Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/79

 investigation. The criticism of German scholars had thrown the gravest doubt on the history of the Gospels; scientific discoveries and historical criticism had invaded the Old Testament; and both had begun to shatter that belief in the inspiration of the Bible on which so much of English religion reposed in peace. The stormy waves these investigations awakened had reached Oxford when Arnold and Clough were students, and they were first disturbed, then dismayed, and finally thrown into a scepticism which profoundly troubled them, Their skies were darkened; the old stars had gone out in the heavens, and no new stars had arisen. They staggered blindly on, and at last fell back on their own souls alone, on the unchallengeable sense of right they felt therein, on the imperative of duty and on resolution to obey it. Nothing else was left. But much more had been; and it was with bitter and ineffable regret that they looked back on the days when they were at peace, when the sun shone upon their way. With what intimate naiveté Clough expressed this trouble, and what cure he found for it, has been already considered. With Clough it was extremely personal. Arnold generalised it far more; hey extended its results all over life; it drove him in after days, not now, to consider world-wide questions, the fates and fortunes of the whole race.

Fifteen years after his earliest book of poetry he emerged from the trouble I have described. His long strife ended in a quiet force which looked steadily on