Puslapio vaizdai
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542-589. Corn-land. See note on line 261.

a molten image. A. Gellius tells us (Noctes Atticæ, iv. 5) that this statue was once struck by lightning. Etruscan soothsayers being consulted as to the meaning of this prodigy, treacherously advised that the statue be placed in a sheltered spot where the sun's rays could not shine on it. Their treachery being discovered, the soothsayers were put to death and the statue was placed in an elevated spot on the Vulcanal: this brought the state good luck again. Comitium. An enclosed space at the foot of the Palatine hill where elections were held and justice administered. It is sometimes spoken of as included in the Forum Romanum. See Rich, articles Comitium and Forum. Volscian. The territory of the Volsci touched that of the Romans on the south and east. The two peoples were engaged in almost constant border warfare, the Volsci being finally subdued in 338 B.C. See the legend of Coriolanus, as treated by ShakeJuno. Cl. Myths, § 34. Algidus (= Cold); a mountain in Latium. From Horace it appears that this mountain was sacred to Diana (Carmen Sæculare, 69), and that oak-timber grew there (Odes, iv. 4. 57-58).

speare.

Some critics, who find nothing so good but they must have better, claim that Horatius is not poetry. We must allow that the versification, if correct, is somewhat mechanical and that the epithets show a poor eye for color, but having admitted this much, we have admitted about all that can fairly be said in dispraise of Horatius. The theme chosen1 is one admirably adapted to poetic treatment, the action is well sustained, the characters are thoroughly human and real, the imagery and diction are appropriate to the subject; above all, the sentiment that pervades this poem is national and noble. In this respect Macaulay reaches a higher ethical level than Scott, 'the great restorer of our ballad-poetry,' who can seldom rise to anything loftier than the idea of feudal allegiance.

1 No such easy matter, this finding of a subject! Look at Shelley's numerous failures.

CLOUGH.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH was born at Liverpool in 1819. When four years old his parents took him to Charleston, South Carolina, where they lived some four years. Returning to England, he had the good fortune to spend seven years at Rugby under Dr. Arnold. At Oxford he paid more attention to independent reading than to required studies; in spite of this he was elected Fellow and appointed Tutor of Oriel College. These positions he resigned in 1848 on account of conscientious scruples, glad to be free from what he called his 'bondage in Egypt.' Instead of defending his action, as was expected, by a polemic against the Thirty-nine Articles, Clough delighted his friends and puzzled his enemies by publishing his charming Highland pastoral, The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich [The Hut of the Bearded Well]. The form of this was suggested by reading Longfellow's Evangeline. A visit to Rome during the stormy days of '49 produced the Amours de Voyage; a visit to Venice gave the background for Dipsychus, - The Man of Two Souls, whose conscience struggles with the Spirit of the World. In 1852 Clough went to seek his literary fortunes in Boston, making the voyage in the same vessel with Thackeray and Lowell. To this voyage we owe the Songs in Absence and the best parts of the Mari Magno. In a few months he returned to England to accept a position in the Education Department of the Government. His remaining years brought him the happiness that comes from the love of a good woman and from the consciousness of even lowly work faithfully performed. He died at Florence in November, 1861, and was buried in the little Protestant cemetery there. That same resting-place, a few months before, had received the remains of Mrs. Browning; three years later, the aged Landor came to lay his bones beside theirs.

Mr. Lowell has said: 'We have a foreboding that Clough, imperfect as he was in many respects, and dying before he had subdued his sensitive temperament to the requirements of his art, will be thought a hundred years hence to have been the truest expression in verse of the moral and intellectual tendencies, the doubt and struggle towards settled convictions, of the period in which he lived.'

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

LIFE AND TIMES.-Clough taught in verse the old but oft-forgotten philosophy that Carlyle taught in prose: While the doing of your nearest duty may not solve the problem of Life, other solution is there none. Unlike Carlyle, Clough practised what he preached: this comes out clearly and beautifully in his Prose Remains, with a Selection from his Letters and a Memoir: Edited by his Wife.

(Macmillan.) Waddington's Clough, a Monograph (Bell) is a sympathetic and scholarly study of Clough's life as illustrated by his poems.

