Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

So in we went and stood in the crowd
To hear the old clock as it crooned aloud,
With sound and symbol, the only tongue
The maker taught it while yet 't was young.
And we saw Saint Peter clasp his hands,
And the cock crow hoarsely to all the lands,
And the Twelve Apostles come and go,
And the solemn Christ pass sadly and slow;
And strange that iron-legged procession,
And odd to us the whole impression,
As the crowd beneath, in silence pressing,
Bent to that cold mechanic blessing.

But I alone thought far in my soul
What a touch of genius was in the whole,
And felt how graceful had been the thought
Which for the signs of the months had sought,
Sweetest of symbols, Christ's chosen train;
And much I pondered, if he whose brain
Had builded this clock with labor and pain
Did only think, twelve months there are,
And the Bible twelve will fit to a hair;
Or did he say, with a heart in tune,
Well-loved John is the sign of June,
And changeful Peter hath April hours,
And Paul the stately, October bowers,
And sweet, or faithful, or bold, or strong,
Unto each one shall a month belong.

But beside the thought that under it lurks,
Pray, do you think clocks are saved by their works?

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

To win such love as Arthur Hugh Clough won in life, to leave so dear a
memory as he has left, is a happiness that falls to few men. In America,
as in England, his death is mourned by friends whose affection is better
than fame, and who in losing him have met with an irreparable loss.
Outside the circle of his friends his reputation had no large extent;
but though his writings are but little known by the great public of
readers, they are prized by all those of thoughtful and poetic temper
to whose hands they have come, as among the most precious and original
productions of the time. To those who knew him personally his poems had
a special worth and charm, as the sincere expression of a character of
the purest stamp, of rare truthfulness and simplicity, not less tender
than strong, and of a genius thoroughly individual in its form, and full
of the promise of a large career. He was by Nature endowed with subtile
and profound powers of thought, with feeling at once delicate and
intense, with lively and generous sympathies, and with conscientiousness
so acute as to pervade and control his whole intellectual disposition.
Loving, seeking, and holding fast to the truth, he despised all
falseness and affectation. With his serious and earnest thinking was
joined the play of a genial humor and the brightness of poetic fancy.
Liberal in sentiment, absolutely free from dogmatism and pride of
intellect, of a questioning temper, but of reverent spirit, faithful in
the performance not only of the larger duties, but also of the lesser
charities and the familiar courtesies of life, he has left a memory of
singular consistency, purity, and dignity. He lived to conscience, not
for show, and few men carry through life so white a soul.

A notice of Mr. Clough understood to be written by one who knew him well
gives the outline of his life.

"Arthur Hugh Clough was educated at Rugby, to which school he went
very young, soon after Dr. Arnold had been elected head-master. He
distinguished himself at once by gaining the only scholarship which
existed at that time, and which was open to the whole school under the
age of fourteen. Before he was sixteen he was at the head of the fifth
form, and, as that was the earliest age at which boys were then admitted
into the sixth, had to wait for a year before coming under the personal
tuition of the headmaster. He came in the next (school) generation to
Stanley and Vaughan, and gained a reputation, if possible, even greater
than theirs. At the yearly speeches, in the last year of his residence,
when the prizes are given away in the presence of the school and the
friends who gather on such occasions, Arnold took the almost unexampled
course of addressing him, (when he and two fags went up to carry off his
load of splendidly bound books,) and congratulating him on having
gained every honor which Rugby could bestow, and having also already
distinguished himself and done the highest credit to his school at the
University. He had just gained a scholarship at Balliol, then, as now,
the blue ribbon of undergraduates.

"At school, although before all things a student, he had thoroughly
entered into the life of the place, and before he left had gained
supreme influence with the boys. He was the leading contributor to the
'Rugby Magazine'; and though a weakness in his ankles prevented him from
taking a prominent part in the games of the place, was known as the
best goal-keeper on record, a reputation which no boy could have gained
without promptness and courage. He was also one of the best swimmers in
the school, his weakness of ankle being no drawback here, and in his
last half passed the crucial test of that day, by swimming from Swift's
(the bathing-place of the sixth) to the mill on the Leicester road, and
back again, between callings over.

