Touchstone Method

In the study of poetry, Arnold delineates his idea of excellent poetry and formulates a practical method for identifying the true poetry -this method is named by him the Touchstone method. According to this method the specimens of the very highest quality of poetry are compared to the specimens of the work of poetry under study and conclusions are drawn in favour or against the work. This method requires to keep in ones mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and apply them as a touchstone to other poetical works.

In order to find the truly excellent poetry, we should form a real estimate of poetryl as opposed to "historical estimate "and personal estimate “. Both historical and personal estimates go in vein. He argues us not to be misled by the historic and personal estimates while judging poetry. Arnold says than the personal estimate should be eschewed because it will lead to wrong judgments. The historic estimate or judging a poet from the point of view of his importance in the course of literary history is also not a true judgment of a poet. Its historical importance may make us rate the work as higher than it really deserves. "the course of development of a nation's language, thought, and, poetry is profoundly interesting, and by regarding a poet’s work as a stage in this course of development, we may easily bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is." Arnold gives a concrete example of the fallacies of the historical approach. Caedmon's position is important in the historical sense but it would be wrong to hold him in the same level as Milton poetically because of this historical position.

Arnold offers his theory of touchstone method to form a real estimate of poetry in distinguishing a real classic from a dubious classic and form a real estimate of poetry; one should have the ability to distinguish a real classic. He says "a dubious classic, let us shift him; if he is a false classic, let us explode him . But he is a real classic, if his works belong to the class of the very best, then the great thing for us to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can." A best classic is recognized by placing it beside the known classics of the world. Those known classics can serve as the touch stood by which the merits of contemporary poetic work can be tested. This is the central idea of Arnold's touchstone method.

Arnold suggests that a reader should always have in his mind lines and expressions of the great masters of poetry and that these lines should be applied as touchstone to judge other poetry. The poetry need not resemble these lines and expressions, they may be very different applied with fact and care, can help us "detect the presence or absence of high poetic quality and also the degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside them ".

Arnold illustrates his point in giving short passages and even single lines from Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton as models for judging the order of excellence in a modern poet or a work. These are Arnold’s touchstones gathered from the work of the greatest classics of European literature in his time. He gives Shakespeare’s lines of Henry the fourth's expostulation with sleep

"Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge . . .”

Then Miltonic passage
"Darken'd so ,yet shone
Above them all the archangel; but his face
Deep sears of thunder had intrench’d, and care
Sat on his faded check . . ."

“And courage never to submit or yield
And what is else not to be overcome . . ."

Arnold believes that even a single line if it is good would do: “In la sua volun tade e nostra pace".

Arnold shows this how this method is to be made use of . He first quotes few lines from Chaucer and says Chaucer is found to be lacking of high seriousness. By using one line from Dante ,"In la sua volun tade e nostra pace" as a touchstone and by comparing Chaucer 's line with that he concludes that "the substance of Chaucer 's poetry ,his view of things and his criticism of life ,has largeness ,freedom shrewdness ,benignity, but it has not this high seriousness"

Arnold applies the touchstone method for determining the worth of the works of Dryden and Pope and comes to the conclusion that though they can be called the classics of poetry .And also taking lines from Chaucer

"My throat is cut Unto my nekke-bone
Saide this child, and as by way of kinde
I should have deyd,yea,longe time agone;” as a touchstone and by comparing with some lines of
Wordsworth:

“My throat unto the bone I trow ,
said this young child ,and by the law of kind
I should have died yea, many hours ago" he concludes that the charm of Chaucer’s lines are most attractive than Wordsworth.

Again Arnold has used touchstone method by comparing Dryden with Milton "When we find Milton writing :And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem,...it is obsolete....” But when Dryden tells us: "what Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to tramplkt in my declining years." Then we find Dryden is a true English prose writer.”

We see that Arnold had introduced a very novel and practical device to detect the order of excellence on a given poem. Explaining this method we can find that "there can be no mare useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lives and expressions of the great masters and to apply them as a touchtone to other poetry."

Arnold as the poet of Victorian unrest

Arnold belonged and hence he is referred to as the poet of Victorian unrest. Victorian age was the period of material prosperity, the expansion of democracy and the growth of science which had hardly any appeal to him. He is certainly more violent than anybody else to the spiritual distress of his age and this is why he is called a poet Victorian unrest and spiritual distress which is clearly shown in his poetry.

