< Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

MATTHEW ARNOLD'S NEW POEMS.

147

for our behoof the part of Agonistes or protagonist in the new Gaza where we live. From the son of his father and the pupil of his teacher none would have looked for such efficient assault and battery of the Philistine outworks; none but those who can appreciate the certain and natural force, in a strong and well-tempered spirit, of loyal and unconscious reaction. I say reaction, and not revolt; he has assuredly nothing of the bad, perhaps not enough of the good stuff, which goes to make a rebel. He is loyal, not to a fault, but to the full; yet no man's habit of mind or work can be less like that which men trained in other schools expect from a scholar of Rydal or of Rugby. A profane alien in my hearing once defined him as "David the son of Goliath;" and when rebuked for the flat irreverence, avowed himself unable to understand how such a graft could have ever been set by the head gardener of the main hotbed of Philistine saplings now flourishing in England. It is certain that the opinion put forth with such flippant folly of phrase is common to many of the profane, and not explicable by mere puerile prejudice or sentiment; and that students of Rugby or of Rydal, vocal and inarticulate, poetic and prosaic, are not seldom recognisable through certain qualities which, if any be, are undeniably Philistine, Whatever these schools have of good, their tendency is to cultivate all the merits recognised and suppress all the merits unrecognised in Ascalon or in Gath. I will not call up witnesses past or present from the realms of prose or verse, of practice or theory: it would be a task rather invidious than difficult,

Son of Goliath or son of Jesse, this David or Samson

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.