Matthew Arnold and the Celts [pp. 884-890]

MA TTHE w ARNOLD AND THE CELTS.
... "in such a night
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage.'
"And those last lines of all are so drenched and intoxicated
with the fairy dew of that natural magic which is our theme
that I cannot do better than end with them.
"And now, with the pieces of evidence in our hand, let us
go to those who say it is vain to look for Celtic elements in
any Englishman, and let us ask them: first, if they seize what we
mean by the power of natural magic in Celtic poetry; secondly,
if English poetry does not eminently exhibit this power; and
thirdly, where they suppose English poetry got it from?"
Rhyme, Mr. Arnold tells us, we owe to the music-loving
Celts. Then a spirit that hovers over our poetry and makes it
wonderfully enchanting, where the sweep of its mystical wings
is heard, has flown down to us from the days of the Celtic
division. "Titanism" Mr. Arnold calls this power.
"Its chord of penetrating passion and melancholy again, its
'Titanism,' as we see it in Byron. What other European poetry possesses it like the English, and where do we get it from?
The Celts, with their vehement reaction against the despotism
of fact, with their sensuous nature, their manifold striving, their
adverse destiny, their immense calamities-the Celts are the
prime authors of this vein of piercing regret and passion-of
this Titanism in poetry. A famous book, McPherson's Ossian,
carried in the last century this vein, like a flood of lava, through
Europe. I am not going to criticise McPherson's Ossian here.
Make the part of what is forged, modern, tawdry, spurious in
the book as large as you please; strip Scotland, if you like, of
every feather of borrowed plumes which, on the strength of
McPherson's Ossian, she may have stolen from that vetus et major Scotia, the true home of the Ossianic poetry, Ireland; I
make no objection. But there will still be left in the book a
residue, with the very soul of the Celtic genius in it, and which
has the proud distinction of having brought this soul of the
Celtic genius into contact with the genius of the nations of
modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody
Morven and echoing Sora and Selma, with its silent halls!-we
all owe them a debt of gratitude, and when we are unjust
886
[Mar.,