thy form. Justice and Love
Welcome thee, Monarch! thou shalt throne with us. "
## p. 833 (#251) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
833
HE AND SHE
"SHE
HE is dead! " they said to him: «< come away;
Kiss her and leave her,- thy love is clay! "
They smoothed her tresses of dark-brown hair;
On her forehead of stone they laid it fair;
Over her eyes that gazed too much
They drew the lids with a gentle touch;
With a tender touch they closed up well
The sweet thin lips that had secrets to tell;
About her brows and beautiful face
They tied her veil and her marriage lace,
And drew on her white feet her white-silk shoes,
Which were the whitest no eye could choose,—
And over her bosom they crossed her hands,
"Come away! " they said, "God understands. "
And there was silence, and nothing there
But silence, and scents of eglantere,
And jasmine, and roses and rosemary;
And they said, "As a lady should lie, lies she. "
And they held their breath till they left the room,
With a shudder, to glance at its stillness and gloom.
But he who loved her too well to dread
The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead,
He lit his lamp, and took the key
And turned it-alone again, he and she.
He and she; but she would not speak,
Though he kissed, in the old place, the quiet cheek.
He and she; yet she would not smile,
Though he called her the name she loved erewhile.
He and she; still she did not move
To any passionate whisper of love.
Then he said, "Cold lips and breasts without breath,
Is there no voice, no language of death,
"Dumb to the ear and still to the sense,
But to heart and to soul distinct, intense?
11-53
## p. 834 (#252) ############################################
834
EDWIN ARNOLD
"See, now; I will listen with soul, not ear:
What was the secret of dying, dear?
"Was it the infinite wonder of all
That you ever could let life's flower fall?
"Or was it a greater marvel to feel
The perfect calm o'er the agony steal?
"Was the miracle greater to find how deep
Beyond all dreams sank downward that sleep?
"Did life roll back its record dear,
And show, as they say it does, past things clear?
"And was it the innermost heart of the bliss
To find out so, what a wisdom love is?
"O perfect dead! O dead most dear!
I hold the breath of my soul to hear.
"I listen as deep as to horrible hell,
As high as to heaven, and you do not tell.
"There must be pleasure in dying, sweet,
To make you so placid from head to feet!
"I would tell you, darling, if I were dead,
And 'twere your hot tears upon my brow shed, -
-
"I would say, though the Angel of Death had laid
His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid,
"You should not ask vainly, with streaming eyes,
Which of all deaths was the chiefest surprise.
"The very strangest and suddenest thing
Of all the surprises that dying must bring. "
Ah, foolish world! O most kind dead!
Though he told me, who will believe it was said?
Who will believe that he heard her say,
With the sweet, soft voice, in the dear old way,
"The utmost wonder is this, I hear
And see you, and love you, and kiss you, dear;
"And am your angel, who was your bride,
And know that though dead, I have never died. "
## p. 835 (#253) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
835
AFTER DEATH
From Pearls of the Faith'
He made life-and He takes it—but instead
Gives more: praise the Restorer, Al-Mu'hid!
E who died at Azan sends
This to comfort faithful friends:-
HE
Faithful friends! it lies, I know,
Pale and white and cold as snow;
And ye say, "Abdullah's dead! "
Weeping at my feet and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your cries and prayers,
Yet I smile and whisper this:-
"I am not that thing you kiss;
Cease your tears and let it lie:
It was mine, it is not I. "
Sweet friends! what the women lave
For its last bed in the grave
Is a tent which I am quitting,
Is a garment no more fitting,
Is a cage from which at last
Like a hawk my soul hath passed.
Love the inmate, not the room;
The wearer, not the garb; the plume
Of the falcon, not the bars
Which kept him from the splendid stars.
Loving friends! be wise, and dry
Straightway every weeping eye:
What ye lift upon the bier
Is not worth a wistful tear.
'Tis an empty sea-shell, one
Out of which the pearl is gone.
The shell is broken, it lies there;
The pearl, the all, the soul, is here.
'Tis an earthen jar whose lid
Allah sealed, the while it hid
That treasure of His treasury,
A mind which loved Him: let it lie!
Let the shard be earth's once more,
Since the gold shines in His store!
## p. 836 (#254) ############################################
836
EDWIN ARNOLD
Allah Mu'hid, Allah most good!
Now Thy grace is understood:
Now my heart no longer wonders
What Al-Barsakh is, which sunders
Life from death, and death from Heaven:
Nor the "Paradises Seven "
Which the happy dead inherit;
Nor those "birds" which bear each spirit
Toward the Throne, "green birds and white. "
Radiant, glorious, swift their flight!
Now the long, long darkness ends.
Yet ye wail, my foolish friends,
While the man whom ye call "dead"
In unbroken bliss instead
Lives, and loves you: lost, 'tis true
By any light which shines for you;
But in light ye cannot see
Of unfulfilled felicity.
And enlarging Paradise;
Lives the life that never dies.
Farewell, friends! Yet not farewell;
Where I am, ye, too, shall dwell.
I am gone before your face
A heart-beat's time, a gray ant's pace.
When ye come where I have stepped,
Ye will marvel why ye wept;
Ye will know, by true love taught,
That here is all, and there is naught.
Weep awhile, if ye are fain,—
Sunshine still must follow rain!
Only not at death, for death-
Now I see is that first breath
Which our souls draw when we enter
Life, that is of all life centre.
Know ye Allah's law is love,
Viewed from Allah's Throne above;
Be ye firm of trust, and come
Faithful onward to your home!
"La Allah illa Allah! Yea,
Mu'hid! Restorer! Sovereign! " say!
He who died at Azan gave
This to those that made his grave.
## p. 837 (#255) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
837
SOLOMON AND THE ANT
From Pearls of the Faith'
Say Ar-Raheen! call Him «Compassionate,»
For He is pitiful to small and great.
T'S
s written that the serving angels stand
Beside God's throne, ten myriads on each hand,
Waiting, with wings outstretched and watchful eyes,
To do their Master's heavenly embassies.
Quicker than thought His high commands they read,
Swifter than light to execute them speed;
Bearing the word of power from star to star,
Some hither and some thither, near and far.
And unto these naught is too high or low,
Too mean or mighty, if He wills it so;
Neither is any creature, great or small,
Beyond His pity, which embraceth all,
Because His eye beholdeth all which are;
Sees without search, and counteth without care.
Nor lies the babe nearer the nursing-place
Than Allah's smallest child to Allah's grace;
Nor any ocean rolls so vast that He
Forgets one wave of all that restless sea.
Thus it is written; and moreover told
How Gabriel, watching by the Gates of Gold,
Heard from the Voice Ineffable this word
Of twofold mandate uttered by the Lord:-
"Go earthward! pass where Solomon hath made
His pleasure-house, and sitteth there arrayed,
Goodly and splendid — whom I crowned the king.
For at this hour my servant doth a thing
Unfitting: out of Nisibis there came
A thousand steeds with nostrils all aflame
And limbs of swiftness, prizes of the fight;
Lo! these are led, for Solomon's delight,
Before the palace, where he gazeth now
Filling his heart with pride at that brave show;
So taken with the snorting and the tramp
Of his war-horses, that Our silver lamp
Of eve is swung in vain, Our warning Sun
Will sink before his sunset-prayer's begun;
:-
## p. 838 (#256) ############################################
838
EDWIN ARNOLD
So shall the people say, 'This king, our lord,
Loves more the long-maned trophies of his sword
Than the remembrance of his God! ' Go in!
Save thou My faithful servant from such sin.
"Also, upon the slope of Arafat,
Beneath a lote-tree which is fallen flat,
Toileth a yellow ant who carrieth home
Food for her nest, but so far hath she come
Her worn feet fail, and she will perish, caught
In the falling rain; but thou, make the way naught.
And help her to her people in the cleft
Of the black rock. "
Silently Gabriel left
The Presence, and prevented the king's sin,
And holp the little ant at entering in.
O Thou whose love is wide and great,
We praise Thee, "The Compassionate. »
THE AFTERNOON
G
From Pearls of the Faith'
He is sufficient, and He makes suffice;
Praise thus again thy Lord, mighty and wise.
OD is enough! thou, who in hope and fear
Toilest through desert-sands of life, sore tried,
Climb trustful over death's black ridge, for near
The bright wells shine: thou wilt be satisfied.
God doth suffice! O thou, the patient one,
Who puttest faith in Him, and none beside,
Bear yet thy load; under the setting sun
The glad tents gleam: thou wilt be satisfied.
By God's gold Afternoon! peace ye shall have:
Man is in loss except he live aright,
And help his fellow to be firm and brave,
Faithful and patient: then the restful night!
Al Mughni! best Rewarder! we
Endure; putting our trust in Thee.
## p. 839 (#257) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
839
THE TRUMPET
From Pearls of the Faith'
Magnify Him, Al-Kaiyum; and so call
The "Self-subsisting" God who judgeth all.
HEN the trumpet shall sound,
On that day,
The wicked, slow-gathering,
Shall say,
"Is it long we have lain in our graves?
For it seems as an hour! »
Then will Israfil call them to judgment:
And none shall have power
To turn aside, this way or that;
And their voices will sink
WHEN
To silence, except for the sounding
Of a noise, like the noise on the brink
Of the sea when its stones
Are dragged with a clatter and hiss
Down the shore, in the wild breakers' roar!
The sound of their woe shall be this:-
Then they who denied
That He liveth Eternal, "Self-made,"
Shall call to the mountains to crush them;
Amazed and affrayed.
Thou Self-subsistent, Living Lord!
Thy grace against that day afford.
ENVOI TO THE LIGHT OF ASIA'
H, BLESSED Lord! Oh, High Deliverer!
A Forgive this feeble script which doth Thee wrong
Measuring with little wit Thy lofty Love.
Ah, Lover! Brother! Guide! Lamp of the Law!
I take my refuge in Thy name and Thee!
I take my refuge in Thy Law of God!
I take my refuge in Thy Order! Om!
The Dew is on the lotus-rise, great Sun!
And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.
Om mani padme hum, the Sunrise comes!
The Dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea!
## p. 840 (#258) ############################################
840
EDWIN ARNOLD
From Harper's Monthly, copyright 1886, by Harper & Brothers
GRISHMA; OR THE SEASON OF HEAT
Translated from Kalidasa's Ritu Sanhâra›
ITH fierce noons beaming, moons of glory gleaming,
Full conduits streaming, where fair bathers lie,
With sunsets splendid, when the strong day, ended,
Melts into peace, like a tired lover's sigh—
So cometh summer nigh.
WITH
And nights of ebon blackness, laced with lustres
From starry clusters; courts of calm retreat,
Where wan rills warble over glistening marble;
Cold jewels, and the sandal, moist and sweet-
These for the time are meet
-
Of "Suchi," dear one of the bright days, bringing
Love songs for singing which all hearts enthrall,
Wine cups that sparkle at the lips of lovers,
Odors and pleasures in the palace hall:
In "Suchi" these befall.
