This chance remark sent me back to the poems with
a fresh surmise. I felt bound to admit that there was some- thing in what my friend had said. The Dorian strain does certainly lend itself readily to regrets for undergraduate life, and there is a striking analogy between Milton's " self-same hill " and the " track by Childsworth farm " of Matthew Arnold. It was noticeable also that both Milton and Arnold adopted towards their deceased friends a tone of patronising, although sincere, regret. Milton confined himself to remark- ing that Edward King had left no peer ; Arnold compared Clough to a cuckoo. I was unable to deny moreover that the passages in which Lycidas and Thyrsis really light up are those passages in which Milton abuses the " blind mouths " and Arnold recalls the night ramblings of his arrogant young days. I am prepared to confess also that in Adonais, Shelley was more concerned with Keats' apparent failure than with his unapparent success. I surmise also that Swinburne's main preoccupation was with the fact that the Flews du Mal had been banned by the French courts. But In Memoriam was quite certainly written upon• the subject of Arthur Hallam.
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