"He went to reside at Oxford when the whole University was in a ferment.
The struggle of Alma Mater to humble or cast out the most remarkable
of her sons was at its height. Ward had not yet been arraigned for his
opinions, and was a fellow and tutor of Balliol, and Newman was in
residence at Oriel, and incumbent of St. Mary's.

"Clough's was a mind which, under any circumstances, would have thrown
itself into the deepest speculative thought of its time. He seems soon
to have passed through the mere ecclesiastical debatings to the deep
questions which lay below them. There was one lesson--probably one
only--which he had never been able to learn from his great master,
namely, to acknowledge that there are problems which intellectually are
not to be solved by man, and before these to sit down quietly. Whether
it were from the harass of thought on such matters which interfered with
his regular work, or from one of those strange miscarriages in the most
perfect of examining machines, which every now and then deprive the best
men of the highest honors, to the surprise of every one Clough missed
his first class. But he completely retrieved this academical mishap
shortly afterwards by gaining an Oriel fellowship. In his new college,
the college of Pusey, Newman, Keble, Marriott, Wilberforce, presided
over by Dr. Hawkins, and in which the influence of Whately, Davidson,
and Arnold had scarcely yet died out, he found himself in the very
centre and eye of the battle. His own convictions were by this time
leading him far away from both sides in the Oxford contest; he, however,
accepted a tutorship at the college, and all who had the privilege of
attending them will long remember his lectures on logic and ethics.
His fault (besides a shy and reserved manner) was that he was much too
long-suffering to youthful philosophic coxcombry, and would rather
encourage it by his gentle 'Ah! you think so?' or, 'Yes, but might not
such and such be the case?'"

Clough was at Oxford in 1847,--the year of the terrible Irish famine,
and with others of the most earnest men at the University he took part
in an association which had for its object "Retrenchment for the sake
of the Irish." Such a society was little likely to be popular with the
comfortable dignitaries or the luxurious youth of the University. Many
objections, frivolous or serious as the case might be, were raised
against so subversive a notion as that of the self-sacrifice of the rich
for the sake of the poor. Disregarding all personal considerations,
Clough printed a pamphlet entitled, "A Consideration of Objections
against the Retrenchment Association," in which he met the careless or
selfish arguments of those who set themselves against the efforts of
the society. It was a characteristic performance. His heart was deeply
stirred by the harsh contrast between the miseries of the Irish poor and
the wasteful extravagance of living prevalent at Oxford. He wrote with
vehement indignation against the selfish pleas of the indifferent and
the thoughtless possessors of wealth, wasters of the goods given them as
a trust for others. His words were chiefly addressed to the young men
at the University,--and they were not without effect. Such views of the
rights and duties of property as he put forward, of the claims of labor,
and of the responsibilities of the aristocracy, had not been often heard
at Oxford. He was called a Socialist and a Radical, but it mattered
little to him by what name he was known to those whose consciences were
not touched by his appeal. "Will you say," he writes toward the end of
this pamphlet, "this is all rhetoric and declamation? There is, I dare
say, something too much in that kind. What with criticizing style and
correcting exercises, we college tutors perhaps may be likely, in the
heat of composition, to lose sight of realities, and pass into the limbo
of the factitious,--especially when the thing must be done at odd times,
in any case, and, if at all, quickly. But if I have been obliged to
write hurriedly, believe me, I have obliged myself to think not hastily.
And believe me, too, though I have desired to succeed in putting vividly
and forcibly that which vividly and forcibly I felt and saw, still the
graces and splendors of composition were thoughts far less present to my
mind than Irish poor men's miseries, English poor men's hardships, and
your unthinking indifference. Shocking enough the first and the second,
almost more shocking the third."

It was about this time that the most widely known of his works, "The
Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich, a Long-Vacation Pastoral," was written. It
was published in 1848, and though it at once secured a circle of warm
admirers, and the edition was very soon exhausted, it "is assuredly
deserving of a far higher popularity than it has ever attained." The
poem was reprinted in America, at Cambridge, in 1849, and it may be
safely asserted that its merit was more deeply felt and more generously
acknowledged by American than by English readers. The fact that its
essential form and local coloring were purely and genuinely English, and
thus gratified the curiosity felt in this country concerning the social
habits and ways of life in the mother-land, while on the other hand its
spirit was in sympathy with the most liberal and progressive thought
of the age, may sufficiently account for its popularity here. But
the lovers of poetry found delight in it, apart from these
characteristics,--in its fresh descriptions of Nature, its healthy
manliness of tone, its scholarly construction, its lively humor, its
large thought quickened and deepened by the penetrating imagination of
the poet.

