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    the worse , we should say , has been the reason . From one father of the church we learn that God was obliged to make the human body cruciform , because the soul was to be redeemed upon the cross ; from another , that since there are but four quarters of the world from which the wind can set , there cannot be more than four gospels , to blow immortality on men . Mediaeval logicians explain the triplicity of the syllogism by the three persons in the Trinity ; and there is no end . to the things accounted for by the name and number of the Apocalyptic beast . "

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    There is a series of little treatises announced for publication next year , Orrs Circle of the Sciences , to set forth in popular language the fundamental principles of the sciences ; the great name of Owen " , and the respected names of Ansted , Jardine , and Tennant at once guarantee it as worthy of support . There is only one thing in the programme which looks suspicious , and that is the hint of making Science degenerate into the miserable twaddle called Natural Theology—a suspicion which

    assumes a graver form in our minds from the fact of the editor talking in his prospectus of a " science of Teleology , or that which relates to the power and wisdom of a Personal Omnipotence . " If that is more than a perorating phrase , meant to flatter the prejudices of many , it betokens an alarming ignorance of what is science in an editor of a scientific series . We wish this Series to succeed ; the greater its success the more we shall rejoice ; and because we wish it well , we indicate a danger .

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    SCHOOLS OF POETIIY . Poems . By Matthew Arnold . A New Edition . Price 6 s . Longman and Co . It is with individuals as with nations , the baffled turbulence of Youth subsides into the calm acquiescence of Age , but in both the ideal is placed beyond the Present . Jean Paul has said , " Keiner ist mit der Zeit zufrieden : das heisst die . Junglinge halten die Kiinftige fur idealer als die Gegenwartige , die Alten die Vergangene , " ( None are content with the age : the young believe the Future , the old the Past to be the ideal era . ) And with this we may connect what Goethe says of all men being Radicals in their youth , and Conservatives in their old age . We see a Goethe and a Schiller escaping from the notoriety of the " storm and stress period" which they had created , into Grecian , elassicality , just as we see the unrestrained and " chartered libertinism" of the Elizabethan

    period changing to the classicality of Charles and Anne , which in its turn was to be set aside by a " new school ; " and that new school , now old , will perhaps have to give place to another revival of the classical : indications whereof may be read in the vehement j ^ rotests against Tennyson and Alexander Smith , as also in the artistic strivings of some poets , Arnold among the number . Scorn of the past we hold to be as unwise as scorn of " our wondrous Mother-Age ; " but witli whatever reverence and retrospective longing the Past is regarded , it should always be regarded as past : it should have historical , " not absolute significance : it is our .. Ancestry , and not our Life . And as the retention in our organism of the elements which have lived is in itself a fatal source of destruction , poisoning the . very life these elements once served , so in the onward progression of Humanity the old elements must pass away , transmitting to successors the work they had to perform :

    " Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt I " Matthew Arnold , in the Preface to this new edition of his poems , defends himself against those critics ayIio bid him "leave the exhausted past , and fix his thoughts upon the present . " It seems to him that his critics know very little of what they are talking about . Whatever -he may once have thought of " Our Age , " it is clear he does not now regard it as so fruitful in poetry as the olden time ; and all lie says on this point is worthy of attention : —

    ^ "What are the eternal objects of Poetry , among all nations , and at all times ? They are actions ; human actions : possessing : in inherent interest in themselves , and which are to be communicated in an interesting manner by the art of the Poet . Vainly will the hitter imagine that lie lias everything in his own power ; that he can make an intrinsically in forior action equally delightful with a more excellent one by his treatment of it : he may indeed compel us to admire his skill , but Inn work will possess , within itself , an incurable defect . " The Toot , then , h ; is in the ; flint place to select an excellent action ; and what actions are the nuwt excellent ? Those , certainly , which most powerfully appeal to the grout primary human affection * : to those elementary feelings which subsist in the and which

