222 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 



poetry of that absolute kind which may and does help 

 men, but needs no help of theirs ; and such surely we 

 have a right to demand in tragedy, if nowhere else. We 

 should not speak so unreservedly if we did not set a 

 high value on Mr. Arnold and his poetic gift. But 

 " Merope " has that one fault against which the very 

 gods, we are told, strive in vain. It is dull, and the 

 seed of this dulness lay in the system on which it was 

 written. 



Pseudo-classicism takes two forms. Sometimes, as 

 Mr. Landor has done, it attempts truth of detail to 

 ancient scenery and manners, which may be attained 

 either by hard reading and good memory, or at a cheaper 

 rate from such authors as Becker. The " Moretum," 

 once attributed to Virgil, and the idyl of Theocritus 

 lately chosen as a text by Mr. Arnold, are interesting, 

 because they describe real things ; but the mock-antique, 

 if not true, is nothing, and how true such poems are 

 likely to be we can judge by " Punch's " success at 

 Yankeeisms, by all England's accurate appreciation of 

 the manners and minds of a contemporary people one 

 with herself in language, laws, religion, and literature. 

 The eye is the only note-book of the true poet ; but a 

 patchwork of second-hand memories is a laborious futil- 

 ity, hard to write and harder to read, with about as much 

 nature in it as a dialogue of the Deipnosophists. Alex- 

 ander's bushel of peas was a criticism worthy of Aristotle's 

 pupil. We should reward such writing with the gift of 

 a classical dictionary. In this idyllic kind of poetry 

 also we have a classic, because Goldsmith went to nature 

 for his " Deserted Village," and borrowed of tradition 

 nothing but the poetic diction in which he described it. 

 This is the only method by which a poet may surely 

 reckon on ever becoming an ancient himself. When we 

 heard it said once that a certain poem might have been 