"Any one who has read it will acknowledge that a tutorship at Oriel was
not the place for the author. The intense love of freedom, the deep and
hearty sympathy with the foremost thought of the time, the humorous
dealing with old formulas and conventionalisms grown meaningless, which
breathe in every line of the 'Bothie,' show this clearly enough. He
would tell in after-life, with much enjoyment, how the dons of the
University, who, hearing that he had something in the press, and knowing
that his theological views were not wholly sound, were looking for a
publication on the Articles, were astounded by the appearance of that
fresh and frolicsome poem. Oxford (at least the Oriel common room)
and he were becoming more estranged daily. How keenly he felt the
estrangement, not from Oxford, but from old friends, about this time,
can be read only in his own words." It is in such poems as the "Qua
Cursum Ventus," or the sonnet beginning, "Well, well,--Heaven bless you
all from day to day!" that it is to be read. These, with a few other
fugitive pieces, were printed, in company with verses by a friend, as
one part of a small volume entitled, "Ambarvalia," which never attained
any general circulation, although containing some poems which will take
their place among the best of English poetry of this generation.

"_Qua Cursum Ventus_.

"As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day,
Are scarce long leagues apart descried:

"When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied,
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas
By each was cleaving side by side:

"E'en so----But why the tale reveal
Of those whom, year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel,
Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

"At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered:
Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,
Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!

"To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through winds and tides one compass guides:
To that, and your own selves, be true!

"But, O blithe breeze! and O great seas!
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last!

"One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where'er they fare:
O bounding breeze! O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there!"

"In 1848-49 the revolutionary crisis came on Europe, and Clough's
sympathies drew him with great earnestness into the struggles which were
going on. He was in Paris directly after the barricades, and in Rome
during the siege, where he gained the friendship of Saffi and other
leading Italian patriots." A part of his experiences and his thoughts
while at Rome are interwoven with the story in his "Amours de Voyage," a
poem which exhibits in extraordinary measure the subtilty and delicacy
of his powers, and the fulness of his sympathy with the intellectual
conditions of the time. It was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly"
for 1858, and was at once established in the admiration of readers
capable of appreciating its rare and refined excellence. The spirit
of the poem is thoroughly characteristic of its author, and the
speculative, analytic turn of his mind is represented in many passages
of the letters of the imaginary hero. Had he been writing in his own
name, he could not have uttered his inmost conviction more distinctly,
or have given the clue to his intellectual life more openly than in the
following verses:--

"I will look straight out, see things, not try to
evade them:
Fact shall be Fact for me; and the Truth the
Truth as ever,
Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform
and doubtful."

Or, again,--

"Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards,
opens all locks,
Is not _I will_, but _I must_. I must,--I must,
--and I do it."

And still again,--

"But for the steady fore-sense of a freer and
larger existence,
Think you that man could consent to be
circumscribed here into action?
But for assurance within of a limitless ocean
divine, o'er
Whose great tranquil depths unconscious
the wind-tost surface
Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and
change and endure not,--
But that in this, of a truth, we have our
being, and know it,
Think you we men could submit to live and
move as we do here?"

"To keep on doing right,--not to speculate only, but to act, not to
think only, but to live,"--was, it has been said, characteristic of the
leading men at Oxford during this period. "It was not so much a part of
their teaching as a doctrine woven into their being." And while they
thus exercised a moral not less than an intellectual influence over
their contemporaries and their pupils, they themselves, according to
their various tempers and circumstances, were led on into new paths of
inquiry or of life. Some of them fell into the common temptations of
an English University career, and lost the freshness of energy and the
honesty of conviction which first inspired them; others, holding their
places in the established order of things, were able by happy faculties
of character to retain also the vigor and simplicity of their early
purposes; while others again, among whom was Clough, finding the
restraints of the University incompatible with independence, gave up
their positions at Oxford to seek other places in which they could more
freely search for the truth and express their own convictions.

