Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/112

 bad as Arnold thought them to be, nor was their restless movement really evil. The turmoil was not caused by want of ideas, but by new ideas surging into the sleepy elements of the time. It was not the seething of decay and dissolution, it was the heating upwards into force of new creative powers. Big, formative conceptions were cast into the world, and every element in that vast caldron boiled up and over in resistance or agreement. Only after years, did the ebullition settle down, did another world of thought begin to arise into a temple in which men could rest and live. It is not yet half finished. Every year it is being built into harmony. But we owe its beginnings, and we shall owe much of its beauty and of the peace of its aisles, to the wild creative turmoil which Arnold thought so evil, which filled him with trouble and dismay. He began to see the truth of this in 1867. It was clearer to him in 1877, when he collected his poems. But by that time he had drained dry his poetic vein. Weary when he began to write, he was far more wearied as a poet when he had gone through the storm. His imaginative power was tired out. His intellectual power was not. On the contrary, the sword of his intellect had been tempered in the fight, ground down to exceeding sharpness, and if he used it with too little mercy on his foes, it was always with a certain humour, sometimes grim, sometimes gentle, which made even those whom he satirised smile, and forgive him after their pain was over. Men who loved