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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
PROF. MALBONE W. GRAHAM
SELECTIONS
FROM THE PROSE WRITINGS OF
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Edited with
Notes and an Introduction
BY
LEWIS E. GATES
w
WW
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1897,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
PREFACE.
These Selections from Arnold are meant to go with
the Selections from Newman already included in Eng-
lish Readings. Newman and Arnold were both Oxford
men ; both were devoted believers in the academic
ideal; both discussed and dealt practically with edu-
cational problems, and yet both touched life in many
other ways and are remembered as men of letters or
leaders of thought, rather than as mere academicians.
Although Arnold never imposed himself on his gener-
ation as did Newman, never ruled the imaginations
of large masses of men, or was so prevailing and
picturesque a figure as Newman, yet no less than New-
man he represents one distinct phase of nineteenth-
century academic culture; from 1855 to 1870 he was
probably the man of letters whom the younger genera-
tion at Oxford most nearly accepted as their natural
spokesman.
The Selections aim to present, in the briefest possible
compass, what is most characteristic in Arnold's criti-
cism of literature and life. His conception of the
critic was as the guardian of culture, as called upon
to pass judgment on the various expressions of life,
and especially upon books in their relation to life,
and to determine their influence on the temper and
ideals of the public. He is to be an adept in life,
691368
iv PREFACE.
a diviner of the essentials that underlie the multi-
form play of human energy ; he must know life inti-
mately; and being concerned that life shall have its
best quality, he will strive for this perfection not
only through what he says about books, but also
through direct comment on those modes of living —
those ideals — which his analysis and imagination
detect as ruling his contemporaries. In obedience
to this conception of the critic, Arnold had much
to say not only on poetry and belles lettres, but on
politics, religion, theology, and the general social con-
ditions of his time. The Selections include one or
more of his characteristic comments on each of these
topics.
It should also be noted that many of the Selections
are complete essays or lectures, not mere extracts.
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time is an en-
tire essay; On Translating Homer is the entire first
lecture on this subject; Oxford and Philistinism and
Culture and Anarchy are entire prefaces or introduc-
tions; Compulsory Education and " Life a Dream " are
entire Letters; Literature and Science and Emerson are
entire Discourses — two of the three that Arnold gave
repeatedly in America. His Discourses in America
stood specially high in Arnold's favor; shortly before
his death he spoke of the book as that " by which, of
all his prose-writings, he should most wish to be re-
membered."
The Selections are believed also to present Arnold's
style adequately throughout its whole range. In some
respects his style, despite possible faults of manner
that will later be considered, is the best model avail-
PRE FA CE. V
able for students of prose. It is not so idiosyncratic
as are the styles of Carlyle or Mr. Ruskin, not so
inimitably individual; it is more conventional and
unimpassioned, more expressive of the mood of prose,
with little of the color and few of the overtones of
poetry. Yet it is an intensely vital style, and every-
where exemplifies not simply the logic of good writing,
but the intimate correspondence of phrase with thought
and mood that great writers of prose continually secure.
Individual it therefore is, and yet not arbitrarily or
forbiddingly individual. Its merits and possible short-
comings are analyzed at length in the Introduction.
The more important dates in Arnold's life and a list
of his main publications are given just after the Intro-
duction. ■ A brief sketch of his life may be found in
Men of the Time, ed. 1887; a longer, more appreciative
sketch, in Eminent Persons, or Biographies reprinted
from the Times, vol. iv. Mr. Andrew Lang's article on
Arnold, in the Century for April, 1882, also contains
much interesting biographical detail.
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.,
August, 1S97.
CONTENTS.
Introduction :
PAGB
I.
Arnold's Manner,
. ix
II.
Criticism of Life,
•
. . xiv
III.
Theory of Culture,
. . xxii
IV.
Ethical Bias,
•
xxxii
V.
Literary Criticism,
xliii
VI.
Appreciations,
•
li
VII.
Style,
lix
VIII.
Relation to his Times, .
•
lxxvii
Selections : *
""The Function of Criticism (1865), ....
On Translating Homer (1861), ....
Philology and Literature (1862), ....
^The Grand Style (1862)
"^Style in Literature (1866), .....
pfature in English Poetry (1866), ....
Poetry and Science (1S63) 102
literature and Science (1882), .... 104
* The date assigned each Selection is that of its earliest appear-
ance in print.
V11J
CONTENTS.
Uxford and Philistinism (1865),
Philistinism (1863), . . .
vDulture and Anarchy (1867),
Sweetness and Light (1867), .
Hebraism and Hellenism (1868),
N The Dangers of Puritanism (1868),
The Not Ourselves (1871),
Paris and the Senses (1873), .
The Celt and the Teuton (1866),
The Modern Englishman (1866), .
Compulsory Education (1867), .
" Life a Dream " (1870), . .
America (1869),
xlmerson (1884), .
Notes ... .
PAGE
. 132
139
. 144
147
. l8l
193
. 204
218
. 224
235
. 242
250
. 258
265
. 295
INTRODUCTION.
Admirers of Arnold's prose find it well to admit
frankly that his style has an unfortunate knack of
exciting prejudice. Emerson has somewhere spoken
of the unkind trick fate plays a man when it gives him
a strut in his gait. Here and there in Arnold's prose,
there is just a trace — sometimes more than a trace — of
such a strut. He condescends to his readers with a
gracious elaborateness ; he is at great pains to make
them feel that they are his equals ; he undervalues him-
self playfully ; he assures us that " he is an unlearned
belletristic trifler"; 1 he insists over and over again
that " he is an unpretending writer, without a phil-
osophy based on interdependent, subordinate, and
coherent principles." 2 All this he does, of course,
smilingly ; but the smile seems to many on whom its
favors fall, supercilious ; and the playful undervalua-
tion of self looks shrewdly like an affectation. He is
very debonair, — this apologetic writer ; very self-as-
sured ; at times even jaunty. 3
Thorough-going admirers of Arnold have always
1 Celtic Literature, p. 21.
2 Culture and Anarchy, p. 152 ; Friendship's Garland, p. 273.
3 Various critics have complained of Arnold's tone and bearing.
Mr. Saintsbury, for example, objects to his " mincing" manner j
Professor Jowett, to his " flippancy."
x INTRODUCTION.
relished this strain in his style ; they have enjoyed its
delicate challenge, the nice duplicity of its innuendoes;
they have found its insinuations and its covert, satirical
humor infinitely entertaining and stimulating. More-
over, however seriously disposed they may have been,
however exacting of all the virtues from the author of
their choice, they have been able to reconcile their
enjoyment of Arnold with their serious inclinations,
for they have been confident that these tricks of
manner implied no essential or radical defect in
Arnold's humanity, no lack either of sincerity or of
earnestness or of broad sympathy.
Such admirers and interpreters of Arnold have
been amply justified of their confidence since the
publication in 1895 of Arnold's Letters. The Arnold
of these letters is a man the essential integrity — whole-
ness — of whose nature is incontestable. His sincerity,
kindliness, wide-ranging sympathy with all classes of
men, are unmistakably expressed on every page of his
correspondence. We see him having to do with
people widely diverse in their relations to him ; with
those close of kin, with chance friends, with many
men of business or officials, with a wide circle of
literary acquaintances, with workingmen, and with
foreign savants. In all of his intercourse the same
sweet-tempered frankness and the same readiness of
sympathy are manifest. There is never a trace of the
duplicity or the treacherous irony that are to be found
in much of his prose.
Moreover, the record that these Letters contain of
close application to uncongenial tasks must have been
a revelation to many readers who have had to rely
INTRODUCTION. XI
upon books for their knowledge of literary men.
Popular caricatures of Arnold had represented him as
"a high priest of the kid-glove persuasion," as an
incorrigible dilettante, as a kind of literary fop idling
his time away over poetry and recommending the
parmaceti of culture as the sovereignest thing in
nature for the inward bruises of the spirit. This con-
ception of Arnold, if it has at all maintained itself,
certainly cannot survive the revelations of the Letters.
The truth is beyond cavil that he was one of the most
self-sacrificingly laborious men of his time.
For a long period of years Arnold held the post of
inspector of schools. Day after day, and week after
week, he gave up one of the finest of minds, one of
the most sensitive of temperaments, one of the most
delicate of literary organizations, to the drudgery of
examining in its minutest details the work of the
schools in such elementary subjects as mathematics
and grammar. On January 7, 1863, he writes to his
mother, "I am now at the work I dislike most
in the world — looking over and marking examina-
tion papers. I was stopped last week by my eyes,
and the last year or two these sixty papers a day of
close hand-writing to read have, I am sorry to say,
much tried my eyes for the time." ' Two years later
he laments again: "I am being driven furious by
seven hundred closely-written grammar papers, which
I have to look over." ' During these years he was
holding the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, and he had
long since established his reputation as one of the
1 Letters, i. 207. 5 Letters, i. 285
Xll INTRODUCTION.
foremost of the younger poets. Yet for a livelihood
he was forced still to endure — and he endured them till
within a few years of his death in 1888 — the exactions
of this wearing and exasperating drudgery. More-
over, despite occasional outbursts of impatience, he
gave himself to the work freely, heartily, and effect-
ively. He was sent on several occasions to the Con-
tinent to examine and report on foreign school
systems ; his reports on German and French educa-
tion show immense diligence of investigation, a
thorough grasp of detail, and patience and persistence
in the acquisition of facts that in and for themselves
must have been unattractive and unrewarding.
The record of this severe labor is to be found in
Arnold's Letters, and it must dispose once for all of
any charge that he was a mere dilettante and coiner
of phrases. Through a long period of years he
was working diligently, wearisomely, in minutely prac-
tical ways, to better the educational system of Eng-
land ; he was persistently striving both to spread
sounder ideals of elementary education and to make
more effective the system actually in vogue. And
thus, unpretentiously and laboriously, he was serv-
ing the cause of sweetness and light as well as through
his somewhat debonair contributions to literature.
In another way his Letters have done much to
reveal the innermost core of Arnold's nature, and so,
ultimately, to explain the genesis of his prose. They
place it beyond a doubt that in all he wrote Arnold
had an underlying purpose, clearly apprehended and
faithfully pursued. In 1867, in a letter to his mother,
he says : " I more and more become conscious of
INTRODUCTION. Xlli
having something to do and of a resolution to do
it. . . Whether one lives long or not, to be less and
less personal in one's desires and workings is the great
matter." ' In a letter of 1863 he had already written
in much the same strain : " However, one cannot
change English ideas as much as, if I live, I hope to
change them, without saying imperturbably what one
thinks, and making a good many people uncomfort-
able." And in a letter of the same year he exclaims :
"It is very animating to think that one at last has a
chance of getting at the English public. Such a pub-
lic as it is, and such a work as one wants to do with
it." 3 A work to do ! The phrase recalls Cardinal
Newman and the well-known anecdote of his Sicilian
illness, when through all the days of greatest danger
he insisted that he should get well because he had a
work to do in England. Despite Arnold's difference
in temperament from Newman and the widely dis-
similar task he proposed to himself, he was no less in
earnest than Newman, and no less convinced of the
importance of his task.
The occasional supercilious jauntiness of Arnold's
style, then, need not trouble even the most consci-
entious of his admirers. To many of his readers it is
in itself, as has been already suggested, delightfully
stimulating. Others, the more conscientious folk and
perhaps also the severer judges of literary quality, are
bound to find it artistically a blemish; but they need
not at any rate regard it as implying any radical
defect in Arnold's humanity or as the result of cheap
1 Letters, i. 400. J Letters, i. 225. 3 Letters, i. 233.
xiv IN TROD UC TION.
cynicism or of inadequate sympathy. In point of fact,
the true account of the matter seems rather to lie in the
paradox that the apparent superciliousness of Arnold's
style comes from the very intensity of his moral
earnestness, and that the limitations of his style and
method are largely due to the strenuousness of his
moral purpose.
II.
What, then, was Arnold's controlling purpose in
his prose writing ? What was " the work " that he
" wanted to do with the English public " ? In trying
to find answers to these questions it will be well first
to have recourse to stray phrases in Arnold's prose ;
these phrases will give incidental glimpses, from differ-
ent points of view, of his central ideal ; later, their
fragmentary suggestions may be brought together into
something like a comprehensive formula.
In the lectures on Celtic Literature Arnold points
out in closing that it has been his aim to lead English-
men to " reunite themselves with their better mind and
with the world through science " ; that he has sought
to help them "conquer the hard unintelligence, which
was just then their bane ; to supple and reduce it by
culture, by a growth in the variety, fullness, and sweet-
ness of their spiritual life." In the Preface to his first
volume of Essays he explains that he is trying " to pull
out a few more stops in that powerful but at present
somewhat narrow-toned organ, the modern English-
man." In Culture and Anarchy he assures us that
his object is to convince men of the value of " culture ";
introduction: xv
to incite them to the pursuit of "perfection"; to help
"make reason and the will of God prevail." And
again in the same work he declares that he is striving
to intensify throughout England "the impulse to the
development of the whole man, to connecting and
harmonizing all parts of him, perfecting all, leaving
none to take their chance."
These phrases give, often with capricious pictur-
esqueness, hints of the prevailing intention with which
Arnold writes. They may well be supplemented by
a series of phrases in which, in similarly picturesque
fashion, he finds fault with life as it actually exists in
England, with the individual Englishman as he
encounters him from day to day ; these phrases,
through their critical implications, also reveal the pur-
pose that is always present in Arnold's mind, when he
addresses his countrymen. "Provinciality," Arnold
points out as a widely prevalent and injurious charac-
teristic of English literature ; it argues a lack of
centrality, carelessness of ideal excellence, undue
devotion to relatively unimportant matters. Again,
"arbitrariness," and "eccentricity" are noticeable
traits both of English literature and scholarship ;
Arnold finds them everywhere deforming Professor
Newman's interpretations of Homer, and he further
comments on them as in varying degrees " the great
defect of English intellect — the great blemish of
English literature." In religion he takes special
exception to the "loss of totality" that results, from
sectarianism ; this is the penalty, Arnold contends,
that the Nonconformist pays for his hostility to the
established church ; in his pursuit of his own special
xvi INTRODUCTION.
enthusiasm the Nonconformist becomes, like Ephraim,
"a wild ass alone by himself."
From all these brief quotations this much at least
is plain, that what Arnold is continually recommend-
ing is the complete development of the human type,
and that what he is condemning is departure from
some finely conceived ideal of human excellence —
from some scheme of human nature in which all its
powers have full and harmonious play. The various
phrases that have been quoted, alike the positive and
the negative ones, imply as Arnold's continual pur-
pose in his prose-writings the recommendation of this
ideal of human excellence and the illustration of the
evils that result from its neglect. The significance
and the scope of this purpose will become clearer,
however, if we consider some of the imperfect ideals
which Arnold finds operative in place of this absolute
ideal, and note their misleading and depraving effects.
One such partial ideal is the worship of the
excessively practical and the relentlessly utilitarian
as the only things in life worth while. England is
a prevailingly practical nation, and our age is a
prevailingly practical age ; the unregenerate product
of this nation and age is the Philistine, and against
the Philistine Arnold never wearies of inveighing.
The Philistine is the swaggering enemy of the chil-
dren of light, of the chosen people, of those who
love art and ideas disinterestedly. The Philistine
cares- solely for business, for developing the material
resources of the country, for starting companies,
building bridges, making railways, and establishing
plants. The machinery of life — its material organ-
INTRODUCTION. xvu
ization — monopolizes all his attention. He judges
of life by the outside, and is careless of the
things of the spirit. The Philistine may, of course,
be religious ; but his religion is as materialistic as his
everyday existence ; his heaven is a triumph of engi-
neering skill and his ideal of future bliss is, in Sydney
Smith's phrase, to eat "pdte's de foie gras to the sound
of trumpets." Against men of this class Arnold can-
not show himself too cynically severe ; they are piti-
ful distortions ; the practical instincts have usurped,
and have destroyed the symmetry and integrity of the
human type. The senses and the will to live are mo-
nopolizing and determine all the man's energy toward
utilitarian ends. The power of beauty, the power of
intellect and knowledge, the power of social manners
are atrophied. Society is in serious danger unless
men of this class can be touched with a sense of their
shortcomings ; made aware of the larger values of
life ; made pervious to ideas ; brought to recognize
the importance of the things of the mind and the
spirit.
Another partial ideal, the prevalence of which Arnold
laments, is the narrowly and unintelligently religious
ideal. The middle class Englishman is according to
Arnold a natural Hebraist; he is pre-occupied with
matters of conduct and careless about things of the
mind; he is negligent of beauty and abstract truth, of
all those interests in life which had for the Greek of
old, and still have for the modern man of " Hellen-
istic " temper, such inalienable charm. The Puritan-
ism of the seventeenth century was the almost
unrestricted expression of the Hebraistic temper, and
xvm INTRODUCTION.
from the conceptions of life that were then wrought
out, the middle classes in England have never wholly
escaped. The Puritans looked out upon life with a
narrow vision, recognized only a few of its varied in-
terests, and provided for the needs of only a part of
man's nature. Yet their theories and conceptions of
life — theories and conceptions that were limited in the
first place by the age in which they originated, and in
the second place by a Hebraistic lack of sensitiveness
to the manifold charm of beauty and knowledge —
these limited theories and conceptions have imposed
themselves constrainingly on many generations of
Englishmen. To-day they remain, in all their nar-
rowness and with an ever increasing disproportion to
existing conditions, the most influential guiding prin-
ciples of large masses of men. Such men spend their
lives in a round of petty religious meetings and em-
ployments. They think all truth is summed up in
their little cut and dried Biblical interpretations.
New truth is uninteresting or dangerous. Art dis-
tracts from religion, and is a siren against whose
seductive chanting the discreet religious Ulysses seals
his ears. To Arnold this whole view of life seems
sadly mistaken, and the men who hold it seem fan-
tastic distortions of the authentic human type. The
absurdities and the dangers of the unrestricted Hebra-
istic ideal he satirizes or laments in Culture and
Anarchy, in Literature and Dogma, in God and the
Bible, and in St. Paul and Protestantism.
