of Burns, and the best of the Scottish and national lyrics of Campbell. To the latter order belong the lyrical ballads of Wordsworth, almost the earliest and most delightful of his poems. To neither of these good kinds do Mr. Arnold's lyrics belong; but it is not because we cannot refer them to any recognised standard, that we reject them, but because they seem entirely empty of human interest. For these our best wish is, that when another edition appears, they may be allowed to retire into the obscurity of private life. Of the sonnets nothing need now be said, for they have been before the world for some years.-This only by the way, that the "marble massiveness" of their style, so imposing at a distance, is not borne out, on a nearer approach, by corresponding solidity of thought or depth of wisdom. But if from many of these shorter poems we are repelled by the blank dejection and morbid languor of their tone, or by the seeming wisdom of apathy, which is not wisdom, we cannot be deaf to some strains of nobler aspiration which here and there break through. The former tones are fewer in this than in the earlier volumes, the latter more numerous. May these grow till they have become full chorus! Of these latter kind are the two poems entitled "The Future," and "Morality." Let our quotations close with this last. It is a striking, if rather recondite expression of the old truth, that man's moral being is higher than nature's strength; that, as Sir Thomas Browne has it, "there is surely a piece of divinity in us,-something that was before the elements, and owes no homage to the Sun." "We cannot kindle when we will, The fire that in the heart resides; The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides: But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd. "With aching hands and bleeding feet "Then, when the clouds are off the soul, Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, "And she, whose censure thou dost dread, that strife divine, Whence was it, for it is not mine? "There is no effort on my brow- "I knew not yet the gauge of Time, I felt it in some other clime I saw it in some other place. -'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, And now, before taking leave of these poems, we must advert to one thing which strikes us as their prevailing fault. We read them separately, and see many separate excellencies; but there is no one predominant interest to give life to the whole. High gifts, beautiful poems you do see; but one thing you miss -the one pervading poet's heart, that throb of feeling which is the true inspiration, the life of life to all true poetry, without which all artistic gifts are of little worth. Where this is present you cannot but feel its presence, not by self-revelations of the poet's own feelings, but by the living personality and interest which it breathes through whatever it touches. If you associate much with a man of strong character and deep heart, you cannot, but feel what kind of man he is. So you cannot read poems which come from a strong poetic soul without their thrilling to your own. But when you have read these poems, and read with admiration, you are still at a loss to know what the author most lays to heart -what kind of country he has lived in-what scenery is dear to him-what part of past or present history he cares for-in what range of human feeling and action he is peculiarly at home. Certain characteristics they do contain-admiration for Greek Art and a uniformly artistic style; but these are not enough to stamp individuality on the poems. The two earlier volumes, it must be allowed, were pervaded by a strong sense of man's nothingness in presence of the great powers of nature that effort and sorrow are alike vain-that our warm hopes and fears, faiths and aspirations, are crushed like moths beneath the omnipotence of deaf adamantine laws. But such a view of life can Prevailing Fault of the Poems. 503 give birth to nothing great and noble in character, nor anything high or permanent in poetry. This last voluine has much less of that blank dejection and fatalistic apathy which were the main tones of the former ones; and though it has hereby lost in unity of purpose, we gladly welcome the change. In some of the newer poems we seem to catch strains which may prelude a higher music, but they have not yet attained compass enough to set the tone of the book. They may grow to this-we trust they may. Meanwhile we cannot but remind Mr. Arnold that there is a difference between poetic gifts and the poet's heart. That he possesses the former no candid judge can doubt; of the existence of the latter in him he has as yet given less evidence. But it is the beat of this poetic pulse that gives unity of impression and undying interest to the works of the noblest poets. At the outset we noticed the difference between what we called the natural and the artistic poets; those chiefly remarkable for what they say; these for the manner in which they say it. And although in the great poet-kings the two qualities meet and combine, they are not the less in other men distinct and in danger of falling asunder. Where the nature is strong, and the heart full, the poet is apt to rely entirely on this, and to care little for the form to which he entrusts his thoughts. Where the sense of artistic beauty and power of expression predominate, their owner, intent on these, is ever ready to divorce himself from the warmth of life and human interests. This is Mr. Arnold's danger. If we are to judge from these poems, his interest in the poetic art would seem to be stronger than his interest in life, or in those living powers which move the souls of men, and are the fountains of real poetry and of all genuine art. Indeed it is only in proportion as it expresses these that any art is truly valuable. Before he again gives anything to the world, we hope that he will take honest counsel with himself, ask himself the simple