ABSTRACT
In a recent review of Mr. John Mackinnon Robertson's volume, New Essays towards a Critical Method, an allusion was made to the somewhat curious appreciation of Arthur Hugh Clough's verse which it contains. Clough's reputation might be thought to have so waned and dwindled during the last twenty years among all classes of readers that it might seem by this time to have well-nigh reached its vanishing point. As a member of a famous group of Rugby men, he is held by many to have been thrust into a position of eminence which his work never really merited, and the charm of his personality seems, during his life, and even after his death, to have enlisted for him the rather undiscriminating admiration of a powerful circle, especially among Oxford men, who exerted themselves to thrust him down the throats of an undiscerning public. But the cult of Clough has died entirely in the Oxford of to-day, and if it lingers at all among men of letters, it seldom makes itself heard. By most of us Clough, particularly Clough the poet, has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. One or two of his lyrics in the Arnold manner are occasionally quoted, and one may admire the dexterity and adroitness of The Latest Decalogue. But The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich (which we cannot pronounce) and the Amours de Voyage (which we cannot read) are dead past recall.