Still another kind of deformity arises when the in-
tellect grows self-assertive and develops overween-
ingly. To this kind of distortion the modern man ui
INTRODUCTION. XIX
science is specially prone ; his exclusive study of
material facts leads to crude, unregenerate strength
of intellect, and leaves him careless of the value truth
may have for the spirit, and of its glimmering sugges-
tions of beauty. Yes, and for the philosopher and the
scholar, too, over-intellectualism has its peculiar dan-
gers. The devotee of a system of thought is apt to
lose touch with the real values of life, and in his exor-
bitant desire for unity and thoroughness of organiza-
tion, to miss the free play of vital forces that gives
to life its manifold charm, its infinite variety, and
its ultimate reality. Bentham and Comte are ex-
amples of the evil effects of this rabid pursuit of
system. :i Culture is always assigning to system-
makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of
human destiny than their friends like." ' As for the
pedant he is merely the miser of facts, who grows
withered in hoarding the vain fragments of precious
ore of whose use he has lost the sense. Men of all
these various types offend through their fanatical
devotion to truth ; for, indeed, as someone has in
recent years well said, the intellect is " but a parvenu"
and the other powers of life, despite the Napoleonic
irresistibleness of the newcomer, have rights that de-
serve respect. Over-intellectualism, then, like the
over-development of any other power, leads to dis-
proportion and disorder.
Such being some of the partial ideals against which
Arnold warns his readers, what account does he give
of that perfect human type in all its integrity, in terms
1 Culture and Anarchy, p. 33.
XX INTRODUCTION.
of which he criticises these aberrations or deformities ?
To attempt an exact definition of this type would
perhaps be a bit presumptuous and grotesque, and,
with his usual sureness of taste, Arnold has avoided
the experiment. But in many passages he has recorded
clearly enough his notion of the powers in man that
are essential to his humanity, and that must all be duly
recognized and developed, if man is to attain in its
full scope what nature offers him. A representative
passage may be quoted from the lecture on Literature
and Science : "When we set ourselves to enumerate
the powers which go to the building up of human life,
and say that they are the power of conduct, the power
of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and
the power of social life and manners, he [Professor
Huxley] can hardly deny that this scheme, though
drawn in rough and plain lines enough, and not pre-
tending to scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly
true representation of the matter. Human nature is
built up of these powers ; we have the need for them
all. When we have rightly met and adjusted the
claims for them all, we shall then be in a fair way for
getting soberness and righteousness with wisdom." '
These same ideas are presented under a somewhat
different aspect and with somewhat different termi-
nology in the first chapter of Culture and Anarchy :
" The great aim of culture [is] the aim of setting our-
selves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it
prevail." Culture seeks " the determination of this
question through all the voices of human experience
1 Selections, p. 116.
INTRODUCTION. XXI
which have been heard upon it, — of art, science, poetry
philosophy, history, as well as of religion, — in order to
give a greater fullness and certainty to its solution. . .
Religion says: The Kingdom of God is within you j
and culture, in like manner, places human perfection
in an internal condition, in the growth and predomi-
nance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from
our animality. It places it in the ever-increasing
efficacy and in the general harmonious expansion of
those gifts of thought and feeling which make the
peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human na-
ture. As I have said on a former occasion : ' It is in
making endless additions to itself, in the endless ex-
pansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom
and beauty, that the spirit of the human race finds its
ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable
aid, and that is the true value of culture.' " '
In such passages as these Arnold comes as near as
he ever comes to defining the perfect human type.
He does not profess to define it universally and in ab-
stract terms, for indeed he " hates " abstractions almost
as inveterately as Burke hated them. He does not
even describe concretely for men of his own time and
nation the precise equipoise of powers essential to per-
fection. Yet he names these powers, suggests the
ends toward which they must by their joint working
contribute, and illustrates through examples the evil
effects of the preponderance or absence of one and
another. Finally, in the course of his many discus-
sions, he describes in detail the method by which the
1 Selections, p. 152-
XXII INTRODUCTION.
delicate adjustment of these rival powers may be
secured in the typical man ; suggests who is to be the
judge of the conflicting claims of these powers,
and indicates the process by which this judge may
most persuasively lay his opinions before those whom
he wishes to influence. The method for the attain-
ment of the perfect type is culture ; the censor of
defective types and the judge of the rival claims of
the co-operant powers is the critic ; and the process by
which this judge clarifies his own ideas and enforces
his opinions on others is criticism.
III.
We are now at the centre of Arnold's theory of life
and hold the keyword to his system of belief, so far as
he had a system. His reasons for attaching to the
work of the critic the importance he palpably attached
to it, are at once apparent. Criticism is the method
by which the perfect type of human nature is at any
moment to be apprehended and kept in uncontami-
nate clearness of outline before the popular imagina-
tion. The ideal critic is the man of nicest
discernment in matters intellectual, moral, aesthetic,
social ; of perfect equipoise of powers ; of delicately
pervasive sympathy ; of imaginative insight; who grasps
comprehensively the whole life of his time ; who feels
its vital tendencies and is intimately aware of its most
insistent preoccupations ; who also keeps his orienta-
tion toward the unchanging norms of human endeavor :
and who is thus able to note and set forth the imper-
INTRODUCTION. xxill
fections in existing types of human nature and to urge
persuasively a return in essential particulars to the
normal type. The function of criticism, then, is the
vindication of the ideal human type against perverting
influences, and Arnold's prose writings will for the
most part be found to have been inspired in one form
or another by a single purpose : the correction of ex-
cess in some human activity and the restoration of that
activity to its proper place among the powers that make
up the ideal human type.
Culture and Anarchy (1869) was the first of Arnold's
books to illustrate adequately this far-reachingconcep-
tion of criticism. His special topic is, in this case,
social conditions in England. Politicians, he urges,
whose profession it is to deal with social questions, are
engrossed in practical matters and biassed by party
considerations ; they lack the detachment and breadth
of view to see the questions at issue in their true rela-
tions to abstract standards of right and wrong. They
mistake means for ends, machinery for the results that
machinery is meant to secure ; they lose all sense of
values and exalt temporary measures into matters
of sacred import ; finally they come to that pass of
ineptitude which Arnold symbolizes by the enthusiasm
of Liberals over the measure to enable a man to marry
his deceased wife's sister. What is needed to correct
these absurd misapprehensions is the free play of criti-
cal intelligence. The critic from his secure coign of
vantage must examine social conditions dispassion-
ately ; he must determine what is essentially wrong in
the inner lives of the various classes of men around
him and so reveal the real sources of those social evils
xxiv INTRODUCTION.
which politicians are trying to remedy by external
readjustments and temporary measures.
And this is just the task that Arnold undertakes in
Culture and Anarchy. He sets himself to consider
English society in its length and breadth with a view
to discovering what is its essential constitution, what
are the typical classes that enter into it, and what are
the characteristics of these classes. So far as concerns
classification, he ultimately accepts, it is true, as ade-
quate to his purpose the traditional division of English
society into upper, middle, and lower classes. But he
then goes on to give an analysis of each of these
classes that is novel, penetrating, in the highest degree
stimulating. He takes a typical member of each class
and describes him in detail, intellectually, morally,
socially; he points out his sources of strength and his
sources of weakness. He compares him as a type
with the abstract ideal of human excellence and notes
wherein his powers "fall short or exceed." He indi-
cates the reaction upon the social and political life of
the nation of these various defects and excesses,
their inevitable influence in producing social misad-
justment and friction. Finally, he urges that the one
remedy that will correct these errant social types and
bring them nearer to the perfect human type is culture,
increase in vital knowledge.
The details of Arnold's application of this concep-
tion of culture as a remedy for the social evils of the
time, every reader may follow out for himself in
Culture and Anarchy. One point in Arnold's concep-
tion, however, is to be noted forthwith; it is a crucial
point in its influence on his theorizings. By culture
IN TROD UCTION. xx v
Arnold means increase of knowledge; yes, but he
means something more; culture is for Arnold not
merely an intellectual matter. Culture is the best
knowledge made operative and dynamic in life and
character. Knowledge must be vitalized ; it must be
intimately conscious of the whole range of human
interests; it must ultimately subserve the whole
nature of man. Continually, then, as Arnold is plead-
ing for the spread of ideas, for increase of light, for
the acceptance on the part of his fellow-countrymen
of new knowledge from the most diverse sources, he
is as keenly alive as anyone to the dangers of over-
intellectualism. The undue development of the
intellectual powers is as injurious to the individual as
any other form of deviation from the perfect human
type.
This distrust of over-intellectualism is the ultimate
ground of Arnold's hostility to the claims of Physical
Science to primacy in modern education. His ideas
on the relative educational value of the physical
sciences and of the humanities are set forth in the
well-known discourse on Literature and Science}
Arnold is ready, no one is more ready, to accept the
conclusions of science as to all topics that fall within
its range; whatever its authenticated spokesmen have
to say upon man's origin, his moral nature, his rela-
tions to his fellows, his place in the physical universe,
his religions, his sacred books — all these utterances are
to be received with entire loyalty so far as they can
be shown to embody the results of expert scientific
1 Selections, p. 104.
XXVI INTRODUCTION.
observation and thought. But for Arnold the great
importance of modern scientific truth does not for a
moment make clear the superiority of the physical
sciences over the Humanities as a means of educa-
tional discipline. The study of the sciences tends
merely to intellectual development, to the increase of
mental power ; the study of literature on the other
hand trains a man emotionally and morally, develops
his human sympathies, sensitizes him temperamentally,
rouses his imagination, and elicits his sense of beauty.
Science puts before the student the crude facts of
nature, bids him accept them dispassionately, rid
himself of all discoloring moods as he watches the
play of physical force, and convert himself into pure
intelligence ; he is simply to observe, to analyze, to
classify, and to systematize, and he is to go through
these processes continually with facts that have no
human quality, that come raw from the great whirl of
the cosmic machine. As a discipline, then, for the
ordinary man, the study of science tends not a whit
toward humanization, toward refinement, toward
temperamental regeneration ; it tends only to develop
an accurate trick of the senses, fine observation, crude
intellectual strength. These powers are of very great
importance ; but they may also be trained in the
study of literature, while at the same time the student,
as Sir Philip Sidney long ago pointed out, is being led
and drawn " to as high a perfection as our degenerate
souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be
capable of." Arnold, then, with characteristic anxiety
for the integrity of the human type, urges the superior
worth to most young men of a literary rather than a
INTRODUCTION-. xxvii
scientific training. Literature nourishes the whole
spirit of man ; science ministers only to the intellect.
The same insistent desire that culture be vital is at
the root of Arnold's discomfort in the presence of
German scholarship. For the thoroughness and the
disinterestedness of this scholarship he has great re-
spect; but he cannot endure its trick of losing itself in
the letter, its " pedantry, slowness," its way of " fum-
bling" after truth, its ''ineffectiveness." 1 "In the
German mind," he exclaims in Literature and Dogma,
" as in the German language, there does seem to be
something splay, something blunt-edged, unhandy,
infelicitous, — some positive want of straightforward,
sure perception." 2 Of scholarship of this splay variety,
that comes from exaggerated intellectuality and from
lack of a delicate temperament and of nice perceptions,
Arnold is intolerant. Such scholarship he finds work-
ing its customary mischief in Professor Francis New-
man's translation of Homer, and, accordingly, he gives
large parts of the lectures on Translating Homer to the
illustration of its shortcomings and maladroitness ; he
is bent on showing how inadequate is great learning
alone to cope with any nice literary problem. New-
man's philological knowledge of Greek and of Homer
is beyond dispute, but his taste may be judged from his
assertion that Homer's verse, if we could hear the liv-
ing Homer, would affect us *' like an elegant and
simple melody from an African of the Gold Coast." '
The remedy for such inept scholarship lies in cul-
1 Celtic Literature, p. 75. l Literature and Dogma, p. xxi.
* On Translating Homer, p. 295 .
xxvm INTRODUCTION.
ture, in the vitalization of knowledge. The scholar
must not be a mere knower ; all his powers must be
harmoniously developed.
One last illustration of Arnold's insistence that
knowledge be vital, may be drawn from his writings
on religion and theology. Again criticism and cul-
ture are the passwords that open the way to a
new and better order of things. Formulas, Arnold
urges, have fastened themselves constrainingly upon
the English religious mind. Traditional interpreta-
tions of the Bible have come to be received as be-
yond cavil. These interpretations are really human
inventions — the product of the ingenious think-
ing of theologians like Calvin and Luther. Yet
they have so authenticated themselves that for
most readers to-day the Bible means solely what
it meant for the exacerbated theological mind of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If religion is
to be vital, if knowledge of the Bible is to be genuine
and real, there must be a critical examination of what
this book means for the disinterested intelligence of
to-day; the Bible, as literature, must be interpreted
anew, sympathetically and imaginatively; the moral
inspiration the Bible has to offer, even to men who
are rigidly insistent on scientific habits of thought and
standards of historical truth, must be disengaged
from what is unverifiable and transitory, and made
real and persuasive. " I write," Arnold declares, " to
convince the lover of religion that by following habits
of intellectual seriousness he need not, so far as re-
ligion is concerned, lose anything. Taking the Old
Testament as Israel's magnificent establishment of
IN TROD UC 7 ION. xx ix
the theme, Righteousness is salvation! taking th» New
as the perfect elucidation by Jesus of what righteous-
ness is and how salvation is »von, I do not fear com-
paring even the power over the soul and imagination
of the Bible, taken in this sense, — a sense which is at
the same time solid, — with the like power in the old
materialistic and miraculous sense for the Bible,
which is not." ' This definition of what Arnold hopes
to do for the Bible may be supplemented by a descrip-
tion of the method in which culture works toward the
ends desired : " Difficult, certainly, is the right read-
ing of the Bible, and true culture, too, is difficult.
For true culture implies not only knowledge, but right
tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves
by and with knowledge; without this tact it is not true
culture. Difficult, however, as culture is, it is neces-
sary. For, after all, the Bible is not a talisman, to
be taken and used literally; neither is any existing
Church a talisman, whatever pretensions of the sort
it may make, for giving the right interpretation of the
Bible. Only true culture can give us this interpreta-
tion ; so that if conduct is, as it is, inextricably
bound up with the Bible and the right interpretation
of it, then the importance of culture becomes un-
speakable. For if conduct is necessary (and there is
nothing so necessary), culture is necessary." 2
Enough has now been said to illustrate Arnold's
conception of culture and of its value as a specific
against all" the ills that society is heir to. Culture
1 God and the Bible, p. xxxiv.
2 IJiterature and Dogma, p. xxV\
XXX INTRODUCTION.
is vital knowledge and the critic is its fosterer
and guardian ; culture and criticism work together
for the preservation of the integrity of the human
type against all the disasters that threaten it from
the storm and stress of modern life. Politics,
religion, scholarship, science each has its special
danger for the individual; each seizes upon him,
subdues him relentlessly to the need of the moment
and the requirements of some particular function, and
converts him often into a mere distorted fragment
of humanity. Against this tyranny of the moment,
against the specializing and materializing trend of
modern life, criticism offers a powerful safeguard.
Criticism is ever concerned with archetypal excel-
lence, is continually disengaging with fine discrimina-
tion what is transitory and accidental from what is
permanent and essential in all that man busies himself
about, and is thus perpetually helping every individual
to the apprehension of his "best self," to the develop-
ment of what is real and absolute and the elimination
of what is false or deforming. And in doing all this
the critic acts as the appreciator of life; he is not the
abstract thinker. He apprehends the ideal intuitively;
he reaches it by the help of the feelings and the
imagination and a species of exquisite tact, not
through a series of syllogisms; he is really a poet,
rather than a philosopher.
This conception of the nature and functions of
criticism makes intelligible and justifies a phrase of
Arnold's that has often been impugned — his descrip-
tion of poetry as a criticism of life. To this account
of poetry it has been objected that criticism is an intel-
INTRODUCTION. XXXI
tectual process, while poetry is primarily an affair of
the imagination and the heart; and that to regard
poetry as a criticism of life is to take a view of poetry
that tends to convert it into mere rhetorical moraliz-
ing; the decorative expression in rhythmical language
of abstract truth about life. This misinterpretation
of Arnold's meaning becomes impossible, if the fore-
going theory of criticism be borne in mind. Criticism
is the determination and the representation of the
archetypal, of the ideal. Moreover, it is not a deter-
mination of the archetypal formally and theoretically,
through speculation or the enumeration of abstract
qualities ; Arnold's disinclination for abstractions has
been repeatedly noted. The process to be used in
criticism is a vital process of appreciation, in which
the critic, sensitive to the whole value of human life,
to the appeal of art and of conduct and of manners as
well as of abstract truth, feels his way to a synthetic
grasp upon what is ideally best and portrays this con-
cretely and persuasively for the popular imagination.
Such an appreciator of life, if he produce beauty in
verse, if he embody his vision of the ideal in metre,
will be a poet. In other words, the poet is the
appreciator of human life who sees in it most sen-
sitively, inclusively, and penetratingly what is arche-
typal and evokes his vision before others through
rhythm and rhyme. In this sense poetry can hardly
be denied to be a criticism of life ; it is the winning
portrayal of the ideal of human life as this ideal shapes
itself in the mind of the poet. Such a criticism of
life Dante gives, a determination and portrayal of
what is ideally best in life according to mediaeval
XXXll INTRODUCTION.
conceptions ; a representation of life in its integrity
with a due adjustment of the claims of all the powers
that enter into it — friendship, ambition, patriotism,
loyalty, religion, artistic ardor, love. Such a criticism
of life Shakspere incidentally gives in terms of the full
scope of Elizabethan experience in England ; with
due imaginative setting forth of the splendid vistas of
possible achievement and unlimited development that
the new knowledge and the discoveries of the Renais-
sance had opened. In short, the great poet is the
typically sensitive, penetrative, and suggestive appre-
ciator of life, — who calls to his aid, to make his appreci-
ation as resonant and persuasive as possible, as potent
as possible over men's minds and hearts, all the
emotional and imaginative resources of language, —
rhythm, figures, allegory, symbolism — whatever will
enable him to impose his appreciation of life upon
others and to insinuate into their souls his sense of the
relative values of human acts and characters and
passions ; whatever will help him to make more over-
weeningly beautiful and insistently eloquent his
vision of beauty and truth. In this sense the poet is
the limiting ideal of the appreciative critic, and poetry
is the ultimate criticism of life — the finest portrayal
each age can attain to of what seems to it in life most
significant and delightful.
IV.
The purpose with which Arnold writes is now
fairly apparent. His aim is to shape in happy
fashion the lives of his fellows ; to free them
IN TROD UC riON. XXXU1
from the bonds that the struggle for existence imposes
upon them; to enlarge their horizons, to enrich them
spiritually, and to call all that is best within them into
as vivid play as possible. When we turn to Arnold's
literary criticism we shall find this purpose no less
paramount.