question:- What is there which he cares about, for its own sake, apart from its poetic capabilities, what side of human life, what aspects of nature, what of thought or passion is there, in which he is more at home, about which he feels more intensely than common men do? When he has found this, let him forget the ancient masters and all theories of poetry, and stick to his subject resolutely with his whole heart. For, after all that has been said about it, the soul alone is the true inspirer. Let him be true to this, and seek no other inspiration. And when he has found a self-prompted subject, let him turn on it his full strength of poetic gift and power of expression. These will manifest themselves all the more fully when employed on something which has a real base in human interests, and his future productions will awake a deeper response in other breasts when he speaks from out of the fulness of his own. Criticism steps beyond its province when it prescribes limits to the poet, or attempts to dictate what his subject should be, or chains him down to the present. All ages, past, present, and future, are alike open to him. Which he is to choose his own instinct must decide. But some are more promising, because they have a deeper hold on men's minds than others. Therefore we cannot but doubt whether Mr. Arnold, or any man, will succeed in really interesting his countrymen by merely disinterring and reconstructing, however skilfully, the old Greek legends. And we are quite sure, that if he is ever to take permanent possession of men's thoughts it must be in the strength of some better, healthier spirit than the blank dejection of his early poems. Mr. Arnold must learn, if he has indeed to learn, that whatever are the faults or needs of our own time, the heart has not yet died out of it; that if he thinks it bad, it is the duty of poets, and all thoughtful men, to do their part to mend it, not by weak-hearted lamentations, but by appealing to men's energies, their hopes, their moral aspirations. Let him be quite sure that these are still alive, if he can but arouse them, and that if he cannot the fault lies elsewhere than in his age. To arouse, to strengthen, to purify whatever is good in the men of his own and after times, this is the work which the true poet does. A noble work, if any is, and it takes a noble unworldly nature rightly to fulfil it. "To console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier, to teach the young and gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more active and securely virtuous, this is their office, which I trust they will perform long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves." It was thus that Wordsworth looked forward to the destiny of his own poems at the very time when all the world were combining to scorn them. This calm and invincible confidence was supported, not more by the consciousness of innate power than by the feeling that his poetry had left conventional taste behind it, and struck home into the essential harmony of things. For Mr. Arnold we can have no better wish than that his future efforts may be guided by as true and elevated a purpose, and win for him, according to his measure, as worthy a success. Sir Roderick Murchison's Siluria. 505 ART. VIII.- Siluria. The History of the Oldest known Rocks, containing Organic Remains, with a brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold over the Earth. By SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, G.C.St.S., D.C.L., M.A., F.R.S., &c., 8vo, pp. 530. London, 1854. A PHILOSOPHER placed on the earth's surface, looking upward into the starry firmament, and downward through the crust of the earth, has his attention drawn to two very different classes of phenomena. The sun and moon-the stars and comets which are seen in the celestial vault, appear to him at the same distance from the earth on which he stands; and when he explores the various rocks and strata, which, without any appearance of order, shew themselves around him, he can neither class them according to their age, nor refer them to the position which they may have formerly occupied in relation to the centre or the surface of the earth. Like the stars which stud the sky, and which seem but lights of different magnitudes and intensities, the rocks and strata of the globe appear but as masses of stone differing in form, in position, or in structure. In the progress of observation, however, the astronomer is soon convinced that the stars which change their place in the heavens, belong to a group or system to which he himself belongs, and that the other stars among which they move have an independent existence, and a more distant locality. In like manner, the geologist learns to separate the stratified rocks from those deeper masses upon which they rest, and by means of the fossils which they contain, to identify them in different parts of the earth, and ascertain their difference of age, and the relative distances from the centre or the surface of the earth at which they were originally deposited. And as the Solar System with its sun, and planets, and comets, is separated from the sidereal firmament beyond it, so the crust of the earth formed of various strata, of mountain masses, and of insulated stones, is separated from the solid nucleus upon which it rests. By means of powerful telescopes the astronomer has been able to discover binary and multiple systems of stars,-to extend to their motions the laws of terrestrial gravity, and by principles by no means illusory, to sound even the interminable depths of sidereal space; and when his science has been more generally cultivated, and its generalizations more firmly established, the geologist may reasonably expect to penetrate the primeval mass where no trace of life has been found, and perchance to reach even depths where new formations may excite his wonder, and from which new forms of VOL. XXI. NO. XLII. 2 K |