life do not consist in passionate effort such as that which Browning counsels :- 'Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!'i Nor are they to be experienced, as with Tennyson, in the contemplation of a blessed far-off consummation towards which the whole creation moves. Arnold felt that these con solations and remedies were breathed from the dispassionate calm, the orderly perfection and loveliness of Nature, that they entered and for a little time gave ease to the heart from the contemplation of the highest reaches of human art, and tha: they were abundantly present in the deliverance of his owl soul in his poetry. And the subjects of his own poetry are thus determined. They are such as in poetic treatment vill best relieve his own overstrained feelings, such as willase his wound's imperious anguish.' Thus it comes that, ake what form they may, his poems are translations into vese of his own emotional moods. Throughout his poetry-torecall his own fine phrase spoken of Byron-he bears 'the pageant of his bleeding heart.' Empedocles on Etna, The Sic King at Bokhara, and Obermann are poems in which the desired relief is obtained in the delineation of mental statessimilar to his own. To escape from this enfeebling mood, he turns to Nature. Of the class of poems in which he turns to Nature forconsolation, Thyrsis may serve as an example. Here the elegiac strain softly dies away into the tender sweetness of he soothing music that consoles for the departure of My by the promise of the coming fulness of Midsummer. 'So, some tempestuous morn in early Jun 1 R. Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra. Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Sweet William with his homely cottage smell, Roses that down the valleys shine afar, And groups under the dreaming garden trees, And the full moon, and the white evening star.' Arnold's gospel according to Nature is not Wordsworth's. While both poets are lovers of Nature, and join in her matins and vespers, her litanies, her festivals of spring and summer, they worship her each in a different spirit. In no poem of Arnold's is to be heard the pure note of joy; he is the poet of a nation's elegiac mood. The consolations of Nature that are to him so soothing, so indispensable, are the whispers of her peace, the hushing effluence of her calm; while to Wordsworth Nature is the source of rapture, of passionate delight, of inexpressible thrills of joyous ecstasy. To Arnold she is the consoling mother whose gracious countenance and winning sympathy soothes, steals away the sharpness of his pain. To Wordsworth she is much more than this: his teacher, his constant companion, sharer and source of joy as well as friend. In the one case we have palliative remedies for the fever of the mind; in the other a power of renovation and a stimulus, assistance in health as well as in disease. Wordsworth's healing power arises from this, that, like Shakespeare, he discovers a joy in widest commonalty spread,' and (what is still harder to find) 'joys that spring out of human suffering.' To become a Wordsworthian, one must be born again; to read the poetry of Arnold with pleasure, we need not again become children. It will soothe us in unrest for a time; but only for a time-while if we learn the secret of the elder poet, we shall enter into possession of a peace that cannot be disturbed. Of Arnold himself what shall we say as last word? How better or more truly than he has himself taught us to think of the high-hearted Roman Emperor with whose inner life he had so much in common? 'We see him just, wise, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless, yet with all this agitated, stretching out his hands to something beyond 'Tendentemque manus ripa ulterioris amore.' 1 M. Arnold, Thyrsis, p. 283. ART. VII.-BRIGHT'S 'WAYMARKS IN CHURCH HISTORY.' Waymarks in Church History. By WILLIAM BRIGHT, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History. (London, 1894.) THE gifts and opportunities required in our day for the composition of history, or of disquisitions on history, are large and manifold. The author is expected, in the first place, to derive the main bulk of the information which he gives us from the original sources; but it is at the same time thought desirable that he should exhibit some acquaintance with the works of other writers who have studied these authorities from a different point of view. We also hope to find occasional displays of considerable independence of thought. He must not follow blindly the lead of any one single guide, but must show himself, in the hackneyed lines of Horace, 'Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri, Virtutis veræ custos rigidusque satelles :' He must, therefore, be a man of research; he must be a judge of the value of evidence; he must be able to read between the lines of defunct authors, and to detect truths which they did not necessarily intend to convey. All of these requisites will, we think, be generally allowed to exist in the honoured Divine who at present occupies the chair of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford. There is a further condition which Dr. Arnold and others have justly, as it seems to us, considered, if not absolutely indispensable, yet at least highly effective, as a qualification for success in historic studies: namely, a practical acquaintance with some outward form of national life sufficient to remove the inquirer from the position of a pure theorist. He may thus obtain that interest in his own times which intensifies interest in the events of the past, and