Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 1 (1869).djvu/31

Rh had been presented to him by the leaders of the Romanising movement, but also that it had shaken the whole foundations of his early faith, and had forced him to rely upon his own endeavours in the search after that truth which he still firmly believed in.

This spirit of doubt and struggle, yet of unshaken assurance in the final conquest of truth and good, comes out strongly in the poems written about this time, and contrasts markedly with the boyish effusions of the Rugby period. It is this which forms the very essence of the scepticism of which he is accused, the truth of which charge, in a certain sense, we do not attempt to deny, nay, we believe that in this quality of mind lay his chief power of helping his generation. But his scepticism was of no mere negative quality—not a mere rejection of tradition and denial of authority, but was the expression of a pure reverence for the inner light of the spirit, and of entire submission to its guidance. It was the loyalty to truth as the supreme good of the intellect, and as the only sure foundation of moral character.

He was absolutely truthful towards his own soul. The experiences he had gone through forced him to look religious questions full in the face, and he could no longer take any dogmatic teaching on trust. He ignored no difficulties, he accepted nothing because it was pleasant—he could retain faith in nothing but his own soul. But that he did retain this faith—faith in the intuitions which he regarded as revelations of God to him, in absolute faithfulness to duty, strict adherence to intellectual and moral truthfulness, practice of all social and domestic virtues—is not only true of his outward life, but is shown, as far as concerns his moral and intellectual convictions, even in the poems which most strongly testify to the struggle and the darkness in which he often found himself. In illustration of this point we may mention in particular the 'Summum Pulchrum,' 'Qui laborat