painter ..John Ashbery

John Ashbery



painter ..John Ashbery
critically Notes



The best part about this poem is that it can be interpreted in any way you would like.

He repeats the word "canvas" 7 times, "portrait" 8 times, "buildings" 7 times, "brush" 7 times, "subject" 7 times, and "prayer" 7 times.

The artist is sitting out in front of the sea, imagining what he wants his protrait to look like. He expected ideas to come out so he could draw the sea, but he sat there in silence.
 He didn't end up painting anything until the people who lived in the buildings told him to select a new subject to write about, something that may fit his mood better.
He picked to draw his wife, but he never ended up drawing her because she is art already, like ruined buildings.
 Unsatisfied, he went back to the sea and wished for his ideas to come out from his soul already.
"Imagine the painter crusified by his subject!" means, imagine a man so powerful, who can draw anything he sees, be taken aback by the thing he is supposed to be drawing. Picture a man whose soul is so strong, yet he doesn't know how to put it on a canvas.
He looked back at the other artists, and said there is no way they can get the sea to sit still so they could paint it.
 "Others declared it a self portrait" means, whatever he drew came from his soul. What he put on the canvas, was what he was. He drew nothing.
 They threw away the portrait from the tallest building.

The "portrait" in this case can symbolize any type of worry, since the artist danced around his portrait for the longest time, ended up drawing nothing, getting annoyed, and just throwing it out. Nothing good can come from worrying, and you just have to let go. It can also stand for life.
 The sea, can be the bigger picture. The man was trying to draw the sea, but he could never get it to sit still because things keep changing. When he didn't draw the sea, and others declared it a self-portrait, it's saying that the man wasn't consumed by the bigger picture (other people).

Like I said, this poem is open for debate. You can interpret it any way you like. I think as long as you have a good analysis and reasoning, your teacher will accept it and even praise you for thinking on your own outside of the box. There's no right or wrong answer, and you can't find it on the internet. It's up to you what you want this poem to mean.


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Critically evaluate the poem, The Painter by John Ashbery. (P.U. 2006)


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In The Painter, Ashbery touches upon some of the basic concepts in imitative arts. He does not attempt a poetic reconciliation of the warring schools of criticism. Rather he presents a situation in which the artistic creativity may come in direct conflict with the demands of modern society. The poem presents the situation of an artist who wants to paint the sea. His ambition is to present the sea rather than paint it. He wants that “nature, not art, might usurp the canvas”. Ashbery concludes that such an ambition would result in a total denial of modern urban values and would be met with violent rejection.

Ashbery establishes a relation between the sea and the buildings in the very beginning of the poem. The artist sits between the symbols of nature and the urban jungle of cement and steel. He was enjoying his work and expected that his subject would easily yield to creative reproduction, but his expectations were thwarted. Reality refused to be captured so easily by art. Ashbery compares his ambition to children’s view of prayer showing the simplicity of his desire. Ashbery contrasts the artist’s expectation to realistic theory of art asserting that even the most naturalistic presentation of life is still not nature as it exists in a different medium which changes its attributes. The artist with this realization is unable to present reality and so “there was never any paint on the canvas”.

Ashbery contrasts the artist with the people in the buildings. He emphasizes the basic difference between their modes of thinking. They want to “put him to work” desiring him to paint something less “angry and large”, something “more subject to a painter’s mood”. It is obvious that they consider art to be an imitative skill in the service of urban, commercial interests. It is “more subject to…a prayer” or as one may say ‘an order’. The concept of presentation of reality in the sense that reality may actually “usurp” the canvas is alien to them.

The artist’s choosing his wife for a subject and making her “vast” is Ashbery’s way of defining bathos. Ashbery being a gay poet could hardly have expressed matrimonial love in any other way. However this time it was as if the portrait “Had expressed itself without a brush”. With this encouragement the artist now arises to paint with seawater, letting the medium of reality to be the medium of artistic expression. This was as if the artistic creation would “wreck the canvas”, putting an end to the illusion of presentation and letting the reality to be expressed without any alien medium of expression.

This new mode of creation in which the artist is overtaken by his subject is blasphemous to the people in the buildings who consider it to be the case of “a painter crucified by his subject”. Others declare it to be the egotistical expression of the artist’s self and not presentation of reality.

