Abreast of the Age
Six,- --Dr. John Holloway has caused me some anxiety. He says boldly that Matthew Arnold 'was a poet.' This poet. he adds, has 'a rich sense of fact'—in some things, this poet is better than Keats- Well I Here is a sketch of the kind of commentary I have been making in lectures here for some years past, taking a poem like The Scholat Gypsy:
'Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted doesn't that remind you too much of Coleridge —'His flashing eyes, his floating hair!'—softened perhaps with a little Shelley-breath? What about 'Oft thou hast given them. store/Of flowers . —doesn't that come straight from Keats's 'Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?'? What about such cadences as: 'Children, who early range these slopes and late'—with the heavy-footed skits' step at the beginning, in imitation of Wordsworth and Milton—but quite functionless'?—or worse, mai' functioning, as here: Maidens who from the distant hamlets come To dance around the Fyfield elm in May . .
Why the heavy metrical emphasis on maidens? DO' they really come in with such a thump? Perhaps the are meant to be like this—hefty, clodhopping. rural maidens? maidens? If so, the rhythm is excellent—but I don know; I only know this: if I was a farmer, catch; ing sight of the Scholar Gypsy 'hanging on a gal, out there, I would send a man to offer him a ioh for the day, or else, chase him to hell off my gato. Not that you could get much action out of hon. with his 'pregnant parts' and all : he would only 'Through the long dewy grass move slow awaY'-.1 ruminating, no doubt; or ruminant? Then there' that simple and beautiful effect (touched on by hlr- Holloway): 'Where at her open door the housewife darns . .' Why, what darns she? Why, a such Wordsworth now, could make simple things epic' but I don't think. he ever risked it with a ward like 'darns.' The truth is. Matthew Arnold was not a poet—for all his other beauties and great gifts' He wrote pastiche. His effects were parasitical a. great poets past—when he had to stand by himsch he fell into bathos. His verse is not rich of fact it is poor, weak and vague. He tells you all if" time-=he can't do it.
I hope I haven't seriously misled my charges?
M M
Alakerere College. University ofAfricam. "HI
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