    permanently race , are independent of time . 'JL 1 ie . ie feelings arc permanent and the . same ; that which interests them in permanent and the same also . I ho modernne , s . s or antiquity of an action , therefore , has nothing to do with its fitness for poetical representation ; this depends upon its inherent qualities . I o the elementary part of our nature , to our pinions , that which in great and pasnionato is eternally interesting ; and interesting Holely i ,, proportion to its greatness uiul to itH passion . A great li . unan action of a " thoiiHund yearn ayo m n . oro interesting to it than a smaller human action of to-day , even though upon the ropiesentu ..... of this last the most eon « , u , unate . skill may have been expended , , i , i , l though it ban the advantage of appealing hy its mo . Iorn language , familiar manners , and contemporary allusion * , to all our transient feelings and interests . ] hese , however , have „ ,, right to demand of a poetical work that it shall natisfy them ; their claims are to he directed elsewhere . Poetical works belong to the domain of oiu-permanent . paBsions : let then , interest then ,, , and the voice of all Mibonlmate claims upon them is at once silenced

    " AehdloH , IVonietlieuH , Clytenmestra ,, Dido -what modern poem presents personages as nilerestu . g . oven to us moderns , nn these p . ^ sonages of an ' exhausted past t We have the domoHt . e epie dealing w . t . U th « detail ,, of modern life which ] , aM daily under our eyes ; we have poems representing modern pommages in con act with the prol . lems of modern life , moral , intellectual , and social those works have been produced l > j poets the most distinguished of their nation -ind time ; yet ! foarlesuly assort that . Hermann and Dorothea , ( Ihihlo Harold Tocelvn Tim Excursion , leave the mulereohl in comparison with tho efl ' ect produoVd linon him by the latter books of the Iliad , hy the Orestea , or by the episode of l ) i , ' l | , And why is this ? Simply localise in the throe hitter oases tho action iH gro-tlor the personages nobler , the situations more intense : and thin i « the true hati ' iit of the interest in a poetical work , and this alone . "It may be urged , however , that past actions may be intorenting in thoimiolveH hut that they are not to be adopted by the modem ' Poet , heeauso it in impossible for him to havw them clearly present to his own mind , and ho cannot therefore

    feel them deeply , nor represent them forcibly . But this is not necessaril y the case The externals of a past action , indeed , he cannot know with the precision of a contemporary ; but his business is with its essentials . The outward man of CEdipua or of Macbeth , the houses in which they lived , the ceremonies of their courts he cannot accurately figure to himself ; but neither do they essentially concern him His business is with their inward man ; with their feelings and behaviour in certain tragic situations , which engage their passions as men ; these have in them nothing local and casual : they are as accessible to the modern Poet as to a contemporary .

    " The date of an action , then , signifies nothing : the action itself , its selection and construction , this is what is all-important . This the Greeks understood far more clearly than we do . The radical difference between their poetical theory and ours consists , as it appears to me , in this : that , with them , the poetical character of the action in itself , and the conduct of it , was the first consideration ; with us attention is fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action . They regarded the whole ; we regard the parts . With them , the action predominated over the expression of it ; with us the expression predominates over the action . I ^ ot that they failed in expression ' or were inattentive to it ; on the contrary , they are the highest models of expression , the unapproached masters of the grand style : but their expression is so excellent because it is so admirably kept in its right degree of prominence ; because it is so simple and so well subordinated ; because it draws its force directly from the pregnancy of the matter which it conveys . "

