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A Study of Clough's Mari Magno

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Albert Morton Turner
Albert Morton Turner*
Affiliation:
University of Maine
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Extract

Mari Magno, by Arthur Hugh Clough, is a series of six narratives in verse related by voyagers across the Atlantic. Clough wrote these tales during his travels for health through southern Europe in the final year of his life—the last tale, indeed, on his very deathbed—and he left them unrevised at the end. Though in themselves deficient in narrative power, these tales present to the literary investigator two distinct problems, neither of which has as yet been satisfactorily solved. The first of these relates to the extent to which Clough in his narrative drew upon the events of his own life; the second is the question of the nature and the importance of the influence exerted upon him by the works of other authors, particularly Chaucer and Crabbe.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1929 , pp. 569 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 569 The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough with a Selection from His Letters and a Memoir, edited by his wife (two volumes, London, 1869), II, 365. These volumes, whether for memoir, letters, or poems, I cite as Works.

Note 2 in page 569 J. I. Osborne, A. H. Clough (London, 1920), pp. 173-74.

Note 3 in page 569 Works, I, 28-30, 107 note.

Note 4 in page 569 His letters from Rome written during the siege (Works, I, 140-163) refer to many events which have been used in the poem.

Note 5 in page 570 Works, I, 182 (letter) and II, 425 (verse).

Note 6 in page 570 Works, I, 182 (letter) and II, 425 (verse).

Note 7 in page 570 Works, I, 183.

Note 8 in page 571 Works, I, 181 (letter) and II, 415 (verse).

Note 9 in page 571 Works, II, 366.

Note 10 in page 571 H. E. Scudder, J. R. Lowell, a Biography (2 vols., Boston, 1901), I, 307.

Note 11 in page 571 Works, I, 181-91. Lowell also refers to this voyage with Thackeray and Clough: “Even smoking becomes an employment instead of a solace. Who less likely to come to their wit's end than W.M.T. and A.H.C.? Yet I have seen them driven to five meals a day for mental occupation.” Lowell, Prose Works (Boston, no date, 6 vols.), I, 101-2.

Note 12 in page 572 Works, I, 183.

Note 13 in page 572 Eyre Crowe, With Thackeray in America (London, 1893), 16. Crowe mentions Thackeray and also Clough: “Coming up the companion ladder, I noticed a burly form, in mustard-colored inexpressibles, and a wideawake hat crowning a swarthy face. This was Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet and Oxford Don.” The only other person spoken of by Crowe is one who was in such need of soap and razor that the other passengers presented him these articles on landing.

Note 14 in page 572 Works, I, 181.

Note 15 in page 572 Works, II, 425.

Note 16 in page 573 Works, II, 366-67.

Note 17 in page 573 Works, II, 181.

Note 18 in page 573 Works, II, 182.

Note 19 in page 573 Works, II, 183.

Note 20 in page 574 Works, II, 183.

Note 21 in page 574 Dictionary of National Biography, XIX, 573 and 578.

Note 22 in page 574 L. Melville (pen-name of L. S. Benjamin), The Thackeray Country (London, 1905), 198-9. See also the same author's W. M. Thackeray (2 vols., London, 1910). I, 343.

Note 23 in page 574 Works, I, 191.

Note 24 in page 575 Works, I, 10.

Note 25 in page 575 Works, I, 9-11.

Note 26 in page 575 Works, I, 90.

Note 27 in page 575 Works, I, 251, 255; II, 385.

Note 28 in page 575 Works, I, 60 ff.

Note 29 in page 575 Works, I, 107.

Note 30 in page 576 Works, II, 394.

Note 31 in page 576 Works, I, 262-4.

Note 32 in page 576 Works, I, 262 (letter); II, 402 (verse).

Note 33 in page 577 Works, II, 417.

Note 34 in page 578 Works, II, 440.

Note 35 in page 579 Works, I, 28-30, 107 note. This information is confirmed by Letters and Remains of A. H. Clough (For Private Circulation, London, 1865), p. 82.

Note 36 in page 579 Works, I, 83, 85.

Note 37 in page 579 Works, II, 30.

Note 38 in page 579 Works, II, 31.

Note 39 in page 580 Works, II, 193.

Note 40 in page 580 I find that Alfred Huth (Über A. H. Clough's The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, Leipzig, 1911, p. 50) believes Clough fell in love with a Highland girl. He mentions the Bothie, the last Mari Magno tale, and 'O but doesnotpointoutany resemblances in detail between the plots or carry the matter further.

