;

et crépusculaire-que voulez vous qu'elle fasse de tout cela? Pour elle, la négation même n'est pas stérile chez elle, Lucrèce a sa place comme Moïse, Omar1 comme Job; mais elle ne saurait où glisser les petites questions d'évidence, les petites tracasseries théologiques. Même en cette époque cependant nous ne manquons pas de poëtes qui sachent manier des choses hautes et sombres. Nous ne renverrons pas des écrivains anglais au sixième livre des Contemplations, aux sommets pour eux inabordables de la poésie actuelle, où la lumière se mêle au vertige; sans citer le grand maître, nous pourrions leur indiquer un des leurs qui a mieux fait qu'eux." Here follows the reference to Mr. Arnold's poem and to the exact passages supposed to bear upon the matter at issue. "Ce monologue lyrique est d'une ampleur, d'une droiture poétique dont on ne saurait ailleurs retrouver une trace. C'est un rude évangile qu'on vient là nous prêcher; on sent dans cette cratère des flammes éteintes; c'est lugubre pour les âmes faibles, pour les esprits à l'œil chassieux ; c'est une poésie froide et ferme et forte. Voici enfin quelqu'un qui a le regard haut, le pied sûr, la parole nette, la vue large; on sait ce qu'il nous veut. Sa philosophie âpre, escarpée, impassible, est après tout meilleure consolatrice que la théologie douteuse, pleureuse, tracassière de ses rivaux."2 In spite of his

'Far better than in the long literal version of Omar Khayyám which is all that the French language can show, may the soul and spirit of his thought be tasted in that most exquisite English translation, sovereignly faultless in form and colour of verse, which gives to those ignorant of the East a relish of the treasure and a delight in the beauty of its wisdom.

2 There are varieties of opinion in this world; and the British critic's fond faith in the British thinker will not soon be shaken by

flippancy and violence of manner, I am disposed in part to agree with this critic.

Elsewhere, in minor poems, Mr. Arnold also has now and then given signs of an inclination for that sad task of sweeping up dead leaves fallen from the dying tree of belief; but has not wasted much time or strength on such sterile and stupid work. Here, at all events, he has wasted none; here is no melodious whine of retrospective and regretful scepticism; here are no cobwebs of plea and counterplea, no jungles of argument and brakes of analysis. "Ask what most helps when known;" let be the oracular and the miraculous, and vex not the soul about their truth or falsehood; the soul, which oracles and miracles can neither make nor mar, can neither slay

nor save.

"Once read thy own breast right,

And thou hast done with fears.
Man gets no other light,

Search he a thousand years.

Sink in thyself; there ask what ails thee, at that shrine."

This is the gospel of avrápкeia, the creed of self-suffi? cience,' which sees for man no clearer or deeper duty than the adverse verdict of any French heretic. Witness the words of a writer whom I once fell in with, heaven knows where; who, being far above the shallow errors of foolish "Greeks " and puerile "pagans," takes occasion to admonish their disciples that "our philosophers and poets will tell you that they have got far beyond this stage. The riddles they have to unravel involve finer issues" (and among these perhaps they might deign to expound what manner of thing may be the involution of an issue); no doubt, in a word, but they are the people, and wisdom shall die with them. They may tell us so, certainly; thought and speech are free, and for aught I know they may be fully capable of the assertion. But it is for us to choose what amount of belief it may please us to accord them.

I take leave to forge this word, because "self-sufficingness"

that of intellectual self-reliance, self-dependence, selfrespect; an evangel not to be cancelled or supplanted by any revelation of mystic or prophet or saint. Out of this counsel grows the exposition of obscure and afflictive things. Man's welfare-his highest sphere and state of spiritual well-doing and well-being-this indeed is his true aim; but not this is the aim of nature: the world has other work than this to do; and we, not it, must submit; submit, not by ceasing to attempt and achieve the best we can, but by ceasing to expect subservience to our own ends from all forces and influences of existing things; it is no reason or excuse for living basely instead of nobly, that we must live as the sons and not as the lords of nature. "To tunes we did not call our being must keep chime; but this bare truth we will not accept. Philosophy, as forcibly and clearly as religion, indicates the impediments of sin and self-will; we do not what we ought, what we ought not we do;" but there religion stops, as far as regards this world, and passes upward into a new world and life; philosophy has further to go without leaving her hold upon earth. Even were man pure, just, wise, instead of unwise, unjust, and impure, this would not affect the "other existences that clash with ours."

66

is a compound of too barbaric sound, and "self-sufficiency" has fallen into a term of reproach. Archbishop Trench has pointed out how and why a word which to the ancient Greek signified a noble virtue came to signify to the modern Christian the base vice of presumption. I do not see that human language has gained by this change of meaning, or that the later mood of mind which dictated this debasement of the word is at all in advance of the older, or indicative of any spiritual improvement; rather the alteration seems to me a loss and a discredit, and the tone of thought which made the quality venerable more sound and wise than that which declares it vile.

"Like us, the lightning fires

Love to have scope and play;

The stream, like us, desires
An unimpeded way;

Like us, the Libyan wind delights to roam at large.

"Streams will not curb their pride

The just man not to entomb,
Nor lightnings go aside

To leave his virtues room;

Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge.

"Nature, with equal mind,

Sees all her sons at play;

Sees man control the wind,

The wind sweep man away :

Allows the proudly-riding and the founder'd bark.”

Again, there are "the ill-deeds of other men" to fill up the account against us of painful and perilous things. And we, instead of doing and bearing all we can under our conditions of life, must needs "cheat our pains" like children after a fall who "rate the senseless ground:

So, loth to suffer mute,

We, peopling the void air,
Make gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear;

With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.

"Yet grant-as sense long miss'd

Things that are now perceiv'd,

And much may still exist

Which is not yet believ'd

Grant that the world were full of Gods we cannot see;

"All things the world which fill

Of but one stuff are spun,

That we who rail are still,

With what we rail at, one ;

One with the o'er-labour'd Power that through the breadth and

length

"Of earth, and air, and sea,

In men, and plants, and stones,

Hath toil perpetually,

And struggles, pants, and moans;

Fain would do all things well, but sometimes fails in strength.

"And, patiently exact,

This universal God

Alike to any act

Proceeds at any nod,

And quietly declaims the cursings of himself.

"This is not what man hates,

Yet he can curse but this.
Harsh Gods and hostile Fates

Are dreams; this only is ;

Is everywhere; sustains the wise, the foolish elf."

Again, we must have comfortable Gods to bless, as well as these discomfortable to curse; "kind Gods who perfect what man vainly tries; " we console ourselves for long labour and research and failure by trust in their sole and final and sufficient knowledge. Then comes the majestic stroke of reply to rebuke and confute the feeble follies of inventive hope, the futile forgeries of unprofitable comfort; scornful and solemn as the forces themselves of nature.

"Fools! that in man's brief term

He cannot all things view,

Affords no ground to affirm
That there are Gods who do ;

Nor does being weary prove that he has where to rest."

In like manner, when pleasure-seekers fail of pleasure in this world, they turn their hearts Godward, and thence in the end expect that joy which the world could not give; making sure to find happiness where the foiled student makes sure to find knowledge. Again the re