Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/80

 the problems of life. He looked with eyes, purged from personal consideration, at the pressure of every kind of trouble on the human family, and asked why it was and to what end. And he never let the question go till he found his solution for it, and gave it to the world in hope that it might help and comfort others. In the process, he reconstituted, for himself, the theology of his youth. And then, feeling, as he did, that in faith in God, in worship, in a right and graceful spirit of love, and in righteousness of conduct, was the true foundation of life, he devoted himself, in prose, to clear away from religion those forms of it which violated intellectual or moral truth, and to establish what was eternal in it, beyond controversy, and fitted for God to be, and for man to believe and love. With that, into which he passed from poetry, we have nothing to do here. What we are in contact with now is his early religious trouble, and its distress breathes through all his youthful poetry.

Again—and this belongs to his personal feeling against mob turbulence and chattering theories—Oxford, when he was there, was filled with the noise of controversy between the High Churchmen and their opponents. Both were intolerant one of another, and the battle raged with confused tumult, not only between these two hot-headed parties, but also between both of them united against the Neologians, as the critical school was then called. Clough, greatly disturbed by the loss of his faith, was not much disturbed