Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/165

Rh tremulous passages from a psychical journal; most of all, perhaps, for those which so convey the spirit of youth,—the youth of his own doubting, searching, freedom-sworn Oxonian group—a group among whom he and Clough, his scholar-gypsy, were leaders in their search for unsophisticated nature and life, in their regret for inaction, their yearning for new light, their belief that love and hope are the most that we can get from this mortal existence. It was Arnold's sensitive and introspective temperament, so often saddening him, that brought his intellect into perfect comprehension of Heine, Joubert, Sénancour, and, doubtless, Amiel. His career "Look in thy heart and write.". strengthens my belief that the true way is the natural one,—that way into which the artist is led by impulse, modified by the disposition of his time. Burns was a force because he was not Greek, nor even English, but Scottish, entirely national, and withal intensely personal. Scott's epics are founded in the true romantic ballads of the North. A few of us read and delight in "Balder Dead;" "Marmion," a less artistic poem, gave pleasure far and wide, and still holds its own. I confess that this again suggests my old question concerning Landor, "Shall not the wise, no less than the witless, have their poets?" and that, whether wise or otherwise, I prefer to read "Balder Dead;" but I have observed that poetry, however admirable, A consideration. which appeals solely to a studious class rarely becomes in the end a part of the world's