Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/72

 have spoken to the universal in man, "seen life steadily and seen it whole," as he said of Sophocles. Steadily he did see it, but not as a whole. That he could not do. He is the poet of a backwater, of a harbour, of a retired garden, not of the full, swift river, not of the open sea, not of the king's highway. He is so far like Hamlet that he was not able to grasp the nettle of the world so that it should not sting. The sad, philosophic, poetic imagination of Hamlet was also his, but he had more moral power, a closer grasp on realities, than Hamlet. And he had this power because he clasped stoicism—which Hamlet could not do—to his breast.

The power of stoicism lies in the appeal it makes to the moral endurance of the soul in resolute, unviolent resistance to the tyranny of outward and inward evil. It it bids us claim our moral individuality as the conqueror of fate and of the outward world. The claim is high, and uplifts the character of the claimer. "The fates are hard on me," the stoic says, "but they shall not subdue my soul. Things are dark as night, but there shall be light within. Pain is here, but it does not touch my real self. It is not I that suffer, but the shell of me. I do not understand why the world is so wrong and so troubled, but one thing I do understand, that I need not be wrong or troubled, and that I will not be. The furies of the gods may hunt me down, but my soul remains unconquered, even by the gods."

There is no doubt of the power which is hid in that