The work of the artist is such that “all indication of subject began to fade”. Immaculate reality untouched with art is the final expression and provokes a destructive violent response form the people of the buildings. The portrait is tossed into the sea where it becomes one with its subject and thus the expression of the subject remains a prayer.

The poem presents many contrasting views related to art and its relation to reality and society. Ashbery finds an appropriate locale for the presentation of ideological discord. The artist sits between the sea and the buildings, i.e., between nature and the urban civilization. The buildings are tall and overcrowded, apt representation of overpopulated urban scene. The tallness of the buildings also reflects the way the people look down upon the artist. But the artist has his back to the buildings. His independence of thought is met with advice from the buildings. People want to “put him to work”. Ashbery with his usual figurative way of presentation makes the artist paint his wife whom he makes “vast, like ruined buildings”. He very cleverly hides whether the portrait of the wife was made in paint on the canvas or if it was a real-life portrait.

The poem makes use of figurative language throughout thus making every simple detail stand for a more complex thought related with theory of art. Phrases like “sea’s portrait, plaster its own portrait on the canvas, the brush as means to an end, usurp the canvas. As if forgetting itself the portrait, had expressed itself without a brush, wrecks the canvas, crucified by his subject, all indications of a subject began to fade, to howl, that was also a prayer, the sea devoured the canvas and the brush”, all have figurative meanings expressing or reflecting significant artistic concepts. Ashbery uses the word prayer several times, in this poem every time meaning something different. The artist’s prayer and the people’s howl which was also a prayer have contrasted meanings and so Ashbery uses the same word to mean different things to show how reality can be seen from many different perspectives.

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source---englishliteraturelinks.blogspot.com

