Sleep no more. Glamis hath murdered sleep: and therefore Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more ! eyes, and a somewhat florid complexion he had just thrown up his fellowship at Oriel, because at that time subscription to the Articles of the Church of England was the condition of all these Oxford prehe sheathed, as it were, the mortal an- ferments, and in deference to Carlyle's guish of the assassin's guilt in the fine exhortation to admit no insincerities into imaginative scabbard of the poet's spirit- one's life, Clough, who felt that he did not ual expression. No murderer could have believe in the general teaching of the said that, or put the feeling of the mur-Thirty-nine Articles, thought himself derer sufficiently outside his own mind to conceive it. The poet who feels too keenly the griefs of other men - who feels them too much as they feel themcan never find the most adequate imaginative expression for them. Just conceive a real human being reproaching his mother in rhyme, as Hamlet does for her unfaithfulness to his father, A bloody deed; almost as bad, good mother, bound to throw up a position inconsistent plished man - you know whom I mean as Milton invoked her, though he once the one who never says anything." And invokes her in burlesque; he could never in referring to the delight which Crabb have commemorated Arnold, as Arnold Robinson took in reading poems of commemorated him, as a classical shepWordsworth's at his breakfast parties to herd. Clough was an idealist, but an his friends, Bagehot goes on, "There are idealist always pressing for greater reality some of Wordsworth's poems at which I in life, and he liked neither the fancy never look even now without thinking of dresses of fanciful poetry nor its vague the wonderful and dreary faces which abstractions. Once, I remember, when Clough used to make while Mr. Robinson I praised to him some book with a mysti. was reading them. To Clough, certain of cal turn in it, he spread out his hand and Wordsworth's poems were part of his in- called my attention to the fact that his ner being, and he suffered at hearing fingers widened, instead of tapering tothem obtruded at meal times, just as a wards the ends, remarking that men High Churchman would suffer at hearing whose fingers taper are disposed to symthe Collects of the Church. Indeed, these bolism and mysticism, but that men with poems were amongst the Collects of fingers like his cannot rest on anything Clough's Church." And Clough remained but broad and homely fact. At the same to the last a silent, reserved, and some-time his nature was deeply religious, in what perplexed man, a too anxious scan- spite of his craving to satisfy equally the ner of his own heart, a contemptuous demands of the intellect and the emotions. critic of the comfortable middle-class so- of the heart. The consequence was, that ciety of his time, and a kind of Don though in pathos and delicacy of feeling Quixote whenever he saw a chance of some few of Clough's lyrics have rarely really serving any human being, whether been surpassed, his whole poetic mind in his own social sphere or not-all the needed a freer and larger medium for its more if in one beneath it-though no one expression than any which had been comknew better the difficulties of rendering monly used in English poetry. Somesuch services truly. In one of his Scotch times he used blank verse, as in that most tours he walked two days over the moun- characteristic complaint of his that God tains from a house by the side of Loch appears not to encourage us, in these Ericht to Fort William, and two days modern days, to spend much time in back again, only to get the proper medi- purely devotional attitudes of feeling: cines for a forester's child who was lying sick of a fever at the former place, beyond the reach of medical help. But it was not often that so strong a man could see his way to serving his fellow-men effectually amidst the perplexities of this a remark to which he returns again and complicated world; and hence he moved again, with a sort of heavy groan, in his uneasily about, half inclined to reproach correspondence. But blank verse was the great spiritual Captain for not sound- not really a medium suited to Clough's ing the advance in a manner more audible genius, which was, if I may say so, a to ears in which so many strange sounds genius for moving buoyantly under a great are ringing. It is obvious, I think, that a weight of superincumbent embarrassman with his mind constantly concen- ment. I have already quoted from Mr. trated, as Clough's was, on the desire to Bagehot a description of the plaits and make human society more real in its un- furrows in his forehead when he listened derstanding of its duties, and in his con- to those with whom he could not agree, scientious laboriousness to fulfil them, and yet from whom he did not know how could never be a pastoral poet; and in to express his difference. I remember, spite of Clough's love for the simplicities, too, how, when I endeavored, in twilight or rather, perhaps, by reason of it, for talks with him, to lay any of my youthful pastoral poetry is conventional in its sim- perplexities before him, he, in the kindliplicities, and he was ardent for over-riding ness of his heart and the extreme embarconventionalities by the help of some rassment of his intellect as to whether he truer insight into nature, he never was should do more harm than good by his a pastoral poet in any true meaning of the answers, would pick up with the tongs term. There is sometimes a humorous, one little mite of coal after another from sometimes a passionate, directness in his the grate and put it on the fire, as a mere manner, which pastoral poets eschew. physical relief to his perplexed and rather He could never have invoked the Museinarticulate feelings towards a junior It seems His newer will We