 

In his famous poem 'Doves beach', he reacted more violently to the spiritual distress and meaningless of his age. He says religion and traditional values are east dying out. Materialism, scepticism and agnosticism are the order of the day. Men do not find comfort and happiness in Arid world .he says,

"Hath really neither joy nor love nor light

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;"

 

To him, contemporary life had on meaning or direction .life to him appears to be full of darkness and gloom and he feels like a benighted traveler in a foreign land without any light of hope.

"And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies slash by night."

 

It is the world of Science and people are sceptical. Their minds are disturbed by the new scientific thoughts. It is now leaving the world barren and dry with the declining of faith, men are getting more and more materialistic. He, therefore, could not help being a poet of skeptical reaction. Once the sea of religion was full but now Arnold has complained about the religious belief of Victorian age-

"The Sea of faith

War once, too at the full and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd

But now I only hear

Its long, melancholy, withdrawing roar"

 

In the Victorian age, religious belief has disappeared; doubt and disbelief have combined to force back the wave of faith from the share of the world. And the world is now like a coast on which bole pebbles lie about in complete desolation.

 

In his another poem "The Scholar Gypsy" we also find the atmosphere of the Victorian unrest as well as spiritual distress. He says Victorian people only come and gone, and are completely lost in oblivion. They are materialistic and they have no fixed ideal to pursue.They are engaged in various experiments and have not the patience to stick to anything. They fail in their experiments and feel weak and miserable as a result of a series of shocks. They lose their vitality and elasticity of spirit

"'Tis that from change to change their beings roles;

'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,

Exhaust the energy of strongest souls

And numb the elastic powers"(141-144)

 

The Victorians suffered from all lines of distraction, despair and frustration, and that is why they were always feeling different about the success of their quest.

 

The acute spiritual distress is found among the Victorians. The religious faith of the Victorians is casual. They have never thought about religion. He says about them

"and we,

Light half believers of our casual Creeds.

Who never deeply felt, oms clearly will'd"

 

The Victorian people's spiritual loss is evident in these lines

"... this stange disease of modern life,

With its pick hurry, its divided aims."

 

Victorians have no singleness purpose. They run after many hares and catch none. They caunch an experiment today, and abandon it tomorrow and they therefore, suffer from a series of shocks of disappointment. They advance one step to day and go two steps backward tomorrow:

... Each year we see

Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;

Who hesitate and falter life away,

And kore to-morrow the ground won today.

 

Victorians do not know the meaning and purpose of life. They even can't face the baffling problems of life with stoical forbearance. They can never hope to attain the serenity and bliss.

The Victorian age suffered from a strange disease called modern life, which has brought in its wake sordid materialism and scepticism. They are madly pursuing wealth like the willo the wisp

...the strange disease of modern life,

With its pick hurry, its divided aims,

its heads overtax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife,

 

This disease of modern man is due to his preoccupation with his hectic world of business away from spiritual and moral pursuit, and so the poet advises the scholar Gipsy to keep away from such a restless and noisy world.

 

Like other poems, in "Thyrsis" he also weighs his age in the balance, and finds it wanting. Here Arnold laments for his friend who was the Victim of Victorian age. Under the bad effects of this age he was drawn into the vortex of a religious controversy. His simple faith was darkened by doubts and despair. He was sick of materialism and scepticism and left Oxford, and eventually left the world,

"Yet hadst thou always visions of our light,

And long with men of care thou couldst not stay,

And soon thy foot resumed 'tis wandering way

Left human haunt and on alone till night."

 

In this poem, the materialism of the Victorians is very well disparaged when the poet with subdued sarcasm says that materialism can never lead to truth and spiritualism.

"This doesn't come with houses or with gold,

With place, with honour. And a flattering crow;

'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold"

 

Arnold the poet, therefore, is a poet of "the hopeless tangle of the age." in his poetry as a whole, and sometimes in every line of his poems, Arnold proclaims himself a man who was dissatisfied with the Victorian age. R.H.Hutton, summing up Arnold's poetry says, "No one has expressed more powerfully and poetically its spiritual weakness, its craving for a passion that it can't feel, its admiration for a self mastery that it can't achieve, its desire for a creed that it fails to accept, its sympathy with a faith that it well not share, its aspiration for a peace it doesn't know."