e patience, endurance, suffering, not in the Christian types,
but as they now seem to a post-Christian imagination, looking back to
the past." Even when his poems treat of modern or romantic subjects,
one is impressed with the feeling that he presents them with the same
quality of imagination as would the Greek masters themselves: and in
the same form.

=Arnold's Attitude toward Nature=.--In his attitude toward Nature
Arnold is often compared to Wordsworth. A close study, however,
reveals a wide difference, both in the way Nature appealed to them
and in their mood in her presence. To Arnold she offered a temporary
refuge from the doubts and distractions of our modern life,--a
soothing, consoling, uplifting power; to Wordsworth she was an
inspiration,--a presence that disturbed him "with the joy of elevated
thoughts." Conscious of the help he found in her association, Arnold
urged all men to follow Nature's example; to possess their souls in
quietude, despite the storm and turmoil without. Pancoast says: "He
delights in leading us to contemplate the infinite calm of Nature,
beside which man's transitory woes are reduced to a mere fretful
insignificance. All the beautiful poem of _Tristram and Iseult_ is
built upon the skilful alternation of two themes. We pass from the
feverish, wasting, and ephemeral struggle of human passions and
desire, into an atmosphere that shames its heat and fume by an
immemorial coolness and repose;" and the same comparison constitutes
the theme for a considerable portion of his poetical work. In his
method of approaching Nature, Arnold also differed widely from
Wordsworth, in that he saw with the outward eye, that is objectively;
while Wordsworth saw rather with the inward eye, or subjectively.
In this Arnold is essentially Greek and more Tennysonian than
Wordsworthian. Many of his poems, in full or in part, are mere nature
pictures, and are artistic in the extreme. The pictures of the Oxus
stream at the close of _Sohrab and Rustum_; the English garden in
_Thyrsis_; and the hunter on the arras, in _Tristram and Iseult_, are
all notable examples. This pictorial method Wordsworth seldom used.
In spirit, too, the poets differed widely. To Wordsworth, Nature was,
first of all, the abiding place of God; but Arnold "finds in the
wood and field no streaming forth of beauty and wisdom from the
fountainhead of beauty," no habitancy of Nature's God.

=Arnold's Attitude toward Life=.--Arnold's attitude