For then, with wide hips richly girt, and bosoms
Fragrant with blossoms, and with pearl strings gay,
Their new-laved hair unbound, and spreading round.
Faint scents, the palace maids in tender play
The ardent heats allay
Of princely playmates. Through the gates their feet,
With lac-dye rosy and neat, and anklets ringing,
In music trip along, echoing the song
Of wild swans, all men's hearts by subtle singing
To Kama's service bringing;
For who, their sandal-scented breasts perceiving,
Their white pearls-weaving with the saffron stars
Girdles and diadems-their gold and gems
Linked upon waist and thigh, in Love's soft snares
Is not caught unawares?
Then lay they by their robes - no longer light
For the warm midnight—and their beauty cover
With woven veil too airy to conceal
Its dew-pearled softness; so, with youth clad over,
Each seeks her eager lover.
## p. 841 (#259) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
841
And sweet airs winnowed from the sandal fans,
Faint balm that nests between those gem-bound breasts,
Voices of stream and bird, and clear notes heard
From vina strings amid the songs' unrests,
Wake passion. With light jests,
And sidelong glances, and coy smiles and dances,
Each maid enhances newly sprung delight;
Quick leaps the fire of Love's divine desire,
So kindled in the season when the Night
With broadest moons is bright;
Till on the silvered terraces, sleep-sunken,
With Love's draughts drunken, those close lovers lie;
And all for sorrow there shall come To-morrow
w
The Moon, who watched them, pales in the gray sky,
While the still Night doth die.
THEN breaks fierce Day! The whirling dust is driven
O'er earth and heaven, until the sun-scorched plain
Its road scarce shows for dazzling heat to those
Who, far from home and love, journey in pain,
Longing to rest again.
Panting and parched, with muzzles dry and burning,
For cool streams yearning, herds of antelope
Haste where the brassy sky, banked black and high,
Hath clouded promise. << There will be" - they hope —
"Water beyond the tope! "
Sick with the glare, his hooded terrors failing,
His slow coils trailing o'er the fiery dust,
The cobra glides to nighest shade, and hides
His head beneath the peacock's train: he must
His ancient foeman trust!
The purple peafowl, wholly overmastered
By the red morning, droop with weary cries;
No stroke they make to slay that gliding snake
Who creeps for shelter underneath the eyes
Of their spread jewelries!
## p. 842 (#260) ############################################
842
EDWIN ARNOLD
The jungle lord, the kingly tiger, prowling,
For fierce thirst howling, orbs a-stare and red,
Sees without heed the elephants pass by him,
Lolls his lank tongue, and hangs his bloody head,
His mighty forces fled.
Nor heed the elephants that tiger, plucking
Green leaves, and sucking with a dry trunk dew;
Tormented by the blazing day, they wander,
And, nowhere finding water, still renew
Their search-a woful crew!
With restless snout rooting the dark morasses,
Where reeds and grasses on the soft slime grow,
The wild-boars, grunting ill-content and anger,
Dig lairs to shield them from the torturing glow,
Deep, deep as they can go.
The frog, for misery of his pool departing-
'Neath that flame-darting ball-and waters drained
Down to their mud, crawls croaking forth, to cower
Under the black-snake's coils, where there is gained
A little shade; and, strained
-
To patience by such heat, scorching the jewel
Gleaming so cruel on his venomous head,
That worm, whose tongue, as the blast burns along,
Licks it for coolness-all discomfited—
Strikes not his strange friend dead!
The pool, with tender-growing cups of lotus
Once brightly blowing, hath no blossoms more!
Its fish are dead, its fearful cranes are fled,
And crowding elephants its flowery shore
Tramp to a miry floor.
With foam-strings roping from his jowls, and dropping
From dried drawn lips, horns laid aback, and eyes
Mad with the drouth, and thirst-tormented mouth,
Down-thundering from his mountain cavern flies
The bison in wild wise,
Questing a water channel. Bare and scrannel
The trees droop, where the crows sit in a row
With beaks agape.
The hot baboon and ape
Climb chattering to the bush. The buffalo
Bellows. And locusts go
## p. 843 (#261) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
843
Choking the wells.
Far o'er the hills and dells
Wanders th' affrighted eye, beholding blasted
The pleasant grass: the forest's leafy mass
Wilted; its waters waned; its grace exhausted;
Its creatures wasted.
Then leaps to view-blood-red and bright of hue-
As blooms sprung new on the Kusumbha-Tree-
The wild-fire's tongue, fanned by the wind, and flung
Furiously forth; the palms, canes, brakes, you see
Wrapped in one agony
Of lurid death! The conflagration, driven
In fiery levin, roars from jungle caves;
Hisses and blusters through the bamboo clusters,
Crackles across the curling grass, and drives
Into the river waves
The forest folk!
Dreadful that flame to see
Coil from the cotton-tree a snake of gold-
Violently break from root and trunk, to take
The bending boughs and leaves in deadly hold
Then passing-to enfold
New spoils! In herds, elephants, jackals, pards,
For anguish of such fate their enmity
Laying aside, burst for the river wide
Which flows between fair isles: in company
As friends they madly flee!
«<
Bur Thee, my Best Beloved! may Suchi" visit fair
With songs of secret waters cooling the quiet air,
Under blue buds of lotus beds, and pâtalas which shed
Fragrance and balm, while Moonlight weaves over thy happy
head
Its silvery veil! So Nights and Days of Summer pass for
thee
Amid the pleasure-palaces, with love and melody!
## p. 844 (#262) ############################################
844
MATTHEW ARNOLD
(1822-1888)
BY GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
M
ATTHEW ARNOLD, an English poet and critic, was born De-
cember 24th, 1822, at Laleham, in the Thames valley. He
was the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, best remembered as
the master of Rugby in later years, and distinguished also as a histo-
rian of Rome. His mother was, by her maiden name, Mary Penrose,
and long survived her husband. Arnold passed his school days at
Winchester and Rugby, and went to Oxford in October, 1841. There,
as also at school, he won scholarship and prize, and showed poetical
talent. He was elected a fellow of Oriel in March, 1845. He taught
for a short time at Rugby, but in 1847 became private secretary
to Lord Lansdowne, who in 1851 appointed him school inspector.
From that time he was engaged mainly in educational labors, as
inspector and commissioner, and traveled frequently on the Continent
examining foreign methods. He was also interested controversially
in political and religious questions of the day, and altogether had a
sufficient public life outside of literature. In 1851 he married Frances
Lucy, daughter of Sir William Wightman, a judge of the Court of
Queen's Bench, and by her had five children, three sons and two
daughters.
His first volume of verse, 'The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems,'
bears the date 1849; the second. 'Empedocles on Etna and Other
Poems, 1852; the third, 'Poems,' made up mainly from the two
former, was published in 1853, and thereafter he added little to his
poetic work. His first volume of similar significance in prose was
'Essays in Criticism,' issued in 1865. Throughout his mature life he
was a constant writer, and his collected works of all kinds now fill
eleven volumes, exclusive of his letters. In 1857 he was elected
Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and there began his career as a lec-
turer; and this method of public expression he employed often. His
life was thus one with many diverse activities, and filled with prac-
tical or literary affairs; and on no side was it deficient in human
relations. He won respect and reputation while he lived; and his
works continue to attract men's minds, although with much uneven-
ness. He died at Liverpool, on April 15th, 1888.
That considerable portion of Arnold's writings which was con-
cerned with education and politics, or with phases of theological
thought and religious tendency, however valuable in contemporary
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曾
i
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சர்மா
CRICI
3
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
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MATTHEW ARNOLD
845
discussion, and to men and movements of the third quarter of the
century, must be set on one side. It is not because of anything
there contained that he has become a permanent figure of his time,
or is of interest in literature. He achieved distinction as a critic and
as a poet; but although he was earlier in the field as a poet, he was
recognized by the public at large first as a critic. The union of the
two functions is not unusual in the history of literature; but where
success has been attained in both, the critic has commonly sprung
from the poet in the man, and his range and quality have been lim-
ited thereby. It was so with Dryden and Wordsworth, and, less
obviously, with Landor and Lowell. In Arnold's case there is no
such growth: the two modes of writing, prose and verse, were dis-
connected. One could read his essays without suspecting a poet,
and his poems without discerning a critic, except so far as one finds
the moralist there. In fact, Arnold's critical faculty belonged rather
to the practical side of his life, and was a part of his talents as a
public man.
This appears by the very definitions that he gave, and by the
turn of his phrase, which always keeps an audience rather than a
meditative reader in view. "What is the function of criticism at the
present time? " he asks, and answers-"A disinterested endeavor to
learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the
world. " That is a wide warrant. The writer who exercises his crit-
ical function under it, however, is plainly a reformer at heart, and
labors for the social welfare. He is not an analyst of the form of
art for its own sake, or a contemplator of its substance of wisdom
or beauty merely. He is not limited to literature or the other arts
of expression, but the world - the intellectual world- is all before
him where to choose; and having learned the best that is known
and thought, his second and manifestly not inferior duty is to go
into all nations, a messenger of the propaganda of intelligence. It
is a great mission, and nobly characterized; but if criticism be so
defined, it is criticism of a large mold.
The scope of the word conspicuously appears also in the phrase,
which became proverbial, declaring that literature is "a criticism of
life. " In such an employment of terms, ordinary meanings evapo-
rate; and it becomes necessary to know the thought of the author
rather than the usage of men. Without granting the dictum, there-
fore, which would be far from the purpose, is it not clear that by
"critic" and "criticism" Arnold intended to designate, or at least to
convey, something peculiar to his. own conception, not strictly
related to literature at all, it may be, but more closely tied to soci-
ety in its general mental activity? In other words, Arnold was a
critic of civilization more than of books, and aimed at illumination
## p. 846 (#268) ############################################
846
MATTHEW ARNOLD
by means of ideas. With this goes his manner, - that habitual air of
telling you something which you did not know before, and doing it
for your good, which stamps him as a preacher born. Under the
mask of the critic is the long English face of the gospeler; that type
whose persistent physiognomy was never absent from the conventicle
of English thought.
This evangelizing prepossession of Arnold's mind must be recog-
nized in order to understand alike his attitude of superiority, his
stiffly didactic method, and his success in attracting converts in
whom the seed proved barren. The first impression that his entire
work makes is one of limitation; so strict is this limitation, and it
profits him so much, that it seems the element in which he had his
being. On a close survey, the fewness of his ideas is most surpris-
ing, though the fact is somewhat cloaked by the lucidity of his
thought, its logical vigor, and the manner of its presentation. He
takes a text, either some formula of his own or some adopted phrase
that he has made his own, and from that he starts out only to
return to it again and again with ceaseless iteration. In his illus-
trations, for example, when he has pilloried some poor gentleman,
otherwise unknown, for the astounded and amused contemplation of
the Anglican monocle, he cannot let him alone. So too when, with
the journalist's nack for nicknames, he divides all England into three
parts, he cannot forget the rhetorical exploit. He never lets the
points he has made fall into oblivion; and hence his work in general,
as a critic, is skeletonized to the memory in watchwords, formulas,
and nicknames, which, taken altogether, make up only a small num-
ber of ideas.
