Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/74

 they have finished behind them without considering it, and pass on, unconcerned, to new things. Rarely, if ever, does Arnold's poetry make that impression upon us. It has too much pride in itself; it is too self-conscious of its artistic effort, and this lowers its imaginative power; and too conscious of its being moral and teaching morality, and this lowers its influence as art.

Then, again, the stoic position which gave him the power of which I have spoken, made him weak, on another side, as a poet. It often isolated him too much from the mass of men, very few of whom are stoics either in philosophy or practice. A certain touch of contempt for ordinary humanity entered into his work. His appeal was so far to the few, not to the many; to a class, not to the whole; to the self-centred, not to those who lose their self in love. In this way also, he became too self-involved, and, troubled with the restlessness and noise of man, took refuge in the solitudes of his own heart. Owing to this self-involvement—which, though it was modified towards the end of his poetic life, was an integral part of his nature— he was very rarely, if ever, swept by any high passion out of himself altogether. He could not feel, till later in life, the greater waves of human emotion, save once perhaps with regard to England's vast imperial toil, breaking upon his heart. Into the infinite hopes, the infinite possibilities of man—into that country where the greater poets live, his early poetry entered only for moments, and then his sceptical self-consciousness