Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/101

 another side of the question; he could not altogether fix his thought into the stoic limits. Now, in these bad times, he cries, when fate and circumstance are strong, praise the strong for their defiant courage, even though they do not live under the law of right—and here he recurs to the motive of Mycerinus—praise the younger Cato, praise Byron, for their dauntlessness. For what we want now is force of soul, even in the things which in themselves are blameable. Our bane is faltering, indecision. We may see clear, but can we act forcibly? That, too, is only a fragment of the problem of life, a little lyric cry.

Then there is the poem of Self-Dependence—a piece of modern stoicism. I say modern because the Nature Arnold dwells on—Nature as the revealer of law moving in the universe in quietude, and teaching us obedience and its calm—is a thought the ancients only conjectured. They had no knowledge of the constancy of energy. The close applies to himself the teaching of Nature.

It is a thought which grows out of the stoic position, out of that weary reference to the soul alone as the source of strength, that pride engendering self-consideration, which, isolating a man, enfeebles love, and, if the gods do not interfere, slays it altogether. Who