-
-
His scale, likewise, is meagre. is essay is apt to be a book
review or a plea merely; it is without that free illusiveness and
undeveloped suggestion which indicate a full mind and give to such
brief pieces of writing the sense of overflow. He takes no large sub-
ject as a whole, but either a small one or else some phases of the
larger one; and he exhausts all that he touches. He seems to have
no more to say. It is probable that his acquaintance with literature
was incommensurate with his reputation or apparent scope as a
writer. As he has fewer ideas than any other author of his time of
the same rank, so he discloses less knowledge of his own or foreign
literatures. His occupations forbade wide acquisition; he husbanded
his time, and economized also by giving the best direction to his
private studies, and he accomplished much; but he could not master
the field as any man whose profession was literature might easily
do. Consequently, in comparison with Coleridge or Lowell, his criti-
cal work seems dry and bare, with neither the fluency nor the rich-
ness of a master.
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MATTHEW ARNOLD
847
In yet another point this paucity of matter appears. What Mr.
Richard Holt Hutton says in his essay on the poetry of Arnold is so
apposite here that it will be best to quote the passage. He is
speaking, in an aside, of Arnold's criticisms:-
"They are fine, they are keen, they are often true; but they are always
too much limited to the thin superficial layer of the moral nature of their
subjects, and seem to take little comparative interest in the deeper individual-
ity beneath. Read his essay on Heine, and you will see the critic engrossed
with the relation of Heine to the political and social ideas of his day, and
passing over with comparative indifference the true soul of Heine, the fount-
ain of both his poetry and his cynicism. Read his five lectures on translating
Homer, and observe how exclusively the critic's mind is occupied with the
form as distinguished from the substance of the Homeric poetry. Even when
he concerns himself with the greatest modern poets,- with Shakespeare as in
the preface to the earlier edition of his poems, or with Goethe in reiterated
poetical criticisms, or when he again and again in his poems treats of Words-
worth, it is always the style and superficial doctrine of their poetry, not the
individual character and unique genius, which occupy him. He will tell you
whether a poet is 'sane and clear,' or stormy and fervent; whether he is
rapid and noble, or loquacious and quaint; whether a thinker penetrates the
husks of conventional thought which mislead the crowd; whether there is
sweetness as well as lucidity in his aims; whether a descriptive writer has
'distinction of style, or is admirable only for his vivacity: but he rarely goes
to the individual heart of any of the subjects of his criticism; he finds their
style and class, but not their personality in that class; he ranks his men, but
does not portray them; hardly even seems to find much interest in the indi-
vidual roots of their character. "
In brief, this is to say that Arnold took little interest in human
nature; nor is there anything in his later essays on Byron, Keats,
Wordsworth, Milton, or Gray, to cause us to revise the judgment on
this point. In fact, so far as he touched on the personality of Keats
or Gray, to take the capital instances, he was most unsatisfactory.
Arnold was not, then, one of those critics who are interested in
life itself, and through the literary work seize on the soul of the
author in its original brightness, or set forth the life-stains in the
successive incarnations of his heart and mind. Nor was he of those
who consider the work itself final, and endeavor simply to under-
stand it,-form and matter,—and so to mediate between genius and
our slower intelligence. He followed neither the psychological nor
the æsthetic method. It need hardly be said that he was born too
early to be able ever to conceive of literature as a phenomenon of
society, and its great men as only terms in an evolutionary series.
He had only a moderate knowledge of literature, and his stock of
ideas was small; his manner of speech was hard and dry, there was
a trick in his style, and his self-repetition is tiresome.
## p. 848 (#270) ############################################
848
MATTHEW ARNOLD
What gave him vogue, then, and what still keeps his more liter-
ary work alive? Is it anything more than the temper in which he
worked, and the spirit which he evoked in the reader ? He stood
for the very spirit of intelligence in his time. He made his readers
respect ideas, and want to have as many as possible. He enveloped
them in an atmosphere of mental curiosity and alertness, and put
them in contact with novel and attractive themes. In particular, he
took their minds to the Continent and made them feel that they
were becoming cosmopolitan by knowing Joubert; or at home, he
rallied them in opposition to the dullness of the period, to "bar-
barism" or other objectionable traits in the social classes: and he
volleyed contempt upon the common multitudinous foe in general,
and from time to time cheered them with some delectable examples
of single combat. It cannot be concealed that there was much mali-
cious pleasure in it all. He was not indisposed to high-bred cruelty.
Like Lamb, he "loved a fool," but it was in a mortar; and pleasant
it was to see the spectacle when he really took a man in hand for
the chastisement of irony. It is thus that "the seraphim illuminati
sneer. " And in all his controversial writing there was a brilliancy
and unsparingness that will appeal to the deepest instincts of a
fighting race, willy-nilly; and as one had only to read the words to
feel himself among the children of light, so that our withers were
unwrung, there was high enjoyment.
This liveliness of intellectual conflict, together with the sense of
ideas, was a boon to youth especially; and the academic air in which
the thought and style always moved, with scholarly self-possession
and assurance, with the dogmatism of "enlightenment" in all ages
and among all sects, with serenity and security unassailable, from
within at least—this academic ❝clearness and purity without shadow
or stain" had an overpowering charm to the college-bred and culti-
vated, who found the rare combination of information, taste, and
aggressiveness in one of their own ilk. Above all, there was the play
of intelligence on every page; there was an application of ideas to
life in many regions of the world's interests; there was contact with
a mind keen, clear, and firm, armed for controversy or persuasion
equally, and filled with eager belief in itself, its ways, and its will.
To meet such personality in a book was a bracing experience;
and for many these essays were an awakening of the mind itself. We
may go to others for the greater part of what criticism can give, —
for definite and fundamental principles, for adequate characterization,
for the intuition and the revelation, the penetrant flash of thought
and phrase: but Arnold generates and supports a temper of mind in
which the work of these writers best thrives even in its own sphere;
and through him this temper becomes less individual than social,
## p. 849 (#271) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
849
encompassing the whole of life. Few critics have been really less
"disinterested," few have kept their eyes less steadily "upon the
object" but that fact does not lessen the value of his precepts of
disinterestedness and objectivity; nor is it necessary, in becoming "a
child of light," to join in spirit the unhappy "remnant" of the acad-
emy, or to drink too deep of that honeyed satisfaction, with which he
fills his readers, of being on his side. As a critic, Arnold succeeds if
his main purpose does not fail, and that was to reinforce the party
of ideas, of culture, of the children of light; to impart, not moral
vigor, but openness and reasonableness of mind; and to arouse and
arm the intellectual in contradistinction to the other energies of civ-
ilization.
The poetry of Arnold, to pass to the second portion of his work,
was less widely welcomed than his prose, and made its way very
slowly; but it now seems the most important and permanent part.
It is not small in quantity, though his unproductiveness in later years
has made it appear that he was less fluent and abundant in verse
than he really was. The remarkable thing, as one turns to his
poems, is the contrast in spirit that they afford to the essays: there
is here an atmosphere of entire calm. We seem to be in a different
world. This fact, with the singular silence of his familiar letters in
regard to his verse, indicates that his poetic life was truly a thing
apart.
In one respect only is there something in common between his
prose and verse: just as interest in human nature was absent in the
latter, it is absent also in the former. There is no action in the
poems; neither is there character for its own sake. Arnold was a
man of the mind, and he betrays no interest in personality except
for its intellectual traits; in Clough as in Obermann, it is the life
of thought, not the human being, that he portrays. As a poet, he
expresses the moods of the meditative spirit in view of nature and
our mortal existence; and he represents life, not lyrically by its
changeful moments, nor tragically by its conflict in great characters,
but philosophically by a self-contained and unvarying monologue,
deeper or less deep in feeling and with cadences of tone, but always
with the same grave and serious effect. He is constantly thinking,
whatever his subject or his mood; his attitude is intellectual, his
sentiments are maxims, his conclusions are advisory. His world is
the sphere of thought, and his poems have the distance and repose
and also the coldness that befit that sphere; and the character of his
imagination, which lays hold of form and reason, makes natural to
him the classical style.
It is obvious that the sources of his poetical culture are Greek.
It is not merely, however, that he takes for his early subjects Merope
11-54
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850
MATTHEW ARNOLD
and Empedocles, or that he strives in 'Balder Dead' for Homeric
narrative, or that in the recitative to which he was addicted he
evoked an immelodious phantom of Greek choruses; nor is it the
"marmoreal air” that chills while it ennobles much of his finest
work. One feels the Greek quality not as a source but as a presence.
In Tennyson, Keats, and Shelley, there was Greek influence, but
in them the result was modern. In Arnold the antiquity remains;
remains in mood, just as in Landor it remains in form. The Greek
twilight broods over all his poetry. It is pagan in philosophic spirit;
not Attic, but of a later and stoical time, with the very virtues of
patience, endurance, suffering, not in their Christian types, but as
they now seem to a post-Christian imagination looking back to the
imperial past. There is a difference, it is true, in Arnold's expres-
sion of the mood: he is as little Sophoclean as he is Homeric, as little
Lucretian as he is Vergilian. The temperament is not the same,
not a survival or a revival of the antique, but original and living.
And yet the mood of the verse is felt at once to be a reincarnation
of the deathless spirit of Hellas, that in other ages also has made
beautiful and solemn for a time the shadowed places of the Christian
world. If one does not realize this, he must miss the secret of the
tranquillity, the chill, the grave austerity, as well as the philosoph-
ical resignation, which are essential to the verse. Even in those
parts of the poems which use romantic motives, one reason of their
original charm is that they suggest how the Greek imagination would
have dealt with the forsaken merman, the church of Brou, and Tris-
tram and Iseult. The presence of such motives, such mythology,
and such Christian and chivalric color in the work of Arnold does
not disturb the imple unity of its feeling, which finds no solvent for
life, whatever its accident of time and place and faith, except in
that Greek spirit which ruled in thoughtful men before the triumph.
of Christianity, and is still native in men who accept the intellect as
the sole guide of life.
It was with reference to these modern men and the movement
they took part in, that he made his serious claim to greatness; to
rank, that is, with Tennyson and Browning, as he said, in the litera-
ture of his time. "My poems," he wrote, "represent on the whole
the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century; and
thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious
to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in
the literary productions that reflect it. It might be fairly urged 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,
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MATTHEW ARNOLD
851
If
I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had theirs. "
the main movement had been such as he thought of it, or if it had
been of importance in the long run, there might be a sounder basis
for this hope than now appears to be the case; but there can be no
doubt, let the contemporary movement have been what it may, that
Arnold's mood is one that will not pass out of men's hearts to-day
nor to-morrow.
