teach what they do not know, the wonderful earnestness with which most incomplete solutions of the universe are thrust upon us as complete and satisfying. "Le fond de la Providence," says the French novelist, "c'est l'ironie."* Mr. Clough would not have said that; but he knew what it meant, and what was the portion of truth contained in it. Undeniably this is an odd world, whether it should have been so or no; and all our speculations upon it should begin with some admission of its strangeness and singularity. The habit of dwelling on such thoughts as these will not of itself make a man happy, and may make unhappy one who is inclined to be so. Mr. Clough in his time felt more than most men the weight of the unintelligible world; but such thoughts make an instructive man. Several survivors may think they owe much to Mr. Clough's quiet question, "Ah, then, you think?" Many pretending creeds and many wonderful demonstrations passed away before that calm inquiry. He had a habit of putting your own doctrine concisely before you, so that you might see what it came to, and that you did not like it. Even now that he is gone, some may feel the recollection of his society a check on unreal theories and halfmastered thoughts. Let us part from him in his own words:

"Some future day, when what is now is not,

When all old faults and follies are forgot,

And thoughts of difference passed like dreams away,-
We'll meet again, upon some future day.

"When all that hindered, all that vexed our love,
The tall, rank weeds that clomb the blade above,
And all but it has yielded to decay,-

We'll meet again, upon some future day.

"When we have proved, each on his course alone,
The wider world, and learnt what's now unknown,
Have made life clear, and worked out each a way,-
We'll meet again; we shall have much to say.

*Irony is the basis of Providence."

"With happier mood, and feelings born anew,
Our boyhood's bygone fancies we'll review,
Talk o'er old talks, play as we used to play,
And meet again, on many a future day.

"Some day, which oft our hearts shall yearn to see,
In some far year, though distant yet to be,
Shall we indeed - ye winds and waters, say!-
Meet yet again, upon some future day?"

IA

WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, AND BROWNING;
OR, PURE, ORNATE, AND GROTESQUE ART
IN ENGLISH POETRY.*

(1864.)

WE Couple these two books together, not because of their likeness, for they are as dissimilar as books can be; nor on account of the eminence of their authors, for in general two great authors are too much for one essay: but because they are the best possible illustration of something we have to say upon poetical art,-because they may give to it life and freshness. The accident of contemporaneous publication has here brought together two books very characteristic of modern art, and we want to show how they are characteristic.

Neither English poetry nor English criticism have ever recovered the eruption which they both made at the beginning of this century into the fashionable world. The poems of Lord Byron were received with an avidity that resembles our present avidity for sensation novels, and were read by a class which at present reads little but such novels. Old men who remember those days may be heard to say, "We hear nothing of poetry nowadays: it seems quite down." And "down" it certainly is, if for poetry it be a descent to be no longer the favorite excitement of the more frivolous part of the "upper" world. That stimulating poetry is now little read. A stray schoolboy may still be detected in a wild admiration for the "Giaour" or the "Corsair" (and it is suitable

* Enoch Arden, etc. By Alfred Tennyson, D. C. L., Poet Laureate. - Dramatis Personæ. By Robert Browning.

to his age, and he should not be reproached for it); but the real posterity, the quiet students of a past literature, never read them or think of them. A line or two linger on the memory; a few telling strokes of occasional and felicitous energy are quoted, — but this is all. As wholes, these exaggerated stories were worthless: they taught nothing, and therefore they are forgotten. If nowadays a dismal poet were, like Byron, to lament the fact of his birth, and to hint that he was too good for the world, the Saturday Reviewers would say that "they doubted if he was too good"; that "a sulky poet was a questionable addition to a tolerable world"; that "he need not have been born, as far as they were concerned."> Doubtless, there is much in Byron besides his dismal exaggeration; but it was that exaggeration which made "the sensation" which gave him a wild moment of dangerous fame. As so often happens, the cause of his momentary fashion is the cause also of his lasting oblivion. Moore's former reputation was less excessive, yet it has not been more permanent. The prettiness of a few songs preserves the memory of his name, but as a poet to read he is forgotten. There is nothing to read in him: no exquisite thought, no sublime feeling, no consummate description of true character. Almost the sole result of the poetry of that time is the harm which it has done. It degraded for a time the whole character of the art. It said by practice-by a most efficient and successful practice that it was the aim, the duty, of poets to catch the attention of the passing, the fashionable, the busy world. If a poem "fell dead," it was nothing: it was composed to please the "London" of the year, and if that London did not like it, why, it had failed. It fixed upon the minds of a whole generation, it engraved in popular memory and tradition, a vague conviction that poetry is but one of the many amusements for the enjoying classes, for the lighter hours of all classes. The mere notion, the bare idea, that

poetry is a deep thing, a teaching thing, the most surely and wisely elevating of human things, is even now to the coarse public mind nearly unknown.

<As was the fate of poetry, so inevitably was that of criticism. The science that expounds which poetry is good and which is bad is dependent for its popular reputation on the popular estimate of poetry itself.> The critics of that day had a day, which is more than can be said for some since: they professed to tell the fashionable world in what books it would find new pleasure, and therefore they were read by the fashionable world. Byron counted the critic and poet equal. The Edinburgh Review penetrated among the young, and into places of female resort where it does not go now. As people ask, "Have you read 'Henry Dunbar'? and what do you think of it?" so they then asked, "Have you read the 'Giaour'? and what do you think of it?" Lord Jeffrey, a shrewd judge of the world, employed himself in telling it what to think,—not so much what it ought to think, as what at bottom it did think; and so, by dexterous sympathy with current society, he gained contemporary fame and power. Such fame no critic must hope for now. His articles will not penetrate where the poems themselves do not penetrate. When poetry was noisy, criticism was loud; now poetry is a still small voice, and criticism must be smaller and stiller. As the function of such criticism was limited, so was its subject. For the great and (as time now proves) the permanent part of the poetry of his time, -for Shelley and for Wordsworth,-Lord Jeffrey had but one word. He said, "It won't do." And it will not do, to amuse a drawing-room. >

The doctrine that poetry is a light amusement for idle hours, a metrical species of sensational novel, did not indeed become popular without gainsayers. Thirty years ago, Mr. Carlyle most rudely contradicted it. But perhaps this is about all that he has done. He has denied, but he has not disproved. He