tiousness of his Greek models, Mr. Arnold will feel flattered, and his readers will feel disheartened. The main moral is simple and Greek enough, that blood demands expiatory blood; connected with which is another somewhat deeper and less Greek, viz. that no man can be so sure of himself and his motives as to be justified in making himself arbitrary judge of another, and in shedding blood and assuming power himself for the supposed welfare of others. We presume, at least, that this idea is to be conveyed, though it is rendered somewhat perplexed by the obscurity we may say, the studied obscurity-which is cast over the character and actions of Polyphontes. His character, Mr. Arnold tells us, is not fixed by the tradition; and he feels free to deal with it as he judges best. "A finer tragic feeling, it seems to me," he says, "is produced, if Polyphontes is represented as not wholly black and inexcusable, than if he is represented as a mere monster of cruelty and hypocrisy. Aristotle's profound remark is well known,—that the tragic personage whose ruin is represented should be a personage neither eminently good, nor yet one brought to ruin by sheer iniquity; nay, that his character should incline rather to good than to bad, but that he should have some fault which impels him to his fall." Curiously enough, however, instead of painting Polyphontes partly good and partly bad, the poet leaves it uncertain whether he is good or is bad. He paints two characters-the one of a man of a determined spirit, and capable of generous devotion to another, whom a deep sense of patriotism and justice had compelled to rise in arms against and sacrifice the life of the king whom hitherto he had faithfully served; the other, of a man who rebels against and murders his king that he may usurp the throne for his own advantage. Polyphontes represents himself in the one light, Merope represents him in the other; and the reader is furnished with no clue to judge between them, or to decide whether Polyphontes speaks truly or hypocritically. This doubt and perplexity as to the real bent of his character is carried on to the very end of the play. His death does not help to clear it, and Merope herself is unable to see her way out of the puzzle; her last words confess the enigma to be insoluble: "What meantest thou, O Polyphontes, what Desired'st thou, what truly spurr'd thee on? Of the Heracleidan conquerors, as thou saidst, U Over thy corpse, triumph not, neither mourn; A mixed character no doubt is fitted to tragedy; but a dubious character is fitted to no dramatic art whatever. This is not the case of a complex character not easily decipherable, but of two simple enough sets of opposite qualities ascribed to one man; and the play must be read to appreciate how nicely the see-saw between the two is kept up, and how distracting an influence it exerts. From the preface, indeed, we may gather which way the balance was intended to incline; and we presume (though even with this assistance we walk very uncertainly) that Polyphontes is intended to be represented as a man of noble nature, and whose rebellion was actuated in the main by noble motives; but in whose breast lay a vein of personal and selfish ambition half concealed, and but half concealed, from the consciousness of its owner. The fate of such a man might take a tragic interest which would deserve not to be eclipsed even by separate interests gathered round another: but if such was indeed the writer's aim, he has shot wide of his mark. The fact is, the forms of the Greek drama scarcely afford scope for the full development of such a character, which demands greater detail and variety of circumstance in its exhibition than can there be possibly afforded. Indeed, in placing such a character on the stage at all, Mr. Arnold can scarcely be said to be true to his model. The general language which Aristotle uses of a man not wholly good or bad, but leaning one way rather than the other, is very descriptive of the amount of human character which the Greek drama required. It uses the men to bring out the story. It does not dwell upon or seek to display the self-originating springs of action. Man stands there as a more or less passive instrument, on which destiny, the gods, and circumstance play; and the character assigned him is only as it were the setting of that instrument at a certain pitch. A character like that which we have presumed the author intends for Polyphontes confuses a Greek play; it raises a crowd of moral questions and dilemmas which have no place there. Merope's simple dictum on his death, "just in either case the stroke Which laid thee low, for blood requires blood," does not satisfy us. We are launched on the inquiry whether the blood was rightly shed: we seek to know whether the man was true to himself,-whether his own conscience exonerated him; and these are not questions either to be asked or solved in Greek tragedy. It concerns itself full little