On the modern side the example of Wordsworth was most form-
ative, and in fact it is common to describe Arnold as a Wordsworthian.
and so, in his contemplative attitude to nature, and in his habitual
recourse to her, he was; but both nature herself as she appeared to
him, and his mood in her presence, were very different from Words-
worth's conception and emotion. Arnold finds in nature a refuge
from life, an anodyne, an escape; but Wordsworth, in going into the
hills for poetical communion, passed from a less to a fuller and
deeper life, and obtained an inspiration, and was seeking the goal of
all his being. In the method of approach, too, as well as in the
character of the experience, there was a profound difference between
the two poets. Arnold sees with the outward rather than the inward
eye. He is pictorial in a way that Wordsworth seldom is; he uses
detail much more, and gives a group or a scene with the externality
of a painter. The method resembles that of Tennyson rather than
that of Wordsworth, and has more direct analogy with the Greek
manner than with the modern and emotional schools; it is objective,
often minute, and always carefully composed, in the artistic sense of
that term. The description of the river Oxus, for example, though
faintly charged with suggested and allegoric meaning, is a noble close
to the poem which ends in it. The scale is large, and Arnold was
fond of a broad landscape, of mountains, and prospects over the land;
but one cannot fancy Wordsworth writing it. So too, on a small
scale, the charming scene of the English garden in Thyrsis' is far
from Wordsworth's manner:—
-
"When garden walks and all the grassy floor
With blossoms red and white of fallen May
And chestnut-flowers are strewn -
So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden trees,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze. »
This is a picture that could be framed: how different from Words-
worth's "wandering voice"! Or to take another notable example,
which, like the Oxus passage, is a fine close in the Tristram and
Iseult,' the hunter on the arras above the dead lovers :-
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852
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"A stately huntsman, clad in green,
And round him a fresh forest scene.
On that clear forest-knoll he stays,
With his pack round him, and delays.
The wild boar rustles in his lair,
The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air,
But lord and hounds keep rooted there.
Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
O hunter! and without a fear
Thy golden tasseled bugle blow->
But no one is deceived, and the hunter does not move from the
arras, but is still "rooted there," with his green suit and his golden
tassel. The piece is pictorial, and highly wrought for pictorial effects
only, obviously decorative and used as stage scenery precisely in the
manner of our later theatrical art, with that accent of forethought
which turns the beautiful into the æsthetic. This is a method which
Wordsworth never used. Take one of his pictures, the 'Reaper' for
example, and see the difference. The one is out-of-doors, the other
is of the studio. The purpose of these illustrations is to show that
Arnold's nature-pictures are not only consciously artistic, with an ar-
rangement that approaches artifice, but that he is interested through
his eye primarily and not through his emotions. It is characteris-
tic of his temperament also that he reminds one most often of the
painter in water-colors.
If there is this difference between Arnold and Wordsworth in
method, a greater difference in spirit is to be anticipated. It is a
fixed gulf. In nature Wordsworth found the one spirit's "plastic
stress," and a near and intimate revelation to the soul of truths that
were his greatest joy and support in existence. Arnold finds there no
inhabitancy of God, no such streaming forth of wisdom and beauty
from the fountain heads of being; but the secret frame of nature is
filled only with the darkness, the melancholy, the waiting endurance
that is projected from himself:-
"Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,
The solemn hills about us spread,
The stream that falls incessantly,
The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,
If I might lend their life a voice,
Seem to bear rather than rejoice. »
Compare this with Wordsworth's 'Stanzas on Peele Castle,' and the
important reservations that must be borne in mind in describing
Arnold as a Wordsworthian will become clearer. It is as a relief from
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MATTHEW ARNOLD
853
1.
thought, as a beautiful and half-physical diversion, as a scale of being
so vast and mysterious as to reduce the pettiness of human life to
nothingness, it is in these ways that nature has value in Arnold's
verse. Such a poet may describe natural scenes well, and obtain by
means of them contrast to human conditions, and decorative beauty;
but he does not penetrate nature or interpret what her significance is
in the human spirit, as the more emotional poets have done. He
ends in an antithesis, not in a synthesis, and both nature and man
lose by the divorce. One looks in vain for anything deeper than
landscapes in Arnold's treatment of nature; she is emptied of her
own infinite, and has become spiritually void: and in the simple great
line in which he gave the sea
"The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea- >>
he is thinking of man, not of the ocean: and the mood seems ancient
rather than modern, the feeling of a Greek, just as the sound of the
waves to him is always Ægean.
In treating of man's life, which must be the main thing in any
poet's work, Arnold is either very austere or very pessimistic. If the
feeling is moral, the predominant impression is of austerity; if it is
intellectual, the predominant impression is of sadness. He was not in-
sensible to the charm of life, but he feels it in his senses only to deny
it in his mind. The illustrative passage is from 'Dover Beach':—
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. »
This is the contradiction of sense and thought, the voice of a
regret grounded in the intellect (for if it were vital and grounded in
the emotions it would become despair); the creed of illusion and
futility in life, which is the characteristic note of Arnold, and the
reason of his acceptance by many minds. The one thing about life
which he most insists on is its isolation, its individuality. In the
series called 'Switzerland,' this is the substance of the whole; and
the doctrine is stated with an intensity and power, with an amplitude
and prolongation, that set these poems apart as the most remarkable
of all his lyrics. From a poet so deeply impressed with this aspect
of existence, and unable to find its remedy or its counterpart in the
harmony of life, no joyful or hopeful word can be expected, and none
is found. The second thing about life which he dwells on is its
futility; though he bids one strive and work, and points to the
example of the strong whom he has known, yet one feels that his
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854
MATTHEW ARNOLD
voice rings more true when he writes of Obermann than in any
other of the elegiac poems. In such verse as the 'Summer Night,'
again, the genuineness of the mood is indubitable. In The Sick
King of Bokhara,' the one dramatic expression of his genius, futility
is the very centre of the action. The fact that so much of his
poetry seems to take its motive from the subsidence of Christian
faith has set him among the skeptic or agnostic poets, and the "main
movement" which he believed he had expressed was doubtless that
in which agnosticism was a leading element. The unbelief of the
third quarter of the century was certainly a controlling influence over
him, and in a man mainly intellectual by nature it could not well
have been otherwise.
Hence, as one looks at his more philosophical and lyrical poems-
the profounder part of his work — and endeavors to determine their
character and sources alike, it is plain to see that in the old phrase,
"the pride of the intellect" lifts its lonely column over the desola-
tion of every page. The man of the academy is here, as in the
prose, after all.
He reveals himself in the literary motive, the
bookish atmosphere of the verse, in its vocabulary, its elegance of
structure, its precise phrase and its curious allusions (involving foot-
notes), and in fact, throughout all its form and structure. So self-
conscious is it that it becomes frankly prosaic at inconvenient times,
and is more often on the level of eloquent and graceful rhetoric than
of poetry. It is frequently liquid and melodious, but there is no
burst of native song in it anywhere. It is the work of a true poet,
nevertheless; but there are many voices for the Muse. It is sincere,
it is touched with reality; it is the mirror of a phase of life in our
times, and not in our times only, but whenever the intellect seeks
expression for its sense of the limitation of its own career, and its
sadness in a world which it cannot solve.
A word should be added concerning the personality of Arnold
which is revealed in his familiar letters,- a collection that has
dignified the records of literature with a singularly noble memory of
private life. Few who did not know Arnold could have been pre-
pared for the revelation of a nature so true, so amiable, so dutiful.
The victim's bonds, none staying him, so great
His presence was. Then, craving leave, he spake
## p. 829 (#247) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
829
Of life, which all can take, but none can give,
Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep,
Wonderful, dear and pleasant unto each,
Even to the meanest; yea, a boon to all
Where pity is, for pity makes the world
Soft to the weak and noble for the strong.
Unto the dumb lips of his flock he lent
Sad, pleading words, showing how man, who prays
For mercy to the 'gods, is merciless,
Being as god to those; albeit all life
Is linked and kin, and what we slay have given
Meek tribute of the milk and wool, and set
Fast trust upon the hands which murder them.
Also he spake of what the holy books
Do surely teach, how that at death some sink
To bird and beast, and these rise up to man
In wanderings of the spark which grows purged flame.
So were the sacrifice new sin, if so
The fated passage of a soul be stayed.
Nor, spake he, shall one wash his spirit clean
By blood; nor gladden gods, being good, with blood;
Nor bribe them, being evil; nay, nor lay
Upon the brow of innocent bound beasts
One hair's weight of that answer all must give
For all things done amiss or wrongfully,
Alone, each for himself, reckoning with that
The fixed arithmetic of the universe,
Which meteth good for good and ill or ill,
Measure for measure, unto deeds, words, thoughts;
Watchful, aware, implacable, unmoved;
Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.
Thus spake he, breathing words so piteous
With such high lordliness of ruth and right,
The priests drew back their garments o'er the hands
Crimsoned with slaughter, and the King came near,
Standing with clasped palms reverencing Buddha;
While still our Lord went on, teaching how fair
This earth were if all living things be linked
In friendliness of common use of foods,
Bloodless and pure; the golden grain, bright fruits,
Sweet herbs which grow for all, the waters wan,
Sufficient drinks and meats. Which, when these heard,
The might of gentleness so conquered them,
The priests themselves scattered their altar-flames
## p. 830 (#248) ############################################
830
EDWIN ARNOLD
And flung away the steel of sacrifice;
And through the land next day passed a decree
Proclaimed by criers, and in this wise graved
On rock and column:-" Thus the King's will is:
There hath been slaughter for the sacrifice
And slaying for the meat, but henceforth none
Shall spill the blood of life nor taste of flesh,
Seeing that knowledge grows, and life is one,
And mercy cometh to the merciful. "
So ran the edict, and from those days forth
Sweet peace hath spread between all living kind,
Man and the beasts which serve him, and the birds,
Of all those banks of Gunga where our Lord
Taught with his saintly pity and soft speech.
THE FAITHFULNESS OF YUDHISTHIRA
From The Great Journey,' in the Mahâbhârata
THE
HENCEFORTH alone the long-armed monarch strode,
Not looking back, - nay, not for Bhima's sake,-
But walking with his face set for the mount;
And the hound followed him, only the hound.
-
After the deathly sands, the Mount; and lo!
Sâkra shone forth, the God, filling the earth
And heavens with thunder of his chariot-wheels.
"Ascend," he said, "with me, Pritha's great son! "
But Yudhisthira answered, sore at heart
For those his kinsfolk, fallen on the way:-
"O Thousand-eyed, O Lord of all the gods,
Give that my brothers come with me, who fell!
Not without them is Swarga sweet to me.