Critical Analysis of the “The Painter” by John Ashbery





Ashbery makes a genuine effort to portray the poetic vision of an artist’s mind by concentrating on the dictum "ut pictura poesis"--"as is painting, so is poetry". Through poetry he glorifies a mere painter’s struggle to find his true artistic form and inclination towards a specific way of being creative in The Painter.
“For some people the fear of inner torment is such that the desire to create has to be repressed: ‘He does not embark on any serious pursuits commensurate with his gifts lest he fails to be a brilliant success. He would like to write or paint but does not dare to start’ (Horney 107). Or if the desire to create is not repressed, the creative process will be wracked with anxiety or hampered by self torment.” This quote from the book Therapeutic dimensions of autobiography in creative writing by Celia Hunt aptly captures to some extent the condition the painter in the poem who seems confused on whether to draw sea or not and how to capture the sea just the way it was.
A similar theme is also tackled by the great American poet, Emily Dickinson. In her short poem she writes: “Artists wrestle here! /Lo, a tint Cashmere! /Lo, a Rose! /Student of the Year! /For the easel here/Say Repose!” This poem lays bare the face that the artist always juggles with his tools and crafts in order to create what he wants. For him to relax is unthinkable likewise the painter in the poem faces a lot of troubles in making this special piece of art (the sea). The painter seems to self actualize himself by materializing the urge to paint a portrait of the sea which will give the chaos of his creative world a poetic and appeasing feeling.
Ashbery is known for his surrealist poetry and in The Painter he uses his skill to masterfully create connections between varied images. Using the modified form of sestina (last words of the verses are mostly changed) he is able to make these images jump into a creative hotchpotch. But the irony of the poem is that the artist portrayed in the poem seems to go through a rough patch in his life yet the creativity by which the poet himself writes speaks volume of it; the poet is able to create with the painter in the poem a smooth imagery of an artist’s struggle towards his creative independence -- a mere human’s effort to fight for what he deems right. For his creative vision to evolve he goes against all the odds set by the society. Ashbery was himself a painter and his surrealist automatic writing in the poem seems to give power to the automatic drawing the painter is trying to achieve in the poem, as the artist wishes: “he expected his subject/ To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,/ Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
Interpretation of this poem is complicated. On the surface level one can judge what is happening but on a deeper level the reader may not be able to interpret the unfathomable depth. One reason quite evident is the surrealism employed. Just like the artist’s mind the poem is also free of conscious control. It takes on its own route and it paints with its own brush strokes with the artist’s creative vision.
Ashbery takes into account many aspects of syntax and rhyme in his poetry and one of it is the repetition of words. The reader may not notice immediately about it but after a careful examination it comes to light that, Ashbery repeats the word "canvas", "buildings", "brush", "subject", "prayer" seven times and "portrait" eight times in the poem. This repetition creates a surrealistic effect in the poem.
The painter in the poem is on the beach and contemplates his tempestuous subject. Sea here symbolizes the freedom, the chaos, the harmony of the waves and the creative space for the painter. The sea symbolizes freedom as it liberates the painter from the hustle bustle of the city life behind him (“the building”). The painter is like a child imagining a prayer. His innocent imagination muses over what to draw on his canvas. Though the painter loves to paint the sea but he is confused by the daunting question of how to draw and live in one’s own creative vision, how to capture the universe around us. Even though he has brush in his hand but his canvas seems empty, this paint-less canvas brings out the fact that the painter himself has lost his creative vision, or he is going through the phase of imagination blockage and he is unable to take a plunge into mind's eye where haphazard brushes could be waved like a magic wand and a beauty of its own kind would emerge into a classic piece of art. His lack of strength to take on a decision leads the people around him to take control of his mind. They ask him to make a portrait of “Something less angry and large”, that is to say; do not draw the sea due to its turbulent nature and gargantuan effect which is unfathomable by human mind to capture. The painter seemed unable to convey “his prayer” to the people that he wants “nature, not art, [to] usurp the canvas”.
The skillful painter then tries to paint his wife. He does that without really making a creative endeavour because she seemed a ruined building in the first place that is not something he would want to paint. He does make an attempt, though unwillingly. It is throttling to the painter as an artist is a free will creature and no matter what happens he has to go to his roots of desire that is he has to be a creative by not conforming to traditionalists. He has to fulfill his urge to create his own tradition. His desire to go back to the sea appears to be the only right thing to do.
"Imagine the painter crucified by his subject." signifies a powerful figure that could draw faultlessly the things he see, and be astonished and spiritualized by the creative vision he has with the drawing. The painter in the poem proves his creative vision and creative authority when “He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings”; suggesting their eagerness to stick to the roots; the traditional way of painting. The poet clearly implies that the traditional painters are bent towards following an authority by which they could judge the painter and his work.
The people, the critics and the painters of traditional sort did not appreciate the effort of the painter and thus life’s way of taking the unconventional approach irrationally by not getting accepted by his own people fell upon the painter as they threw the portrait of the sea from the tallest building. This "portrait" symbolizes something that the people, the critics and the painters of his age were not able to handle the pressure posit on them by the painter or his creative vision of the sea. Such non-conformist and cavalier attitude is also visible in Ashbery’s life, as he nonchalantly says that his goal is "to produce a poem that the critic cannot even talk about.”In the end of the poem “the sea devoured the canvas and the brush”. It signifies that the portrait drawn by a mere artist cannot be fathomed by man himself because chaos of the sea is unfathomable and it was as if “his subject had decided to remain a prayer”. Thus the freedom and turbulence the sea entails with it consumes man’s creation as well. The chaos of the world cannot be painted in a canvas, at least people around them would not let the painter do that, yet his creative drive would urge him to create what he instinctively desires. Neither the painter would stop nor the chaos around him would end. The cycle of life would go on like this.

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"Life is really beautiful when your family understands you as a friend
And Your friends support you as a family.

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The Door of the Almighty.

When you think all your doors are closed, it's because you haven't yet knocked at the right door. The Door of the Almighty.

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Graduation

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Giving up doesn't always mean you are weak.

"Giving up doesn't always mean you are weak. . . . .
sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go." 

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"Success is not final, Failure is not fatal, it is the Courage to contiue that counts."

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Robert Browning: Obscurity ...

Robert Browning: Obscurity

uch ink has been spilt in proving and disproving that Browning is an obscure poet. It is hard to absolve Browning of the charge of unintelligibility and difficulty. In his own age, he was considered very difficult and obscure and hence could not achieved popularity and recognition like his contemporary Tennyson. "Sordellow" was regarded as more obscure than any other poem in the English language. Mrs. Carlyle read the poem and could not judge whether 'Sordellow' was a man, or a city, or a book. Douglas Jerrold, after reading it said:

My God! I am an idiot. My health is restored, but my mind is gone.

