Arthur Hugh Clough; a monograph

Front matter

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ATE DUE

GAYLORD

Preface

T N preparing the following study of Clough's life -*■ and poems I have more especially availed myself of the information contained in the notices, reviews, and other fugitive papers respecting him, which have been published during the last quarter of a century ; — and, with a view of preserving all that might prove of interest, numerous extracts have been included from the writings of various authors, who were, for the most part, personally acquainted with the poet. Among such writers may be mentioned the late Dean of Westminster, Mr. R. H. Hutton, Mr. Matthew Arnold, the late Mr. Walter Bagehot, the Dean of St. Paul's, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, Mr. Thomas Hughes, Q.C., Professor Masson, Mr. William Allingham, Professor Sellar, Mr. J. A. Symonds, Mr. C. E. Norton, Mr. T. Arnold, Professor Shairp, the late Charles Kingsley, and others. The present would appear to be a period unusually productive as regards the publication of viii PREFACE.

monographs and biographies, and in the case of one poet— Shelley— there have been, if I remember rightly, nearly a dozen critical and biographical works published in rapid succession within a very few years. This is, however, the first volume that has been devoted to the criticism and study of Clough, although nearly a quarter of a century has now elapsed since he was laid in the ' little cypresscrowded cemetery beyond the walls of the Fair City (Florence), on the side towards Fiesole.' — The ' sincerity and sense,' which, with a rare Homeric simplicity of genius, are the characteristic features of Clough's poetry, will, I trust, impart an interest and value to the present volume which it might not, perhaps, otherwise have possessed.

I would take this opportunity of thanking Mrs. Clough, and also Messrs. Macmillan and Co., for their kindness in granting me permission to print extracts from the poet's works.

47, Connaught Street, Hyde Park, W.

October, 1882.

Introduction

T T has been said that ' poets are all who love, "*• who feel great truths and tell them,' — and we know that of old ' they were ranked in the class of philosophers, and that the ancients made use of them as preceptors in music and morality.' But now, in these latter days, nous avons changi tout cela, and we look to the ministers of religion, to our pastors and masters, to preach and teach us morality ; while we expect our bards, or singers (as some of them now prefer to be called), to teach us something quite different, — or rather we expect them not to teach at all. And yet, as a matter of fact, all classes are being taught, and cannot fail to be taught, by those verses which, when once read, remain stamped on the tablets of memory for life : and it was not unwisely written by Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, in a letter to the Marquis of Montrose, B

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that 'if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.' The influence of the poetry of Robert Burns in forming and colouring the opinions and characters of his countrymen is said to have been greater than that of any other Scotchman of his century ; — and the influence of Keats, a poet of a very different order, is plainly perceptible at the present time in England, and is affecting many sections of society, and more especially the art and . literary circles of the metropolis. A few years ago the same might have been observed, with equal truth, respecting Wordsworth ; but it is to the author of Endymion and The Eve of St. Agnes that reference is usually made by those modern critics who extol what they themselves call ' mere poetry,' although it was Keats that complained of those who forget '

' the great end Of Poesy, that it should be a friend To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.'

And yet if this is what is meant by ■ mere poetry,' if it means verse that ' lifts the thoughts of man,' and makes us feel

' that we are greater than we know '

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then it becomes clear that the contention respecting it is only a dispute about words, and arises from the fact that our two schools of criticism do not quite understand each other's meaning. The poetry of Burns and of Wordsworth, or even that of Shakspeare and of Milton, can hardly be said to do more than ' soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man ; ' and we are not prepared to say that the poetry of Keats at all fails to accomplish the like end. The lines

' Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,'

contain the one 'great truth' which Keats loved, and felt, and taught ; and which coloured, and in a measure consecrated, all his compositions. Never was there a philosopher who was more firmly attached to his own particular views respecting the world in which he moved, nor ever a preceptor whose example was more in accordance with his teaching.

Still, all this notwithstanding, it seems probable, seeing that the minds of men are differently constituted, and variously influenced by imagination and reason, by thought and emotion, that there will

INTRODUCTION.

ever be found in our midst these two schools holding opposite views respecting the province and proper sphere of poetry. The one delights, and will always continue to delight, in the form, the manner, the music, the metaphor, the graceful phrase, the uncommon, the well-chosen or, perhaps, archaic term, and all the thousand-and-one adjuncts that go to form the dress in which the poet clothes his thought, — or, alas, in some instances conceals his want of thought. The other school also delights in all these things ; — it rejoices in the harmonious arrangement of words, and in the subtle felicity of expression ; — it loves

' the light that never was on sea or land ; '

but these, these alone, these unaccompanied by any deep ' under-song of sense,' are not sufficient for it, and it asks, ' Is not the body more than raiment, and the soul of more importance than the body ? '

' Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outer walls so costly gay ? '

Or, in the words of Isaac Barrow, it exclaims : ' If it is true that nothing has for you any relish except painted comfits and unmeaning trifles, that not even wisdom will please you, unless without its peculiar

INTRODUCTION.

flavour, nor truth, unless seasoned with a jest, then in an unlucky hour have I been assigned as your purveyor, neither born nor bred in such a frivolous confectionery.'

Such, roughly and briefly stated, are the two opposite views that are held by the respective partisans and upholders of the especial value in poetry of form and manner, on the one hand, and of thought and subject-matter, on the other: — but it is in the latter rather than the former of these schools that the poet who is the subject of these pages has for the most part found his disciples and admirers. Those who cherish, and find pleasure in studying the writings of Clough — and we believe that their number, both in this country and in America, is much larger than is usually supposed — admire him, not for the smoothness of his numbers, or the melody of his verse, but for the nobility of character, the subtlety of thought, and the sincere earnestness and zeal in the pursuit of both truth and truthfulness, that are marked in no uncertain letters upon all his compositions, whether in prose or verse. As regards the question, however, respecting the province of poetry, to which reference has already been made, it will be well before proceeding to the study of the poet's own writings that some insight should, if possible, be obtained into what were the opinions which he himself held on this subject. With this view the following interesting extract is quoted from a paper published by him in the North American Review for July, 1853, m which he reviewed and compared the respective poems of the late Alexander Smith and Mr. Matthew Arnold. He writes : —

'We have before us, we may say, the latest disciple of the school of Keats, who was indeed no well of English undefiled, though doubtless the fountain-head of a true poetic stream. Alexander Smith is young enough to free himself from his present manner, which does not seem his simple and natural own. He has given us, so to say, his Endymion ; it is certainly as imperfect, and as mere a promise of something wholly different, as was that of the master he has followed. We are not sorry, in the meantime, that this Endymion is not upon Mount Latmos. The natural man does pant within us after flumina silvasque; yet really, and truth to tell, is it not, upon the whole, an easy matter to sit under a green tree by a purling brook, and indite pleasing stanzas on the beauties of nature

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and fresh air? Or is it, we incline to ask, so verygreat an exploit to wander out into the pleasant field of Greek or Latin mythology, and reproduce, with more or less of modern adaptation,

' the shadows Faded and pale, yet immortal, of Faunus, the Nymphs, and the Graces ? '

Studies of the literature of any distant age or country; all the imitations and ^Mtf-rz-translations' which help to bring together into a single focus the scattered rays of human intelligence ; poems after classical models, poems from Oriental sources, and the like, have undoubtedly a great literary value. Yet there is no question, it is plain and patent enough, that people much prefer Vanity Fair and Bleak House. Why so? Is it simply because we have grown prudent and prosaic, and should not welcome, as our fathers did, the Marmions and the Rokebys, the Childe Harolds and the Corsairs ? Or is it, that to be widely popular, to gain the ear of multitudes, to shake the hearts of men, poetry should deal, more than at present it usually does, with general wants, ordinary feelings, the obvious rather than the rare facts of

.human nature ? Could it not attempt to convert into beauty and thankfulness, or at least into some, form and shape, some feeling, at any rate, of content — the actual, palpable things with which our every-day life is concerned ; introduce into business and weary task-work a character and a soul of purpose and reality ; intimate to us relations which, in our unchosen, peremptorily-appointed posts, in our grievously narrow and limited spheres of action, we still, in and through all, retain to some central, celestial fact ? Could it not console us with a sense of significance, if not of dignity, in that often dirty, or at least dingy, work which it is the lot of so many of us to have to do, and which some one or other, after all, must do ? Might it not divinely condescend to all infirmities; be in all points tempted as we are ; exclude nothing, least of all guilt and distress, from its wide fraternization ; not content itself merely with talking of what may be better elsewhere, but seek also to deal with what is here ? We could each one of us, alas ! be so much that somehow we find we are not ; we have all of us fallen away from so much that we still long to call ours. Cannot the Divine Song in some way indicate to us our unity, though from a great way

INTRODUCTION.

off, with those happier things ; inform us, and* prove to us, that though we are what we are, we may yet, in some way, even in our abasement, even by and through our daily work, be related to the purer existence.'