It was not long after his return from Italy that he became Professor of
English Language and Literature at University College, London. He filled
this place, which was not in all respects suited to him, until 1852.
After resigning it, he took various projects into consideration, and
at length determined to come to America with the intention of settling
here, if circumstances should prove favorable. In November, 1852,
he arrived in Boston. He at once established himself at Cambridge,
proposing to give instruction to young men preparing for college, or to
take on in more advanced studies those who had completed the collegiate
course. He speedily won the friendship of those whose friendship
was best worth having in Boston and its neighborhood. His thorough
scholarship, the result of the best English training, and his intrinsic
qualities caused his society to be sought and prized by the most
cultivated and thoughtful men. He had nothing of insular narrowness, and
none of the hereditary prejudices which too often interfere with the
capacity of English travellers or residents among us to sympathize with
and justly understand habits of life and of thought so different from
those to which they have been accustomed. His liberal sentiments and his
independence of thought harmonized with the new social conditions in
which he found himself, and with the essential spirit of American life.
The intellectual freedom and animation of this country were congenial
to his disposition. From the beginning he took a large share in the
interests of his new friends. He contributed several remarkable articles
to the pages of the "North American Review" and of "Putnam's Magazine,"
and he undertook a work which was to occupy his scanty leisure for
several years, the revision of the so-called Dryden's Translation of
Plutarch's Lives. Although the work was undertaken simply as a revision,
it turned out to involve little less labor than a complete new
translation, and it was so accomplished that henceforth it must remain
the standard version of this most popular of the ancient authors.

But all that made the presence of such a man a great gain to his new
friends made his absence felt by his old ones as a great loss. In July,
1853, he received the announcement that a place had been obtained for
him by their efforts in the Education Department of the Privy Council,
and he was so strenuously urged to return to England, that, although
unwilling to give up the prospect of a final settlement in America,
he felt that it was best to go home for a time. Some months after his
return he was married to the granddaughter of the late Mr. William
Smith, M.P. for Norwich. He established himself in a house in London,
and settled down to the hard routine-work of his office. In a private
letter written not long after his return, he said,--"As for myself, whom
you ask about, there is nothing to tell about me. I live on contentedly
enough, but feel rather unwilling to be re-Englished, after once
attaining that higher transatlantic development. However, _il faut s'y
soumettre_, I presume,--though I fear I am embarked in the foundering
ship. I hope to Heaven you'll get rid of slavery, and then I shouldn't
fear but you would really 'go ahead' in the long run. As for us and our
inveterate feudalism, it is not hopeful."

In another letter about this time, he wrote,--"I like America all the
better for the comparison with England on my return. Certainly I think
you are more right than I was willing to admit, about the position of
the poorer classes here. Such is my first reimpression. However, it
will wear off soon enough, I dare say; so you must make the most of my
admissions."

Again, a little later, he wrote,--"I do truly hope that you will get the
North erelong thoroughly united against any further encroachments. I
don't by any means feel that the slave-system is an intolerable crime,
nor do I think that our system here is so much better; but it is clear
to me that the only safe ground to go upon is that of your Northern
States. I suppose the rich-and-poor difficulties must be creeping in at
New York, but one would fain hope that European analogies will not be
quite accepted even there."

His letters were reflections of himself,--full of thought, fancy, and
pleasant humor, as well as of affectionateness and true feeling. Their
character is hardly to be given in extracts, but a few passages may
serve to illustrate some of these qualities.

"Ambrose Philips, the Roman Catholic, who set up the new St. Bernard
Monastery at Charnwood Forest, has taken to spirit-rappings. He avers,
_inter alia_, that a Buddhist spirit in misery held communication with
him through the table, and entreated his confessor, Father Lorraine, to
say three masses for him. Pray, convey this to T---- for his warning.
For, moreover, it remains uncertain whether Father Lorraine did say the
masses; so that perhaps T----'s deceased co-religionist is still in the
wrong place."

Some time after his return, he wrote,--"Really, I may say I am only
just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young and
hopeful and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old
monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience
about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into
space; but I think you have, beyond all question, the happiest country
going. Still, the political talk of America, as one hears it here, is
not always true to the best intentions of the country, is it?"