She, too, the dear and kind and queenly, — she
Whose perfect virtue Paradise must crown,
Grant her to come with us! Dost thou grant this? "
-
—
-
The God replied: "In heaven thou shalt see
Thy kinsman and the Queen - these will attain
And Krishna. Grieve no longer for thy dead,
Thou chief of men! their mortal covering stripped,
These have their places: but to thee the gods
Allot an unknown grace; Thou shalt go up,
Living and in thy form, to the immortal homes. "
## p. 831 (#249) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
831
But the King answered:-"O thou Wisest One,
Who know'st what was, and is, and is to be,
Still one more grace! This hound hath ate with me,
Followed me, loved me: must I leave him now? »
"Monarch. " spake Indra. "thou art now as we,
Deathless, divine; thou art become a god;
Glory and power and gifts celestial,
And all the joys of heaven are thine for aye:
What hath a beast with these? Leave here thy hound. "
Yet Yudhisthira answered:-"O Most High,
O, Thousand-eyed and wisest! can it be
That one exalted should seem pitiless?
Nay, let me lose such glory: for its sake
I cannot leave one living thing I loved. "
Then sternly Indra spake:-"He is unclean,
And into Swarga such shall enter not.
The Krodhavasha's wrath destroys the fruits
Of sacrifice, if dogs defile the fire.
Bethink thee, Dharmaraj; quit now this beast!
That which is seemly is not hard of heart. "
Still he replied: "'Tis written that to spurn
A suppliant equals in offense to slay
A twice-born; wherefore, not for Swarga's bliss
Quit I, Mahendra, this poor clinging dog,-
So without any hope or friend save me,
So wistful, fawning for my faithfulness;
So agonized to die, unless I help
Who among men was called steadfast and just. "
-
Quoth Indra:-"Nay, the altar-flame is foul
Where a dog passeth; angry angels sweep
The ascending smoke aside, and all the fruits
Of offering, and the merit of the prayer
Of him whom a hound toucheth. Leave it here!
He that will enter heaven must enter pure.
Why didst thou quit thy brethren on the way,
And Krishna, and the dear-loved Draupadí,
Attaining, firm and glorious, to this Mount
Through perfect deeds, to linger for a brute?
Hath Yudhisthira vanquished self, to melt
With one poor passion at the door of bliss?
-
## p. 832 (#250) ############################################
832
EDWIN ARNOLD
Stay'st thou for this, who didst not stay for them,-
Draupadí, Bhima? »
But the King yet spake :-
"Tis known that none can hurt or help the dead.
They, the delightful ones, who sank and died,
Following my footsteps, could not live again
Though I had turned, therefore I did not turn;
But could help profit, I had stayed to help.
There be four sins, O Sâkra, grievous sins:
The first is making suppliants despair,
The second is to slay a nursing wife,
The third is spoiling Brahmans' goods by force,
The fourth is injuring an ancient friend.
These four I deem not direr than the crime,
If one, in coming forth from woe to weal,
Abandon any meanest comrade then. "
―――
Straight as he spake, brightly great Indra smiled;
Vanished the hound, and in its stead stood there
The Lord of Death and Justice, Dharma's self!
Sweet were the words which fell from those dread lips,
Precious the lovely praise:-"O thou true King,
Thou that dost bring to harvest the good seed
Of Pandu's righteousness; thou that hast ruth
As he before, on all which lives! -O son!
I tried thee in the Dwaita wood, what time
They smote thy brothers, bringing water; then
Thou prayedst for Nakula's life-tender and just-
Nor Bhima's nor Arjuna's, true to both,
To Madri as to Kunti, to both queens.
Hear thou my word! Because thou didst not mount
This car divine, lest the poor hound be shent
Who looked to thee, lo! there is none in heaven
Shall sit above thee, King! - Bhârata's son!
Enter thou now to the eternal joys,
Living and in thy form. Justice and Love
Welcome thee, Monarch! thou shalt throne with us. "
## p. 833 (#251) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
833
HE AND SHE
"SHE
HE is dead! " they said to him: «< come away;
Kiss her and leave her,- thy love is clay! "
They smoothed her tresses of dark-brown hair;
On her forehead of stone they laid it fair;
Over her eyes that gazed too much
They drew the lids with a gentle touch;
With a tender touch they closed up well
The sweet thin lips that had secrets to tell;
About her brows and beautiful face
They tied her veil and her marriage lace,
And drew on her white feet her white-silk shoes,
Which were the whitest no eye could choose,—
And over her bosom they crossed her hands,
"Come away! " they said, "God understands. "
And there was silence, and nothing there
But silence, and scents of eglantere,
And jasmine, and roses and rosemary;
And they said, "As a lady should lie, lies she. "
And they held their breath till they left the room,
With a shudder, to glance at its stillness and gloom.
But he who loved her too well to dread
The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead,
He lit his lamp, and took the key
And turned it-alone again, he and she.
He and she; but she would not speak,
Though he kissed, in the old place, the quiet cheek.
He and she; yet she would not smile,
Though he called her the name she loved erewhile.
He and she; still she did not move
To any passionate whisper of love.
Then he said, "Cold lips and breasts without breath,
Is there no voice, no language of death,
"Dumb to the ear and still to the sense,
But to heart and to soul distinct, intense?
11-53
## p. 834 (#252) ############################################
834
EDWIN ARNOLD
"See, now; I will listen with soul, not ear:
What was the secret of dying, dear?
"Was it the infinite wonder of all
That you ever could let life's flower fall?
"Or was it a greater marvel to feel
The perfect calm o'er the agony steal?
"Was the miracle greater to find how deep
Beyond all dreams sank downward that sleep?
"Did life roll back its record dear,
And show, as they say it does, past things clear?
"And was it the innermost heart of the bliss
To find out so, what a wisdom love is?
"O perfect dead! O dead most dear!
I hold the breath of my soul to hear.
"I listen as deep as to horrible hell,
As high as to heaven, and you do not tell.
"There must be pleasure in dying, sweet,
To make you so placid from head to feet!
"I would tell you, darling, if I were dead,
And 'twere your hot tears upon my brow shed, -
-
"I would say, though the Angel of Death had laid
His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid,
"You should not ask vainly, with streaming eyes,
Which of all deaths was the chiefest surprise.
"The very strangest and suddenest thing
Of all the surprises that dying must bring. "
Ah, foolish world! O most kind dead!
Though he told me, who will believe it was said?
Who will believe that he heard her say,
With the sweet, soft voice, in the dear old way,
"The utmost wonder is this, I hear
And see you, and love you, and kiss you, dear;
"And am your angel, who was your bride,
And know that though dead, I have never died. "
## p. 835 (#253) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
835
AFTER DEATH
From Pearls of the Faith'
He made life-and He takes it—but instead
Gives more: praise the Restorer, Al-Mu'hid!
E who died at Azan sends
This to comfort faithful friends:-
HE
Faithful friends! it lies, I know,
Pale and white and cold as snow;
And ye say, "Abdullah's dead! "
Weeping at my feet and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your cries and prayers,
Yet I smile and whisper this:-
"I am not that thing you kiss;
Cease your tears and let it lie:
It was mine, it is not I. "
Sweet friends! what the women lave
For its last bed in the grave
Is a tent which I am quitting,
Is a garment no more fitting,
Is a cage from which at last
Like a hawk my soul hath passed.
Love the inmate, not the room;
The wearer, not the garb; the plume
Of the falcon, not the bars
Which kept him from the splendid stars.
Loving friends! be wise, and dry
Straightway every weeping eye:
What ye lift upon the bier
Is not worth a wistful tear.
'Tis an empty sea-shell, one
Out of which the pearl is gone.
The shell is broken, it lies there;
The pearl, the all, the soul, is here.
'Tis an earthen jar whose lid
Allah sealed, the while it hid
That treasure of His treasury,
A mind which loved Him: let it lie!
Let the shard be earth's once more,
Since the gold shines in His store!
## p. 836 (#254) ############################################
836
EDWIN ARNOLD
Allah Mu'hid, Allah most good!
Now Thy grace is understood:
Now my heart no longer wonders
What Al-Barsakh is, which sunders
Life from death, and death from Heaven:
Nor the "Paradises Seven "
Which the happy dead inherit;
Nor those "birds" which bear each spirit
Toward the Throne, "green birds and white. "
Radiant, glorious, swift their flight!
Now the long, long darkness ends.
Yet ye wail, my foolish friends,
While the man whom ye call "dead"
In unbroken bliss instead
Lives, and loves you: lost, 'tis true
By any light which shines for you;
But in light ye cannot see
Of unfulfilled felicity.
And enlarging Paradise;
Lives the life that never dies.
Farewell, friends! Yet not farewell;
Where I am, ye, too, shall dwell.
I am gone before your face
A heart-beat's time, a gray ant's pace.
When ye come where I have stepped,
Ye will marvel why ye wept;
Ye will know, by true love taught,
That here is all, and there is naught.
Weep awhile, if ye are fain,—
Sunshine still must follow rain!
Only not at death, for death-
Now I see is that first breath
Which our souls draw when we enter
Life, that is of all life centre.
Know ye Allah's law is love,
Viewed from Allah's Throne above;
Be ye firm of trust, and come
Faithful onward to your home!
"La Allah illa Allah! Yea,
Mu'hid! Restorer! Sovereign! " say!
He who died at Azan gave
This to those that made his grave.
## p. 837 (#255) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
837
SOLOMON AND THE ANT
From Pearls of the Faith'
Say Ar-Raheen! call Him «Compassionate,»
For He is pitiful to small and great.
T'S
s written that the serving angels stand
Beside God's throne, ten myriads on each hand,
Waiting, with wings outstretched and watchful eyes,
To do their Master's heavenly embassies.
Quicker than thought His high commands they read,
Swifter than light to execute them speed;
Bearing the word of power from star to star,
Some hither and some thither, near and far.
And unto these naught is too high or low,
Too mean or mighty, if He wills it so;
Neither is any creature, great or small,
Beyond His pity, which embraceth all,
Because His eye beholdeth all which are;
Sees without search, and counteth without care.
Nor lies the babe nearer the nursing-place
Than Allah's smallest child to Allah's grace;
Nor any ocean rolls so vast that He
Forgets one wave of all that restless sea.
Thus it is written; and moreover told
How Gabriel, watching by the Gates of Gold,
Heard from the Voice Ineffable this word
Of twofold mandate uttered by the Lord:-
"Go earthward! pass where Solomon hath made
His pleasure-house, and sitteth there arrayed,
Goodly and splendid — whom I crowned the king.
For at this hour my servant doth a thing
Unfitting: out of Nisibis there came
A thousand steeds with nostrils all aflame
And limbs of swiftness, prizes of the fight;
Lo! these are led, for Solomon's delight,
Before the palace, where he gazeth now
Filling his heart with pride at that brave show;
So taken with the snorting and the tramp
Of his war-horses, that Our silver lamp
Of eve is swung in vain, Our warning Sun
Will sink before his sunset-prayer's begun;
:-
## p. 838 (#256) ############################################
838
EDWIN ARNOLD
So shall the people say, 'This king, our lord,
Loves more the long-maned trophies of his sword
Than the remembrance of his God! ' Go in!
Save thou My faithful servant from such sin.
