The Strayed Reveller

Introduftion.
endeavoured to dramatize the story of Merope, the
unanimous voice of criticism informed him that although
the subject was undeniably fitting, and the poet adequately
penetrated by it, "everything else" had not
followed. But " Sohrab and Rustum " suited him to
perfection, for it is an heroic action whose greatness
consists not in its grandeur, but in its pathos. Pathos
is the note of all his best poems, there is hardly one of
them which is not more or less an appeal for compassion
on account of the character of the incident
described, or some human or spiritual sorrow, or some
real or imaginary distress of the age. No more
affecting incident than the involuntary death of a son
by his father's hand can be found in history or fiction,
and it especially impressed Arnold, from that strength
in him of the parental instinct revealed by his recently
published correspondence. What he received
intimately he reproduced vividly, and the conduct of
his story and the tissue of his diction are masterpieces
of judgment. Nothing, he rightly perceived, can be
more essential to the impressiveness of a story of
profound pathos than that it should be told in the
simplest language, yet unrelieved simplicity throughout
a long narrative must wear an aspect of poverty,
perhaps even of affectation. The general homeliness of
the exposition, therefore, is occasionally interrupted by
elaborate similes, little poems in themselves, and
involving close and accurate word-painting. These for
a moment suspend, but do not divert, the reader's
attention to the main action, whose pathos goes on
deepening with every line, until there is no modern
poem, with perhaps the exception of Tennyson's
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