[edgar] MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET. 313 



disadvantage of being obviously academic exercises. In the "Merope" 

 his imagination was not kindled in the progress of the composition, 

 and as a result the poem exhibits every defect of which Matthew 

 Arnold is capable. To the lack of ecstasy we easily reconcile our- 

 selves, for Arnold's song is rarely "rapt above the pole;" what we 

 rather deplore is the singular deficiency of his dramatic sense, and 

 his no less lamentable deficiency of ear in the unrhymed choruses, 

 which may be an original attempt on his part to find a metrical 

 equivalent for the Greek choral ode, but seem rather an unsuccessful 

 effort to reproduce the cadences of Milton in "Samson Agonistes" 

 or of Goethe in the "Iphigeneia." Our conclusion is that sustained 

 poems may be written in accordance with Arnold's theory on subjects 

 and with characters the remotest from our modern range of experience, 

 but that only by a miracle will these poems succeed. And in so far 

 as the effort is made to resort to the forms as well as to the themes 

 of ancient art the prospects of success are correspondingly prejudiced. 

 "Samson Agonistes" is at once a classically conceived tragedy and a 

 great poem. "Merope" is a conscientious and pedantic experiment. 



"Balder Dead" is even more remote in subject matter, for now 

 we are concerned not with men but with gods. That it is not a poem 

 which has regard to the immediate traffic of this world is no sufficient 

 reason for slighting its merits, and these I find very considerable 

 though critics as a rule discover little to commend in the performance. 

 Choosing a theme from Scandinavian mythology Arnold, who at this 

 time was bewitched by ethnological fancies, thought that he was 

 appealing to the latent racial instincts of his Teutonic readers. Noth- 

 ing of course is gained from this naive device, for it is always the 

 story rather than its derivation that counts with the reader. Arnold's 

 one advantage in "Balder Dead" is that he is dealing with material 

 that is not frayed with over use as themes from Grecian mythology 

 have now come to be. He is not so elemental and forceful as Morris 

 in his saga of "Sigurd the Volsung," but the story as he tells it is 

 dignified and impressive and loses nothing in the unemotional stateli- 

 ness of the diction. "Sohrab and Rustum" the other Homeric experi- 

 ment is too well-known to demand comment. It is the poem in which 

 Arnold's theories can be tested to best advantage, for he has availed 

 himself here of a story which for all its antiquity is in no sense remote 

 from our experience, and which gave him an occasion to exhibit the 

 fullest pathos under the most dignified restraint. 



Undeniable as is the charm it exercises I cannot include the 

 "Tristram and Iseult" among the poems which exhibit Arnold's 

 theories of narrative verse, and for reasons sufficiently obvious. 

 In planning his poem he made it impossible that a great action should 