"Also, upon the slope of Arafat,
Beneath a lote-tree which is fallen flat,
Toileth a yellow ant who carrieth home
Food for her nest, but so far hath she come
Her worn feet fail, and she will perish, caught
In the falling rain; but thou, make the way naught.
And help her to her people in the cleft
Of the black rock. "
Silently Gabriel left
The Presence, and prevented the king's sin,
And holp the little ant at entering in.
O Thou whose love is wide and great,
We praise Thee, "The Compassionate. »
THE AFTERNOON
G
From Pearls of the Faith'
He is sufficient, and He makes suffice;
Praise thus again thy Lord, mighty and wise.
OD is enough! thou, who in hope and fear
Toilest through desert-sands of life, sore tried,
Climb trustful over death's black ridge, for near
The bright wells shine: thou wilt be satisfied.
God doth suffice! O thou, the patient one,
Who puttest faith in Him, and none beside,
Bear yet thy load; under the setting sun
The glad tents gleam: thou wilt be satisfied.
By God's gold Afternoon! peace ye shall have:
Man is in loss except he live aright,
And help his fellow to be firm and brave,
Faithful and patient: then the restful night!
Al Mughni! best Rewarder! we
Endure; putting our trust in Thee.
## p. 839 (#257) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
839
THE TRUMPET
From Pearls of the Faith'
Magnify Him, Al-Kaiyum; and so call
The "Self-subsisting" God who judgeth all.
HEN the trumpet shall sound,
On that day,
The wicked, slow-gathering,
Shall say,
"Is it long we have lain in our graves?
For it seems as an hour! »
Then will Israfil call them to judgment:
And none shall have power
To turn aside, this way or that;
And their voices will sink
WHEN
To silence, except for the sounding
Of a noise, like the noise on the brink
Of the sea when its stones
Are dragged with a clatter and hiss
Down the shore, in the wild breakers' roar!
The sound of their woe shall be this:-
Then they who denied
That He liveth Eternal, "Self-made,"
Shall call to the mountains to crush them;
Amazed and affrayed.
Thou Self-subsistent, Living Lord!
Thy grace against that day afford.
ENVOI TO THE LIGHT OF ASIA'
H, BLESSED Lord! Oh, High Deliverer!
A Forgive this feeble script which doth Thee wrong
Measuring with little wit Thy lofty Love.
Ah, Lover! Brother! Guide! Lamp of the Law!
I take my refuge in Thy name and Thee!
I take my refuge in Thy Law of God!
I take my refuge in Thy Order! Om!
The Dew is on the lotus-rise, great Sun!
And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.
Om mani padme hum, the Sunrise comes!
The Dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea!
## p. 840 (#258) ############################################
840
EDWIN ARNOLD
From Harper's Monthly, copyright 1886, by Harper & Brothers
GRISHMA; OR THE SEASON OF HEAT
Translated from Kalidasa's Ritu Sanhâra›
ITH fierce noons beaming, moons of glory gleaming,
Full conduits streaming, where fair bathers lie,
With sunsets splendid, when the strong day, ended,
Melts into peace, like a tired lover's sigh—
So cometh summer nigh.
WITH
And nights of ebon blackness, laced with lustres
From starry clusters; courts of calm retreat,
Where wan rills warble over glistening marble;
Cold jewels, and the sandal, moist and sweet-
These for the time are meet
-
Of "Suchi," dear one of the bright days, bringing
Love songs for singing which all hearts enthrall,
Wine cups that sparkle at the lips of lovers,
Odors and pleasures in the palace hall:
In "Suchi" these befall.
For then, with wide hips richly girt, and bosoms
Fragrant with blossoms, and with pearl strings gay,
Their new-laved hair unbound, and spreading round.
Faint scents, the palace maids in tender play
The ardent heats allay
Of princely playmates. Through the gates their feet,
With lac-dye rosy and neat, and anklets ringing,
In music trip along, echoing the song
Of wild swans, all men's hearts by subtle singing
To Kama's service bringing;
For who, their sandal-scented breasts perceiving,
Their white pearls-weaving with the saffron stars
Girdles and diadems-their gold and gems
Linked upon waist and thigh, in Love's soft snares
Is not caught unawares?
Then lay they by their robes - no longer light
For the warm midnight—and their beauty cover
With woven veil too airy to conceal
Its dew-pearled softness; so, with youth clad over,
Each seeks her eager lover.
## p. 841 (#259) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
841
And sweet airs winnowed from the sandal fans,
Faint balm that nests between those gem-bound breasts,
Voices of stream and bird, and clear notes heard
From vina strings amid the songs' unrests,
Wake passion. With light jests,
And sidelong glances, and coy smiles and dances,
Each maid enhances newly sprung delight;
Quick leaps the fire of Love's divine desire,
So kindled in the season when the Night
With broadest moons is bright;
Till on the silvered terraces, sleep-sunken,
With Love's draughts drunken, those close lovers lie;
And all for sorrow there shall come To-morrow
w
The Moon, who watched them, pales in the gray sky,
While the still Night doth die.
THEN breaks fierce Day! The whirling dust is driven
O'er earth and heaven, until the sun-scorched plain
Its road scarce shows for dazzling heat to those
Who, far from home and love, journey in pain,
Longing to rest again.
Panting and parched, with muzzles dry and burning,
For cool streams yearning, herds of antelope
Haste where the brassy sky, banked black and high,
Hath clouded promise. << There will be" - they hope —
"Water beyond the tope! "
Sick with the glare, his hooded terrors failing,
His slow coils trailing o'er the fiery dust,
The cobra glides to nighest shade, and hides
His head beneath the peacock's train: he must
His ancient foeman trust!
The purple peafowl, wholly overmastered
By the red morning, droop with weary cries;
No stroke they make to slay that gliding snake
Who creeps for shelter underneath the eyes
Of their spread jewelries!
## p. 842 (#260) ############################################
842
EDWIN ARNOLD
The jungle lord, the kingly tiger, prowling,
For fierce thirst howling, orbs a-stare and red,
Sees without heed the elephants pass by him,
Lolls his lank tongue, and hangs his bloody head,
His mighty forces fled.
Nor heed the elephants that tiger, plucking
Green leaves, and sucking with a dry trunk dew;
Tormented by the blazing day, they wander,
And, nowhere finding water, still renew
Their search-a woful crew!
With restless snout rooting the dark morasses,
Where reeds and grasses on the soft slime grow,
The wild-boars, grunting ill-content and anger,
Dig lairs to shield them from the torturing glow,
Deep, deep as they can go.
The frog, for misery of his pool departing-
'Neath that flame-darting ball-and waters drained
Down to their mud, crawls croaking forth, to cower
Under the black-snake's coils, where there is gained
A little shade; and, strained
-
To patience by such heat, scorching the jewel
Gleaming so cruel on his venomous head,
That worm, whose tongue, as the blast burns along,
Licks it for coolness-all discomfited—
Strikes not his strange friend dead!
The pool, with tender-growing cups of lotus
Once brightly blowing, hath no blossoms more!
Its fish are dead, its fearful cranes are fled,
And crowding elephants its flowery shore
Tramp to a miry floor.
With foam-strings roping from his jowls, and dropping
From dried drawn lips, horns laid aback, and eyes
Mad with the drouth, and thirst-tormented mouth,
Down-thundering from his mountain cavern flies
The bison in wild wise,
Questing a water channel. Bare and scrannel
The trees droop, where the crows sit in a row
With beaks agape.
The hot baboon and ape
Climb chattering to the bush. The buffalo
Bellows. And locusts go
## p. 843 (#261) ############################################
EDWIN ARNOLD
843
Choking the wells.
Far o'er the hills and dells
Wanders th' affrighted eye, beholding blasted
The pleasant grass: the forest's leafy mass
Wilted; its waters waned; its grace exhausted;
Its creatures wasted.
Then leaps to view-blood-red and bright of hue-
As blooms sprung new on the Kusumbha-Tree-
The wild-fire's tongue, fanned by the wind, and flung
Furiously forth; the palms, canes, brakes, you see
Wrapped in one agony
Of lurid death! The conflagration, driven
In fiery levin, roars from jungle caves;
Hisses and blusters through the bamboo clusters,
Crackles across the curling grass, and drives
Into the river waves
The forest folk!
Dreadful that flame to see
Coil from the cotton-tree a snake of gold-
Violently break from root and trunk, to take
The bending boughs and leaves in deadly hold
Then passing-to enfold
New spoils! In herds, elephants, jackals, pards,
For anguish of such fate their enmity
Laying aside, burst for the river wide
Which flows between fair isles: in company
As friends they madly flee!
«<
Bur Thee, my Best Beloved! may Suchi" visit fair
With songs of secret waters cooling the quiet air,
Under blue buds of lotus beds, and pâtalas which shed
Fragrance and balm, while Moonlight weaves over thy happy
head
Its silvery veil! So Nights and Days of Summer pass for
thee
Amid the pleasure-palaces, with love and melody!
## p. 844 (#262) ############################################
844
MATTHEW ARNOLD
(1822-1888)
BY GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
M
ATTHEW ARNOLD, an English poet and critic, was born De-
cember 24th, 1822, at Laleham, in the Thames valley. He
was the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, best remembered as
the master of Rugby in later years, and distinguished also as a histo-
rian of Rome. His mother was, by her maiden name, Mary Penrose,
and long survived her husband. Arnold passed his school days at
Winchester and Rugby, and went to Oxford in October, 1841. There,
as also at school, he won scholarship and prize, and showed poetical
talent. He was elected a fellow of Oriel in March, 1845. He taught
for a short time at Rugby, but in 1847 became private secretary
to Lord Lansdowne, who in 1851 appointed him school inspector.
From that time he was engaged mainly in educational labors, as
inspector and commissioner, and traveled frequently on the Continent
examining foreign methods. He was also interested controversially
in political and religious questions of the day, and altogether had a
sufficient public life outside of literature. In 1851 he married Frances
Lucy, daughter of Sir William Wightman, a judge of the Court of
Queen's Bench, and by her had five children, three sons and two
daughters.
His first volume of verse, 'The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems,'
bears the date 1849; the second. 'Empedocles on Etna and Other
Poems, 1852; the third, 'Poems,' made up mainly from the two
former, was published in 1853, and thereafter he added little to his
poetic work. His first volume of similar significance in prose was
'Essays in Criticism,' issued in 1865. Throughout his mature life he
was a constant writer, and his collected works of all kinds now fill
eleven volumes, exclusive of his letters. In 1857 he was elected
Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and there began his career as a lec-
turer; and this method of public expression he employed often. His
life was thus one with many diverse activities, and filled with prac-
tical or literary affairs; and on no side was it deficient in human
relations. He won respect and reputation while he lived; and his
works continue to attract men's minds, although with much uneven-
ness. He died at Liverpool, on April 15th, 1888.
