Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/33

 loosely by Beddoes and Darley, such sentimentalism as that which flowed from Mrs. Hemans or L. E. L. were painful to men who had now begun to live among great events, and historical movements of thought. Again, in this new noise of the world, which grew louder and fiercer from 1830, this type of men took refuge in the silent love of Wordsworth for quiet things, and not least in his spiritual communion with nature, to whose resting-places they fled, in brief holidays, from the storm and stress of affairs. Moreover, Wordsworth's energetic grasp of the fundamental elements of man's nature, his firm hold on its great and universal truths, appealed not only to middle-aged men, seeking severely for truth in great confusion,—the confusion of a world newly awakened from sleep—but also to young men at the Universities, who were deeply moved by the prospect of a life so full of warring elements, on which they were about to enter. The poets who voiced this reaction to Wordsworth were only a small school, but they expressed the feeling of a large number of persons at this time. The most representative of them was Sir Henry Taylor, whose Philip Van Artevelve was published in 1834. This drama, which may fairly be called philosophical, deals with government, popular disturbance, wars and their conduct, in an age crowded with sudden and bold activities; and is full of action, of various types of men, and of thought on public affairs, And love, treated with some stateliness, even with humour and pathos, legitimate and illegiti-