AEtna," (Empedocles on AEtna, and other Poems. By A. London:
1852) the piece de resistance was not the happiest selection.
But of the remaining pieces, and of all those
which he has more recently added, it is difficult to
speak in too warm praise. In the unknown A., we are
now to recognize a son of the late Master of Rugby, Dr.
Arnold. Like a good knight, we suppose he thought it
better to win his spurs before appearing in public with
so honoured a name; but the associations which belong
to it will suffer no alloy from him who now wears it.
Not only is the advance in art remarkable, in greater
clearness of effect, and in the mechanical handling of
words, but far more in simplicity and healthfulness
of moral feeling. There is no more obscurity, and no
mysticism; and we see everywhere the working of a
mind bent earnestly on cultivating whatever is highest
and worthiest in itself; of a person who is endeavouring,
without affectation, to follow the best things, to see
clearly what is good, and right, and true, and to fasten
his heart upon these. There is usually a period in the
growth of poets in which, like coarser people, they
mistake the voluptuous for the beautiful; but in Mr.
Arnold there is no trace of any such tendency; pure,
without effort, he feels no enjoyment and sees no beauty
in the atmosphere of the common passions; and in
nobleness of purpose, in a certain loftiness of mind
singularly tempered with modesty, he continually reminds
us of his father. There is an absence, perhaps,
of colour; it is natural that it should be so in the
earlier poems of a writer who proposes aims such as