Free-trade—Federalism—Higher Education, they all, I say, go together; but if one is more important than the other, then it is the last. Improvement, real improvement, must always be from within outwards, not from without inwards. All abiding good comes, as it has been well said, by evolution not by revolution. “Our chief, our gravest want in this country at present,” says Arnold, “our unum necessarium, is a middle-class, homogeneous, intelligent, civilized, brought up in good public schools, and on the first plane.” How true is this of Australia too, of Melbourne! There are State schools for the lower-class, but what is there for the great upper educated class of the nation? The voluntary schools, the “private adventure schools.” And what sort of education do they supply either in England or here? “The voluntary schools,” says a happy shallow man in some Publishers’ circular I lit on the other day, “the voluntary schools of the country” [of England] “have reached the highest degree of efficiency.” This, to those who have taken the trouble to study the question, not to say to have considerable absolute experience in the English voluntary schools—this is intelligence as surprising as it ought to be gratifying. To such men, the idea they had arrived at of the English voluntary schools was somewhat different; their idea being that these schools were, both socially and intellectually, the most inadequate that fall to the lot of any middle class among the civilized nations of Europe. “Comprehend,” says Arnold to us Englishmen, and he might as well be saying it to you Australians, “comprehend that middle-class education—the higher education, as we have put it, of the great upper educated class—is a great democratic reform, of the truest, surest, safest description.”
“But there are many difficulties to be overcome—so many, that we doubt these abstract theories to be at present within the sphere of practical application. There is such a mass of opposition to the idea of Federalism. And, as for the idea of Free-trade, we can only speculate on the existence of a national spirit here. The thinking public is quite content with its State schools for the lower class, and cares little or nothing about State schools and a higher education for the upper class. They are much more interested in the religious questions of the day—the Catholic attitude, the conflict between Mr. Strong and his Presbytery on the subject of Religious Liberalism or Latitudinarianism, as you may please to call it, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”—All this is so, let us admit it at once, but it does not discourage us. We know, or think we know (which is, after all, almost the same thing), that these three questions—Free-trade, Federalism, Higher Education—are the three great, the three vital questions for Australia, for Melbourne. We know that, sooner or later, they will have to be properly considered and decided upon, and that, if Melbourne is to keep the place which she now holds as the leading city, intellectually and commercially, of Australia, they will have to be decided upon in that way which conforms with “the intelligible law of things,” with the Tendency of the Age, with the Time-Spirit. For this is the one invaluable and, in the end, irresistible ally of Progress—of Progress onward and upward.
December, 1884.
Note.—No one, speaking of Free-trade and Federalism in Australia, can omit a tribute of thanks to the Argus and the Federal Australian for what they have respectively done for the two causes. The cause of Higher Education, however, still waits for a champion in the Press.
THE POETRY OF ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.
“In the whole range of English literature,” says an Australian critic reviewing the complete edition of Gordon’s poems, “in the whole range of English literature there have been few poets possessed of a finer lyrical faculty than Adam Lindsay Gordon.... ‘Ashtaroth,’” continues our critic now warm at his work, “‘Ashtaroth’ is worthy to rank with any of Tennyson’s songs, and is far more musical than the best of Browning’s.” Then there is “the beauty of his ballad poetry, such as ‘Fauconshawe’ and ‘Rippling Water,’ which are perfect of their style;” and so on in the same strain, more or less, until the reader is surprised that our critic ends up with no further claim for his poet than that he “deserves to be ranked with the genuine poets of his generation.” One does not propose to criticise, verbally, criticism of this sort: it would be unkind to do so, and, above all, it would be useless. This is a native melody in the style of “Rule Britannia:” “Australia, and especially Victoria, is great and therefore her poet must be great also. Let us say that Melbourne is the equal of any English city save London, and Gordon the equal of any English poet save Shakspere and Milton!”
Now let us hear what another Australian critic, one who cares more about finding out the real deep true significance of Gordon and his poetry than of glorifying the amour-propre of this class or of that: let us hear what Mr. Marcus Clarke has to say. “Written as they were” (as Gordon’s poems were) “at odd times in leisure moments of a stirring and adventurous life, it is not to be wondered at if they are unequal and unfinished. The astonishment of those who knew the man, and can gauge the capacity of this city to foster poetic instinct, is, that such work was ever produced here at all.”—What a different tone is this from that of our first and enthusiastic critic! “Unequal and unfinished”—“astonishment that such work was ever produced here at all!” But this is not all that Mr. Clarke has to say about Gordon’s poetry: he has also to notice what influence was at work in it, and (most important of all!) what is its real deep true significance. He talks of Gordon “owning nothing but a love for horsemanship and a head full of Browning and Shelley,” and follows this up by saying that “the influence of Browning and of Swinburne” (who, as we all know, has been, creatively and demonstratively, the chief prophet in his generation of the poet who, he likes to think, is ‘beloved above all other poets, being beyond all other poets—in one word, and the only proper word,—divine’)—“the influence of Browning and of Swinburne upon the writer’s taste is plain. There is plainly visible also, however, a keen sense of natural beauty and a manly admiration for healthy living.” Well, and the conclusion of the whole matter? “The student of these unpretending volumes will be repaid for his labour. He will find in them something very like the beginnings of a national school of Australian poetry.”
Let us hasten to offer up our small tribute of praise and thanks to Mr. Clarke for his critical sagacity here, and let us venture to hope that the “Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon” may go down to posterity accompanied always by this small “Preface” of Mr. Clarke, who both “knew the man” and was yet the first to appreciate this aspect of his work.