Page:The Galaxy (New York, Sheldon & Co.) Volume 24 (1877).djvu/13

1877.] know it well, or fully, and yet our sight of it, as far as our sight goes, may at least have definiteness; our thoughts of it may have a just coherence.

Mr. Arnold's first "clear dream and solemn vision" respecting the things of art and of life came thus to him in regarding the serener horizon of ancient times. That interest, however, was but a phase of his growth; that predominant occupation with the past was not to continue. He was to become, as in recent years we have seen him, a most effective critic of contemporary things. But at the time of which I speak he was still quite incurious about the thoughts, the doings, the ideals of this vaunted age of progress. With them, he says, "the poet can do nothing," and in "Merope" (1858) he treats an antique subject under the strictest forms of classic tragedy; noting, however, that he does it for beauty's sake and not because he considered Greek form as final. "The laws of Greek tragic art," he says in the critical preface to that work, "are not exclusive; they are for Greek dramatic art itself, but they do not pronounce other modes of dramatic art unlawful; they are, at the most, prophecies of the improbability of dramatic success under other conditions." The latter clause of that opinion Mr. Arnold would hardly reaffirm now; but we are concerned with it here only so far as it indicates the dawn, or I should rather say the possibility of his greater interest in modern art and modern ideas.

From a very different movement of thought came Mr. Arnold's next publication, the lectures "On Translating Homer," which appeared in 1861. In these there is little expression of such moods as we have just considered; the aspiration, the self- questioning, the retrospection—these are not here; instead of these we see the soldier going out in harness, the combatant upon the intellectual champelos. In these admirable lectures the critical forces are liberated and in full play; never perhaps in English criticism were they in more brilliant play. Mr. Arnold's weapons are well tempered and cunningly handled. An active temperament, acute organic sensitiveness of intelligence and taste, a keen eye for both the broader and the subtler traits of his themes, a play of illustration ranging throughout the higher domains of European literature, as freely as the composer ranges among the modulations, and such a lustre and lucidity of expression, such a gift for making his ideas "shine" as English prose has seldom known—these were endowments from which we might well expect great things in literary criticism. These Mr. Arnold has, and these, in the "Lectures on Translating Homer," are put to the use of controversy; and his spear is tipped with a searching irony before which his Opponents could not stand. As a combatant, we will not now follow Mr. Arnold; but it is a fascinating thing to see him joining at arms. We mark the salute to his antagonist, we mark the quick preliminary passes; presently there is a quick thrust, and the antagonist goes down; and then we see Mr. Arnold turning away with a light ironic smile, much as David turned away, when all was over, from Goliath of Gath, the great ancestor of Mr. Arnold's foes. And not only Philistines, but good and respectable scholars, men like Prof. Newman and other learned translators of Homer, could not withstand this magic irony; even Prof. Newman, with all his learning, went down before it, as the invaders of Granada, in Irving's tale, were put to rout by the enchanted lance of Aben Habuz. These lectures are the flower of culture, but of culture militant; a bitter and thorny blossom have they been to Mr. Arnold's adversaries 1 In these lectures he rejoices in his strength; and sometimes, perhaps, a little too much after the manner of the unregenerate. But that is human nature, and over the natural man Mr. Arnold himself would hardly claim to have gained through culture—much less does he claim to instance in his