250 INDOOE STUDIES 



is a great humanizing power. There is no other 

 personality in literature that gives me such a sense 

 of breadth and magnitude in the purely human and 

 personal qualities. His poems are dominated by a 

 sense of a living, breathing man as no other poems 

 are. This vrould not recommend them to some 

 readers, but it recommends them to such as myself, 

 who value in books perennial human qualities above 

 all things. To put a great personality in poetry is 

 to establish a living fountain of power, where the 

 jaded and exhausted race can refresh and renew 

 itself. 



To a man in many ways the opposite of Whit- 

 man, who stands for an entirely different, almost 

 antagonistic, order ' of ideas, — to wit, Matthew 

 Arnold, — I am indebted for a lesson in clear think- 

 ing and clean expression such as I have got from 

 no other. Arnold's style is probably the most 

 lucid, the least embarrassed by anything false or 

 foreign, of that of any writer living. His page is 

 as clear as science and as vital and flexible as poetry. 

 Indeed, he affords a notable instance of the cool, 

 impartial scientific spirit wedded to, or working 

 through, the finest poetic delicacy and sensibility. 



I have not been deeply touched or moved by any 

 English poet of this century save Wordsworth. 

 Nearly all other poetry of nature is tame and insin- 

 cere compared with his. But my poetic sympathies 

 are probably pretty narrow. I cannot, for instance, 

 read Robert Browning, except here and there a 

 short poem. The sheer mechanical effort of read- 