with the motives of action. Herein Mr. Arnold has scarcely been true either to the outward destiny-controlled morality of ancient Greece, or the placid acquiescences of modern Oxford. It is not this, however, but the duality of nature we have before spoken of, which prevents our taking an interest in Polyphontes, or even grasping him at all by the imagination. We read his speeches, and admire them; but have no notion of the man, and therefore care not for his fate. When Epytus slays him, we feel indifferent whether he had struck the steer or the king: our only impression is, that an elderly insoluble riddle is dead. We are grateful, but not moved. These are faults, and they are such as were to be looked for from our former experience of the author's writings. We suppose the phrenologists would say he wants individuality. He does not grasp wholes, or even the larger aspects of things. It is in his details we learn how fine a poetic faculty he really possesses. His is not a creative, it is an expressive genius. Hence some of his best poems are those in which he gives a direct voice to his own feelings. He has not that tranquil and complete imagination which without effort embraces a wide field, and compels it into a small and perfect circle of creative art; and which, working outward from an inner conception, stamps the harmony of its own nature on its work. Few indeed are the poets that possess it. Matthew Arnold's is a symmetrical rather than a harmonious genius. He creates parts, and adjusts them together. He wants depth and largeness of artistic power; but he has an exquisite taste, the faculty that detects at least minor disproportions and discrepancies. He has a nice sense of fitness and proportion, and, in all that goes to furnish beauty and finish of execution, it would not be easy to rival him among living poets. His poetry wants power: this play does not move you deeply, nor leave as a whole any profound impression; but step by step it is to be read with a high degree of pleasure, and of a high kind. For the author is rich in poetic instincts, and not devoid of the true poet's insight, and his work is informed throughout with an unfailing life of imagination and fancy. Moreover, his faculties are never strained-he strikes no note above his natural compass. The whole conception of the tragedy perhaps taxes his powers fully as far as they can bear; but in the conduct of it he every where displays the decent composure of moderate strength, none of the spasmodic effort of weakness. He has a reticence which enables you to enjoy him with a sense that there is more power in reserve, and sometimes a glowing coal breaks out through the lambent play of imaginative diction which generally characterises him—and it is imaginative, not fanciful. Almost always he writes from the deeper hold of the imagination, not from the lighter grasp of fancy. It is fancy, perhaps, though in her very highest mood, that speaks of “lightning passion, that with grasp of fire Advancest to the middle of a deed Almost before 'tis planned;" but it is imagination that gives their beauty to so many of the choruses, and to that exquisite piece of descriptive writing detailing the supposed death of Epytus. He has come nearer, we think, than any other candidate to giving the effect of the Greek chorus. Though his verse wants something of varied cadence and music, and the changes lie within too limited a range: and though, too, the sharp incessant ictus strikes with something of an artificial sound on the ear, yet he has caught something of that warbling lyric effect which is most characteristic of the ancient choruses, and makes them more like the singing of birds than any other music. From the oak-built, fiercely-burning pyre, Drove them screaming from their eyries! When the shirt-wrapt, poison-blister'd Hero Living, his own funeral-pile, And stood, shouting for a fiery torch; Coming swiftly through the sad Trachinians, That the flame tower'd on high to the Heaven; To the side of Hebe, To immortal delight, O heritage of Neleus, O town, high Stenyclaros, With new walls, which the victors From the four-town'd, mountain-shadow'd Doris, For their Hercules-issu'd princes Built in strength against the vanquish'd! Another, another sacrifice on this day Ye witness, ye new-built towers! When the white-rob'd, garland-crowned Monarch Approaches, with undoubting heart, Living, his own sacrifice-block, And stands, shouting for a slaughterous axe; And the stern, Destiny-brought Stranger, The inheritor of the realm, Coming swiftly through the jocund Dorians, Drives the axe to its goal: That the blood rushes in streams to the dust; To the Gods of Hades, ant. 3. To the dead unaveng'd, The fiercely-requir'd Victim. Knowing he did it, unknowing pays for it. Unknowing, unknowing, Thinking aton'd-for Deeds unatonable, Thinking appeas'd Gods unappeasable, Right at the harbour-mouth, Strikes, with all sail set, Needle of ruin!" epode. |