Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/125

 district, and he has used the names well. He describes the Tartar and Persian dresses, armour, tents, the different aspects of the warring tribes, their manners and much more in great detail. But in this fully Oriental poem the similes and the whole manner of the verse are Greek. It is a mixture too odd for good art. Either have no local colour or keep it pure.

The story of Sohrab and Rustum, of the father who unknowingly fights with and slays his son, and discovers the misery too late, is a wide-spread tale. It exists in two forms at least, in one of which the discovery is made in time, in Teutonic saga. We find it in Celtic saga. It was attached to the Cuchullainn tale, and the rash hero, like Rustum, slays his son. The subject is simple, full of a terrible pity, and a natural horror, capable of passionate treatment, and of leaving in our minds, when wrought according to nature, a sympathy with the fates of men which softens and heals the heart. Arnold has not missed its opportunities. The brave, lovely, and tender-hearted youth is well contrasted with the worn, haughty, austere warrior; and the pathos swells from point to point, deepened by memorial allusion and description, till it culminates in the discovery that the father has slain the son. That crisis is simply and passionately wrought by Arnold, and both the characters, made beautiful by love and endurance of fate together, stir that high pleasure in us which is compact of honour for human nature and of pity for its sorrow—man