should not think of Him at all, but turn, The best we can the impression of an eager, cordial, and embarrassed speech. Again, it would be difficult to find a better rhythm than this for the purpose of Clough's peculiar humor. Take another instance, in the description of one of the pupils, the elaborate dresser of the party, as he comes down prepared to go the Highland banquet:Airlie descended the last, cffulgent as god of Olympus; Blue, perceptibly blue, was the coat that had white-silk facings, Waistcoat blue, coral-buttoned, the white-tie finely adjusted, Coral moreover the studs on a shirt as of crochet of women: whom he only half understood, and was very anxious not to lead into the rather dreary wilderness in which he himself was wandering. Well, this sense of embarrassment, this inertia about him, which was very real and constant, was bound to get some sort of expression in his more intellectual poetry; and he found in the English hexameter, varied, as he varied it, with frequent spondees i.e., with fre quent feet of two protracted syllables, instead of one protracted and two unaccented just the medium that he desired. For this metre expresses easily not only the resisting medium, but the buoyancy that makes itself felt through the resisting medium. I know no rhythm so effective as the rhythm of Clough's English hexameters for the purpose of expressing at once indomitable buoyancy of feeling and the inert mass of the resistance which that buoyancy of feeling has to encoun- In a subsequent part of the poem, a ter. I can illustrate what I mean very Scotch damsel, with whom the poet and simply. In the opening of his "Long hero has flirted - but not so as to endanVacation Pastoral" there is a passage ger her peace is "consoled" by this describing the speech of the Highland gorgeous youth in the mazes of the Scotch chieftain not a very grammatical speech, reel: but a thoroughly hearty speech, encountering difficulties at every word, and at every word boldly overcoming them: Spare me, O great Recollection! for words to the task were unequal, Spare me, O mistress of Song ! nor bid me remember minutely All that was said and done o'er the well-mixed tempting toddy; How were healths proposed and drunk "with all the honors," Glasses and bonnets waving, and three-timesthree thrice over, Queen, and Prince, and Army, and Landlords all, and Keepers; Bid me not, grammar defying, repeat from Long constructions strange and plusquam- Tell how, as sudden torrent in time of speat in Hurries six ways at once, and takes at last to the roughest, Or as the practised rider at Astley's or Fran coni's When the fourwheel for ten minutes already Is it, O marvel of marvels! he too in the maze of the mazy, Skipping, and tripping, though stately, though consolement of waistcoats! Or take this, again, in which one of the party-generally supposed to have been the same who afterwards became a Tory chancellor of the exchequer, now, alas! no more—is described dancing in his illfitting Highland costume: Him rivalling, Hobbes, briefest-kilted of heroes, Enters, O stoutest, O rashest of creatures, mere fool of a Saxon, Skill-less of philibeg, skill-less of reel, too, – Under brief curtain revealing broad acres — I do not think it would be possible for But this peculiar metre suited Clough for better reasons than these. I may say that there is no verse like the hexame ter managed as Homer managed it, nay, managed even as Clough, with his much less liquid medium, managed it, for grouping in one impressive picture the rhythmic motion and the stubborn massiveness of nature's greatest scenes. If there was a great buoyancy and a great inertia in his own heart which this rhythm strangely echoed, so there is a great buoyancy and a great inertia in the external scenery of the universe, which, by this metre, he harmonizes for us, and frames in one magnificent whole. Take, for instance, this grand description of Highland scenery, and notice at once how the mighty natural forces and great diurnal changes are brought before our eyes in it, and yet with them we are made to see the colossal massiveness of the earth's vast bulk and walls: But, O Muse, that encompassest Earth like the ambient ether, missive electric, Swifter than steamer or railway or magical Belting like Ariel the sphere with the star-like trail of thy travel, Thou with thy Poet, to mortals mere postoffice second-hand knowledge Leaving, wilt seek in the moorland of Rannoch the wandering hero. There is it, there, or in lofty Lochaber, where, silent upheaving, Heaving from ocean to sky, and under snowwinds of September, Visibly whitening at morn to darken by noon in the shining, Rise on their mighty foundations the brethren huge of Ben-nevis ? There, or westward away, where roads are unknown to Loch Nevish, And the great peaks look abroad over Skye to the westernmost islands? There is it? there? or there? we shall find our wandering hero? Here, in Badenoch, here, in Lochaber, anon in Lochiel, in Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan, Here I see him and here: I see him; anon I ticability of the Carlylian doctrine which he desired to urge upon the world in this "Long Vacation Pastoral - The Bothie of Tober-Na-Vuolich," as he called his first hexameter poem. Clough, as I have said, was saturated with Carlyle's general principles, and not only saturated by them, but, in some degree at least, exhausted by their categorical and rather impossible imperative. But in this poem he had not reached the stage of exhaustion. He still felt all the inspiration of Carlyle's paradoxes, all the charm of his peculiar democracy, which exalts the sacredness of labor, and the sacredness of faculty, and the sacredness of beauty, and the sacredness of almost every real human gift and talent you can imagine, except the results of what he treated as mere circumstance, while it tramples these last