And I will lay thee in that lovely earth,
And heap a stately mound above thy bones,
And plant a far-seen pillar over all;
And men shall not forget thee in thy grave.
And I will spare thy host: yea, let them go:
Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace.
What should I do with slaying any more?’”
Real poetry, we are sorry to say, is now so scarce among us, that we cannot afford to dismiss any promising aspirant with a sneer. From the foregoing extracts it will be seen that Mr M. Arnold, in opposition to the tenets of that school of bardlings so copiously beslavered by Guffaw, has adopted, in this poem, a simple and even severe method of expression. He is now writing after Homer—not, indeed, slavishly, but on the Homeric principle; and the question now arises, whether or not he has succeeded. Our opinion is that this poem is highly creditable as an attempt in the right direction—that it is infinitely superior to the turgid trash with which we have been, of late years, inundated—but that it has not merit enough to confer lasting distinction on the author. Mr Arnold, we are aware, has been told the reverse; and as the sugared cup is always more palatable than that which contains an ingredient of bitter, he may possibly be inclined to prefer sweet panegyric to sincere though wholesome criticism. But we are not writing for him alone; we are attending to the poetical reputation of the age. In this composition, as it appears to us, Mr Arnold again suffers through imitation. He is writing, with deliberate intention, Homerically—that is, he has been keeping Homer in his eye, instead of rivetting it on his subject. Now this is a great mistake. The peculiar manner of a poet depends upon the age in which he lives. There is an enormous gap in world-history between “the blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle,” and Mr Matthew Arnold, who dates from “Fox How, Ambleside,” A.D. 1853; and it is a sheer impossibility that the two can naturally express themselves alike. What was nature in the one, is affectation in the other. Homer expressed himself simply, because he was addressing a simple audience; and also because his hearty, noble, and grand organisation made him superior to rhetorical conceits or affectation. Arnold also expresses himself simply; but he does so, not from native impulse or inspiration, but because he is aware of Homer’s charm. But he frustrates his own intention by deliberately copying Homer, and making his readers painfully aware of it. A true, or at all events a very accomplished poet, would not have committed this error. Let any man, of really cultivated taste in poetry, read the “Hyperion” of Keats, and the “Morte D’Arthur” of Tennyson—both of them splendid poems, and distinguished by severe simplicity of language—and then compare them with this effusion of Mr Arnold. We cannot for one moment doubt the verdict. Keats and Tennyson saw the principle, but they kept themselves away from imitation, gave their genius full play, and achieved magnificent results. Mr Arnold, recognising the principle, cannot divert his eye from the model, adopts the peculiarities of that, and fails. In fact, imitation is his curse. We said so more than four years ago, and we now repeat it. So strong is his tendency that way, that he cannot, within the limits of a composition of moderate length, confine himself to the imitation of a single renowned poet, but makes patchwork by copying the peculiarities, even though they are acknowledged blemishes, of another. Thus we find, nearly at the commencement of the poem which we are now discussing, the following passage:—
“The sun, by this, had risen, and clear’d the fog
From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands: