simple development of art-subjects did not represent the clashing
complexity of human life, whether inward in the passions, the intellect
or the soul, or in the active movement of the world. And the other poets
were equally incapable of representing this complexity of which the
world became clearly conscious. Arnold tried to express its beginnings,
and failed, because he tried to explain instead of representing them. He
wrote about them; he did not write them down. Nor did he really belong
to this novel, quick, variegated, involved world which was so pleased
with its own excitement and entanglement. He was the child of a world
which was then passing away, out of which life was fading, which was
tired like Obermann, and sought peace in reflective solitudes. Sometimes
he felt, as in _The New Age_, the pleasure of the coming life of the
world, but he was too weary to share in it, and he claimed quiet. But
chiefly he saw the disturbance, the unregulated life; and, unable to
realise that it was the trouble and wildness of youth, he mistook it for
the trouble of decay. He painted it as such. But it was really young,
and out of it broke all kinds of experiments in social, religious,
philosophical and political thought, such as we have seen and read of
for the last thirty years. Art joined in the experiments of this
youthful time. It opened a new fountain and sent forth from it another
stream, to echo this attempting, clanging and complicated society; and
this stream did not flow like a full river, making large or sweet
melody, but like a mountain torrent thick with rocks, the thunderous
whirlpools of whose surface were white with foam. Changing and
sensational scenery haunted its lower banks where it became dangerously
navigable. Strange boats, filled with outlandish figures, who played on
unknown instruments, and sang of deeds and passions remote from common
life, sailed by on its stormy waters. Few were the concords, many the
discords, and some of the discords were never resolved. But in one case
at least--in the case of Browning's poetry, and in very many cases in