Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/98

 not appear. We are freed from him, and he is freed from himself.

This is the noble power which the great stories of the world have upon us, this, their healing and exalting good. They release the soul from its own despotism. They hush the heart into self-forgetfulness. They fill our being with sorrow and with joy which are not our own. And it was well for Arnold that he felt their power. It was one of the enabling elements in his battle towards peace and light. It took him away not only from the turmoil in his own soul, but also from the turmoil without, the evil of which he grossly exaggerated. He was fortunate in that; far more fortunate than the great number of persons whose souls, even now after so many years, are sensitive to, and whose reason is troubled by, the bitter problems of life which afflicted him. They have no means of expression; they fight alone and in silence the grief that would, but cannot speak. Arnold at least had the gift of expression, and he rid himself by his art of a great deal of his distress. No sooner did some aspect of the human question rise threateningly before him, and mock him, than he put it into a poem. It is really curious how many of the short lyrics in this second volume are dedicated to fragments of that problem. One would think he would, after Empedocles, have been a little anxious to throw off the yoke of inquiry, a little tired of walking up and down the alleys of yew within his soul; but it is not so. He