and then, when the light shone into his eyes, there was something, in spite of the air of fine scholarship and culture, which reminded one of the best likenesses of Burns. It was of Clough, I believe, that Emerson was thinking (though, knowing Clough intimately as he did, he was of course speaking mainly in joke) when he described the Oxford of that day thus:—‘“Ah,” says my languid Oxford gentleman, “nothing new, and nothing true, and no matter.”’ No saying could misrepresent Clough’s really buoyant and simple character more completely than that; but doubtless many of his sayings and writings, treating, as they did, most of the greater problems of life as insoluble, and enjoining a self-possessed composure under the discovery of their insolubility, conveyed an impression very much like this to men who came only occasionally in contact with him. Bagehot, in his article on Crabb Robinson, says that the latter, who in those days seldom remembered names, always described Clough as ‘that admirable and accomplished man—you know whom I mean—the one who never says anything.’ And certainly Clough was often taciturn to the last degree, or if he opened his lips, delighted to open them only to scatter confusion by discouraging, in words at least, all that was then called earnestness—as, for example, by asking, ‘Was it ordained that twice two should make four, simply for the intent that boys and girls should be cut to the heart that they do not make five? Be content; when the veil is raised, perhaps they will make five! Who knows?’[10] Clough’s chief fascination for Bagehot was, I think, that he had as a poet in some measure rediscovered, at all events realised, as few ever realised before, the enormous difficulty of finding truth—a difficulty which he somewhat paradoxically held to be enhanced rather than diminished by the intensity of the truest modern passion for it. The stronger the desire, he teaches, the greater is the danger of illegitimately satisfying that desire by persuading ourselves that what we _wish_ to believe, is true, and the greater the danger of ignoring the actual confusions of human things:— ‘Rules baffle instincts, instincts rules, Wise men are bad, and good are fools, Facts evil, wishes vain appear, We cannot go, why are we here? ‘Oh, may we, for assurance’ sake, Some arbitrary judgment take, And wilfully pronounce it clear, For this or that ’tis, we are here? ‘Or is it right, and will it do To pace the sad confusion through, And say, it does not yet appear What we shall be—what we are here?’