A glance through the volumes of Arnold's essays
renders it clear that his selection of a poet or a prose-
writer for discussion was usually made with a view to
putting before English readers some desirable trait of
character for their imitation, some temperamental ex-
cellence that they are lacking in, some mode of belief
that they neglect, some habit of thought that they
need to cultivate. Joubert is studied and portrayed
because of his single-hearted love of light, the purity
of his disinterested devotion to truth, the fine distinc-
tion of his thought, and the freedom of his spirit from
the sordid stains of worldly life. Heine is a typical
leader in the war of emancipation, the arch-enemy of
Philistinism, and the light-hearted indomitable foe of
prejudice and cant. Maurice and Eugenie de Guerin
are winning examples of the spiritual distinction that
modern Romanism can induce in timely-happy souls.
Scherer, whose critiques upon Milton and Goethe are
painstakingly reproduced in the Mixed Essays, repre-
sents French critical intelligence in its best play-
acute, yet comprehensive; exacting, yet sympathetic;
regardful of nuances and delicately refining, and yet
virile and constructive. Of the importance for mod-
ern England of emphasis on all these qualities of
mind and heart, Arnold was securely convinced.
Moreover, even when his choice of subject is deter«
xxxiv INTRODUCTION.
mined by other than moral considerations, his treat-
ment is apt, none the less, to reveal his ethical bias.
Again and again in his essays on poetry, for example,
it is the substance of poetry that he is chiefly anxious
to handle, while the form is left with incidental analy-
sis. Wordsworth is the poet of joy in widest common-
alty spread — the poet whose criticism of life is most
sound and enduring and salutary. Shelley is afebrile
creature, insecure in his sense of worldly values, " a
beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain." ' The essay on Heine helps
us only mediately to an appreciation of the volatile
beauty of Heine's songs, or to an intenser delight in the
mere surface play of hues and moods in his verse.
From the essay on George Sand, to be sure, we receive
many vivid impressions of the emotional and imagina-
tive scope of French romance ; for this essay was
written con amore in the revivification of an early mood
of devotion, and in an unusually heightened style ;
the essay on Emerson is the one study that has in
places somewhat of the same lyrical intensity and the
same vividness of realization. Yet even in the essay
on George Sand, the essayist is on the whole bent on
revealing the temperament of the woman rather in its
decisive influence on her theories of life than in its
reaction upon her art as art. There is hardly a word
of the Romance as a definite literary form, of George
1 This famous image was probably suggested by a sentence of
Joubert's : " Plato loses himself in the void, but one sees the
play of his wings, one hears their rustle. . . It is good to
breathe his air, but not to live upon him." The translation is
Arnold's own. See his Joubert, in Essays in Criticism, i. 294,
INTRODUCTION. XXXV
Sand's relation to earHer French writers of fiction, or
of her distinctive methods of work as a portrayer of
the great human spectacle. In short, literature as
art, literary forms as definite modes of artistic expres-
sion, the technique of the literary craftsman receive
for the most part from Arnold slight attention.
Perhaps, the one piece of work in which Arnold set
himself with some thoroughness to the discussion of
a purely literary problem was his series of lectures
on Translating Homer. These lectures were pro-
duced before his sense of responsilility for the
moral regeneration of the Philistine had become im-
portunate, and were addressed to an academic audi-
ence. For these reasons, the treatment of literary
topics is more disinterested and less interrupted by
practical considerations. Indeed, as will be presently
noted in illustration of another aspect of Arnold's
work, these lectures contain very subtle and delicate
appreciations, show everywhere exquisite responsive-
ness to changing effects of style, and enrich gratefully
the vocabulary of impressionistic criticism.
Even in these exceptional lectures, however, Arnold's
ethical interest asserts itself. In the course of them
he gives an account of the grand style in poetry, — of
that poetic manner that seems to him to stand highest
in the scale of excellence; and he carefully notes as
an essential of this manner, — of this grand style, — its
moral power ; " it can form the character, ... is
edifying, . . . can refine the raw natural man . . .
can transmute him." ' This definition of the grand
x On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, p. 197.
xxxvi INTRODUCTION.
style will be discussed presently in connection with
Arnold's general theory of poetry ; it is enough to
note here that it illustrates the inseparableness in
Arnold's mind between art and morals.
His description of poetry as a criticism of life has
already been mentioned. This doctrine is early im-
plied in Arnold's writings, for example, in the passage
just quoted from the lectures on Translating Homer;
it becomes more explicit in the Last Words ap-
pended to these lectures, where the critic asserts
that "the noble and profound application of ideas to
life is the most essential part of poetic greatness." 1
It is elaborated in the essays on Wordsworth (1879),
on the Study of Poetry (1880), and on Byron (1881).
"It is important, therefore," the essay on Words-
worth assures us, " to hold fast to this: that poetry is
at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a
poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of
ideas to life, — to the question: How to live." 2 And
in the essay on the Study of Poetry Arnold urges that
" in poetry, as a criticism of life under the conditions
fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth
and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find . . .
as time goes on and as other helps fail, its consolation
and stay." 3
With this doctrine of the indissoluble connection
between the highest poetic excellence and essen-
tial nobleness of subject-matter probably only the
most irreconcilable advocates of art for art's sake
1 On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, p. 295.
2 Essays, ii., ed. 1891, p. 143.
3 Essays, ii., ed. 1S91, p. 5.
INTRODUCTION. xxxvn
would quarrel. So loyal an adherent of art as Walter
Pater suggests a test of poetic " greatness " substan-
tially the same with Arnold's. " It is on the quality
of the matter it informs or controls, its compass, its
variety, its alliance to great ends, or the depth of the
note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the
greatness of literary art depends, as The Divine Comedy,
Paradise Lost, Les M is e rabies, The English Bible, are
great art." ! This may be taken as merely a different
phrasing of Arnold's principle that " the greatness of
a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of
ideas to life — to the question : How to live." Surely,
then, we are not at liberty to press any objection to
Arnold's general theory of poetry on the ground of its
being over-ethical.
There remains nevertheless the question of emphasis.
In the application to special cases of this test of essen-
tial worth either the critic may be constitutionally
biassed in favor of a somewhat restricted range of defi-
nite ideas about life, or even when he is fairly hos-
pitable toward various moral idioms, he may still be so
intent upon making ethical distinctions as to fail to
give their due to the purely artistic qualities-of .poetry.
It is in this latter way that Arnold is most apt to
offend. The emphasis in the discussions of Words-
worth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Gray, and Milton is
prevailingly on the ethical characteristics of each
poet; and the reader carries away from an essay a
vital conception of the play of moral energy and of
spiritual passion in the poet's verse rather than an im-
1 Pater's Appreciations, ed. 1890, p. 36.
xxxvm INTRODUCTION.
pression of his peculiar adumbration of beauty, the
characteristic rhythms of his imaginative movement,
the delicate color modulations on the surface of his
image of life.
It must, however, be borne in mind that Arnold has
specially admitted the incompleteness of his descrip-
tion of poetry as "a criticism of life "; this criticism,
he has expressly added, must be made in conformity
" to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty."
"The profound criticism of life" characteristic of
" the few supreme masters " must exhibit itself " in
indissoluble connection with the laws of poetic truth
and beauty." ' Is there, then, any account to be found
in Arnold of these laws observance of which secures
poetic beauty and truth? Is there any description of
the special ways in which poetic beauty and truth
manifest themselves, of the formal characteristics to be
found in poetry where poetic beauty and truth are
present ? Does Arnold either suggest the methods the
poet must follow to attain these qualities or classify
the various subordinate effects through which poetic
beauty and truth invariably reveal their presence?
The most apposite parts of his writings to search for
some declaration on these points are the lectures on
Translating Homer, and the second series of his essays
which deal chiefly with the study of poetry. Here, if
anywhere, we ought to find a registration of beliefs as
regards the precise nature and source of poetic beauty
and truth.
And indeed throughout all these writings, which run
1 Essays, ii., ed. 1S91, pp. 186-187.
INTRODUCTION. xxxix
through a considerable period of time, Arnold makes
fairly consistent use of a half dozen categories for his
analyses of poetic effects. These categories are sub-
stance and matter, style and manner, diction and
movement. Of the substance of really great poetry we
learn repeatedly that it must be made up of ideas of
profound significance " on man, on nature, and on
human life." ' This is, however, merely the prescrip-
tion already so often noted that poetry, to reach the
highest excellence, must contain a penetrating and
ennobling criticism of life. In the essay on Byron,
however, there is something formally added to this
requisition of "truth and seriousness of substance and
matter " ; besides these, " felicity and perfection of
diction and manner, as these are exhibited in the best
poets, are what constitute a criticism of life made in
conformity with the laws of poetic truth and poetic
beauty." 3 There must then be felicity and perfection
of diction and manner in poetry of the highest order ;
these terms are somewhat vague, but serve at least to
guide us on our analytic way. In the essay on the
Study of Poetry, there is still further progress made in
the description of poetic excellence. " To the style
and manner of the best poetry, their special character,
their accent is given by their diction, and, even yet
more, by their movement. And though we distinguish
between the two characters, the two accents, of supe-
riority," [/. <?., between the superiority that comes from
substance and the superiority that comes from style],
1 Essays, ii., ed. 1891, p. 141.
2 Essays, ii., ed. 1891, p. 187.
xl IN TROD UC TION.
" yet they are nevertheless vitally connected one with
the other. The superior character of truth and ser-
iousness, in the matter and substance of the best poetry,
is inseparable from the superiority of diction and
movement marking its style and manner. The two
superiorities are closely related, and are in steadfast
proportion one to the other. So far as high poetic
truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet's matter
and substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high
poetic stamp of diction and movement be wanting to
his style and manner." '
Now that there is this intimate and necessary union
between a poet's mode of conceiving life and his man-
ner of poetic expression, is hardly disputable. The
image of life in a poet's mind is simply the outside
world transformed by the complex of sensations and
thoughts and emotions peculiar to the poet ; and this
image inevitably frames for itself a visible and audible
expression that delicately utters its individual char-
acter — distills that character subtly through word
and sentence, rhythm and metaphor, image and
figure of speech, and through their integration into a
vital work of art. Moreover, the poet's style is itself
in general the product of the same personality which
determines his image of life, and must therefore be
like his image of life delicately striated with the mark-
ings of his play of thought and feeling and fancy.
The close correspondence, then, between the poet's
subject-matter and his manner or style is indubitable.
The part of Arnold's conclusion or the point in his
1 Essays, ii., ed. 1891, p. 22.
INTRODUCTION. xli
method that is regrettable is the exclusive stress that
he throws on this dependence of style upon worth of
substance. He converts style into a mere function
of the moral quality of a poet's thought about life, and
fails to furnish any delicately studied categories for
the appreciation of poetic style apart from its moral
implications.
Take, for example, the judgments passed in the
Study of Poetry upon various poets ; in every instance
the estimate of the poet's style turns upon the quality
of his thought about life. Is it Chaucer whose right
to be ranked as a classic is mooted ? He cannot be
ranked as a classic because " the substance of " his
poetry has not "high seriousness." 1 Is it Burns
whose relative rank is being fixed ? Burns through
lack of "absolute sincerity" falls short of "high
seriousness," and hence is not to be placed among the
classics. And thus continually with Arnold, effects of
style are merged in moral qualities, and the reader
gains little insight into the refinements of poetical
manner except as these derive directly from the poet's
moral consciousness. The categories of style and
manner, diction and movement, are everywhere subor-
dinated to the categories of substance and matter, are
treated as almost wholely derivative. " Felicity and
perfection of diction and manner," wherever they are
admittedly present, are usually explained as the direct
result of the poet's lofty conception of life. Such a
treatment of questions of style does not further us
much on our way to a knowledge of the "laws of
poetic beauty and poetic truth."
1 Essays, ii. , ed. 1891, p. 33.
xlii INTRODUCTION.
Doubtless somewhat more disinterested analyses of
style may be found in the lectures on Translating
Homer. These discussions do not establish laws, but
they at least consider poetic excellence as for the
moment dependent on something else than the moral
mood of the poet. For example, the grand style is
analyzed into two varieties, the grand style in severity
and the grand style in simplicity. Each of these
styles is described and illustrated so that it enters into
the reader's imagination and increases his sensitive-
ness to poetic excellence. 1 Again, a bit later in the
lectures, the distinction between real simplicity and
sophisticated simplicity in poetic style is drawn with
exquisite delicacy of appreciation. 2 Here there is
an effort to deal directly with artistic effects for
their own sake and apart from their significance
as expressive of ethos. Yet, even in these cases, the
effort to be faithful to the artistic point of view is
only partly successful. For example, the essential
beauty of the grand style in severity is referred to our
consciousness of " the great personality . . . the
noble nature, in the poet its author"; 3 and the sim-
plesse of Tennyson's style is explained at least psycho-
logically, if not morally, as resulting from the subtle
sophistication of his thought. 4
To bring together, then, the results of this some-
what protracted analysis : Arnold ostensibly admits
that poetry, to be of the highest excellence, must, in
1 On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, pp. 265-267.
9 Ibid., p. 288.
3 Ibid., p. 268.
4 Ibid., p. 288.
INTRODUCTION. xliii
addition to containing a criticism of life of profound
significance, conform to the laws of poetic beauty and
truth. He accepts as necessary categories for the
appreciation of poetical excellence style and manner,
diction and movement. Yet his most important gen-
eral assertion about these latter purely formal deter-
minations of poetry is that they are inseparably
connected with substance and matter; similarly, when-
ever he discusses artistic effects, he is apt to find them
interesting simply as serving to interpret the artist's
prevailing mood toward life; and even where, as is at
times doubtless the case, he escapes for the moment
from his ethical interest and appreciates with imagina-
tive delicacy the individual quality of a poem or a
poet's style, he is nearly always found sooner or later
explaining this quality as originating in the poet's
peculiar ethos. As for any systematic or even inci-
dental determination of " the laws of poetic beauty
and truth," we search for it through his pages in vain.
But it would be wrong to attribute this lack in
Arnold's essays of theorizing about questions of art
solely to his preoccupation with conduct. For theory
in general and for abstractions in general, — for all
sorts of philosophizing, — Arnold openly professes his
dislike. " Perhaps we shall one day learn," he says in
his essay on Wordsworth, " to make this proposition
general, and to say: Poetry is the reality, philosophy
the illusion." ! This distrust of the abstract and the
1 Essays, ii., ed. 1891, p. 149.
xliv INTRODUCTION.
purely theoretical shows itself throughout his literary
criticism and determines many of its characteristics.
His hostility to systems and to system-makers has
already been pointed out ; this hostility admits of no
exception in favor of the systematic critic. " There is
the judgment of ignorance, the judgment of incom-
patibility, the judgment of envy and jealousy. Fi-
nally, there is the systematic judgment, and this judg-
ment is the most worthless of all. . . Its author has
not really his eye upon the professed object of his
criticism at all, but upon something else which he
wants to prove by means of that object. He neither
really tells us, therefore, anything about the object,
nor anything about his own ignorance of the object.
He never fairly looks at it; he is looking at something
else." ' This hypnotizing effect is what Arnold first
objects to and fears in a theory; the critic with a
theory is bound to find what he goes in search of, and
nothing else. He goes out — to change somewhat
one of Arnold's own figures — like Saul, the son of
Kish, in search of his father's asses; and he comes
back with the authentic animals instead of the tradi-
tional windfall of a kingdom.
Nor is preoccupation with a pet theory the sole in-
capacity that Arnold finds in the systematic critic;
such a critic is almost sure to be over-intellectualized,
a victim of abstractions and definitions, dependent for
his judgments on conceptions, and lacking in temper-
amental sensitiveness to the appeal of literature as
art. He is merely a triangulator of the landscape of
1 Mixed Essays, ed. 1883, p. 209.
INTRODUCTION. xlv
literature, and moves resolutely in his process of tri-
angulation from one fixed point to another; he finds
significant only such parts of his experience as he can
sum up in a definite abstract formula at some one of
these arbitrary halting places; his ultimate opinion of
the ground he covers is merely the sum total of a com-
paratively small number of such abstract expressions.
To the manifold wealth of the landscape in color, in
light, in shade, and in poetic suggestiveness, the sys-
tem-monger, the theoretical critic, has all the time
been blind.
Knowledge, too, even though it be not severely sys-
tematized, may interfere with the free play of critical
intelligence. An oversupply of unvitalized facts or
ideas, even though these facts or ideas be not organ-
ized into an importunate theory, may prove disastrous
to the critic. The danger to which the critic is
exposed from this source, Arnold has amusingly set
forth in his Last Words on Homeric translation :
" Much as Mr. Newman was mistaken when he talked
of my rancour, he is entirely right when he talks of my
ignorance. And yet, perverse as it seems to say so,
I sometimes find myself wishing, when dealing with
these matters of poetical criticism, that my ignor-
ance were even greater than it is. To handle these
matters properly, there is needed a poise so perfect
that the least overweight in any direction tends to
destroy the balance. Temper destroys it, a crotchet
destroys it, even erudition may destroy it. To press
to the sense of the thing with which one is dealing,
not to go off on some collateral issue about the thing,
is the hardest matter in the world. The ' thing
xlvi INTRODUCTION.
itself ' with which one is here dealing — the critical
perception of poetic truth — is of all things the most
volatile, elusive, and evanescent; by even pressing too
impetuously after it, one runs the risk of losing it.
The critic of poetry should have the finest tact, the
nicest moderation, the most free, flexible, and elastic
spirit imaginable; he should be, indeed, the 'ondoyant
et divers,' the undulating and diverse being of Mon-
taigne. The less he can deal with his object simply
and freely, the more things he has to take into ac-
count in dealing with it, — the more, in short, he has
to encumber himself, — so much the greater force of
spirit he needs to retain his elasticity. But one can-
not exactly have this greater force by wishing for it;
so, for the force of spirit one has, the load put upon it
is often heavier than it will well bear. The late
Duke of Wellington said of a certain peer that ' it
was a great pity his education had been so far too
much for his abilities.' In like manner one often sees
erudition out of all proportion to its owner's critical
faculty. Little as I know, therefore, I am always ap-
prehensive, in dealing with poetry, lest even that little
should prove too much for my abilities." !
