Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/151

 have said something of them already, but more must now be said. I dwell now on their deep interest in the life and history of humanity. Their poetry, with a few lyric exceptions, is the best he wrote. They are weighty with interesting, novel, masculine, and often surprising thought. They extend their sympathy over wide areas of history and are in close contact also with the limited time in which he lived. They contain admirable drawings of men and women whom he admired and loved; of their characters and their influence on the world. Weighted with grave and clear thought, their imagination moves with power, and with a grace which results from the power. It grasps the higher nature of one division of the human race, as in these celebrated lines which describe the Orient when Rome had ceased to disturb it; yet the phrase is only partly true:

With as much forceful insight, when he pictures the Scholar Gipsy flying from the fevered world and pursuing still the unreachable ideal, he describes another whole class of men. And with the insight and the force of it, what beauty of words, what intimate love of the lovely world!