Browning certainly is a very difficult poet. Dawson calls him "the Carlyle of poetry". Various reasons are given for the obscurity and difficulty of his poetry. According to some critics, obscurity of Browning's poetry is

… a piece of intellectual vanity indulged in more and more insolently as his years and fame increased".

But as Chesterton points out:

All the records of Browning's long life and caret show that he was at all vain. All his contemporaries agree that he never talked cleverly or tried to talk cleverly which is always the case with a man who is intellectually vain. It is psychologically improbable that the poet, made his poems, complicated from mere pride of his powers and contempt of his readers.

According to the learned critic:

Browning was not unintelligible because he was proud, but unintelligible because he was humble.

He was humble enough to think that what he knew was quite commonplace and was known even to the man in the street. His own concepts were quite clear to him that he found nothing difficult or profound in them.

It is fantastic, it is grotesque, and it is enigmatic but there is nothing philosophical about it. Browning is not obscure because he is philosophical poet; the real reasons of his obscurity lie elsewhere. In the passage in question, the obscurity arises from Browning's use of the unfamiliar and unusual 'Murex', the key-word in the passage and essential for its understanding. More other than not, the key-word in a passage is missing and so it becomes dark and obscure.

Obscurity in Browning's poetry results not from any one reason but from a number of reasons.

Browning had a very high conception of his own calling. He once wrote to a friend:

I never designedly tried to puzzle people as some of my critics have supposed.

He believed that a poet should try to put "the infinite within the finite". It is not a kind of poetry to be read merely to while way a leisure hour.

Browning was a highly original genius and his poetry was entirely different from contemporaries.

Browning's dramatic monologues are soul studies; they study the shifting moods and changing thoughts of a developing soul. It is always soul dissection, it is thought, thought and thought; and thought all the way. It is always "interior landscape" with no chronology or background. Obviously such poetry is bound to be difficult. Browning's long, argumentative and philosophical poems are tiresome and boring.

This difficulty of comprehension is further increased by the fact that he was interested in the queerest human soul, and tried to probe the odd and the abnormal in human psychology. "He sought the sinners whom even the sinners had cast out", and tried to show that even they might be generous and humane. He tried to reveal the essential nobility and humanity even of a mean impostor.

Browning was a very learned poet. His schooling was mostly private and so his learning was more profound and thorough than of those who have been educated at school. He knew in detail the history and geography not of one country, but of a number of countries. Many of his poems require knowledge of medieval history and of Italian history.

There is frequent use of Latin expressions and quotations; there are illusions to little known literary, mythological, historical sources and information of Medieval and Renaissance art and culture of Europe. Browning sought his object in many lands.

Often Browning's metaphors, similes and illustrations are far-fetched and recondite as in "Two in the Campagna" and in "Memorabilia".

Often Browning's writes a telegraphic style. Relative, prepositions, articles, even pronouns are left out. It might be that his pen failed to keep pace with the rush of his ideas, but such telegraphic style is certainly confusing and bewildering for his readers.

Browning's frequent inversions and the use of long, involved sentences, heavily overloaded with parentheses, create almost insurmountable difficulties in the way of his readers. In poems like "The Grammarian's Funeral", he not only buries the grammarian but also grammar.

Frequently, he coins new words, uses unusual compounds and expressions and is too colloquial, jerky, abrupt and rugged.

When his "Sordellow" first appeared, he was accused of verbosity and since then he made it his rule to use only two words where ten were needed. He admits this complexity of his poetry in "Rabbi Ben Ezra".

Thoughts hardly, to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

However, the obscurity of Browning's poetry must not be exaggerated. As Duffin, points out, the majority of Browning's shorter poems are read as easily as the verse of Tennyson. Poems like "Evelyn Hope", "The Last Rise Together", "The Patriot", "Prophyria's Lover", "Prospice", "My Last Duchess", "Home Thoughts, from Abroad" etc are perfectly lucid and simple. The intelligent reader can enjoy most of his lyrics and longer poems in blank verse after a little mental adjustment. Even in these thorniest poems there are passages of great originality and eloquence of classical beauty and easy comprehension.

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Arnold as the poet of Victorian unrest

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."

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Touchstone Method..

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." 

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