Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/93

 of Ætna. Had Arnold been a Greek he might, perhaps, have shuffled off his trouble in the same easy fashion. When a man is brave, is sick of mankind, and recognises no duty to God, suicide is almost too facile a business.

The representation of a man beset by such feelings and pains, if he is stern enough with himself to represent them truly, cannot be without interest, or even without passion; but their representation, if too elaborate, becomes wearisome. And Empedocles goes over his troubles at such a severe length that it is fortunate he is alone save with Pausanias, who is only a shadow. Callicles would have tired of him. Moreover, he sings them in so lumbering a metre that we begin to conjecture that the entangled melancholy of his mind had unconsciously influenced his ear, and dulled it out of tune. These were the real reasons, I think, why the poem displeased its writer. But they were not the reasons he gave for leaving it out in the volume issued in 1853, and issued, for the first time, under his own name. He left it out, he said, because, though the representation was interesting, it did not inspirit and rejoice the reader, and poetry was bound not only to add to the knowledge of men, but also to add to their happiness.

"The Muses," said Hesiod, "were born to be a forgetfulness of evils, and a truce from cares." This happiness may be felt in the representation of the most tragic, even tortured, situations, provided they