ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH was born in Liverpool on the first day of the year 1819. When he was four years of age, his father migrated to the United States, and the early years of his boyhood were spent in Charleston, South Carolina. In the autumn of 1828, the Cloughs returned to England, and Arthur was sent to a school in Chester, whence he proceeded to Rugby in the summer of 1829. Here he came under the marvellous influence of the greatest of English schoolmasters; and in Clough, Dr. Arnold found a pupil after his own heart,-a youth largely dowered by nature with that intellectual and ethical strenuousness which it was Arnold's chief aim to inspire and develop. His school career was a brilliant one. At fifteen he was the head of the fifth form; he edited for some time the Rugby Magazine, to which he contributed his earliest verse; he took an active part in some of the school games, his name appearing in William Arnold's "Rules of Football" as that of the best goal-keeper on record; and when, in October, 1837, he passed on to Oxford, having won the Balliol scholarship in the preceding year, he had gained every honor which Rugby had to bestow. Oxford was then the center of the memorable Tractarian movement, and a mind so sensitive as Clough's, so full of fine ardors and high enthusiasms, could not fail to be affected by the ferment of new thought in which he found himself. For some little time his intellectual activities were turned into an unfamiliar channel, and the earliest evidence that a disturbing element had come into his life was furnished by his failure to take a first-class, and his unsuccessful competition for a fellowship at Balliol. But, though Clough's mind was sensitive, it was stable; and he was not long in recovering his equilibrium. In the spring of 1842, he was elected Fellow of Oriel, and by this time he had worked his way through the storm and stress in which, to use his own words, he had been "like a straw," and had regained possession of himself. Still, such a conflict seldom leaves a man where it found him, and in struggling to make a stand against what he felt to be alien influences, Clough's intellectual attitude had insensibly changed. An aggressive doubter he could never have been, but he had become an eager questioner; and the final result of his questioning was the resignation, in 1848, of his Oriel Fellowship, and also of the tutorship to which he had been subsequently appointed. Then came a month in Paris among the sights of the Revolution; a visit to Liverpool, during which he wrote "The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich"; his appointment as Head of University Hall, London; and a visit to Rome, one result of which was his second long poem. "Amours de Voyage," his earliest volume of verse, “Ambervalia,” having been published during his residence at Oxford. In 1852, he resigned his headship and went to America, settling at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he engaged himself in literary work, and where he might have remained permanently, had he not been tempted home by the offer of an examinership in the Education Office, which would secure him a small but regular and permanent income, now of some importance to him, as he was looking forward to an immediate marriage. This event took place in 1854, and for the next seven years, during which three children were born to him, he lived quietly at home. It was a time of happy content, but also of unwearying labor of many kinds, and at last the strain began to tell. In 1860, he was compelled to take what was believed to be only a temporary leave of absence from his duties. Malvern, the Isle of Wight, and the continent, were successively visited, and in September, 1861, on the Italian Lakes, he caught a chill, which by the time of his arrival in Florence, during the following month, had developed into a malarial fever. The fever wore itself out, but its victim was worn out also. Paralysis, which had been threatening, struck him down, and on the 13th of November, 1861, Arthur Hugh Clough passed away. His body lies in the little Protestant cemetery, just outside the walls of Florence, upon which the beautiful Tuscan hills look down. Any attempt to anticipate the verdict of posterity upon Clough's contribution to English poetry would be foolish and futile. To the more serious and thoughtful of his contemporaries it must have a peculiar interest, for it utters-and utters with singular clearness and adequacy-their own aspirations, their own doubts, and not less, their own certainties. For Clough, though in one sense a poet of doubt, was in a deeper sense a poet of faith-faith in the Heart of Goodness at the Heart of the Universe, which will make its warmth felt, and its beatings heard by Him who, in the darkness, is "Not disobedient to the heavenly vision." J. A. X. QUA CURSUM VENTUS. As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay Are scarce long leagues apart descried; When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side: E'en so-but why the tale reveal Of those, whom year by year unchanged, Brief absence joined anew to feel, Astounded, soul from soul estranged? At dead of night their sails were filled, To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, One port, methought, alike they sought, With no more motion than should bear In one unbroken passage borne "AS I SAT AT THE CAFÉ.” As I sat at the café, I said to myself, They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking, But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking, I sit at my table en grand seigneur, It was but last winter I came up to town, I drive through the streets, and I care not a d—n; I can pay for the damage if ever so bad. We stroll to our box and look down on the pit, The best of the tables and the best of the fare- We sit at our tables and tipple champagne; It was but last winter I came up to town, So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! |