which distinguishes the historian from the mere antiquary. Dr. Bright has, especially of late years, been a prominent member of the Convocation of Canterbury. Not many months have passed since another member of that body paid him the high and deserved compliment of saying that his speeches, whether one agreed with him or not, invariably raised the tone of the debate to a higher level than that on which it rested before he had spoken. We cannot doubt but that the experiences of such debates must have increased the powers of Dr. Bright as an investigator of the past. One more general topic must be touched upon before we can descend to particulars. Is it or is it not to be wished that an historian should be a decided partisan? It may to many seem strange that this should be a subject of controversy. The natural and obvious decision would be that rigid impartiality was a primary condition of successful historic composition. Nevertheless, Byron had something to say for himself when he spoke of partiality as one of the merits of Mitford, adding the remark: 'I call this a merit, because it makes a man write in earnest.' It is undeniable that there is a long list of historians whose partisanship has been to a large portion of their readers one of the grounds of their attractiveness. Let it suffice to mention, by way of illustration, not merely the name of Mitford (wherein Dr. Arnold agrees with Byron), but those of Raleigh, Clarendon, Thiers, Grote, Macaulay, Motley, and Professor Froude. Now, both in courts of justice and in the fields of literature the judge is at some disadvantage as compared with the advocate. Counsel for plaintiff or defendant may make sweeping and even impassioned addresses on behalf of their clients, but from the judge we usually look for a calm investigation of the amount of truth on either side. His performance of this task may be masterly, and may win deserved admiration; but its critical temper, its cautions and hesitations, must almost inevitably detract, at any rate for a time, from the charm and élan of a more one-sided composition. Now and then it may, indeed, happen that a character is so beautiful, or a cause so noble, that almost unbroken eulogy becomes justifiable. But this is a rare event; and he who endeavours to treat history judicially must be content to forego something of the interest and applause which decided partisanship would in many quarters have evoked. He must try to console himself with the hope, that Coleridge may have been right when he expressed a belief in the maxim, that in the long run there will be most power of persuasion wherever there is most pure truth. The volume now before us, perhaps, labours in some degree under the disadvantage to which we have just referred. Its author, indeed, seems to be sensible of this difficulty. A fellow-professor, the late Dr. Mozley, was-at any rate in his historical sketches-less judicial than Dr. Bright. The result is that, exempli gratia, his picture of Laud1 seems freer 1 Essays Historical and Theological. By J. B. Mozley, D.D., late and bolder in its outlines than that given by our author in the Waymarks in Church History. It is not without regret that what is, we trust, a love of truth compels us to regard the portraiture of Laud supplied by Dr. Bright as being probably the more correct. It will be impossible for us within due limits to furnish an analysis or epitome of the twelve essays of this volume with their twelve appendices. Indeed, three of the essays, with two of the appendices, have in substance already appeared in the pages of the Church Quarterly Review; and this circumstance would necessarily render a criticism of them a somewhat delicate and difficult task. We may be prejudiced, but these papers-Cyril of Alexandria,' 'Papalism and Antiquity,' and 'The Clergy and Secular Employments'—seem to us among the most valuable and weighty of the articles in the book before us. The last-named, we think, may be briefly dismissed. We have not seen any reply to Dr. Bright's statement of the case against Dr. Arnold's theory of a diaconate which should be almost entirely immersed during the week in secular occupations as their main duty, but on Sundays and Church Festivals take an active, though subordinate, part in the ministry of the Word and Sacraments. The precedents adduced on the other side are in reality instances, not of laymen taking up religious duties as a by-work (in Aristotelian language a Táρɛрyov), but of clerics driven by need to increase their scanty stipends through occasional secular work. Dr. Bright justly eulogizes the terse language of Archdeacon Bathurst: In every precedent he had found that the trade was supplementary to the orders, and not the orders supplementary to the trade.' On this subject our author is able to appeal to the emphatic language of the present Primate: The case set up entirely breaks down so far as the early Church is concerned' (p. 278). The essay on Cyril of Alexandria introduces us to a particular case of a large and general question: namely, how far the honoured prefix of Saint leaves us at liberty to judge with freedom, and even severity, particular episodes in the career of one so entitled. In claiming this right, Dr. Bright is obliged in some measure to express dissent from the judgment upon Cyril pronounced by a great and holy man, the late Dr. Pusey. We have not room for detailed inquiry. The deplorable case of Hypatia is confessed by the historian Socrates (vii. 15) Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford (i. 107-228), ed. 1878. London, Rivingtons. |