Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/186

 and motion is what England has not and France has; often a blind, erring, heretical faith, often perverse and fanatical, a faith which kills its prophets and stones its protomartyrs; but in art as in politics, in literature as in ethics, an active and a living faith. To show this to English eyes and impress upon English ears its truth and its importance is to do a good work; but to pass from general doctrine to example and detail is hard and unsafe for a foreign preacher. Those who deserve gratitude at our hands deserve also candour; and I must in candour say that Mr. Arnold is not a sure guide over French ground. He does not know quite how the land lies: he turns down this declivity or stops short by that well-head, where a native guide would hardly bid one halt. With a large and fine appreciation of the beauties and capacities of the national character, with a justice and strength of insight into these which compared with an average English judgment are wonderful and admirable, he has not the eyes and the nerves of one to the manner born, the sudden and sensitive intuition of an innate instinct: he thinks right, but he feels wrong; some men are right without being reasonable, he is reasonable without being right. He sets up a rational argument to prove why France should be, and why she is, weak in poetry and strong in prose; a very keen and clear argument, only the facts are all against it. Of classic verse Mr. Arnold is so much more competent to speak than I am that I dare not press the debateable question of choric metre; but of French verse I must have leave to say that he is not competent to speak. His touch has in it no pulse or play of French blood; his fine ear is deaf on that side.