Writing on a July day from his office in Whitehall, he says, after
speaking of the heat of the weather,--"Time has often been compared to
a river: if the Thames at London represent the stream of traditional
wisdom, the comparison will indeed be of an ill odor; the accumulated
wisdom of the past will be proved upon analogy to be as it were the
collected sewage of the centuries; and the great problem, how to get rid
of it."

In March, 1854, he wrote,--"People talk a good deal about that book of
Whewell's on the Plurality of Worlds. I recommend Fields to pirate it.
Have you seen it? It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, etc., are
all pretty certainly uninhabitable,--being (Jupiter, Saturn, etc., to
wit) strange washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks
(or, in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude
we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and,
what is more, quite Scriptural. Owen, on the other hand, I believe,
and other scientific people, declare it a most presumptuous essay,--
conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are
allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the inductive philosophy,
incline to concur."

Of his work he wrote,--"Well, I go on in the office, _operose nihil
agenda_, very _operose_, and very _nihil_ too. For lack of news, I send
you a specimen of my labors."--"We are here going on much as usual,
--occupied with nothing else but commerce and the money-market. I do not
think any one is thinking audibly of anything else."--"I have read with
more pleasure than anything else that I have read lately Kane's Arctic
Explorations, i.e., his second voyage, which is certainly a wonderful
story. The whole narrative is, I think, very characteristic of the
differences between the English and the American-English habits of
command and obedience."

In the autumn of 1857, after speaking of some of the features of the
Sepoy revolt, he said,--"I don't believe Christianity can spread far in
Asia, unless it will allow men more than one wife,--which isn't likely
yet out of Utah. But I believe the old Brahmin 'Touch not and taste not,
and I am holier than thou, because I don't touch and taste,' may be got
rid of. As for Mahometanism, it is a crystallized monotheism, out of
which no vegetation can come. I doubt its being good even for the
Central negro."

March, 1859. "Excuse this letter all about my own concerns. I am pretty
busy, and have time for little else: such is our fate after forty. My
figure 40 stands nearly three months behind me on the roadway, unwept,
unhonored, and unsung, an _octavum lustrum_ bound up and laid on the
shelf. 'So-and-so is dead,' said a friend to Lord Melbourne of some
author. 'Dear me, how glad I am! Now I can bind him up.'"

It was not until 1859 that the translation of Plutarch, begun six years
before, was completed and published. It had involved much wearisome
study, and gave proof of patient, exact, and elegant scholarship.
Clough's life in the Council-Office was exceedingly laborious, and
for several years his work was increased by services rendered to Miss
Nightingale, a near relative of his wife. He employed "many hours, both
before and after his professional duties were over, to aid her in those
reforms of the military administration to which she has devoted the
remaining energies of her overtasked life." For this work he was the
better fitted from having acted, during a period of relief from his
regular employment, as Secretary to a Military Commission appointed by
Government shortly after the Crimean War to examine and report upon the
military systems of some of the chief Continental nations. But at length
his health gave way under the strain of continuous overwork. He had for
a long time been delicate, and early in 1861 he was obliged to give
up work, and was ordered to travel abroad. He went to Greece and
Constantinople, and enjoyed greatly the charms of scenery and of
association which he was so well fitted to appreciate. But the release
from work had come too late. He returned to England in July, his health
but little improved. In a letter written at that time he spoke of Lord
Campbell's death, which had just occurred. "Lord Campbell's death is
rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the
Cabinet, on the Bench, and at a dinner-party, busy, animated, and full
of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a
wonder they last so long." But of himself he says, in words of striking
contrast,--"My nervous energy is pretty nearly spent for to-day, so I
must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope
I shall be strong again for another good spell of work." After a happy
three weeks in England, he went abroad again, and spent some time
with his friends the Tennysons in Auvergne and among the Pyrenees. In
September he was joined by his wife in Paris, and thence went with her
through Switzerland to Italy. He had scarcely reached Florence before
he became alarmingly ill with symptoms of a low malaria fever. His
exhausted constitution never rallied against its attack. He sank
gradually away, and died on the 13th of November. "I have leave till
November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another
good spell of work." That hope is accomplished;--

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19