Discreet ignorance, then, is Arnold's counsel of
perfection to the would-be critic. And, accordingly,
he himself is desultory from conscientious motives and
unsystematic by fixed rule. There are two passages
in his writings where he explains confidentially his
methods and his reasons for choosing them. The
first occurs in a letter of 1864 ; "My sinuous, easy.
1 On Translating Homer, p. 245.
INTRODUCTION. xlvii
unpolemical mode of proceeding has been adopted
by me first because I really think it the best way
of proceeding, if one wants to get at, and keep
with, truth; secondly, because I am convinced only
by a literary form of this kind being given to them
can ideas such as mine ever gain any access in a
country such as ours." ' The second passage occurs
in the Preface to his first series of Essays in Criticism
(1865): " Indeed, it is not in my nature — some of my
critics would rather say not in my power — to dispute
on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obsti-
nately. To try and approach truth on one side after
another, not to strive or cry, not to persist in pressing
forward, on any one side, with violence and self-will,
it is only thus, it seems to me, that mortals may hope
to gain any vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom
we shall never see except in outline. He who will do
nothing but fight impetuously toward her, on his own
one favorite particular line, is inevitably destined to
run his head into the folds of the black robe in which
she is wrapped." 2
Such, then, is Arnold's ideal of critical method. The
critic is not to move from logical point to point, as, for
example, Francis Jeffrey was wont, in his essays, to
move, with an advocate's devotion to system and de-
sire to make good some definite conclusion. Rather
the critic is to give rein to his temperament ;
he is to make use of intuitions, imaginations, hints
that touch the heart, as well as abstract principles,
syllogisms, and arguments ; and so he is to reach out
1 Letters, i. 282. 2 Essays, i., ed. 1891, p. v.
xlviii INTRODUCTION.
tentatively through all his powers after truth if haply
he may find her ; in the hope that thus, keeping close
to the concrete aspects of his subject, he may win to
an ever more inclusive and intimate command of its
surface and configurations. The type of mind most
apt for this kind of critical work is the "free, flexible
and elastic spirit," described in the passage from the
Last Words quoted a moment ago ; the " undulating
and diverse being of Montaigne."
A critic of this type will palpably concern himself
slightly with abstractions, with theorizings, with
definitions. And indeed Arnold's unwillingness to
define becomes at times almost ludicrous. " Noth-
ing has raised more questioning among my critics
than these words — noble, the grand style. . . Alas !
the grand style is the last matter in the world for
verbal definition to deal with adequately. One may
say of it as is said of faith: 'One must feel it in
order to know it.' " 1 Similarly in the Study of Poetry,
Arnold urges : " Critics give themselves great labour
to draw out what in the abstract constitutes the
characters of a high quality of poetry. It is much
better to have recourse to concrete examples. . .
If we are asked to define this mark and accent in the
abstract, our answer must be : No, for we should
thereby be darkening the question, not clearing it."
Again : " I may discuss what in the abstract consti-
tutes the grand style; but that sort of general dis-
cussion never much helps our judgment of particular
instances." 2
1 On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, p. 264.
2 Ibid., p. 194.
IN TROD UCTION. xl ix
These passages are characteristic; rarely indeed
does Arnold consent to commit himself to the control
of a definition. He prefers to convey into his readers'
mind a living realization of the thing or the object
he treats of rather than to put before them its logically
articulated outlines.
Moreover, when he undertakes the abstract dis-
cussion of a general term, he is apt to be capricious
in his treatment of it and to follow in his subdivisions
and classifications some external clew rather than
logical structure. In the essay on Celtic Literature
he discusses the various ways of handling nature in
poetry and finds four such ways — the conventional
way, the faithful way, the Greek way, and the magical
way. The classification recommends itself through its
superficial charm and facility, yet rests on no psycho-
logical truth, or at any rate carries with it, as Arnold
treats it, no psychological suggestions ; it gives no
swift insight into the origin in the poet's mind and
heart of these different modes of conceiving of nature.
Hence, the classification, as Arnold uses it, is merely a
temporary makeshift for rather gracefully grouping
effects, not an analytic interpretation of these effects
through a reduction of them to their varying sources
in thought and feeling.
This may be taken as typical of Arnold's critical
methods. As we read his essays we have no sense of
making definite progress in the comprehension of lit-
erature as an art among arts, as well as in the apprecia-
tion of an individual author or poem. We are not
being intellectually oriented as we are in reading the
most stimulating critical work; we are not getting an
1 INTRODUCTION.
ever surer sense of the points of the compass. Essays,
to have this orienting power, need not be continually
prating of theories and laws; they need not be
rabidly scientific in phrase or in method. But they
must issue from a mind that has come to an under-
standing with itself about the genesis of art in the
genius of the artist; about the laws that, when the
utmost plea has been made for freedom and caprice,
regulate artistic production ; about the history and
evolution of art forms ; and about the relations of
the arts among themselves and to the other activities
of life. It may fairly be doubted if Arnold had ever
wrought out for himself consistent conclusions on
all or on most of these topics. Indeed, the mere
juxtaposition of his name and a formal list of these
topics suggests the kind of mock-serious depreca-
tory paragraph with which the "unlearned belletristic
trifler " was wont to reply to such strictures — a para-
graph sure to carry in its tail a stinging bit of sarcasm
at the expense of pedantry and unenlightened formal-
ism. And yet, great as must be every one's respect for
the thorough scholarship and widely varied accom-
plishment that Arnold made so light of and carried off
so easily, the doubt must nevertheless be suggested
whether a more vigorous grasp on theory, and a more
consistent habit of thinking out literary questions to
their principles, would not have invigorated his work
as a critic and given it greater permanence and richer
suggestiveness.
INTRODUCTION.
VI.
It is, then, as an appreciator of what may perhaps
be called the spiritual qualities of literature that
Arnold is most distinctively a furtherer of criticism.
An appreciator of beauty, — of true beauty wherever
found, — that is what he would willingly be; and yet,
as the matter turns out, the beauty that he most surely
enjoys and reveals has invariably a spiritual aroma, —
is the finer breath of intense spiritual life. Or, if
spiritual be too mystical a word to apply to Homer
and Goethe, perhaps Arnold should rather be termed
an appreciator of beauty that is the effluence of noble
character.
The importance of appreciation in criticism, Arnold
has himself described in one of the Mixed Essays :
"Admiration is salutary and formative; . . . but
things admirable are sown wide, and are to be gathered
here and gathered there, not all in one place ; and
until we have gathered them wherever they are to be
found, we have not known the true salutariness and
formativeness of admiration. The quest is large;
and occupation with the unsound or half sound, de-
light in the not good or less good, is a sore let and
hindrance to us. Release from such occupation and
delight sets us free for ranging farther, and for per-
fecting our sense of beauty. He is the happy man,
who, encumbering himself with the love of nothing
which is not beautiful, is able to embrace the greatest
number of things beautiful in his life." '
1 Mixed Essays, ed. 1883, p. 210.
Hi INTRODUCTION.
On this disinterested quest then, for the beautiful,
Arnold in his essays nominally fares forth. Yet cer-
tain limitations in his appreciation, over and beyond
his prevalent ethical interest, must forthwith be noted.
Music, painting, and sculpture have seemingly noth-
ing to say to him. In his Letters there are only a few
allusions to any of these arts, and such as occur do
not surpass in significance the comments of the chance
loiterer in foreign galleries or visitor of concert rooms.
In his essays there are none of the correlations be-
tween the effects and methods of literature and those
of kindred arts that may do so much either to indi-
vidualize or to illustrate the characteristics of poe-
try. For Arnold, literature and poetry make up the
whole range of art.
Within these limits, however, — the limits imposed by
preoccupation with conduct and by carelessness of all
arts except literature, — Arnold has been a prevailing
revealer of beauty. Not his most hostile critic can
question the delicacy of his perception, so far as he
allows his perception free play. On the need of nice
and ever nicer discriminations in the apprehension of
the shifting values of literature, he has himself often
insisted. Critics who let their likes and dislikes assert
themselves turbulently, to the destruction of fine dis-
tinctions, always fall under Arnold's condemnation.
" When Mr. Palgrave dislikes a thing, he feels no pres-
sure constraining him, either to try his dislike closely
or to express it moderately ; he does not mince mat-
ters, he gives his dislike all its own way. . . He dis-
likes the architecture of the Rue Rivoli, and he puts
it on the level with the architecture of Belgravia and
INTRODUCTION. liii
Gower Street ; he lumps them all together in one con-
demnation ; he loses sight of the shade, the distinction
which is here everything." ' For a similar blurring
of impressions, Professor Newman is taken to task,
though in Newman's case the faulty appreciations are
due to a different cause: " Like all learned men, ac-
customed to desire definite rules, he draws his con-
clusions too absolutely ; he wants to include too much
under his rules ; he does not quite perceive that in
poetical criticism the shade, the fine distinction, is
everything ; and that, when he has once missed this,
in all he says he is in truth but beating the air." 2 To
appreciate literature more and more sensitively in
terms of " an undulating and diverse temperament,"
this is the ideal that Arnold puts before literary criti-
cism.
His own appreciations of poetry are probably
richest, most discriminating, and most disinterested in
the lectures on Translating Homer. The imaginative
tact is unfailing with which he-renders the contour
and the surface-qualities of the various poems that he
comments on; and equally noteworthy is the divining
instinct with which he captures the spirit of each
poet and sets it before us with a phrase or a symbol.
The " inversion and pregnant conciseness " of Milton's
style, its "laborious and condensed fullness"; the
plainspokenness, freshness, vigorousness, and yet
fancifulness and curious complexity of Chapman's
style; Spenser's " sweet and easy slipping move'
1 Essays, i., ed. 1891, p. 73.
2 On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, p. 246.
liv INTRODUCTION,
ment"; Scott's "bastard epic style"; the "one
continual falsetto " of Macaulay's " pinchbeck Roman
Ballads "j all these characterizations are delicately
sure in their phrasing and suggestion, and are the
clearer because they are made to stand in continual
contrast with Homer's style, the rapidity, directness,
simplicity, and nobleness of which Arnold keeps ever
present in our consciousness. Incidentally, too, such
suggestive discriminations as that between simplesse
and simplicity the " semblance " of simplicity and the
" real quality," are made ours by the critic, as he goes
on with his pursuit of the essential qualities of
Homeric thought and diction. To read these lectures
is a thoroughly tempering process; a process that
renders the mind and imagination permanently finer
in texture, more elastic, more sensitively sure in tone,
and subtly responsive to the demands of good art.
The essay on the Study of Poetry which was written
as preface to Ward's English Poets is also rich in
appreciation, and at times almost as disinterested as
the lectures on Homer ; yet perhaps never quite so
disinterested. For in the Study of Poetry Arnold is
persistently aware of his conception of " the grand
style "and bent on winning his readers to make it
their own. Only poets who attain this grand style
deserve to be "classics," and the continual insistence
on the note of "high seriousness" — its presence or
absence — becomes rather wearisome. Moreover,
Arnold's preoccupation with this ultimate manner and
quality tends to limit a trifle the freedom and delicate
truth of his appreciations of other manners and minor
qualities. At times, one is tempted to charge Arnold
IN TR OD UC T/OAT. 1 v
with some of the unresponsiveness of temperament
that he ascribes to systematic critics, and to find
even Arnold himself under the perilous sway of a fixed
idea. Yet, when all is said, the Study of Poetry is full
of fine things and does much to widen the range of ap-
preciation and at the same time to make appreciation
more certain. " The liquid diction, the fluid move-
ment of Chaucer, his large, free, sound representation
of things"; Burns's "touches of piercing, sometimes
almost intolerable pathos," his " archness," too, and his
" soundness" ; Shelley, "that beautiful spirit building
his many-coloured haze of words and images ' Pinna-
cled dim in the intense inane' "; these, and other inter-
pretations like them, are easily adequate and carry the
qualities of each poet readily into the minds and
imaginations of sympathetic readers. Appreciation is
much the richer for this essay on the Study of Poetry
Nor must Arnold's suggestive appreciations of prose
.Style be forgotten. Several of them have passed into
standard accounts of clearly recognized varieties of
prose diction. Arnold's phrasing of the matter has
made all sensitive English readers permanently more
sensitive to " the warm glow, blithe movement, and
soft pliancy of life " of the Attic style, and also perma-
nently more hostile to "the over-heavy richness and
encumbered gait " of the Asiatic style. Equally good
is his account of the Corinthian style : "It has glitter
without warmth, rapidity without ease, effectiveness
without charm. Its characteristic is that it has no
soul; all it exists for, is to get its ends, to make its
points, to damage its adversaries, to be admired, to
triumph. A style so bent on effect at the expense
1 vi IN TROD UCTION.
of soul, simplicity, and delicacy; a style so little
studious of the charm of the great models; so far
from classic truth and grace, must surely be said to
have the note of provinciality." 1 "Middle-class
Macaulayese " is his name for Hepworth Dixon's
style; a style which he evidently regards as likely to
gain favor and establish itself. " 1 call it Macau-
layese . . . because it has the same internal and ex-
ternal characteristics as Macaulay's style; the external
characteristic being a hard metallic movement with
nothing of the soft play of life, and the internal char-
acteristic being a perpetual semblance of hitting the
right nail on the head without the reality. And I call
it middle-class Macaulayese, because it has these
faults without the compensation of great studies and
of conversance with great affairs, by which Macaulay
partly redeemed them." ; It will, of course, be noted
that these latter appreciations deal for the most part
with divergences from the beautiful in style, but they
none the less quicken and refine the aesthetic sense.
Finally, throughout the two series of miscellaneous
essays there is, in the midst of much business with
ethical matters, an often-recurring free play of imagi-
nation in the interests, solely and simply, of beauty.
Many are the happy windfalls these essays offer of
delicate interpretation both of poetic effect and of
creative movement, and many are the memorable
phrases and symbols by which incidentally the essen-
tial quality of a poet or prose writer is securely lodged
in the reader's consciousness.
1 Essays, i., ed. 1891, p. 75.
* Friendship's Garland, ed. 1883, p. 279.
IN TROD UCTION. lvii
And yet, wide ranging and delicately sensitive as are
Arnold's appreciations, the feeling will assert itself, in
a final survey of his work in literary criticism, that he
nearly always has designs on his readers and that
appreciation is a means to an end. The end in view
is the exorcism of the spirit of Philistinism. Arnold's
conscience is haunted by this hideous apparition as
Luther's was by the devil, and he is all the time
metaphorically throwing his inkstand at the spectre.
Or, to put the matter in another way, his one dominat-
ing wish is to help modern Englishmen to "conquer
the hard unintelligence," which is "their bane; to
supple and reduce it by culture, by a growth in the
variety, fullness, and sweetness of their spiritual life " ;
and the appreciative interpretation of literature to as
wide a circle of readers as possible seems to him one
of the surest ways of thus educing in his fellow-coun-
trymen new spiritual qualities. It must not be for-
gotten that Matthew Arnold was the son of Thomas
Arnold, master of Rugby ; there is in him a hereditary
pedagogic bias — an inevitable trend toward moral
suasion. The pedagogic spirit has suffered a sea-
change into something rich and strange, and yet
traces of its origin linger about it. Criticism with
Arnold is rarely, if ever, irresponsible; it is our school-
master to bring us to culture.
In a letter of 1863 Arnold speaks of the great trans-
formation which " in this concluding half of the cen-
tury the English spirit is destined to undergo." " I
shall do," he adds, " what I can for this movement in
literature; freer perhaps in that sphere than I could
be in any other, but with the risk always before me, if
lvii i IN TROD UCTION.
I cannot charm the wild beast of Philistinism while
I am trying to convert him, of being torn in pieces
by him." 1 In charming the wild beast Arnold ulti-
mately succeeded; and yet there is a sense in which he
fell a victim to his very success. The presence of the
beast, and the necessity of fluting to him debonairly
and winningly, fastened themselves on Arnold's imagi-
nation and subdued him to a comparatively narrow
range of subjects and set of interests. From the point
of view, at least, of what is desirable in appreciative
criticism Arnold was injured by his sense of responsi-
bility ; he lacks the detachment and the delicate
mobility that are the redeeming traits of modern
dilettantism.
If, then, we regard Arnold as a writer with a task to
accomplish, with certain definite regenerative pur-
poses to carry out, with a body of original ideas about
the conduct of life to inculcate, we must conclude that
he succeeded admirably in his work, followed out his
ideas with persistence and temerity through many
regions of human activity, and embodied them with
unwearying ingenuity and persuasiveness in a wide
range of discussions. If, on the other hand, we con-
sider him solely as a literary critic, we are forced to
admit that he is not the ideal literary critic; he is not
the ideal literary critic because he is so much more,
and because his interests lie so decisively outside of
art. Nor is this opinion meant to imply an ultimate
theory of art for art's sake, or to suggest any limita-
tion of criticism to mere impressionism or appreciation.
1 Letters, ed. 1896, i. 240.
INTRODUCTION. lix
Literature must be known historically and philo-
sophically before it can be adequately appreciated ;
that is emphatically true. Art may or may not be
justifiable solely as it is of service to society; that
need not be debated. But, in any event, literary
criticism, if it is to reach its utmost effectiveness,
must regard works of art for the time being as self-
justified integrations of beauty and truth, and so
regarding them must record and interpret their power
and their charm. And this temporary isolating proc-
ess is just the process which Arnold very rarely, for
the reasons that have been traced in detail, is willing
or able to go through with.
VII.
When we turn to consider Arnold's literary style,
we are forced to admit that this, too, has suffered from
the strenuousness of his moral purpose; it has been
unduly sophisticated, here and there, because of his
desire to charm " the wild beast of Philistinism."
To this purpose and this desire is owing, at least in
part, that falsetto note — that half-querulous, half-
supercilious artificiality of tone, — that is now and
then to be heard in his writing. In point of fact, it
would be easy to exaggerate the extent to which this
note is audible ; an unprejudiced reader will find long
continuous passages of even Arnold's most elaborately
designed writing free from any trace of undue self-
consciousness or of gentle condescension. And yet
it is undeniable that when, apart from his Letters.
Arnold's prose, as a whole, is compared with that ot
lx introduction:
such a writer, for example, as Cardinal Newman,
there is in Arnold's style, as the ear listens for the
quality of the bell metal, not quite the same beauti-
fully clear and sincere resonance. There seems to be
now and then some unhappy warring of elements,
some ill-adjustment of overtones, a trace of some flaw
in mixing or casting.
Are not these defects in Arnold's style due to his
somewhat self-conscious attempt to fascinate a recal-
citrant public? Is it not the assumption of a manner
that jars on us often in Arnold's less happy moments?