That considerable portion of Arnold's writings which was con-
cerned with education and politics, or with phases of theological
thought and religious tendency, however valuable in contemporary
## p. 844 (#263) ############################################
## p. 844 (#264) ############################################
曾
i
## p. 844 (#265) ############################################
சர்மா
CRICI
3
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
வ
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## p. 845 (#267) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
845
discussion, and to men and movements of the third quarter of the
century, must be set on one side. It is not because of anything
there contained that he has become a permanent figure of his time,
or is of interest in literature. He achieved distinction as a critic and
as a poet; but although he was earlier in the field as a poet, he was
recognized by the public at large first as a critic. The union of the
two functions is not unusual in the history of literature; but where
success has been attained in both, the critic has commonly sprung
from the poet in the man, and his range and quality have been lim-
ited thereby. It was so with Dryden and Wordsworth, and, less
obviously, with Landor and Lowell. In Arnold's case there is no
such growth: the two modes of writing, prose and verse, were dis-
connected. One could read his essays without suspecting a poet,
and his poems without discerning a critic, except so far as one finds
the moralist there. In fact, Arnold's critical faculty belonged rather
to the practical side of his life, and was a part of his talents as a
public man.
This appears by the very definitions that he gave, and by the
turn of his phrase, which always keeps an audience rather than a
meditative reader in view. "What is the function of criticism at the
present time? " he asks, and answers-"A disinterested endeavor to
learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the
world. " That is a wide warrant. The writer who exercises his crit-
ical function under it, however, is plainly a reformer at heart, and
labors for the social welfare. He is not an analyst of the form of
art for its own sake, or a contemplator of its substance of wisdom
or beauty merely. He is not limited to literature or the other arts
of expression, but the world - the intellectual world- is all before
him where to choose; and having learned the best that is known
and thought, his second and manifestly not inferior duty is to go
into all nations, a messenger of the propaganda of intelligence. It
is a great mission, and nobly characterized; but if criticism be so
defined, it is criticism of a large mold.
The scope of the word conspicuously appears also in the phrase,
which became proverbial, declaring that literature is "a criticism of
life. " In such an employment of terms, ordinary meanings evapo-
rate; and it becomes necessary to know the thought of the author
rather than the usage of men. Without granting the dictum, there-
fore, which would be far from the purpose, is it not clear that by
"critic" and "criticism" Arnold intended to designate, or at least to
convey, something peculiar to his. own conception, not strictly
related to literature at all, it may be, but more closely tied to soci-
ety in its general mental activity? In other words, Arnold was a
critic of civilization more than of books, and aimed at illumination
## p. 846 (#268) ############################################
846
MATTHEW ARNOLD
by means of ideas. With this goes his manner, - that habitual air of
telling you something which you did not know before, and doing it
for your good, which stamps him as a preacher born. Under the
mask of the critic is the long English face of the gospeler; that type
whose persistent physiognomy was never absent from the conventicle
of English thought.
This evangelizing prepossession of Arnold's mind must be recog-
nized in order to understand alike his attitude of superiority, his
stiffly didactic method, and his success in attracting converts in
whom the seed proved barren. The first impression that his entire
work makes is one of limitation; so strict is this limitation, and it
profits him so much, that it seems the element in which he had his
being. On a close survey, the fewness of his ideas is most surpris-
ing, though the fact is somewhat cloaked by the lucidity of his
thought, its logical vigor, and the manner of its presentation. He
takes a text, either some formula of his own or some adopted phrase
that he has made his own, and from that he starts out only to
return to it again and again with ceaseless iteration. In his illus-
trations, for example, when he has pilloried some poor gentleman,
otherwise unknown, for the astounded and amused contemplation of
the Anglican monocle, he cannot let him alone. So too when, with
the journalist's nack for nicknames, he divides all England into three
parts, he cannot forget the rhetorical exploit. He never lets the
points he has made fall into oblivion; and hence his work in general,
as a critic, is skeletonized to the memory in watchwords, formulas,
and nicknames, which, taken altogether, make up only a small num-
ber of ideas.
-
-
His scale, likewise, is meagre. is essay is apt to be a book
review or a plea merely; it is without that free illusiveness and
undeveloped suggestion which indicate a full mind and give to such
brief pieces of writing the sense of overflow. He takes no large sub-
ject as a whole, but either a small one or else some phases of the
larger one; and he exhausts all that he touches. He seems to have
no more to say. It is probable that his acquaintance with literature
was incommensurate with his reputation or apparent scope as a
writer. As he has fewer ideas than any other author of his time of
the same rank, so he discloses less knowledge of his own or foreign
literatures. His occupations forbade wide acquisition; he husbanded
his time, and economized also by giving the best direction to his
private studies, and he accomplished much; but he could not master
the field as any man whose profession was literature might easily
do. Consequently, in comparison with Coleridge or Lowell, his criti-
cal work seems dry and bare, with neither the fluency nor the rich-
ness of a master.
## p. 847 (#269) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
847
In yet another point this paucity of matter appears. What Mr.
Richard Holt Hutton says in his essay on the poetry of Arnold is so
apposite here that it will be best to quote the passage. He is
speaking, in an aside, of Arnold's criticisms:-
"They are fine, they are keen, they are often true; but they are always
too much limited to the thin superficial layer of the moral nature of their
subjects, and seem to take little comparative interest in the deeper individual-
ity beneath. Read his essay on Heine, and you will see the critic engrossed
with the relation of Heine to the political and social ideas of his day, and
passing over with comparative indifference the true soul of Heine, the fount-
ain of both his poetry and his cynicism. Read his five lectures on translating
Homer, and observe how exclusively the critic's mind is occupied with the
form as distinguished from the substance of the Homeric poetry. Even when
he concerns himself with the greatest modern poets,- with Shakespeare as in
the preface to the earlier edition of his poems, or with Goethe in reiterated
poetical criticisms, or when he again and again in his poems treats of Words-
worth, it is always the style and superficial doctrine of their poetry, not the
individual character and unique genius, which occupy him. He will tell you
whether a poet is 'sane and clear,' or stormy and fervent; whether he is
rapid and noble, or loquacious and quaint; whether a thinker penetrates the
husks of conventional thought which mislead the crowd; whether there is
sweetness as well as lucidity in his aims; whether a descriptive writer has
'distinction of style, or is admirable only for his vivacity: but he rarely goes
to the individual heart of any of the subjects of his criticism; he finds their
style and class, but not their personality in that class; he ranks his men, but
does not portray them; hardly even seems to find much interest in the indi-
vidual roots of their character. "
In brief, this is to say that Arnold took little interest in human
nature; nor is there anything in his later essays on Byron, Keats,
Wordsworth, Milton, or Gray, to cause us to revise the judgment on
this point. In fact, so far as he touched on the personality of Keats
or Gray, to take the capital instances, he was most unsatisfactory.
Arnold was not, then, one of those critics who are interested in
life itself, and through the literary work seize on the soul of the
author in its original brightness, or set forth the life-stains in the
successive incarnations of his heart and mind. Nor was he of those
who consider the work itself final, and endeavor simply to under-
stand it,-form and matter,—and so to mediate between genius and
our slower intelligence. He followed neither the psychological nor
the æsthetic method. It need hardly be said that he was born too
early to be able ever to conceive of literature as a phenomenon of
society, and its great men as only terms in an evolutionary series.
He had only a moderate knowledge of literature, and his stock of
ideas was small; his manner of speech was hard and dry, there was
a trick in his style, and his self-repetition is tiresome.
## p. 848 (#270) ############################################
848
MATTHEW ARNOLD
What gave him vogue, then, and what still keeps his more liter-
ary work alive? Is it anything more than the temper in which he
worked, and the spirit which he evoked in the reader ? He stood
for the very spirit of intelligence in his time. He made his readers
respect ideas, and want to have as many as possible. He enveloped
them in an atmosphere of mental curiosity and alertness, and put
them in contact with novel and attractive themes. In particular, he
took their minds to the Continent and made them feel that they
were becoming cosmopolitan by knowing Joubert; or at home, he
rallied them in opposition to the dullness of the period, to "bar-
barism" or other objectionable traits in the social classes: and he
volleyed contempt upon the common multitudinous foe in general,
and from time to time cheered them with some delectable examples
of single combat. It cannot be concealed that there was much mali-
cious pleasure in it all. He was not indisposed to high-bred cruelty.
Like Lamb, he "loved a fool," but it was in a mortar; and pleasant
it was to see the spectacle when he really took a man in hand for
the chastisement of irony. It is thus that "the seraphim illuminati
sneer. " And in all his controversial writing there was a brilliancy
and unsparingness that will appeal to the deepest instincts of a
fighting race, willy-nilly; and as one had only to read the words to
feel himself among the children of light, so that our withers were
unwrung, there was high enjoyment.
This liveliness of intellectual conflict, together with the sense of
ideas, was a boon to youth especially; and the academic air in which
the thought and style always moved, with scholarly self-possession
and assurance, with the dogmatism of "enlightenment" in all ages
and among all sects, with serenity and security unassailable, from
within at least—this academic ❝clearness and purity without shadow
or stain" had an overpowering charm to the college-bred and culti-
vated, who found the rare combination of information, taste, and
aggressiveness in one of their own ilk. Above all, there was the play
of intelligence on every page; there was an application of ideas to
life in many regions of the world's interests; there was contact with
a mind keen, clear, and firm, armed for controversy or persuasion
equally, and filled with eager belief in itself, its ways, and its will.
To meet such personality in a book was a bracing experience;
and for many these essays were an awakening of the mind itself. We
may go to others for the greater part of what criticism can give, —
for definite and fundamental principles, for adequate characterization,
for the intuition and the revelation, the penetrant flash of thought
and phrase: but Arnold generates and supports a temper of mind in
which the work of these writers best thrives even in its own sphere;
and through him this temper becomes less individual than social,
## p. 849 (#271) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
849
encompassing the whole of life. Few critics have been really less
"disinterested," few have kept their eyes less steadily "upon the
object" but that fact does not lessen the value of his precepts of
disinterestedness and objectivity; nor is it necessary, in becoming "a
child of light," to join in spirit the unhappy "remnant" of the acad-
emy, or to drink too deep of that honeyed satisfaction, with which he
fills his readers, of being on his side. As a critic, Arnold succeeds if
his main purpose does not fail, and that was to reinforce the party
of ideas, of culture, of the children of light; to impart, not moral
vigor, but openness and reasonableness of mind; and to arouse and
arm the intellectual in contradistinction to the other energies of civ-
ilization.
The poetry of Arnold, to pass to the second portion of his work,
was less widely welcomed than his prose, and made its way very
slowly; but it now seems the most important and permanent part.
It is not small in quantity, though his unproductiveness in later years
has made it appear that he was less fluent and abundant in verse
than he really was. The remarkable thing, as one turns to his
poems, is the contrast in spirit that they afford to the essays: there
is here an atmosphere of entire calm. We seem to be in a different
world. This fact, with the singular silence of his familiar letters in
regard to his verse, indicates that his poetic life was truly a thing
apart.