Note 41 in page 580 Works, II, 257-8. Clough took the name of Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich from a hut in a different part of Scotland—namely on Loch Ericht. (Works, I, 28-9 and Nineteenth Century, Vol. 43, p. 109.)

Note 42 in page 580 Works, II, 427.

Note 43 in page 580 Works, I, 107-8.

Note 44 in page 580 Works, I, 114-15.

Note 45 in page 580 Works, I, 115-16.

Note 46 in page 581 Works, I, 30.

Note 47 in page 581 Cornhill Magazine, 14, 418-19.

Note 48 in page 581 Every Saturday, 8, 509.

Note 49 in page 581 Macmillan's Magazine, 6, 331.

Note 50 in page 581 Sidgwick, Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses (London 1904), p. 87.

Note 51 in page 581 Oliver Elton, A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1880 (N. Y. 1920), IV, 96; J. I. Osborne, A. H. Clough, p. 173-4.

Note 52 in page 581 Doris Hertwig, Der Einfluss von Chaucers “Canterbury Tales” auf die englische Literatur (Marburg, 1908), pp. 57-9. Alfred Tobler, Geoffrey Chaucer's Influence in English Literature (Berne, 1905), p. 121, mentions Clough in connection with Chaucer without citing passages.

Note 53 in page 582 Paula Lutonsky, A. B. Clough (Wien, 1912), pp. 52-3.

Note 54 in page 582 XIII, 104.

Note 55 in page 582 R. H. Hutton, Essays in Literary Criticism (Philadelphia, no date), p. 169.

Note 56 in page 582 Samuel Waddington, A. H. Clough (London, 1883), pp. 276, 279-84.—Clough is also mentioned as “a careful student of Chaucer” in E. P. Hammond, Chaucer, A Bibliographical Manual (New York, 1908), p. 154.

Note 57 in page 582 Clough, Works, I, 228. This passage is also cited by J. I. Osborne, in A. H. Clough, p. 171-72.

Note 58 in page 583 Works, II, 395-6.

Note 59 in page 583 The Poetical Works of George Crabbe, edited by A. J. and R. M. Carlyle (Oxford, 1914), 243, 439, 482.

Note 60 in page 583 Works of Crabbe, 439.

Note 61 in page 584 Works of Crabbe, 275.

Note 62 in page 584 Works of Crabbe: Edward, 267, 275; Jane, 381, 445, 521, 537.

Note 63 in page 585 Works, I, 214. Also quoted in C. F. E. Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion (7 vols., London), III, 12.

Note 64 in page 585 Works, I, 220. Also quoted in Miss Spurgeon's work, III, 17.

Note 65 in page 585 Works, I, 337-40. Also quoted, in part, in Miss Spurgeon's work, III, 8.

Note 66 in page 585 Works, II, 366. This passage is quoted by Waddington and Miss Lutonsky.

Note 67 in page 586 Prologue, line 82. W. W. Skeat, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1894), vol. 4.

Note 68 in page 586 E.g., His eyen twinkled in his heed aright,

As doon the sterres in the frosty night.

This worthy limitour was cleped Huberd. (Prologue, 1. 269)

Other examples are lines 207, 284, 410.

Note 69 in page 586 Works, II, 367.

Note 70 in page 586 London, I. 177.

Note 71 in page 586 Works, II, 365.

Note 72 in page 586 Works, II, 368.

Note 73 in page 587 The Tales of the Hall, the only series by Crabbe to have a framework, are quite unlike Mari Magno in this respect. At the beginning of them, we have a long, rather abstract account of the elder brother George, his opinions, and the purchase of the hall, and, thereafter, an account of the younger brother Richard, ending with his visit on George. Later, the customary procedure is for Richard to see some strange personage at the beginning of each division of. the poem and for George, consequently, to recount the individual's history.

Note 74 in page 587 Works, II, 407.

Note 75 in page 587 Works, II, 411. Miss Hertwig notes these points in Der Einfluss von Chaucers “Canterbury Tales” auf die englische Literatur, 57-59.

Note 76 in page 588 Works, II, 406.

Note 77 in page 588 Works, I, 51-3. Currente Calamo was written, we are told in a letter, on August 13, 1861. (I, 267.) Clough died November 13.

Note 78 in page 588 The length of the tales is 22, 7, 8, 2, 8 and 13 pages respectively.

Note 79 in page 589 Works, II, 408.