Thus writes, and very wisely, the poet himself, — and it is both surprising and instructive to note, as the eye passes along the eloquent and impassioned sentences, how closely the sense, the gist of the whole passage, approximates to those words of Keats, to which reference has been made, that the great end and aim of poetry should be ' to soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.' The very fact that two poets, such as were Keats and Clough, whose compositions are in many respects so very dissimilar, — who in seeking a field in which the poetic genius might work and develop its powers to advantage, turned their backs upon each other, and parted at the very threshold, — who travelled, or seemed to travel, on their respective paths in quest of apparently very different objects of desire, — that these two poets should nevertheless agree on this important subject, and should hold like views respecting the fundamental principle of what should be the great end of poetry, is, to say the very least io INTR OD UCTION.

of it, instructive, and a matter which should not be overlooked by our youthful bards and modem reviewers.

There have recently been various theories propounded respecting what may best serve as a true definition of ' poetry ; ' — and while Mr. Matthew Arnold tells us that it is the criticism, of life, Mr. Alfred Austin intimates that it is nothing of the kind, but that it is the transfiguration or imaginative representation of life. Possibly there is much truth in both of these theories, and yet, after all, may we not say in the words of Wordsworth, —

' Dear child of Nature, let them rail ! — There is a nest in a green dale, A harbour and a hold, Where thou * * * shalt see Thy own delightful days, and be A light to young and old.'

And may not these lines, also, serve in a measure to indicate one phase at least of what poetry either is, or ought to be ? But so long as the term is widely and variously employed, as it is at present, it is manifestly a waste of time to try and include under one definition its manifold and various meanings. Originally it would appear to have meant

INTRODUCTION. n

rhythmical compositions, or creations, of any kind or character ; and a century ago it would have been considered applicable to what we should now only deem to be correctly described as ' verse : ' — while it would not have been held to be an appropriate term for any composition in prose, even if written by such imaginative or emotional writers as Thomas Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin.

The ' poetry of life ' is plainly far removed from the poetry (if there be any) in Pope's Essay on Man, or Samuel Butler's Hudibras : — while the poetry that Wordsworth could find in ' a primrose by a river's brim,' or in his favourite, 'the lesser celandine,' is an entirely different thing from that which inspires some of Mr. Matthew Arnold's philosophic, didactic, and yet very beautiful sermons-in-sonnets, such as are his East London, The Better Part, and Worldly Place. But let us once more refer on this subject to the paper by Clough in the North American Review where he writes : — ' You have been reading Burns, and you take up Cowper. You feel at home, how strangely ! in both of them. Can both be the true thing ? and if so, in what new form can we express the relation, the harmony, between them ? Are we to try and reconcile them, or judge between them ? May we escape from all the difficulty by a mere quotation, and pronounce with the shepherd of Virgil,

* * * * Will you be content, O reader, to plod in German manner over miles of a straight road that seems to lead somewhere, with the prospect of arriving at last at some point where it will divide at equal angles, and lead equally into two opposite directions, where you may therefore safely pause, and thankfully set up your rest, and adore in sacred doubt the Supreme Bifurcation ? '

But now let us consider a moment what is the conclusion at which we are arriving, — what is the end and aim of these introductory observations, Is it to set up, and adore the poetic Supreme Bifurcation, as the poet himself humorously designates, the point where the pathways of two schools of poetry divide? Is it to show that the wonderworking process of Evolution has in its literary progress created at various points of divergence new and distinct species of poetry ? Is it to indicate that whereas one school, or species, will more especially serve ' to soothe the cares,' another will rather ' lift the thoughts,' of Man ? Is it to urge that both of these schools are good in their way, and to be esteemed for their own particular merits ? Is it to prove that of Clough and Keats, as of Cowper and Burns, it may justly be said,

Or, lastly, is it to point out that it is hardly wise in literature — any more than it is in religion — to confine the growing, the ever-increasing world of thought, and truth, and sympathy, by any narrow exclusive dogma, or definition, that may at the time best fit in with our own opinions and predilections ?