    There is excellent matter amid some that is questionable here . We remark , in passing , that he maintains opinions respecting the Greek and . JJatin poets , which are traditional , but which , to our experience , are very far removed from the truth . We will not , however , encumber the argument by questioning his illustrations ; let us grant for a moment that the Greeks are what he describes , and quote his criticism on the contrasted defects of modern poets : — "We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and pasages ; not for the sake of producing any total-impresssion . We have critics who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions , to the language about the action , not to the action itself . I verily think that the majority ofthem do not in their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total-impression to be derived from a poem at all , or to be demanded from a poet ; they think the term

    a commonplace of metaphysical criticism . They will permit the Poet to select any action he pleases , and to suffer that action to go as it will , provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing , and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images . That is , they permit him to leave their poetical sense ungratified , provided that he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity . Of his neglecting to gratify these , there is little danger ; he needs rather to be warned against the danger of attempting to gratify these alone ; he needs rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to everything else ; so-to treat this , as to permit its inherent excellences to develope themselves , without interruption from the intrusion of his personal peculiarities : most fortunate , when he most entirely succeeds in effacing himself , and in enabling a noble action to subsist as it did in nature . "

    True , most true , and needful to be said . But when he lays it down as a canon that the "highest problem of an art is to imitate actions , " he seems to us either to employ an abusive extension of the term " action , " or else to misconceive the problem and the function of Art . Indeed , one may say that Art is only an imitation of actions in its earliest and rudest forms . He himself is forced to admit that according to this canon Faust is not a great work of Art : — " Wonderful passages as it contains , and in spite of the unsurpassed beauty of the scenes which relate to Margaret , Faust itself , judged as a whole , and judged strictly as a poetical work , is defective : its illustrious author , the . greatest poet of modern times , the greatest critic of all times , would have been the first to aoknowledge it ; he only defended his work , indeed , by asserting it to be ' something incommensurable . '"

    A canon which exdudcslumst , must ipso facto be suspicious . But Mr . Arnold ' s friends , the Ancients , will also fare badly if this rule be applied to them ; even among the dramatists , in spite of action being the prhiciphwi et fans of the drama , one meets with a Philoctctes for example , of which no one will say that the interest or beauty lies in the action ; and if avc turn to the Divine Comedy we shall find it as defective as JAinst according to this rule . Actions are ' not ends in Art , hut means to an end ; they arc not for their own sake , but for the sake of the thoughts and emotions they excite in us . Admirable as means , they arc still only means . If the poot can reach his end through other means we do not tell him he has sinned against Art .

    Turn to the other forms of Art , and the incorrectness of the canon will be obvious : it is not through action that Music readies its effect ; it w not through the representation of any story that Sculpture necessarily excites inns the emotions proper to it . Titinn ' s portrait of a " Young Man with a Glove" is a finer work of Art than Ilaydon ' s " Judgment of Solomon ; " although one has no story , no action , the other n noble story , and a situation of deep interest . It may be answered that ITftydo " has ill-c ; veeuted his idea , ; but this draws the question from tlio " choico of a subject ,, " to that of " representation ; " and while it in a tniinm to assort that execution being equal , rank will depend on the greatness ol the thing represented , it is a falsism to assort ; that the rank of a , work <>> Art ; depends on its idea —its conception . Not that Mr . Arnold asserts this , but others < lo who start from the biuiio point .

    It is to the classics Mr . Arnold would have our poets turn for guidance . Dissatisfied with tlio JYesent , and having no vision oi' it as mi ideal lift ' , > is also dissatisfied with its utterances in Art : Ah ! how unlike To that Large , utterance , of the early gods ! Overlooking the fact tlmt if n man has something of his ago to say or sing , some expression by wliieh lie can make articulate what , in iimrticiimto in the mans or class of winch he is one , ho will , imperiously say or mug it without much regard to " models" at ; all , Mr . Arnold tolls ub :

    " Tho confusion of tho present tinion is great , tho multitude of voicoH counnolling different thingM bewildering , tho number of existing works capable o attracting a young writer ' s attention and of becoming his modeln , immense : w' »^ ho wants in : i hand tognido him through tho confunion , a voico to prescribe to u 111 tho aim which he should keep in viow , ' and to explain to him that tho value ol >" literary workw which oilbr thomHelvtv * to Inn attention m relative to their poww *>*

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    1146 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 26, 1853, page 1146, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2014/page/18/