under foot with every species of indignity. The hero of the he ends by accepting, that the highest poem begins by preaching, what, indeed, feminine fascinations are enhanced, and not diminished, by participation in homely labor. He tells how his heart was struck for the first time with the sense of the mysterious charm of woman, when he saw some damsel in a potato-field, engaged in potato-uprooting. One day sauntering "long and listless," as Tennyson has it, Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbadi boyhood, Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless, bonnetless maiden, Bending with! three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes. Was it the air? who can say? or herself, or the charm of the labor? But a new thing was in me; and longing delicious possessed me, Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her slaving. But soon the youth awakens to the charm of the aristocratic lady, and then he preaches that there is no injustice in all the labor and toil of the "dim, common populations," if only it bear such fruits as the lovely Lady Maria, with whom he has been dancing in her father's castle. Finally, he rises to his completest statement of the Carlylian doctrine on this subject, which appears to be the following. It is contained in a correspondence between the "poet and Radical, Hewson " -a Carlylese Radical, remember, not a Radical as most of us understand the word -and his tutor, on the arrangements of the universe as they are, and as they ought to be: This is a letter written by Philip at Christmas to Adam. There may be beings, perhaps, whose vocation it is to be idle. Idle, sumptuous even, luxurious, if it must be: Only let each man seek to be that for which nature meant him. If you were meant to plough, Lord Marquis, out with you, and do it; If you were meant to be idle, O beggar, behold, I will feed you. If you were born for a groom, and you seem by your dress to believe so, Do it like a man, Sir George, for pay, in a livery stable; Yes, you may so release that slip of a boy at the corner, Fingering books at the window, misdoubting the eighth commandment. Ah, fair Lady Maria, God meant you to live and be lovely; Be so then, and I bless you. But ye, ye spurious ware, who Might be plain women, and can be by no possibility better! Ye unhappy statuettes, and miserable trinkets, Poor alabaster chimney-piece ornaments under glass cases, Come, in God's name, come down! the very French clock by you Puts you to shame with ticking; the fire-irons deride you. You, young girl, who have had such advan tages, learnt so quickly, Can you not teach? O yes, and she likes Sunday school extremely, Only it's soon in the morning. Away! if to teach be your calling, It's no play, but a business: off! go teach and be paid for it. Lady Sophia's so good to the sick, so firm and so gentle. Is there a nobler sphere than of hospital nurse and matron? Hast thou for cooking a turn, little Lady Clarissa? in with them, In with your fingers! their beauty it spoils, but your own it enhances ; For it is beautiful only to do the thing we are meant for. This was the answer that came from the Tutor, the grave man, Adam. When the armies are set in array, and the battle beginning, Is it well that the soldier whose post is far to the leftward Say, I will go to the right, it is there I shall do best service? There is a great Field-Marshal, my friend, who arrays our battalions; Let us to Providence trust, and abide and work in our stations. This was the final retort from the petuous Philip. eager, im I am sorry to say your Providence puzzles me sadly; Children of Circumstance are we to be? You answer, On no wise! Where does Circumstance end, and Provi dence, where begins it? What are we to resist, and what are we to be friends with? If there is battle, 'tis battle by night, I stand in the darkness, Ionian and Dorian Here in the mêlée of men, on both sides, Signal and password known; which is friend and which is foeman? Is it a friend? I doubt, though he speak with the voice of a brother. Still, you are right, I suppose; you always are, and will be; Though I mistrust the Field-Marshal, I bow to the duty of order. Yet it is my feeling rather to ask, where is the battle? Yes, I could find in my heart to cry, notwithstanding my Elspie, O that the armies indeed were arrayed! O joy of the onset ! Sound, thou Trumpet of God, come forth, Great Cause, to array us, King and leader appear, thy soldiers sorrowing seek thee. Would that the armies indeed were arrayed, O where is the battle! Neither battle I see, nor arraying, nor King in Israel, Only infinite jumble and mess and dislocation, Backed by a solemn appeal, "For God's sake do not stir, there!" Yet you are right, I suppose; if you don't attack my conclusion, Let us get on as we can, and do the thing we are fit for ; Every one for himself, and the common success for us all, and Thankful, if not for our own why then for the triumph of others, Get along, each as we can, and do the thing we are meant for. I think in that passage it will be clear enough that Clough's form of Carlyle's democracy was not working itself out very clear, and that we need not wonder at his being reported soon after as saying that Carlyle had led us out into the wilderness, and left us there. But is it possible to conceive a rhythm better adapted for the express purpose of conveying buoyancy of feeling and hope moving through a medium of “infinite jumble and mess and dislocation" which is Clough's edition of Carlyle's gospel than the rhythm of the hexameters of the passage I have just read you? But the sense of desolation and halfdisdainful bewilderment is not at its height in the "Long Vacation Pastoral." In 1849, after its publication, Clough went to Rome, and was there during the siege of Rome by the French, and its defence by the triumvirate. It was there that he |