Yes — these, taken together, constitute the goal to which our observations tend, for in writing of a poet, such as Clough, who is far removed from the sphere in which the new poets that have arisen during the last fifteen or twenty years are moving, it would seem necessary to point out in limine that it does not follow that one is right, and the other wrong, when two poets choose very different methods, and compose poems on opposite principles. There is, after all, much of fashion in these matters, i 4 INTRODUCTION.

and in addition there is the influence which the events of the period, the religious and political movements of the times, must always have upon the poet's work. It is to this that Mr. Stopford Brooke refers when he writes: — 'Keats marks the exhaustion of the impulse which began with Burns 1 and Cowper. There was now no longer in England any large wave of public thought or feeling such as could awaken poetry. We have then, arising after his death, a number of pretty little poems, having no inward fire, no idea, no marked character. They might be written by any versifier at any time, and express pleasant indifferent thought in pleasant verse. But with the Reform agitation, and the new religious agitation at Oxford which was of the same date, a new excitement or a new form of the old, came on England, and with it a new tribe of poets arose, among whom we live. The elements of their poetry were also new, though their germs were sown in the previous poetry. It took up the theological, sceptical, social, and political questions which disturbed England. It gave itself to metaphysics and to analysis of human character. It carried the love of natural scenery into almost every county in England, and described the whole land.

Some of its best writers are Robert Browning and his wife, Matthew Arnold, and Arthur Hugh Clough.'

Of these four only two, unfortunately, are still left with us to work and use their influence in our midst, at a time when their influence is especially needed, and when the school of purely Decorative Poetry (to use the late Mr. Bayard Taylor's phrase) which addresses itself to the eye and ear, rather than to the heart and brain, is beginning to somewhat weary its readers. Of Browning and Clough it is especially true that they are 'thinkers' rather than 'singers,' and the following which has been written respecting the former is also true of the latter : ' He as a singer has been surpassed by many inferior men. We had almost said he seldom sings. But he is a poet for all that, and he can sing, and sing sweetly too, when he pleases. But he is chiefly -dear to the age as a feeler and a thinker ; he is also dear because knowing all, and having been racked with its doubts, and stretched upon the mental torture-wheels of his time, he does not despair.' It is possible that Mr. M. Arnold when he recently defined poetry as the ' criticism of life,' was thinking more especially of these two poets, Browning and Clough, these spiritual analysts of the social body, that unveil the conventional shams of the world, that show us life as it really is, and do not hesitate to criticize our most cherished dogmas of duty and religion. But there is another, and far wider, definition of poetry, given, we believe, by John Stuart Mill, that it is, 'Thought coloured by emotion, expressed in metre : ' — and if we accept this as approximately true, then may we accept, also, Clough's compositions as true poetry, for in them we find the most subtle 'thought' accompanied by the most deep and impressive emotion, which is none the less deep and impressive because it is held under restraint, and bears the calm demeanour of discipline.

Those who, on bygone Sabbath afternoons, When the shades of approaching darkness began to deepen the gloom of the grand old Abbey, have listened in past years to the touching eloquence and the calm yet impressive language of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, will recognize at once the same spiritual fervour, — the same earnest, yet restrained, zeal and emotion — in the poems of Clough and the sermons of the late Dean. And, indeed, are not these in a measure but different pipes of the same organ-stop, — are they not fragrant flowers gathered from the same holy garden, — the work and wisdom of two scholars that had been nurtured and trained under the fostering care of one and the same master, that great and good man the late Dr. Arnold ? Thought, coloured by emotion, yet subject to discipline; — sincere earnestness in the pursuit of Truth coloured by charity towards the holders of opposite views and opinions ; — a desire to impart wider views and a larger sympathy to the various sects of society with their petty shibboleths and narrow party-spirit ; — such, truly, were the feelings and the aims that inspired the spiritual fervour of both poet and priest ; and such is the didactic purpose which we find to be present, though not objectionably obtruded, in most of the poems and prose writings of Clough.

A didactic purpose ? Yes, — for when a great truth has taken possession of the heart, — when an eternal verity (as Carlyle would have said) hath entered into and overpowered the spirit of the man, — then, and then only, out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, and teacheth whether it will or not. Then, and then only, the poet uttereth such impassioned poems, as The world is too much with us, late and soon, as Hood's Bridge of Sighs, or Mrs. Browning's Cry of the Children.

C .

But we have already discussed this subject above, and we will not refer to it further, beyond stating that the effect produced by a man who is in earnest will always be greater than that produced by one who is only playing his part ; and that the character of the worker will, in some way or other, be mirrored in the works that he produces. 'Believe me,' were the words of Sir Frederick Leighton on a recent occasion, 'believe me, whatever of dignity, whatever of strength we have within us, will dignify and will make strong the labours of our hands ; whatever littleness degrades our spirit will lessen them and drag them down. Whatever noble fire is in our hearts will burn also in our work, whatever purity is ours will chasten and exalt it ; for as we are, so our work is, and what we