CRITICISM. - Bagehot: Literary Studies, Vol. ii.; Mr. Clough's Poems Maintains that Clough was the 'one in a thousand' for whom the influence of Arnold was not beneficial; that it disturbed the development of Clough as a thinker and a poet.

Hutton: Essays in Literary Criticism; Arthur Hugh Clough. Shows the influence of Goethe and Wordsworth on Clough; traces his resemblance to Chaucer, and points out his habit of leaving half-solved nearly every intellectual problem he touched.

Coventry Patmore: Principle in Art; Arthur Hugh Clough. Places a low value upon Clough's metaphysical poems, but considers the Bothie 'healthy, human and original.'

Matthew Arnold: Thyrsis; A Monody, to commemorate the Author's friend Arthur Hugh Clough, who died at Florence, 1861. One of the most beautiful elegiac poems in English. The scenery is the same as in The Scholar-Gypsy (p. 241 of this book). At the end of his lectures On Translating Homer (Essays in Criticism, First Series) Mr. Arnold has a touching tribute to the sincerity and simplicity of Clough's character.

QUA CURSUM VENTUS.

This lyric represents the emotions of two friends who, meeting accidentally after the lapse of years, find they have drifted far apart in thought and feeling. The imagery is free and noble; the concluding chord is struck with a hand firmer and bolder than is usual with Clough.

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Mrs. Clough tells us these Tales were written only a few months before the author's death and had not been revised by him.

1-23. These lines, of course, refer to Clough's voyage to the United States in 1852.

24-33. This description seems meant for Mr. Lowell. Time could not dull his youthful spirit. In 1882, -thirty years after these lines were written, I had the honor of a twenty-minute talk with Mr. Lowell in London, and found him just as here described save that his tales were not then of Yankeeland but of Cockneyland. 33-52. This sketch of a Nineteenth Century Parson is as good in its way as Chaucer's Fourteenth Century Parson or Dryden's Seventeenth Century Parson. Canon; a dignitary in the Church of England connected with a cathedral or collegiate church. With the Dean, the Canons form the Chapter or governing body of the cathedral. Quarter-Sessions; A Criminal Court held quarterly in boroughs and counties.

53-76. Slow rises worth in lawyer's gown compressed; an adaptation of Johnson's London, line 173,

Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

76-100. The Yankee friend plays the part played by the Hoste in Chaucer's Prologue; see lines 788-809 of that poem. Indeed it is impossible not to be reminded of Chaucer in reading Clough: there is the same sly humor, the same power of character-drawing and the same directness of phrase.

In the early editions of Clough the Prologue ends here. In the latest edition these eight lines are added:

'Infandum jubes! 'tis of long ago

If tell I must, I tell the tale I know:
Yet the first person using for the freak
Don't rashly judge that of myself I speak.'
So to his tale; if of himself or not

I never learnt; we thought so on the spot.
Lightly he told it as a thing of old,
And lightly I repeat it as he told.

THE LAWYER'S FIRST TALE.

A tale called Primitia or Third Cousins is, in the most recent edition, assigned to the Lawyer as his First Tale; while what in our text is called The Lawyer's First Tale is there called The Clergyman's First Tale. It would be interesting to know whether the changes in Clough texts are based upon ms. authority, or whether they are due to the caprice of the editor.

135-143. This seems to be a bit of autobiography.

169-173. Here we have Shelley's Rule for Right Living, which may be briefly stated as: If you see a thing you want, take it. - It is the application of this principle that makes Penitentiaries a social necessity.

176-180. The influence of Wordsworth is perceptible here. Compare the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.

183-184. Compare Clough's poem Wen Gott Betrügt, Ist Wohl Betrogen (Whom God Beguiles, Is Well Beguiled). 191-199. Compare Byron's

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,

'Tis woman's whole existence.

205-210. Compare Tennyson's Locksley Hall, 17-20.

273-274. Compare Portia's soul-portraying speech beginning,

You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
Such as I am:-

Merchant of Venice, iii. 2.

278-279. love-in-idleness. See the Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 2, 106-109.

301-302.

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.

It fell upon a little western flower, —

Before, milk-white; now purple with love's wound

And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

gave. This is certainly a slip for give.

321-322. The rime shows the common pronunciation of clerk in England.

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352. They met I know not in each other's arms. Keats would have ended the poem at this line. But Clough saw deeper into life than the poet who summed up his philosophy in

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,- that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

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