Has he not the pose of the man who overdoes bravado
with the hope of getting cleverly through a pass which
he feels a bit trying to his nerves? Arnold has a keen
consciousness of the very stupid beast of Philistinism
lying in wait for him ; and in the stress of the moment
he is guilty of a little exaggeration of manner; he is
just a shade unnatural in his flippancy; he treads his
measure with an unduly mincing flourish.
Arnold's habit of half-mocking self-depreciation and
of insincere apology for supposititious personal short-
comings has already been mentioned; to his contro-
versial writings, particularly, it gives often a raspingly
supercilious tone. He insists with mock humbleness
that he is a " mere belletristic trifler "; that he has no
"system of philosophy with principles coherent, inter-
dependent, subordinate, and derivative " to help him in
the discussion of abstract questions. He assures us
that he is merely " a feeble unit " of the " English
middle class "; he deprecates being called a professor
because it is a title he shares " with so many dis-
tinguished men — Professor Pepper, Professor Ander-
INTRODUCTION. lxi
•on, Professor Frickel, and others — who adorn it," he
feels, much more than he does. These mock apologies
are always amusing and yet a bit exasperating, too.
Why should Arnold regard it, we ask ourselves, as
such a relishing joke — the possibility that he has a
defect? The implication of almost arrogant self-satis-
faction is troublesomely present to us. Such passages
certainly suggest that Arnold had an ingrained con-
tempt for the " beast " he was charming.
Yet, when all is said, much of this supercilious satire
is irresistibly droll, and refuses to be gainsaid. One
of his most effective modes of ridiculing his opponents
is through conjuring up imaginary scenes in which
some ludicrous aspect of his opponent's case or char-
acter is thrown into diverting prominence. Is it the
pompous, arrogant self-satisfaction of the prosperous
middle-class tradesman that Arnold wishes to satirize?
And more particularly is it the futility of the Saturday
Review in holding up Benthamism — the systematic
recognition of such a smug man's ideal of selfish hap-
piness — as the true moral ideal? Arnold represents
himself as travelling on a suburban railway on which
a murder has recently been committed, and as falling
into chat with the middle-class frequenters of this
route. The demoralization of these worthy folk,
Arnold assures us, was " something bewildering."
" Myself a transcendentalist (as the Saturday Review
knows), I escaped the infection ; and, day after day,
I used to ply my agitated fellow-travellers with all the
consolations which my transcendentalism would nat-
urally suggest to me. I reminded them how Caesar
refused to take precautions against assassination, be-
lxii INTRODUCTION.
cause life was not worth having at the price of an
ignoble solicitude for it. I reminded them what
insignificant atoms we all are in the life of the world.
'Suppose the worst to happen,' I said, addressing a
portly jeweller from Cheapside; ' suppose even your-
self to be the victim; il ny a pas d'homme ne'cessaire.
We should miss you for a day or two upon the Wood-
ford Branch; but the great mundane movement
would still go on, the gravel walks of your villa would
still be rolled, dividends would still be paid at the
Bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still be
the old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street.' All
was of no avail. Nothing could moderate in the
bosom of the great English middle class, their passion-
ate, absorbing, almost bloodthirsty clinging to life."
This is, of course, " admirable fooling"; and equally
of course, the little imaginary scene serves per-
fectly the purposes of Arnold's argument and turns
into ridicule the narrowness and overweening self-
importance of the smug tradesman.
Another instance of Arnold's ability to conjure up
fancifully a scene of satirical import may be adduced
from the first chapter of Culture and Anarchy. Arnold
has been ridiculing the worship of mere " bodily
health and vigour " as ends in themselves. " Why,
one has heard people," he exclaims, " fresh from read-
ing certain articles of the Times on the Registrar
General's returns of marriages and births in this coun-
try, who would talk of our large English families in
quite a solemn strain, as if they had something in
itself, beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in them ;
as if the British Philistine would have only to present
INTRODUCTION. lxiii
himself before the Great Judge with his twelve chil-
dren, in order to be received among the sheep as a
matter of right ! " '
It is noticeable that only in such scenes and pas-
ages as these is Arnold's imagination active — scenes
and passages that are a bit satirical, not to say mali-
cious; on the other hand, scenes that have the limpid
light and the winning quality of many in Cardinal
Newman's writings — scenes that rest the eye and
commend themselves simply and graciously to the
heart — are in Arnold's prose hardly, if ever, to be
found. This seernr the less easy to explain inasmuch
as his poetry, though of course not exceptionally
rich in color, nevertheless shows everywhere a deli-
cately sure sense of the surface of life. Nor is it
only the large sweep of the earth-areas or the
diversified play of the human spectacle that is
absent from Arnold's prose ; his imagination does
not even make itself exceptionally felt through con-
crete phrasing or warmth of coloring; his style is
usually intellectual almost to the point of wanness, and
has rarely any of the heightened quality of so-called
poetic prose. In point of fact, this conventional re-
straint in Arnold's style, this careful adherence to the
mood of prose, is a very significant matter ; it distin-
guishes Arnold both as a writer and as a critic of life
from such men as Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin. The mean-
ing of this quietly conventional manner will be later
considered in the discussion of Arnold's relation to
his age.
The two pieces of writing where Arnold's style has
1 Selections, p. 158.
lxiv INTRODUCTION.
most fervor and imaginative glow are the essay on
George Sand and the discourse upon Emerson. In
each case he was returning in the choice of his sub-
ject to an earlier enthusiasm, and was reviving a mood
that had for him a certain romantic consecration.
George Sand had opened for him, while he was still
at the University, a whole world of rich and half-
fearful imaginative experience ; a world where he had
delighted to follow through glowing southern land-
scapes the journeyings of picturesquely rebellious
heroes and heroines, whose passionate declamation laid
an irresistible spell on his English fancy. Her love
and portrayal of rustic nature had also come to him
as something graciously different from the saner and
more moral or spiritual interpretation of rustic life to
be found in Wordsworth's poems. Her personality,
in all its passionate sincerity and with pathetically
unrewarded aspirations, had imposed itself on Arnold's
imagination both as this personality was revealed in
her books and as it was afterward encountered in
actual life. All these early feelings Arnold revives in
a memorial essay written in 1877, one year after
George Sand's death. From first to last the essay has
a brooding sincerity of tone, an unconsidering frank-
ness, and an intensity and color of phrase that are
noteworthy. The descriptions of nature, both of the
landscapes to be found in George Sand's romances and
of those in the midst of which she herself lived, have
a luxuriance and sensuousness of surface that Arnold
rarely condescends to. The tone of unguarded devo-
tion may be represented by part of the concluding
paragraph of the essay: "It is silent, that eloquent
INTRODUCTION. Ixv
voice ! it is sunk, that noble, that speaking head!
We sum up, as we best can, what she said to us, and
we bid her adieu. From many hearts in many lands
a troop of tender and grateful regrets converge
toward her humble churchyard in Berry. Let them
be joined by these words of sad homage from one of
a nation which she esteemed, and which knew her
very little and very ill." ' There can be no question
of the passionate sincerity and the poetic beauty of
this passage.
Comparable in atmosphere and tone to this essay on
George Sand is the discourse on Emerson, in certain
parts of which Arnold again has the courage of his
emotions. In the earlier paragraphs there is the same
revivification of a youthful mood as in the essay on
George Sand. There is also the same only half-
restrained pulsation in the rhythm, an emotional throb
that at times almost produces an effect of metre.
" Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at
Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my
memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible
season of youth hears such voices! they are a posses-
sion to him forever." 2 Of this discourse, however,
only the introduction and the conclusion are of this
intense, self-communing passionateness; the analysis
of Emerson's qualities as writer and thinker, that
makes up the greater part of the discourse, has
Arnold's usual colloquial, self-consciously wary tone.
A fairly complete survey of the characteristics of
Arnold's style may perhaps best be obtained by rec-
1 Mixed Essays, ed. 1883, p. 260.
2 Discourses in America, ed. 1894, p. 138.
lxvi INTRODUCTION.
ognizing in his prose writings four distinct manners.
First may be mentioned his least compromising,
severest, most exact style; it is most consistently
present in the first of the Mixed Essays, that on
Democracy (1861). The sentences are apt to be
long and periodic. The structure of the thought
is defined by means of painstakingly accurate articu-
lations. Progress in the discussion is systematic and
is from time to time conscientiously noted. The
tone is earnest, almost anxious. A strenuous, system-
atic, responsible style, we may call it. Somewhat
mitigated in its severities, somewhat less palpably
official, it remains the style of Arnold's technical
reports upon education and of great portions of his
writings on religious topics. It is, however, most
adequately exhibited in the essay on Democracy.
Simpler in tone, easier, more colloquial, more casual,
is the style that Arnold uses in his literary essays, in
the uncontroversial parts of the lectures on Trans-
lating Homer, and in Culture and Anarchy. This
style is characterized by its admirable union of ease,
simplicity, and strength; by the affability of its tone,
an affability, however, that never degenerates into
over-familiarity or loses dignified restraint; by its
disregard of method, or of the more pretentious
manifestations of method; and by the delicate cer-
tainty, with which, when at its best, it takes the
reader, despite its apparently casual movement, over
the essential aspects of the subject under discussion.
This is really Arnold's most distinctive manner, and it
will require, after his two remaining manners have been
briefly noted, some further analysis.
■IN TR OD UC TION. 1 X V ii
Arnold's third style is most apt to appear in contro-
versial writings or in his treatment of subjects where he
is particularly aware of his enemy, or particularly bent
on getting a hearing from the inattentive through
cleverly malicious satire, or particularly desirous of
carrying things off with a nonchalant air. It appears
in the controversial parts of the lectures on Trans-
lating Homer, in many chapters of Culture and
Anarchy, and runs throughout Friendship 's Garland.
Its peculiarly rasping effect upon many readers has
already been described. It is responsible for much
of the prejudice against Arnold's prose.
Arnold's fourth style — intimate, rich in color,
intense in feeling, almost lyrical in tone — is the style
that has just been characterized in the discussion of
the essays on George Sand and on Emerson. There
are not many passages in Arnold's prose where this
style has its way with him. But these passages are
so individual, and seem to reveal Arnold with such
novelty and truth, that the style that pervades them
deserves to be put by itself.
The style usually taken as characteristically
Arnold's is that here classed as his second, with a
generous admixture of the third. Many of the
qualities of this style have already been suggested as
illustrative of certain aspects of Arnold's temperament
or habits of thought. Various important points, how-
ever, still remain to be appreciated.
Colloquial in its rhythms and its idiom this style
surely is. It is fond of assenting to its own proposi-
tions; "well" and "yes" often begin its sentences —
sis^ns of its casual and tentative mode of advance.
Jxviii INTRODUCTION.
Arnold's frequent use of "well" and "yes" and
neglect of the anxiously demonstrative "now," at the
opening of his sentences mark unmistakably the
unrigorousness of his method. An easily negligent
treatment of the sentence, too, is often noticeable; a
subject is left suspended while phrase follows phrase,
or even while clause follows clause, until, quite as in
ordinary talk, the subject must be repeated, the begin-
ning of the sentence must be brought freshly to mind.
Often Arnold ends a sentence and begins the next
with the same word or phrase; this trick is better
suited to talk than to formal discourse. Indeed,
Arnold permits himself not a few of the inaccuracies
of everyday speech. He uses the cleft infinitive; ' he
introduces relative clauses with superfluous " and " *
or "but"; 3 he confuses the present participle with
the verbal noun and speaks, for example, of " the
creating a current"; and he usually "tries and
does " a thing instead of " trying to do " it. Finally,
his prose abounds in exclamations and in Italicized
words or phrases, and so takes on much of the rhythm
and manner of talk. A brief quotation from Literature
and Dogma will make this clear. " But the gloomy,
oppressive dream is now over. ' Let us return to
Nature!' And all the world salutes with pride and
joy the Renascence, and prays to Heaven : ' Oh, that
Ishmael might live before thee ! ' Surely the future
belongs to this brilliant newcomer, with his animating
maxim: Let us return to Nature! Ah, what pitfalls
1 Selections, p. 116, 1. 24. 2 Selections, p. 114, 1. 6.
* Essays in Criticism, ed. 1891, i. 88.
INTRODUCTION. lxix
are in that word Nature ! Let us return to art and
science, which are a part of Nature; yes. Let us
return to a proper conception of righteousness, to a
true sense of the method and secret of Jesus, which
have been all denaturalized; yes. But, ' Let us return
to Nature!' — do you mean that we are to give full
swing to our inclinations? " ' The colloquial character
of these exclamations and the search, through the use
of Italics, for stress like the accent of speech are
unmistakable.
Arnold's fundamental reason, conscious or uncon-
scious, for the adoption of this colloquial tone and
manner, may probably be found in the account of the
ultimate purpose of all his writing, given near the close
of Culture and Anarchy j he aims, not to inculcate an
absolutely determinate system of truth, but to stir his
readers into the keenest possible self-questioning over
the worth of their stock ideas. " Socrates has drunk
his hemlock and is dead; but in his own breast does
not every man carry about with him a possible Socrates,
in that power of disinterested play of consciousness
upon his stock notions and habits, of which this wise
and admirable man gave all through his lifetime the
great example, and which was the secret of his incom-
parable influence? And he who leads men to call forth
and exercise in themselves this power, and who busily
calls it forth and exercises it in himself, is at the pres-
ent moment, perhaps, as Socrates was in his time,
more in concert with the vital working of men's minds,
and more effectually significant, than any House of
1 Literature and Dogma, ed. 1893, p. 321.
1 X X IN TR OD UC TION.
Commons' orator, or practical operator in politics." 1
This dialectical habit of mind is, Arnold believes, best
induced and stimulated by the free colloquial manner
of writing that he usually adopts.
In the choice of words, however, Arnold is not
noticeably colloquial. Less often in Arnold than in
Newman is a familiar phrase caught audaciously from
common speech and set with a sure sense of fitness and
a vivifying effect in the midst of more formal expres-
sions. His style, though idiomatic, stops short of the
vocabulary of every day; it is nice — instinctively
edited. Certain words are favorites with him, and
moreover, as is so often the case with the literary tem-
perament, these words reveal some of his special pre-
occupations. Such words are lucidity, urbanity,
amenity, fluid (as an epithet for style), vital, puissant.
Arnold is never afraid of repeating a word or a
phrase, hardly enough afraid of this. His trick of
ending one sentence and beginning the next with the
same set of words has already been noted. At times,
his repetitions seem due to his attempt to write down
to his public ; he will not confuse them by making
them grasp the same idea twice through two different
forms of speech. Often, his repetitions come palpa-
bly from sheer fondness for his own happy phraseology.
His description of Shelley as " a beautiful and in-
effectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings
in vain," pleases him so well that he carries it over
entire from one essay to another; even a whole page
of his writing is sometimes so transferred.
1 Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1883, p. 205.
INTRODUCTION. lxxi
And indeed iteration and reiteration of single phrases
or forms of words is a mannerism with Arnold, and at
times proves one of his most effective means both for
stamping his own ideas on the mind of the public and
for ridiculing his opponents. Many of his positive
formulas have become part and parcel of the modern
literary man's equipment. His account of poetry as
" a criticism of life "; his plea for "high seriousness"
as essential to a classic; his pleasant substitute for the
old English word God — " the not ourselves which
makes for righteousness"; "lucidity of mind";
" natural magic " in the poetic treatment of nature ;
" the grand style " in poetry; these phrases of his
have passed into the literary consciousness and carried
with them at least a superficial recognition of many of
his ideas.
Iteration Arnold uses, too, as a weapon of ridicule.
He isolates some unluckily symbolic phrase of his
opponent's, points out its damaging implications or its
absurdity, and then repeats it pitilessly as an ironical
refrain. The phrase gains in grotesqueness at each
return — " sweetening and gathering sweetness ever-
more " — and finally seems to the reader to contain the
distilled quintessence of the foolishness inherent in the
view that Arnold ridicules. It is in this way that in
Culture and Anarchy the agitation to " enable a man to
marry his deceased wife's sister " becomes symbolic of
all the absurd fads of " liberal practitioners." Simi-
larly, when he is criticising the cheap enthusiasm with
which democratic politicians describe modern life,
Arnold culls from the account of a Nottingham child-
murder the phrase, " Wragg is in custody," and adds
Ixxii INTRODUCTION.
it decoratively after every eulogy on present social
conditions. Or again the Times at a certain diplo-
matic crisis exhorts the Government to set forth
England's claims " with promptitude and energy"; 1
and this grandiloquent and under the circumstances
empty phrase becomes, as Arnold persistently rings its
changes, irresistibly funny as symbolic of cheap bluster.
Whole sentences are often reiterated by Arnold in this
same satirical fashion. In the course of a somewhat
atrabilious criticism he had been attacked by Mr.
Frederic Harrison as being a mere dilettante and as
having " no philosophy with coherent, interdependent,
subordinate, and derivative principles." 2 This latter
phrase, with its bristling array of epithets, struck Arnold
as delightfully redolent of pedantry ; and, as has already
been noted, it recurs again and again in his writings in
passages of mock apology and ironical self-deprecia-
tion. Readers of Literature and Science, too, will re-
member how amusingly Arnold plays with " Mr.
Darwin's famous proposition that ' our ancestor was
a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed
ears, probably arboreal in his habits.' " 3 It should
be noted that in all these cases the phrase that is
reiterated has a symbolic quality, and therefore, in
addition to its delicious absurdity, comes to possess
a subtly argumentative value.
Akin to Arnold's skillful use of reiteration is his
ingenuity in the invention of telling nicknames. His
1 Friendship 's Garland, ed. 1883, p. 285.
2 Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1883, p. 56.
3 Discourses in America, ed. 1894, p. no.
INTRODUCTION. Ixxiii
classification of his fellow-countrymen as Barbarians,
Philistines, a-nd Populace has become common prop-
erty. The Nonconformist because of his unyielding
sectarianism he compares to Ephraim, " a wild ass
alone by himself." ' To Professor Huxley, who has
been talking of " the Levites of culture," Arnold sug-
gests that " the poor humanist is sometimes apt to
regard " men of science as the " Nebuchadnezzars "
of culture. The Church and State Review Arnold
dubs "the High Church rhinoceros"; the Record is
" the Evangelical hyena." 2
It is interesting to note how often Arnold's satire
has a biblical turn. His mind is saturated with
Bible history and his memory stored with biblical
phraseology ; moreover, allusions whether to the inci-
dents or the language of the Bible are sure to be quickly
caught by English readers ; hence Arnold frequently
gives point to his style through the use of scriptural
phrases or illustrations. Many of the foregoing nick-
names come from biblical sources. The lectures on
Homer offer one admirable instances of Scripture quo-
tation. Arnold has been urged to define the grand
style. With his customary dislike of abstractions, he
protests against the demand. " Alas! the grand style
is the last matter in the world for verbal definition to
deal with adequately. One may say of it as is said of
faith: 'One must feel it in order to know what it is.'
