[edgarI MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET. 315 



of a past that never was. Swinburne writing with energy and passion 

 on the same theme as Arnold, so cloys his story with description that 

 we are not sure what it is that we see behind his many-coloured 

 words. Arnold, though a letter of his informs us that he thought he 

 might succeed where Tennyson had failed, was doubly doomed to 

 defeat by his modernity and by his classical sympathies. There 

 remains William Morris to whom the thirteenth century was dearer 

 and more native than the nineteenth, and for whom medievalising 

 was not an aesthetic pose but a prime necessity of his mind. 



In dealing with "Empedocles on Etna" we can afford to make 

 light of the fact that Arnold once withdrew the poem from his repub- 

 lished works. This was an aberration of judgment, and the critical 

 grounds on which the action was based will scarcely bear examination. 

 He excluded the poem as will be remembered because the action 

 was in his opinion unworthy or at best insufficient to support a sus- 

 tained piece. Casually regarded the poem may lie open to this objec- 

 tion. The hero argues, seems at one moment to issue triumphantly 

 from his argument, and then incontinently eclipses himself in a volcano. 

 As drama, the poem lacks the contention of rival wills, and even 

 within the mind of the protagonist there is little of the relief that 

 arises from the quick interplay of conflicting emotions. Considered as 

 narrative poetry, we readily grant that nothing of importance is 

 narrated. But why compel ourselves to regard the poem as bound 

 by the laws, if there are any, of narrative verse or drama ? It is 

 sufficient for us to know that here Arnold gives us under a slight 

 veil of drama, the ripest reflections of a rich and poetic mind, and in 

 the songs of Callicles lyrics whose purity he has never surpassed. 



The great monologue especially has merits of a commanding order. 

 Callicles on the lower reaches of the mountain has just ceased from 

 singing of Chiron the aged centaur, and the wise lore which he in the 

 olden time instilled into the boy Achilles. As he lays by his harp 

 Empedocles from the heights responds, tuning his song to the note 

 of disenchantment. The wisdom he has learnt from life is far other 

 than that which gladdened the young dawn of the world. In 

 this monologue Arnold seems to gather up the strains which 

 the body of his reflective lyrics separately yields: — the aimless drift 

 of life, and its lack of totality (St. 2, 3,); the imperative need of self- 

 knowledge (St. 14); our too extravagant claims (St. 31 ff.); the imper- 

 turbable calm and indifference of nature (St. 36, 37) ; and the cleavage 

 in our havings and our desires. Here too we find the stoic's refuge 

 in the region of moderate bliss and low-pitched desires, and what is 

 less usual but more welcome, the stoic's rapture revealed to us in 

 verses whose acquiescence in fate and whose quiet joy are a quaintly 