isow in our lives, that, beyonoTadoubt, we shall reap for good or for ill in the strengthening or defacing of whatever gifts have fallen to our lot' In the following pages the reader will have before him the history of the life, and description of the character, of one whom we, for our part, believe to have been a very pure, and noble, and good man ; he will also have an account and study of his poems and other writings, and he will thus have an opportunity of judging for himself how very true in this instance are the words we have here quoted. It has been said, and with much truth, that ' Clough lived his poem ; ' and his life and poetry are alike free from any impurity, from any folly or unfaithfulness ; in neither will the reader come upon any 'deathless traces of a dreadful history,' and they who have an appetite for — a hungering after — stories of crime, of desertion and death ; — of poems composed in the dreamy interregnum of sober moments in lives of delirious intemperance, whether produced by alcohol or opium, — must seek their unwholesome food elsewhere : they will not even meet with any epistolary compositions unworthy to have been written by a man of true nobility of character, by a man of a sane and thorough manliness. And if Sir Frederick Leighton be right, as we think he unquestionably is, that 'as we are, so our work is ; ' and that ' whatever purity is ours will chasten and exalt_.it,' then may we look for, and expect with no fear of disappointment, a loftier spirituality, a higher tone, and a nobler purpose in the poetry of Clough than in that of the majority of bur English poets. We say, in his words, 'we could each one of us be so much that some-

2o INTRODUCTION.

how we find we are not ; we have all of us fallen away from so much that we still long to call ours ; cannot the Divine Song in some way indicate to us our unity, though from a great way off, with these happier things ? ' And we reply that such a song is in a measure to be found in the poetry of many bards who have indicated, who have shown to us, our relationship to a purer existence and a happier state. In the poems of Goethe and Schiller, and no less in those of our own Spenser and Wordsworth, is such a Divine Song to be traced, such an echo, as it were, from a more heavenly shore, — a musical cadence of angels' voices freed from our earthly bonds, our weakness, and our worldliness, and, alas ! our human worldly-holiness. And not only in these, but in many others of our English poets, is such a strain to be found, and in none is it more marked than in the poetry of Clough ; indeed, as might be expected, it is the main feature of his verse; it is the light illuminating, more or less brightly, nearly the whole of his compositions.

The following elegiac lines, which form part of one of his earlier poems, illustrate to some extent the general tone and tenor of his poetry, and with them we will conclude these introductory observations.

' Go from the east to the west, as the sun and the stars direct thee, Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass the earth. Not for the gain of the gold ; for the getting, the hoarding,, the having, But for the joy of the deed ; but for the Duty to do. Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action,

With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth.

Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit Say to thyself : It is good : yet is there better than it.

This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little ; Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.'

Chapter I. EARLY LIFE

TN the year 1819 were born two writers whose ■*- characters were in some respects somewhat similar. Both of them were remarkable for their earnestness and integrity, both of them were poets, and both were destined to become disciples and upholders of the Broad-Church school of liberty and free-thought. The one was Charles Kingsley, and the other Arthur Hugh Clough. To the former we shall have occasion to refer later on; the latter forms the subject of these pages. Clough was by a few months the elder of the two, being born on the first day of the new year; and as Heine, who was born in the year 1801, used to jest about himself as being one of the first men of his century, so of Clough it may be said that he was one of the first men of his year. He was, in truth, a ' New Year's gift,' and rarely have parents

'been honoured with a goodlier one, or with one fated to give them more pleasure in the brief after-years of their lives.

It has long been generally recognized, and is almost a truism, that in the majority of cases the men who have become illustrious in the world's history, and of these more especially the poets, have been the sons, if not of illustrious, yet of clever and talented, mothers. The stately poet of Weimar furnishes the most noticeable example of the genius and gifts of a mother descending to her son in increased and perfected ability. ' From my father,' Goethe writes, ' I inherit my frame and the steady guidance of my life ; from dear little mother my happy disposition and love of story-telling.' And in Lewes's Life of Goethe the poet's mother is referred to as being 'one of the pleasantest figures in German literature, and one standing out with greater vividness than almost any other. She was the delight of children, the favourite of poets and princes. After a lengthened interview an enthusiastic traveller exclaimed, ' Now do I understand how Goethe has become the man he is.' The Duchess Amalia corresponded with her as an intimate friend ; a letter from her was a small jubilee at the Weimar court.' The Italian poet, Torquato Tasso, is another instance of this form of hereditary genius ; and most of us have heard of the mother of England's greatest Greek scholar and verbal critic, Professor Porson, — the wonderful housemaid with the wonderful memory, whose master discovered that she had not only read all his books on the sly, but had a sound knowledge of all the books she had read.