But, as of faith, so too we may say of nobleness, of
the grand style: ' Woe to those who know it not ! '
yet this expression, though indefinable, has a charm;
1 Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1883, p. xxxviii.
2 Selections, p. 28.
lxxiv INTRODUCTION.
one is the better for considering it; bo mint est, nos hie
esse; nay, one loves to try to explain it, though one
knows that one must speak imperfectly. For those,
then, who ask the question, What is the grand style?
with sincerity, I will try to make some answer, inade-
quate as it must be. For those who ask it mockingly
I have no answer, except to repeat to them, with com-
passionate sorrow, the Gospel words: Moriemini in
peccatis vestris, Ye shall die in your sins." *
An interesting comment on this habit of Arnold's
of scriptural phrasing occurs in one of his letters:
" The Bible," he says, " is the only book well enough
known to quote as the Greeks quoted Homer, sure
that the quotation would go home to every reader,
and it is quite astonishing how a Bible sentence
clinches and sums up an argument. 'Where the
State's treasure is bestowed,' etc., for example, saved
me at least half a column of disquisition." 2 A
moment later he adds a charmingly characteristic
explanation as regards his incidental use of Scripture
texts: "I put it in the Vulgate Latin, as I always do
when I am not earnestly serious." This habit of
" high seriousness " in such matters, it is to be feared
he in some measure outgrew.
Arnold's fine instinct in the choice of words has
thus far been illustrated chiefly as subservient to
satire. In point of fact, however, it is subject to
no such limitation. Whatever his purpose, he has
in a high degree the faculty of putting words to-
gether with a delicate congruity that gives them a
1 Selections, p. 83. 2 Letters, i. 191.
IN TROD UC TION. lxxv
permanent hold on the imagination. In this power of
fashioning memorable phrases he far surpasses New-
man, and indeed most recent writers except those
who have developed epigram and paradox into a
meretricious manner. "A free play of the mind;"
"disinterestedness;" "a current of true and fresh
ideas;" " the note of provinciality;" "sweet reason-
ableness;" "the method of inwardness;" " the secret
of Jesus; " " the study of perfection; " " the power of
conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the
power of beauty, and the power of social life and
manners" — how happily vital are all these phrases!
How perfectly integrated! Yet they are unelaborate
and almost obvious. Christianity is " the greatest and
happiest stroke ever yet made for human perfection."
" Burke saturates politics with thought." "Our
august Constitution sometimes looks ... a colossal
machine for the manufacture of Philistines." " Eng-
lish public life . . . that Thyestean banquet of clap-
trap." The Atlantic cable — " that great rope, with a
Philistine at each end of it talking inutilities." These
sentences illustrate still further Arnold's deftness of
phrasing. But with the last two or three we return to
the ironical manner that has already been exemplified.
In his use of figures Arnold is sparing; similes are
few, metaphors by no means frequent. It may be
questioned whether it is ever the case with Arnold as
with Newman that a whole paragraph is subtly con-
trolled in its phrasing by the presence of a single
figure in the author's mind. Simpler in this respect
Arnold's style probably is than even Newman's; its
general inferiority to Newman's style in point of sim-
Jxxvi INTRODUCTION.
plicity is owing to the infelicities of tone and manner
that have already been noted.
Illustrations Arnold uses liberally and happily. He
excels in drawing them patly from current events and
the daily prints. This increases both the actuality of
his discussion — its immediacy — and its appearance
of casualness, of being a pleasantly unconsidered trifle.
For example, the long and elaborate discussion, Cul-
ture and Anarchy, begins with an allusion to a recent
article in the Quarterly Review on Sainte-Beuve, and
turns over and over the use of the word curiosity that
occurs in that article. Arnold is thus led to his
analysis of culture. Later in the same chapter, refer-
ences occur to such sectarian journals as the Non-
conformist, and to current events as reported and
criticised in their columns. Even in essays dealing
with purely literary topics — in such an essay as that
on Eugenie de Gue'rin — there is this same actuality.
" While I was reading the journal of Mdlle. de
Guerin," Arnold tells us, "there came into my hands
the memoir and poems of a young Englishwoman, Miss
Emma Tatham"; and then he uses this memoir to
illustrate the contrasts between the poetic traditions
of Romanism and the somewhat sordid intellectual
poetry of English sectarian life. This closeness of
relation between Arnold's writing and his daily expe-
rience is very noticeable and increases the reader's
sense of the novelty and genuineness and immediacy
of what he reads; it conduces to that impression of
vitality that is perhaps, in the last analysis, the most
characteristic impression the reader carries away from
Arnold's writings.
INTRODUCTION. lxxvii
VIII.
And indeed the union in Arnold's style of actuality
with distinction becomes a very significant matter
when we turn to consider his precise relation to his
age, for it suggests what is perhaps the most striking
characteristic of his personality — his reconciliation of
conventionality with fineness of spiritual temper. In
this reconciliation lies the secret of Arnold's relation
to his romantic predecessors and to the men of his
own time. He accepts the actual, conventional life
of the everyday world frankly and fully, as the earlier
idealists had never quite done, and yet he retains a
strain of other-worldliness inherited from the dreamers
of former generations. Arnold's gospel of culture is
an attempt to import into actual life something of the
fine spiritual fervor of the Romanticists with none of
the extravagance or the remoteness from fact of those
" madmen " — those idealists of an earlier age.
Like the Romanticists, Arnold really gives to the
imagination and the emotions the primacy in life ; like
the Romanticists he contends against formalists, sys-
tem-makers, and all devotees of abstractions. It is by
an exquisite tact, rather than by logic, that Arnold in
all doubtful matters decides between good and evil.
He keeps to the concrete image ; he is an appreciator
of life, not a deducer of formulas or a demonstrator.
He is continually concerned about what ought to be ;
he is not cynically content with the knowledge of
what is. And yet, unlike the Romanticists, Arnold is
in the world, and of it ; he has given heed to the
Ixxviii INTRODUCTION.
world-spirit's warning, "submit, submit", he ha£
" learned the Second Reverence, for things cround."
In Arnold, imaginative literature returns from its ro-
mantic quest for the Holy Grail and betakes itself
half-humorously, and yet with now and then traces of
the old fervor, to the homely duties of everyday life.
Arnold had in his youth been under the spell of
romantic poetry ; he had heard the echoes of " the
puissant hail " of those " former men," whose " voices
were in all men's ears." Indeed, much of his poetry
is essentially a beautiful threnody over the waning
of romance, and in its tenor bears witness alike
to the thoroughness with which he had been imbued
with the spirit of the earlier idealists and to his ina-
bility to rest content with their relation to life and
their accounts of it. It is the unreality of the ideal-
ists that dissatisfies Arnold ; their visionary blindness
to fact; their morbid distaste for the actual. Much
as he delights in the poetry of Shelley and Coleridge,
these qualities in their work seem to him unsound and
injurious. Or at other times it is the capricious self-
will of the Romanticists, their impotent isolation, their
enormous egoism that impress him as fatally wrong.
Even in Wordsworth he is troubled by a semi-untruth
and by the lack of a courageous acceptance of the
conditions of human life. Wordsworth's
" Eyes avert their ken
From half of human fate."
Tempered, then, as Arnold was by a deep sense of
the beauty and nobleness of romantic and idealistic
INTRODUCTION. Ixxix
poetry, finely touched as he was into sympathy with
the whole range of delicate intuitions, quivering
sensibilities, and half-mystical aspirations that this
poetry called into play, he yet came to regard its un-
derlying conceptions of life as inadequate and mis-
leading, and to feel the need of supplementing them by
a surer and saner relation to the conventional world of
common sense. The Romanticists lamented that
"the world is too much with us." Arnold shared
their dislike of the world of dull routine, their fear of
the world that enslaves to petty cares ; yet he came
more and more to distinguish between this world and
the great world of common experience, spread out
generously in the lives of all men ; more and more
clearly he realized that the true land of romance is in
this region of everyday fact, or else is a mere mirage ;
that "America is here or nowhere."
Arnold, then, sought to correct the febrile unreality
of the idealists by restoring to men a true sense of the
actual values of life. In this attempt he had recourse to
Hellenic conceptions with their sanity, their firm de-
light in the tangible and the visible, their regard for
proportion and symmetry — and more particularly to
the Hellenism of Goethe. Indeed, Goethe may justly
be called Arnold's master — the writer who had the
largest share in determining the characteristic prin-
ciples in his theory of life. Goethe's formula for the
ideal life — Im Ganzen, Guten, Wahren, resolut zu leben
— sums up in a phrase the plea for perfection, for
totality, for wisely balanced self-culture that Arnold
is continually making throughout so many of his
essays and books.
lxxx INTRODUCTION.
Allusions to Goethe abound in Arnold's essays, and
in one of his letters he speaks particularly of his close
and extended reading of Goethe's works.' His splen-
did poetic tributes to Goethe, in his Memorial Verses
and Obermann, have given enduring expression to his
admiration for Goethe's sanity, insight, and serene cour-
age. His frankest prose appreciation of Goethe occurs
in A French Critic on Goethe, where he characterizes him
as " the clearest, the largest, the most helpful thinker
of modern times"; . . . "in the width, depth, and
richness of his criticism of life, by far our greatest
modern man." 3 It is precisely in this matter of the
criticism of life that Arnold took Goethe for master.
Goethe, as Arnold saw, had passed through the tem-
pering experiences of Romanticism ; he had rebelled
against the limitations of actual life (in Werther, for
example, and Goetz) and sought passionately for the
realization of romantic dreams ; and he had finally
come to admit the futility of rebellion and to recognize
the treacherous evasiveness of emotional ideals ; he
had learned the " Second Reverence, for things
around." He had found in self-development, in wise
self-discipline for the good of society, the secret of suc-
cessful living. Arnold's gospel of culture is largely
a translation of Goethe's doctrine into the idiom of
the later years of the century, and the minute adapta-
tion of it to the special needs of Englishmen. There
is in Arnold somewhat less sleek Paganism than in
Goethe — a somewhat more genuine spiritual quality.
But the wise limitation of the scope of human en-
1 Letters, ii. 165. 2 Mixed Essays, pp. 233-234.
INTRODUCTION. lxxxi
deavor to this world is the same with both ; so, too, is
the sane and uncomplaining acceptance of fact and
the concentration of all thought and effort on the pur-
suit of tangible ideals of human perfection. Goethe
tempered by Wordsworth — this is not an unfair ac-
count of the derivation of Arnold's ideal.
From one point of view, then, Arnold may fairly
enough be called the special advocate of convention-
ality. He recommends and practices conformity to
the demands of conventional life. He has none of
the pose or the mannerisms of the seer or the bard; he
is even a frequenter of drawing rooms and a diner-out,
and is fairly adept in the dialect and mental idiom of
the frivolously-minded. In all that he writes, " he
delivers himself," as the heroine in Peacock's novel
urged Scythrop (Shelley) to do, " like a man of this
world." He pretends to no transcendental second-
sight and indulges in none of Carlyle's spinning-
dervish jargon. He is never guilty of Ruskin's occa-
sional false sentiment or falsetto rhetoric. The world
that he lives in is the world that exists in the minds and
thoughts and feelings of the most sensible and culti-
vated people who make up modern society; the world
over which, as its presiding genius, broods the haunt-
ing presence of Mr. George Meredith's Comic Spirit.
It is " in this world " that " he has hope," in its
ever greater refinement, in its ever greater compre-
hensiveness, in its increasing ability to impose
its standards on others. When he half pleads for
an English Academy — he never quite pleads for
one — he does this because of his desire for some
organ by which, in art and literature, the collective
lxxxii INTRODUCTION.
sense of the best minds in society assembled may
make itself effective. So, too, when he pleads for the
Established Church he does this for similar reasons ;
he is convinced that it offers by far the best means for
imposing widely upon the nation, as a standard of
religious experience, what is most spiritual in the
lives and aspirations of the greatest number of culti-
vated people. In many such ways as these, then,
Matthew Arnold's kingdom is a kingdom of this
world.
And yet, after all, Arnold " wears " his worldliness
" with a" very great "difference." If he be compared,
for example, with other literary men of the world, —
with Francis Jeffrey or Lord Macaulay or Lockhart, —
there is at once obvious in him an all-pervasive
quality that marks his temper as far subtler and finer
than theirs. His worldliness is a worldliness of his
own, " compounded " out of many exquisite "simples."
His faith in poetry is intense and absolute ; " the
future of poetry," he declares, " is immense, because
in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our
race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and
surer stay." This declaration contrasts strikingly
with Macaulay's pessimistic theory of the essentially
make-believe character of poetry — a theory that puts
it on a level with children's games, and, like the
still more puerile theory of Herr Max Nordau, looks
forward to its extinction as the race reaches genuine
maturity. Poetry always remains for Arnold the most
adequate and beautiful mode of speech possible to
man ; and this faith, which runs implicitly through all
his writing, is plainly the outcome of a mood very
INTRODUCTION. lxxxiii
different from that of the ordinary man of the world,
and is the expression of an emotional refinement and
a spiritual sensitiveness that are, at least in part, his
abiding inheritance from the Romanticists. This faith
is the manifestation of the ideal element in his nature,
which, in spite of the plausible man-of-the-world
aspect and tone of much of his prose, makes itself felt
even in his prose as the inspirer of a kind of " divine
unrest."
In his Preface to his first series of Essays Arnold
playfully takes to himself the name transcendentalist.
To the stricter sect of the transcendentalists he can
hardly pretend to belong. He certainly has none of
their delight in envisaging mystery ; none of their
morbid relish for an " O altitudo ! " provided only the
altitude be wrapped in clouds. He believes, to be
sure, in a "power not ourselves that makes for
righteousness "; but his interest in this power and his
comments upon it confine themselves almost wholly to
its plain and palpable influence upon human conduct.
Even in his poetry he can hardly be rated as more
than a transcendentalist manque"; and in his prose he
is never so aware of the unseen as in his poetry.
Yet, whether or no he be strictly a transcendentalist,
Arnold is, in Disraeli's famous phrase, " on the side of
the angels "; he is a persistent and ingenious opponent
of purely materialistic or utilitarian conceptions of
life. "The kingdom of God is within you" ; this is
a cardinal point in the doctrine of Culture. The
highest good, that for which every man should con-
tinually be striving, is an inner state of perfection ;
material prosperity, political enactments, religious
lxxxiv INTRODUCTION.
organizations — all these things are to be judged solely
according to their furtherance of the spiritual well-
being of the individual ; they are all mere machinery —
more or less ingenious means for giving to every man
a chance to make the most of his life. The true
"ideal of human perfection " is "an inward spiritual
activity, having for its characters increased sweetness,
increased light, increased life, increased sympathy." '
Arnold's worldliness, then, is a worldliness that holds
many of the elements of idealism in solution, that has
none of the cynical acquiescence of unmitigated
worldliness, that throughout all its range shows the
gentle urgency of a fine discontent with fact.
To realize the subtle and high quality of Arnold's
genius, one has but to compare him with men of
science or with rationalists pure and simple, — with
men like Professor Huxley, Darwin, or Bentham.
Their carefulness for truth, their intellectual strength,
their vast services to mankind are acknowledged even
by their opponents. Yet Arnold has a far wider
range of sensibilities than any one of them ; life plays
upon him in far richer and more various ways ; it
touches him into response through associations that
have a more distinctively human character, and that
have a deeper and a warmer color of emotion drawn
out of the past of the race. In short, Arnold brings
to bear upon the present a finer spiritual apprecia-
tion than the mere man of the world or the mere man
of science — a larger accumulation of imaginative ex-
perience. Through this temperamental scope and
refinement he is able, while accepting conventional
1 Selections, i. 172.
INTRODUCTION. lxxxv
and actual life, to redeem it in some measure from
its routine and its commonplace character, and to
import into it beauty and meaning and good from
beyond the range of science or positive truth. All
this comes from the fact that, despite his worldly con-
formity, he has the romantic ferment in his blood.
If his conformity be compared with that of the
eighteenth century, — with the worldliness of Swift or
Addison. — the enormous value of 'the romantic incre-
ment cannot be missed.
Finally, Arnold makes of life an art rather than a
science, and commits the conduct of it to an exquisite
tact, rather than to reason or demonstration. The
imaginative assimilation of all the best experience of
the past — this he regards as the right training to de-
velop true tact for the discernment of good and evil
in all practical matters, where probability must be the
guide of life. We are at once reminded of Newman's
Illative Sense, which was also an intuitive faculty for
the dextrous apprehension of truth through the aid of
the feelings and the imagination. But Arnold's new
Sense comes much nearer than Newman's to being a
genuinely sublimated Common Sense. Arnold's own
flair in matters of art and life was astonishingly
keen, and yet he would have been the last to exalt it
as unerring. His faith is ultimately in the best in-
stincts of the so-called remnant — in the collective
sense of the most cultivated, most delicately percep-
tive, most spiritually-minded people of the world.
Through the combined intuitions of such men
sincerely aiming at perfection, truth in all that per-
tains to the conduct of life will be more and more
Ixxxvi introduction:
nearly won. Because of this faith of his in sublimated
worldly wisdom, Arnold, unlike Newman, is in sym-
pathy with the Zeitgeist of a democratic age.
And indeed here seems to rest Arnold's really most
permanent claim to gratitude and honor. He accepts —
with some sadness, it is true, and yet genuinely and
generously — the modern age, with its scientific bias
and its worldly preoccupations ; humanist as he is, half-
romantic lover of an elder time, he yet masters his
regret over what is disappearing and welcomes the
present loyally. Believing, however, in the continuity
of human experience, and above all in the transcendent
worth to mankind of its spiritual acquisitions, won
largely through the past domination of Christian
ideals, he devotes himself to preserving the quint-
essence of this ideal life of former generations, and
insinuating it into the hearts and imaginations of
men of a ruder age. He converts himself into a
patient, courageous mediator between the old and
the new. Herein he contrasts with Newman on
the one hand, and with the modern devotees of
aestheticism on the other hand. In the case of
Newman, a delicately spiritual temperament, subdued
even more deeply than Arnold's to Romanticism,
shrunk before the immediacy and apparent anar-
chy of modern life, and sought to realize its spir-
itual ideals through the aid of mediaeval formulas
and a return to mediaeval conceptions and standards
of truth. Exquisite spirituality was attained, but at
the cost of what some have called the Great Refusal.
