Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/51

 the Amours de Voyage, is a careful study of this matter of the heart. Clough seems to take a personal delight in the slow, subtle, close drawing, week by week, of the wavering, wandering, changeful drifting of the heart of the hero in love, into pursuit, and out of love—never one moment's resolution, never an hour of grip on circumstance, never one bold effort to clench the throat of Fate. Many are involved in similar circumstances, and have a similar temper; and the result in the poem is the exact result of a soul in that condition. And it seemed, I suppose, to Clough that it would be well to paint their condition, to show its folly, its evil, and its end. "Go, little book," he says—

"Go, and if curious friends ask of thy rearing and age, Say, 'I am flitting about many years from brain unto brain of Feeble and restless youths born to inglorious days.

Of course, we need not believe in the inevitableness of the position, nor indeed did Clough finally. When he recorded it, he recorded what he had felt and known in himself, but he had passed out of it. Only, what he had then attained—for I think he speaks of himself—"that happiness was to be found in knowledge, that faith passed, and love passed, but that knowledge abided"—was not, it seems, a much better position. Knowledge, to be sure, is a good thing, but it is a foundation for life which is always shifting. Its abiding is only for a short time, and its professors have to