158 The Future Poetry
a certain kind of skill. If not an artist in verse, Browning is a
consummate technician, one might almost say a mechanician in
verse; his very roughnesses and crudities and contortions have
the appearance of device and calculation. He had an immense
command of language and was never at a lack for forcible and
efficient expression, but in its base though not in all its turns it
was the language of a vigorous and vivid and colourful prosaist
rather than of a poet, of the intellect and not the imagination.
He could throw into it strong hues of the imagination, has some-
times though too seldom a vigorous richness and strong grace,
achieves often a lyric elevation, but they supervene upon this
base and do not ordinarily suffuse and change it or elevate it to
a high customary level. Much strong and forceful work he did
of a great and robust substance, won many victories, but the
supreme greatness cannot come in poetry without the supreme
beauty.
Arnold is a third considerable Victorian poet of the epoch,
though he bulks less than the two more abundant writers who
have till now held the first place. But as time goes on his figure
emerges and assumes in quality though not in mass of work
a first importance. His poetic work and quality may even be
regarded as finer in its essence of poetic value if more tenuous
in show of power than that of his two contemporaries. There is
a return to the true classic style of poetry in the simplicity and
straightforward directness of his diction and turn of thought
that brings us back to the way of the earlier poets and gives
a certain seriousness and power which we do not find in the
over-consciousness and the too studied simplicity or elaborate
carefulness and purposeful artistry of the other poets of the
time. This imparts a note of depth and sincerity to his passion
and his pathos, a character of high seriousness to his reflection
and meditative thought, a greatness and strength to his moments
of height and elevated force which raise him above the ordinary
levels around him and create an impression of the truest poetry,
the most genuine in poetic value, if not in effect the greatest of
this Victorian age. His simplicity is a true thing and not the over-
studied false simplicity of Tennyson; his thought is free from