A like imperfect synthesis is characteristic of the fol-
lowers of art for art's sake. They, too, give up com-
INTRODUCTION. lxxxvii
mon life as irredeemably crass, as unmalleable,
irreducible to terms of the ideal. They turn for
consolation to their own dreams, and frame for
themselves a House Beautiful, where they may let
these dreams have their way, " far from the world's
noise," and " life's confederate plea." Arnold, with a
temperament perhaps as exacting as either of these
other temperaments, takes life as it offers itself and
does his best with it. He sees and feels its crude-
ness and disorderliness ; but he has faith in the
instincts that civilized men have developed in com-
mon, and finds in the working of these instincts the
continuous, if irregular, realization of the ideal.
DATES IN ARNOLD'S LIFE.
1822. Born at Laleham near Staines ; son of Dr. Thomas Arnolc
of Rugby.
18.11. Matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford.
1843. Wins the Newdigate prize for English verse.
1844. Graduated in honors.
1845. Elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.
1847-51. Private Secretary of Lord Lansdowne.
1 85 1. Appointed Lay Inspector of Schools.
1857-67. Professor of Poetry at Oxford.
1870. Receives the degree of Doctor of Laws from Oxford.
1S83-84. Lectures in America.
1886. Resigns his post as Inspector of Schools.
1888. Death of Arnold.
— From Men of the Time, ed. 1887
lxxxix
BIBLIOGRAPHY."
WORKS OF ARNOLD.
1849. The Strayed Reveler.
1852. Empedocles on Etna.
1853. Poems.
1855. Poems. Second Series.
1858. Merope.
1861. Popular Education in France.
1861. On Translating Homer.
1864. A French Eton.
1865. Essays in Criticism.
1867. On the Study of Celtic Literature.
1867. New Poems.
1868. Schools and Universities on the Continent.
1869. Culture and Anarchy.
1870. St. Paul and Protestantism.
1871. Friendship's Garland.
1873. Literature and Dogma.
1875. God and the Bible.
I877. Last Essays on Church and Religion.
1879. Mixed Essays.
1882. Irish Essays.
1885. Discourses in America.
1888. Essays in Criticism. Second Series.
1888. Civilization in the United States.
* For a complete list of Arnold's writings in prose and poetry,
and of writings about Arnold, see the admirable Bibliography 0/
Matthew Arnold by T. B. Smart, London, 1852.
SELECTIONS. , , - «, <^ „
Gbe Junction of Criticism at the present Gfme.
Many objections have been made to a proposition
which, in some remarks of mine on translating Homer,
Iventured to put forth; a proposition about criticism,
and its importance at the present day. I said : " Of
5 the literature of France and Germany, as of the
intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for
now many years, has been a critical effort ; the
endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology,
philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as
10 in itself it really is." I added, that owing to the
operation in English literature of certain causes,
" almost the last thing for which one would come to
English literature is just that very thing which now
Europe most desires, — criticism"; and that the power
15 and value of English literature was thereby impaired.
More than one rejoinder declared that the importance
I here assigned to criticism was excessive, and
asserted the inherent superiority of the creative effort
of the human spirit over its critical effort. And the
20 other day, having been led by a Mr. Shairp's excellent
notice of Wordsworth ' to turn again to his biography,
1 I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England
during the last century, and still followed in France, of printing a
2 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
I found, in the words of this great man, whom I, for
one, must always listen to with the profoundest re-
spect, a sentence passed on the critic's business, which
seems to justify every possible disparagement of it.
Wordsworth says in one of his letters: — 5
" The writers in these publications " (the Reviews),
" while they prosecute their inglorious employment,
cannot be supposed to be in a st.ue of mind very
favourable for being affected by the finer influences of
a thing so pure as genuine poetry." 10
And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation
quotes a more elaborate judgment to the same effect: —
" Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, in-
finitely lower than the inventive ; and he said to-day
that if the quantity of time consumed in writing crit- 15
iques on the works of others were given to original
composition, of whatever kind it might be, it would
be much better employed ; it would make a man find
out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely
less mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do 20
much injury to the minds of others, a stupid inven-
tion, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless."
It is almost too much to expect of poor human
nature, that a man capable of producing some effect
notice of this kind, — a notice by a competent critic, — to serve as
an introduction to an eminent author's works, might be revived
among us with advantage. To introduce all succeeding editions
of Wordsworth, Mr. Shairp's notice might, it seems to me,
excellently serve ; it is written from the point of view of an
admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is right ; but then the disciple
must be also, as in this case he is, a critic, a man of letters, not,
as too often happens, some relation or friend with no qualification
for his task except affection for his author.
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 3
in one line of literature, should, for the greater good
of society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and
obscurity in another. Still less is this to be expected
from men addicted to the composition of the " false
5 or malicious criticism " of which Wordsworth speaks.
However, everybody would admit that a false or
malicious criticism had better never have been written.
Everybody, too, would be willing to admit, as a general
proposition, that the critical faculty is lower than
iothe inventive. But is it true that criticism is really,
in itself, a baneful and injurious employment ; is it
true that all time given to writing critiques on the
works of others would be much better employed if it
were given to original composition, of whatever
15 kind this may be ? Is it true that Johnson had better
have gone on producing more Irenes instead of writ-
ing his Lives of the Poets; nay, is it certain that
Wordsworth himself was better employed in making
his Ecclesiastical Sonnets than when he made his
20 celebrated Preface, so full of criticism, and criticism
of the works of others ? Wordsworth was himself
a great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted that
he has not left us more criticism ; Goethe was one of
the greatest of critics, and we may sincerely congratu-
25 late ourselves that he has left us so much criticism.
Without wasting time over the exaggeration which
Wordsworth's judgment on criticism clearly contains,
or over an attempt to trace the causes, — not difficult,
I think, to be traced, — which may have led Words-
30 worth to this exaggeration, a critic may with advan-
tage seize an occasion for trying his own conscience,
and for asking himself of what real service at any
4 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
given moment the practice of criticism either is or
may be made to his own mind and spirit, and to the
minds and spirits of others.
The critical power is of lower rank than the crea-
tive. True ; but in assenting to this proposition, one 5
or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeni-
able that the exercise of a creative power, that a free
creative activity, is the highest function of man ; it is
proved to be so by man's finding in it his true happi-
ness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have the 10
sense of exercising this free creative activity in other
ways than in producing great works of literature or
art ; if it were not so, all but a very few men would
be shut out from the true happiness of all men. They
may have it in well-doing, they may have it in learn- 15
ing, they may have it even in criticising. This is one
thing to be kept in mind. Another is, that the exer-
cise of the creative power in the production of great
works of literature or art, however high this exercise
of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all con- 20
ditions possible ; and that therefore labour may be
vainly spent in attempting it, which might with more
fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possi-
ble. This creative power works with elements, with
materials ; what if it has not those materials, those 25
elements, ready for its use ? In that case it must
surely wait till they are ready. Now, in literature, —
I will limit myself to literature, for it is about litera-
ture that the question arises, — the elements with
which the creative power works are ideas ; the best 30
ideas on every matter which literature touches, cur-
rent at the time. At any rate we may lay it down as
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 5
certain that in modern literature no manifestation of
the creative power not working with these can be very
important or fruitful. And I say current dX the time,
not merely accessible at the time ; for creative literary
5 genius does not principally show itself in discovering
new ideas, that is rather the business of the philos-
opher. The grand work of literary genius is a work
of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and dis-
covery ; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily
10 inspired by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmos-
phere, by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself
in them ; of dealing divinely with these ideas, present-
ing them in the most effective and attractive combi-
nations, — making beautiful works with them, in short.
15 But it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself
amidst the order of ideas, in order to work freely ;
and these it is not so easy to command. This is why
great creative epochs in literature are so rare, this is
why there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the pro-
aoductions of many men of real genius ; because, for the
creation of a master-work of literature two powers
must concur, the power of the man and the power of
the moment, and the man is not enough without the
moment ; the creative power has, for its happy exer-
25 cise, appointed elements, and those elements are not
in its own control.
Nay, they are more within the control of the critical
power. It is the business of the critical power, as I
said in the words already quoted, " in all branches of
30 knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science,
to see the object as in itserf it really is." Thus it
tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation of
6 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
which the creative power can profitably avail itself.
It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely
true, yet true by comparison with that which it dis-
places ; to make the best ideas prevail. Presently
these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth is 5
the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth every-
where ; out of this stir and growth come the creative
epochs of literature.
Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considera-
tions of the general march of genius and of society, — 10
considerations, which are apt to become too abstract
and impalpable, — every one can see that a poet, for
instance, ought to know life and the world before deal-
ing with them in poetry ; and life and the world
being in modern times very complex things, the crea- 15
tion of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies
a great critical effort behind it ; else it must be a com-
paratively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. This
is why Byron's poetry had so little endurance in it,
and Goethe's so much ; both Byron and Goethe had 20
a great productive power, but Goethe's was nourished
by a great critical effort providing the true materials
for it, and Byron's was not ; Goethe knew life and the
world, the poet's necessary subjects, much more com-
prehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a 25
great deal more of them, and he knew them much
more as they really are.
It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative
activity in our literature, through the first quarter of
this century, had about it in fact something prema-30
ture ; and that from this cause its productions are
doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 7
which accompanied and do still accompany them, to
prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far
less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes
from its having proceeded without having its proper
5 data, without sufficient materials to work with. In
other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of
this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative
force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so
empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth
ioeven, profound as he is, yet so wanting in complete-
ness and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books,
and disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he
is, so much that I cannot wish him different ; and it is
vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from
15 what he is, to suppose that he could have been differ-
ent. But surely the one thing wanting to make
Wordsworth an even greater poet than he is, — his
thought richer, and his influence of wider applica-
tion, — was that he should have read more books,
20 among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe whom he
disparaged without reading him.
But to speak of books and reading may easily lead
to a misunderstanding here. It was not really books
and reading that lacked to our poetry at this epoch ;
25 Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense
reading. Pindar and Sophocles — as we all say so
glibly, and often with so little discernment of the real
import of what we are saying — had not many books ;
Shakspeare was no deep reader. True ; but in the
30 Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, in the England of
Shakspeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas in the
highest degree animating and nourishing to the crea-
8 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
tive power ; society was, in the fullest measure,
permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive.
And this state of things is the true basis for the crea-
tive power's exercise, in this it finds its data, its
materials, truly ready for its hand ; all the books and 5
reading in the world are only valuable as they are
helps to this. Even when this does not actually
exist, books and reading may enable a man to con-
struct a kind of semblance of it in his own mind, a
world of knowledge and intelligence in which he may iq
live and work. This is by no means an equivalent to
the artist for the nationally diffused life and thought
of the epochs of Sophocles or Shakspeare ; but, be-
sides that it may be a means of preparation for such
epochs, it does really constitute, if many share in it, a 15
quickening and sustaining atmosphere of great value.
Such an atmosphere the many-sided learning and the
long and widely-combined critical effort of Germany
formed for Goethe, when he lived and worked. There
was no national glow of life and thought there as in the 20
Athens of Pericles or the England of Elizabeth. That
was the poet's weakness. But there was a sort of
equivalent for it in the complete culture and unfettered
thinking of a large body of Germans. That was his
strength. In the England of the first quarter of this 25
century there was neither a national glow of life and
thought, such as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor
yet a culture and a force of learning and criticism
such as were to be found in Germany. Therefore the
creative power of poetry wanted, for success in the 30
highest sense, materials and a basis ; a thorough in-
terpretation of the world was necessarily denied to it.
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 9
At first sight it seems strange that out of the im-
mense stir of the French Revolution and its age
should not have come a crop of works of genius equal
to that which came out of the stir of the great produc-
5 tive time of Greece, or out of that of the Renascence,
with its powerful episode the Reformation. But the
truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took a
character which essentially distinguished it from such
movements as these. These were, in the main, disin-
10 terestedly intellectual and spiritual movements ;
movements in which the human spirit looked for its
satisfaction in itself and in the increased play of its
own activity. The French Revolution took a politi-
cal, practical character. The movement which went
15 on in France under the old regime, from 1700 to 1789,
was far more really akin than that of the Revolution
itself to the movement of the Renascence ; the France
of Voltaire and Rousseau told far more powerfully
upon the mind of Europe than the France of the
20 Revolution. Goethe reproached this last expressly
with having " thrown quiet culture back." Nay, and
the true key to how much in our Byron, even in our
Wordsworth, is this ! — that they had their source in a
great movement of feeling, not in a great movement of
25 mind. The French Revolution, however, — that object
of so much blind love and so much blind hatred, —
found undoubtedly its motive-power in the intelligence
of men, and not in their practical sense ; this is what
distinguishes it from the English Revolution of Charles
30 the First's time. This is what makes it a more spirit-
ual event than our Revolution, an event of much more
powerful and world-wide interest, though practically
IO THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
less successful ; it appeals to an order of ideas which
are universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a
thing, Is it rational? 1642 asked of a tiling, Is it
legal ? or, when it went furthest, Is it according to
conscience ? This is the English fashion, a fashion to 5
be treated, within its own sphere, with the highest
respect ; for its success, within its own sphere, has been
prodigious. But what is law in one place is not law
in another, what is law here to-day is not law even
here to-morrow ; and as for conscience, what is bind- 10
ing on one man's conscience is not binding on
another's. The old woman who threw her stool at the
head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles's Church at
Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which millions of
the human race may be permitted to remain strangers. 15
But the prescriptions of reason are absolute, unchang-
ing, of universal validity ; to count by tens is the easiest
way of counting — that is a proposition of which every-
one, from here to the Antipodes, feels the force ; at
least I should say so if we did not live in a country 20
where it is not impossible that any morning we may
find a letter in the Times declaring that a decimal
coinage is an absurdity. That a whole nation should
have been penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure
reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its pre- 25
scriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when
we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy
and quickening as mind, comes into the motives
which alone, in general, impel great masses of men.
In spite of the extravagant direction given to this 30
enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies in which
it lost itself, the French Revolution derives from the
AT THE PRESENT TIME. II
force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it
took for its law, and from the passion with which it
could inspire a multitude for these ideas, a unique and
still living power ; it is — it will probably long remain —
5 the greatest, the most animating event in history. And
as no sincere passion for the things of the mind, even
though it turn out in many respects an unfortunate
passion, is ever quite thrown away and quite barren of
good, France has reaped from hers one fruit — the
to natural and legitimate fruit, though not precisely the
grand fruit she expected : she is the country in Europe
where the people is most alive.
But the mania for giving an immediate political and
practical application to all these fine ideas of the rea-
15 son was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element :
on this theme we can all go on for hours. And all
we are in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a
great deal of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized
in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with ;
20 but to transport them abruptly into the world of poli-
tics and practice, violently to revolutionise this world
to their bidding, — that is quite another thing. There
is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice ;
the French are often for suppressing the one, and the
25 English the other ; but neither is to be suppressed. A
member of the House of Commons said to me the
other day : " That a thing is an anomaly, I consider
to be no objection to it whatever.' - I venture to think
he was wrong ; that a thing is an anomaly is anobjec-
30 tion to it, but absolutely and in the sphere of ideas : it
is not necessarily, under such and such circumstances,
or at such and such a moment, an objection to it in
12 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
the sphere of politics and practice. Joubert has said
beautifully : " C'est la force et le droit qui reglent
toutes choses dans le monde ; la force en attendant le
droit." (Force and right are the governors of this
world ; force till right is ready.) Force till right is 5
ready; and till right is ready, force, the existing order
of things, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But
right is something moral, and implies inward recogni-
tion, free assent of the will ; we are not ready for
right, — right, so far as we are concerned, is not ready, — 10
until we have attained this sense of seeing it and will-
ing it. The way in which for us it may change and
transform force, the existing order of things, and be-
come, in its turn, the legitimate ruler of the world,
should depend on the way in which, when our time 15
comes, we see it and will it. Therefore for other peo-
ple enamoured of their own newly discerned right, to
attempt to impose it upon us as ours, and violently to
substitute their right for our force, is an act of tyranny,
and to be resisted. It sets at nought the second great 20
half of our maxim, force till right is ready. This was
the grand error of the French Revolution ; and its
movement of ideas, by quitting the intellectual sphere
and rushing furiously into the political sphere, ran,
indeed, a prodigious and memorable course, but pro- 25
duced no such intellectual fruit as the movement of
ideas of the Renascence, and created, in opposition to
itself, what I may call an epoch of concentration. The
great force of that epoch of concentration was Eng-
land ; and the great voice of that epoch of concentra- 30
tion was Burke. It is the fashion to treat Burke's
writings on the French Revolution as superannuated
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 3
and conquered by the event ; as the eloquent but un-
philosophical tirades of bigotry and prejudice. I will
not deny that they are often disfigured by the violence
and passion of the moment, and that in some directions
5 Burke's view was bounded, and his observation there-
fore at fault. But on the whole, and for those who can
make the needful corrections, what distinguishes these
writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful, philo-
sophical truth. They contain the true philosophy of
loan epoch of concentration, dissipate the heavy atmos-
phere which its own nature is apt to engender round
it, and make its resistance rational instead of
mechanical, -r
But Burke is so great because, almost alone in Eng-
15 land, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he
saturates politics with thought. It is his accident that
his ideas were at the service of an epoch of concen-
tration, not of an epoch of expansion ; it is his
characteristic that he so lived by ideas, and had such
20 a source of them welling up within him, that he could
float even an epoch of concentration and English Tory
politics with them. It does not hurt him that Dr.
Price and the Liberals were enraged with him ; it
does not even hurt him that George the Third and the
25 Tories were enchanted with him. His greatness is
that he lived in a world which neither English Liberal-
ism nor English Toryism is apt to enter ; — the world of
ideas, not the world of catchwords and party habits.