In one respect only is there something in common between his
prose and verse: just as interest in human nature was absent in the
latter, it is absent also in the former. There is no action in the
poems; neither is there character for its own sake. Arnold was a
man of the mind, and he betrays no interest in personality except
for its intellectual traits; in Clough as in Obermann, it is the life
of thought, not the human being, that he portrays. As a poet, he
expresses the moods of the meditative spirit in view of nature and
our mortal existence; and he represents life, not lyrically by its
changeful moments, nor tragically by its conflict in great characters,
but philosophically by a self-contained and unvarying monologue,
deeper or less deep in feeling and with cadences of tone, but always
with the same grave and serious effect. He is constantly thinking,
whatever his subject or his mood; his attitude is intellectual, his
sentiments are maxims, his conclusions are advisory. His world is
the sphere of thought, and his poems have the distance and repose
and also the coldness that befit that sphere; and the character of his
imagination, which lays hold of form and reason, makes natural to
him the classical style.
It is obvious that the sources of his poetical culture are Greek.
It is not merely, however, that he takes for his early subjects Merope
11-54
## p. 850 (#272) ############################################
850
MATTHEW ARNOLD
and Empedocles, or that he strives in 'Balder Dead' for Homeric
narrative, or that in the recitative to which he was addicted he
evoked an immelodious phantom of Greek choruses; nor is it the
"marmoreal air” that chills while it ennobles much of his finest
work. One feels the Greek quality not as a source but as a presence.
In Tennyson, Keats, and Shelley, there was Greek influence, but
in them the result was modern. In Arnold the antiquity remains;
remains in mood, just as in Landor it remains in form. The Greek
twilight broods over all his poetry. It is pagan in philosophic spirit;
not Attic, but of a later and stoical time, with the very virtues of
patience, endurance, suffering, not in their Christian types, but as
they now seem to a post-Christian imagination looking back to the
imperial past. There is a difference, it is true, in Arnold's expres-
sion of the mood: he is as little Sophoclean as he is Homeric, as little
Lucretian as he is Vergilian. The temperament is not the same,
not a survival or a revival of the antique, but original and living.
And yet the mood of the verse is felt at once to be a reincarnation
of the deathless spirit of Hellas, that in other ages also has made
beautiful and solemn for a time the shadowed places of the Christian
world. If one does not realize this, he must miss the secret of the
tranquillity, the chill, the grave austerity, as well as the philosoph-
ical resignation, which are essential to the verse. Even in those
parts of the poems which use romantic motives, one reason of their
original charm is that they suggest how the Greek imagination would
have dealt with the forsaken merman, the church of Brou, and Tris-
tram and Iseult. The presence of such motives, such mythology,
and such Christian and chivalric color in the work of Arnold does
not disturb the imple unity of its feeling, which finds no solvent for
life, whatever its accident of time and place and faith, except in
that Greek spirit which ruled in thoughtful men before the triumph.
of Christianity, and is still native in men who accept the intellect as
the sole guide of life.
It was with reference to these modern men and the movement
they took part in, that he made his serious claim to greatness; to
rank, that is, with Tennyson and Browning, as he said, in the litera-
ture of his time. "My poems," he wrote, "represent on the whole
the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century; and
thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious
to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in
the literary productions that reflect it. It might be fairly urged 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,
## p. 851 (#273) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
851
If
I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had theirs. "
the main movement had been such as he thought of it, or if it had
been of importance in the long run, there might be a sounder basis
for this hope than now appears to be the case; but there can be no
doubt, let the contemporary movement have been what it may, that
Arnold's mood is one that will not pass out of men's hearts to-day
nor to-morrow.
On the modern side the example of Wordsworth was most form-
ative, and in fact it is common to describe Arnold as a Wordsworthian.
and so, in his contemplative attitude to nature, and in his habitual
recourse to her, he was; but both nature herself as she appeared to
him, and his mood in her presence, were very different from Words-
worth's conception and emotion. Arnold finds in nature a refuge
from life, an anodyne, an escape; but Wordsworth, in going into the
hills for poetical communion, passed from a less to a fuller and
deeper life, and obtained an inspiration, and was seeking the goal of
all his being. In the method of approach, too, as well as in the
character of the experience, there was a profound difference between
the two poets. Arnold sees with the outward rather than the inward
eye. He is pictorial in a way that Wordsworth seldom is; he uses
detail much more, and gives a group or a scene with the externality
of a painter. The method resembles that of Tennyson rather than
that of Wordsworth, and has more direct analogy with the Greek
manner than with the modern and emotional schools; it is objective,
often minute, and always carefully composed, in the artistic sense of
that term. The description of the river Oxus, for example, though
faintly charged with suggested and allegoric meaning, is a noble close
to the poem which ends in it. The scale is large, and Arnold was
fond of a broad landscape, of mountains, and prospects over the land;
but one cannot fancy Wordsworth writing it. So too, on a small
scale, the charming scene of the English garden in Thyrsis' is far
from Wordsworth's manner:—
-
"When garden walks and all the grassy floor
With blossoms red and white of fallen May
And chestnut-flowers are strewn -
So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden trees,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze. »
This is a picture that could be framed: how different from Words-
worth's "wandering voice"! Or to take another notable example,
which, like the Oxus passage, is a fine close in the Tristram and
Iseult,' the hunter on the arras above the dead lovers :-
## p. 852 (#274) ############################################
852
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"A stately huntsman, clad in green,
And round him a fresh forest scene.
On that clear forest-knoll he stays,
With his pack round him, and delays.
The wild boar rustles in his lair,
The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air,
But lord and hounds keep rooted there.
Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
O hunter! and without a fear
Thy golden tasseled bugle blow->
But no one is deceived, and the hunter does not move from the
arras, but is still "rooted there," with his green suit and his golden
tassel. The piece is pictorial, and highly wrought for pictorial effects
only, obviously decorative and used as stage scenery precisely in the
manner of our later theatrical art, with that accent of forethought
which turns the beautiful into the æsthetic. This is a method which
Wordsworth never used. Take one of his pictures, the 'Reaper' for
example, and see the difference. The one is out-of-doors, the other
is of the studio. The purpose of these illustrations is to show that
Arnold's nature-pictures are not only consciously artistic, with an ar-
rangement that approaches artifice, but that he is interested through
his eye primarily and not through his emotions. It is characteris-
tic of his temperament also that he reminds one most often of the
painter in water-colors.
If there is this difference between Arnold and Wordsworth in
method, a greater difference in spirit is to be anticipated. It is a
fixed gulf. In nature Wordsworth found the one spirit's "plastic
stress," and a near and intimate revelation to the soul of truths that
were his greatest joy and support in existence. Arnold finds there no
inhabitancy of God, no such streaming forth of wisdom and beauty
from the fountain heads of being; but the secret frame of nature is
filled only with the darkness, the melancholy, the waiting endurance
that is projected from himself:-
"Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,
The solemn hills about us spread,
The stream that falls incessantly,
The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,
If I might lend their life a voice,
Seem to bear rather than rejoice. »
Compare this with Wordsworth's 'Stanzas on Peele Castle,' and the
important reservations that must be borne in mind in describing
Arnold as a Wordsworthian will become clearer. It is as a relief from
## p. 853 (#275) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
853
1.
thought, as a beautiful and half-physical diversion, as a scale of being
so vast and mysterious as to reduce the pettiness of human life to
nothingness, it is in these ways that nature has value in Arnold's
verse. Such a poet may describe natural scenes well, and obtain by
means of them contrast to human conditions, and decorative beauty;
but he does not penetrate nature or interpret what her significance is
in the human spirit, as the more emotional poets have done. He
ends in an antithesis, not in a synthesis, and both nature and man
lose by the divorce. One looks in vain for anything deeper than
landscapes in Arnold's treatment of nature; she is emptied of her
own infinite, and has become spiritually void: and in the simple great
line in which he gave the sea
"The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea- >>
he is thinking of man, not of the ocean: and the mood seems ancient
rather than modern, the feeling of a Greek, just as the sound of the
waves to him is always Ægean.
In treating of man's life, which must be the main thing in any
poet's work, Arnold is either very austere or very pessimistic. If the
feeling is moral, the predominant impression is of austerity; if it is
intellectual, the predominant impression is of sadness. He was not in-
sensible to the charm of life, but he feels it in his senses only to deny
it in his mind. The illustrative passage is from 'Dover Beach':—
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. »
This is the contradiction of sense and thought, the voice of a
regret grounded in the intellect (for if it were vital and grounded in
the emotions it would become despair); the creed of illusion and
futility in life, which is the characteristic note of Arnold, and the
reason of his acceptance by many minds. The one thing about life
which he most insists on is its isolation, its individuality. In the
series called 'Switzerland,' this is the substance of the whole; and
the doctrine is stated with an intensity and power, with an amplitude
and prolongation, that set these poems apart as the most remarkable
of all his lyrics. From a poet so deeply impressed with this aspect
of existence, and unable to find its remedy or its counterpart in the
harmony of life, no joyful or hopeful word can be expected, and none
is found. The second thing about life which he dwells on is its
futility; though he bids one strive and work, and points to the
example of the strong whom he has known, yet one feels that his
## p. 854 (#276) ############################################
854
MATTHEW ARNOLD
voice rings more true when he writes of Obermann than in any
other of the elegiac poems. In such verse as the 'Summer Night,'
again, the genuineness of the mood is indubitable. In The Sick
King of Bokhara,' the one dramatic expression of his genius, futility
is the very centre of the action. The fact that so much of his
poetry seems to take its motive from the subsidence of Christian
faith has set him among the skeptic or agnostic poets, and the "main
movement" which he believed he had expressed was doubtless that
in which agnosticism was a leading element. The unbelief of the
third quarter of the century was certainly a controlling influence over
him, and in a man mainly intellectual by nature it could not well
have been otherwise.
Hence, as one looks at his more philosophical and lyrical poems-
the profounder part of his work — and endeavors to determine their
character and sources alike, it is plain to see that in the old phrase,
"the pride of the intellect" lifts its lonely column over the desola-
tion of every page. The man of the academy is here, as in the
prose, after all.
He reveals himself in the literary motive, the
bookish atmosphere of the verse, in its vocabulary, its elegance of
structure, its precise phrase and its curious allusions (involving foot-
notes), and in fact, throughout all its form and structure. So self-
conscious is it that it becomes frankly prosaic at inconvenient times,
and is more often on the level of eloquent and graceful rhetoric than
of poetry. It is frequently liquid and melodious, but there is no
burst of native song in it anywhere. It is the work of a true poet,
nevertheless; but there are many voices for the Muse. It is sincere,
it is touched with reality; it is the mirror of a phase of life in our
times, and not in our times only, but whenever the intellect seeks
expression for its sense of the limitation of its own career, and its
sadness in a world which it cannot solve.
A word should be added concerning the personality of Arnold
which is revealed in his familiar letters,- a collection that has
dignified the records of literature with a singularly noble memory of
private life. Few who did not know Arnold could have been pre-
pared for the revelation of a nature so true, so amiable, so dutiful.