So far is it from being really true of him that he " to
30 party gave up what was meant for mankind," that at
the very end of his fierce struggle with the French
Revolution, after all his invectives against its false pre«
14 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
tensions, hollovvness, and madness, with his sincere
conviction of its mischievousness, he can close a
memorandum on the best means of combating it, some
of the last pages he ever wrote, — the Thoughts on
French Affairs, in December, 1791, — with these strik- 5
ing words : —
" The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The
remedy must be where power, wisdom, and informa-
tion, I hope, are more united with good intentions than
they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I ia
believe, for ever. It has given me many anxious
moments for the last two years. If a great change is
to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be
fitted to it j the general opinions and feelings will draw
that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and 15
then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in
human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of
Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They
will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obsti-
nate." 20
That return of Burke upon himself has always
seemed to me one of the finest things in English
literature, or indeed in any literature. That is what
I call living by ideas : when one side of a question
has long had your earnest support, when all your 25
feelings are engaged, when you hear all round you no
language but one, when your party talks this language
like a steam-engine and can imagine no other, — still
to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so
it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side 30
of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to
speak anything but what the lord has put in your mouth.
AT THE PR E SENT TIME. 15
I know nothing more striking, and I must add that I
know nothing more un-English.
For the Englishman in general is like my friend the
Member of Parliament, and believes, point-blank, that
5 for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no objec-
tion to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland
of Burke's day, who, in a memorandum on the French
Revolution, talks of " certain miscreants, assuming
the name of philosophers, who have presumed them-
10 selves capable of establishing a new system of society."
The Englishman has been called a political animal,
and he values what is political and practical so much
that ideas easily become objects of dislike in his eyes,
and thinkers '' miscreants," because ideas and thinkers
15 have rashly meddled with politics and practice. This
would be all very well if the dislike and neglect con-
fined themselves to ideas transported out of their own
sphere, and meddling rashly with practice ; but they
are inevitably extended to ideas as such, and to the
20 whole life of intelligence ; practice is everything, a
free play of the mind is nothing. The notion of the
free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleas-
ure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essen-
tial provider of elements without which a nation's
25 spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them,
must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters
into an Englishman's thoughts. It is noticeable that
the word curiosity, which in other languages is used in
a good sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of
30 man's nature, just this disinterested love of a free
play of the mind on all subjects, for its own sake, — it
is noticeable, I say, that this word has in our language
x6 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
no sense of the kind, no sense but a rather bad and
disparaging one. But criticism, real criticism, is
essentially the exercise of this very quality. It obeys
an instinct prompting it to try to know the best that
is known and thought in the world, irrespectively of 5
practice, politics, and everything of the kind ; and to
value knowledge and thought as they approach this
best, without the intrusion of any other considera-
tions whatever. This is an instinct for which there
is, I think, little original sympathy in the practical ia
English nature, and .what there was of it has under-
gone a long benumbing period of blight and suppres-
sion in the epoch of concentration which followed the
French Revolution.
But epochs of concentration cannot well endure i£
for ever ; epochs of expansion, in the due course of
things, follow them. Such an epoch of expansion
seems to be opening in this country. In the first
place all danger of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign
ideas upon our practice has long disappeared ; like 20
the traveller in the fable, therefore, we begin to wear
our cloak a little more loosely. Then, with a long
peace, the ideas of Europe steal gradually and ami-
cably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally small
quantities at a time, with our own notions. Then, 25
too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing
and brutalising influence of our passionate material
progress, it seems to me indisputable that this progress
is likely, though not certain, to lead in the end to an
apparition of intellectual life ; and that man, after he 30
has made himself perfectly comfortable and has now
to determine what to do with himself next, may begin
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 7
to remember that he has a mind, and that the mind
may be made the source of great pleasure. I grant it
is mainly the privilege of faith, at present, to discern
this end to our railways, our business, and our fortune-
5 making ; but we shall see if, here as elsewhere, faith
is not in the end the true prophet. Our ease, our
travelling, and our unbounded liberty to hold just as
hard and securely as we please to the practice to which
our notions have given birth, all tend to beget an
10 inclination to deal a little more freely with these
notions themselves, to canvass them a little, to pene-
trate a little into their real nature. Flutterings of
curiosity, in the foreign sense of the word, appear
amongst us, and it is in these that criticism must look
15 to find its account. Criticism first ; a time of true
creative activity, perhaps, — which, as I have said, must
inevitably be preceded amongst us by a time of criti-
cism, — hereafter, when criticism has done its work.
It is of the last importance that English criticism
20 should clearly discern what rule for its course, in
order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and
to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The
rule may be summed up in one word, — disinterestedness.
And how is criticism to show disinterestedness ? By
25 keeping aloof from what is called " the practical view
of things "; by resolutely following the law of its own
nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all
subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to
lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical
30 considerations about ideas, which plenty of people
will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought
often to be attached to them, which in this country at
1 8 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
any rate are certain to be attached to them quite
sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to
do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to
know the best that is known and thought in the
world, and by in its turn making this known, to create 5
a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to
do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability ; but
its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all
questions of practical consequences and applications,
questions which will never fail to have due prominence u
given to them. Else criticism, besides being really
false to its own nature, merely continues in the old
rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and
will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For
what is at present the bane of criticism in this country ? 15
It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle
it. It subserves interests not its own. Our organs of
criticism are organs of men and parties having practi-
cal ends to serve, and with them those practical ends
are the first thing and the play of mind the second ; 2c
so much play of mind as is compatible with the prose-
cution of those practical ends is all that is wanted.
An organ like the Revue des Deux Mondes, having for
its main function to understand and utter the best
that is known and thought in the world, existing, it 25
may be said, as just an organ for a free play of the
mind, we have not. But we have the Edinburgh
Review, existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and
for as much play of the mind as may suit its being
that ; we have the Quarterly Revietv, existing as an 30
organ of the Tories, and for as much play of mind as
may suit its being that ; we have the British Quarterly
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 19
Review, existing as an organ of the political Dissenters,
and for as much play of mind as may suit its being
that ; we have the Times, existing as an organ of the
common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as
5 much play of mind as may suit its being that. And
so on through all the various fractions, political and
religious, of our society ; every fraction has, as such,
its organ of criticism, but the notion of combining all
fractions in the common pleasure of a free disinter-
ioested play of mind meets with no favour. Directly
this play of mind wants to have more scope, and to
forget the pressure of practical considerations a little,
it is checked, it is made to feel the chain. We saw
this the other day in the extinction, so much to be
15 regretted, of the Home and Foreign Revieiu. Perhaps
in no organ of criticism in this country was there so
much knowledge, so much play of mind ; but these
could not save it. The Dublin Review subordinates
play of mind to the practical business of English and
20 Irish Catholicism, and lives. It must needs be that
men should act in sects and parties, that each of these
sects and parties should have its organ, and should
make this organ subserve the interests of its action ;
but it would be well, too, that there should be a
25 criticism, not the minister of these interests, not their
enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of
them. No other criticism will ever attain any real
authority or make any real way towards its end, — the
creating a current of true and fresh ideas.
30 It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure
intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from
practice, has been so directly polemical and contro*
20 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
versial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country,
its best spiritual work ; which is to keep man from a
self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to
lead him towards perfection, by making his mind
dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the abso- 5
lute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical prac-
tical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal
perfection of their practice, makes them willingly
assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure
it against attack ; and clearly this is narrowing and 10
baneful for them. If they were reassured on the
practical side, speculative considerations of ideal
perfection they might be brought to entertain, and
their spiritual horizon would thus gradually widen.
Sir Charles Adderley says to the Warwickshire 15
farmers : —
" Talk of the improvement of breed ! Why, the
race we ourselves represent, the men and women,
the old Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the
whole world. . . . The absence of a too enervating 20
climate, too unclouded skies, and a too luxurious
nature, has produced so vigorous a race of people, and
has rendered us so superior to all the world."
Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers : —
"I look around me and ask what is the state of 25
England ? Is not property safe ? Is not every man
able to say what he likes ? Can you not walk from
one end of England to the other in perfect security ?
I ask you whether, the world over or in past history,
there is anything like it ? Nothing. I pray that our 3c
unrivalled happiness may last."
Now obviously there is a peril for poor human
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 21
nature in words and thoughts of such exuberant self-
satisfaction, until we find ourselves safe in the streets
of the Celestial City.
" Das wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blicke
5 Der vorwarts sieht, wie viel noch ubrig bleibt — "
says Goethe ; " the little that is done seems nothing
when we look forward and see how much we have yet
to do." Clearly this is a better line of reflection for
weak humanity, so long as it remains on this earthly
io field of labour and trial.
But neither Sir Charles Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck
is by nature inaccessible to considerations of this sort.
They only lose sight of them owing to the controver-
sial life we all lead, and the practical form which all
15 speculation takes with us. They have in view oppo-
nents whose aim is not ideal, but practical ; and in
their zeal to uphold their own practice against these
innovators, they go so far as even to attribute to this
practice an ideal perfection. Somebody has been
20 wanting to introduce a six-pound franchise, or to
abolish church-rates, or to collect agricultural statistics
by force, or to diminish local self-government. How
natural, in reply to such proposals, very likely im-
proper or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark,
25 and to say stoutly, " Such a race of people as we
stand, so superior to all the world ! The old Anglo-
Saxon race, the best breed in the whole world ! I
pray that our unrivalled happiness may last ! I ask
you whether, the world over or in past history, there
30 is anything like it?" And so long as criticism
answers this dithyramb by insisting that the old
22 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
Anglo-Saxon race would be still more superior to all
others if it had no church-rates, or that our unrivalled
happiness would last yet longer with a six-pound
franchise, so long will the strain, " The best breed in
the whole world ! " swell louder and louder, every- 5
thing ideal and refining will be lost out of sight, and
both the assailed and their critics will remain in a
sphere, to say the truth, perfectly unvital, a sphere in
which spiritual progression is impossible. But let
criticism leave church-rates and the franchise alone, 10
and in the most candid spirit, without a single lurking
thought of practical innovation, confront with our
dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled in a
newspaper immediately after reading Mr. Roebuck : —
"A shocking child murder has just been committed 15
at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the work-
house there on Saturday morning with her young
illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards
found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled.
Wragg is in custody." 2c
Nothing but that ; but, in juxtaposition with the
absolute eulogies of Sir Charles Adderley and Mr.
Roebuck, how eloquent, how suggestive are those
few lines ! " Our old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in
the whole world !" — how much that is harsh and ill- 25
favoured there is in this best ! Wragg ! If we are
to talk of ideal perfection, of " the best in the whole
world," has any one reflected what a touch of gross-
ness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the
more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the 30
natural growth amongst us of such hideous names, —
Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg ! In Ionia and Attica
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 23
they were luckier in this respect than " the best race
in the world "; by the Ilissus there was no Wragg,
poor thing! And "our unrivalled happiness"; —
what an element of grimness, bareness, and hideous-
tness mixes with it and blurs it ; the workhouse, the
dismal Mapperly Hills, — how dismal those who have
seen them will remember ; — the gloom, the smoke,
the cold, the strangled illegitimate child! "I ask
you whether, the world over or in past history, there
10 is anything like it ? " Perhaps not, one is inclined to
answer ; but at any rate, in that case, the world is
very much to be pitied. And the final touch, — short,
bleak, and inhuman : Wragg is in custody. The sex
lost in the confusion of our unrivalled happiness ; or
15 (shall I say ?) the superfluous Christian name lopped off
by the straightforward vigour of our old Anglo-Saxon
breed ! There is profit for the spirit in such con-
trasts as this ; criticism serves the cause of perfection
by establishing them. By eluding sterile conflict, by
20 refusing to remain in the sphere where alone narrow
and relative conceptions have any worth and validity,
criticism may diminish its momentary importance, but
only in this way has it a chance of gaining admittance
for those wider and more perfect conceptions to which
25 all its duty is really owed. Mr. Roebuck will have a
poor opinion of an adversary who replies to his defiant
songs of triumph only by murmuring under his breath,
Wragg is in custody ; but in no other way will these
songs of triumph be induced gradually to moderate
30 themselves, to get rid of what in them is excessive
and offensive, and to fall into a softer and truer key.
It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect
24 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and
that, by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue
of detachment and abandoning the sphere of practical
life, it condemns itself to a slow and obscure work.
Slow and obscure it may be, but it is the only propers
work of criticism. The mass of mankind will never
have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are ;
very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On
these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the
general practice of the world. That is as much as 10
saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they
are will find himself one of a very small circle ; but
it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own
work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.
The rush and roar of practical life will always have a 15
dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected
spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex ;
most of all will this be the case where that life is so
powerful as it is in England. But it is only by re-
maining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the 20
point of view of the practical man, that the critic can
do the practical man any service ; and it is only by
the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and
by at last convincing even the practical man of his
sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which 25
perpetually threaten him.
For the practical man is not apt for fine distinc-
tions, and yet in these distinctions truth and the
highest culture greatly find their account. But it is
not easy to lead a practical man, — unless you reassure 30
him as to your practical intentions, you have no
chance of leading him, — to see that a thing which he
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 25
flas always been used to look at from one side only,
which he greatly values, and which, looked at from
that side, quite deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and
admiring which he bestows upon it, — that this thing,
5 looked at from another side, may appear much less
beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims
to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find
language innocent enough, how shall we make the
spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to
to enable us to say to the political Englishman that the
British Constitution itself, which, seen from the prac-
tical side, looks such a magnificent organ of progress
and virtue, seen from the speculative side, — with its
compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its
15 studied avoidance of clear thoughts, — that, seen from
this side, our august Constitution sometimes looks, —
forgive me, shade of Lord Somers! — a colossal machine
for the manufacture of Philistines ? How is Cobbett
to say this and not be misunderstood, blackened as he
aois with the smoke of a lifelong conflict in the field of
political practice ? how is Mr. Carlyle to say it and
not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into this
field with his Latter-day Pamphlets? how is Mr.
Ruskin, after his pugnacious political economy ? I
E5 say, the critic must keep out of the region of immedi-
ate practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere,
if he wants to make a beginning for that more free
speculative treatment of things, which may perhaps
one day make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but
30 in a natural and thence irresistible manner.
Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain
exposed to frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere
26 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
so much as in this country. For here people are par-
ticularly indisposed even to comprehend that without
this free disinterested treatment of things, truth and
the highest culture are out of the question. So
immersed are they in practical life, so accustomed to 5
take all their notions from this life and its processes,
that they are apt to think that truth and culture them-
selves can be reached by the processes of this life,
and that it is an impertinent sigularity to think of
reaching them in any other. ''We are all terrce Jilii," 10
cries their eloquent advocate; " all Philistines together.
Away with the notion of proceeding by any other
course than the course dear to the Philistines ; let us
have a social movement, let us organise and combine
a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us call it 15
the liberal party, and let us all stick to each other, and
back each other up. Let us have no nonsense about
independent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, and
the few and the many. Don't let us trouble ourselves
about foreign thought; we shall invent the whole 20
thing for ourselves as we go along. If one of us
speaks well, applaud him ; if one of us speaks ill,
applaud him too ; we are all in the same movement,
we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth."
In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really a 25
social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring a
chairman, a secretary, and advertisements ; with the
excitement of an occasional scandal, with a little
resistance to give the happy sense of difficulty over-
come; but, in general, plenty of bustle and very little 30
thought. To act is so easy, as Goethe says; to think
is so hard ! It is true that the critic has many temp-
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 27
tations to go with the stream, to make one of the
party movement, one of these terra filii ; it seems
ungracious to refuse to be a terra filius, when so
many excellent people are ; but the critic's duty is to
5 refuse, or, if resistance is vain, at least to cry with
Obermann : Pe'rissons en resistant.
How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had
ample opportunity of experiencing when I ventured
some time ago to criticise the celebrated first volume
10 of Bishop Colenso. 1 The echoes of the storm which
was then raised I still, from time to time, hear grum-
bling round me. That storm arose out of a misunder-
standing almost inevitable. It is a result of no little
culture to attain to a clear perception that science and
15 religion are two wholly different things. The multi-
tude will for ever confuse them ; but happily that is
of no great real importance, for while the multitude
imagines itself to live by its false science, it does
really live by its true religion. Dr. Colenso, how-
soever, in his first volume did all he could to strengthen
the confusion, 2 and to make it dangerous. He did this
1 So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and contro-
versy, that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time from
the occasion which called them forth, the essays in which I criti-
cised Dr. Colenso's book; I feel bound, however, after all that has
passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere impenitence
for having published them. Nay, I cannot forbear repeating yet
once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, this sentence
from my original remarks upon him : There is truth of science
■ and truth of religion; truth of science does not become truth of
religion till it is made religious. And I will add : Let us have all
the science there is from the men of science ; from the men of
religion let us have religion.
2 It has been said I make it " a crime against literary criticism
28 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
with the best intentions, I freely admit, and with the
most candid ignorance that this was the natural effect
of what he was doing ; but, says Joubert, " Ignorance,
which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, is
itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the first order." 5
I criticised Bishop Colenso's speculative confusion.
Immediately there was a cry raised: "What is this?
here is a liberal attacking a liberal. Do not you
belong to the movement ? are not you a friend of
truth ? Is not Bishop Colenso in search of truth ? 10
then speak with proper respect of his book. Dr.
Stanley is another friend of truth, and you speak with
proper respect of his book ; why make these invidious
differences ? both books are excellent, admirable, lib-
eral ; Bishop Colenso's perhaps the most so, because 15
it is the boldest, and will have the best practical con-
sequences for the liberal cause. Do you want to
encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and
your, and our implacable enemies, the Church and
State Review or the Record, — the High Church rhi- 2c
noceros and the Evangelical hyrena? Be silent, there-
fore ; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you can !
and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd pigeons."
But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indis-
criminate method. It is unfortunately possible for a 25
man in pursuit of truth to write a book which reposes
upon a false conception. Even the practical conse-
quences of a book are to genuine criticism no recom-
mendation of it, if the book is, in the highest sense,-
ind the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant." Need
t point out that the ignorant are not informed by being confirmed
in a confusion ?
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 29
blundering. I see that a lady who herself, too, is in
pursuit of truth, and who writes with great ability,
hut a little too much, perhaps, under the influence of
(he practical spirit of the English liberal movement,
1 classes Bishop Colenso's book and M. Renan's
together, in her survey of the religious state of
Europe, as facts of the same order, works, both of
them, of "great importance"; "great ability, power,
and skill"; Bishop Colenso's, perhaps, the most
10 powerful; at least. Miss Cobbe gives special expres-
sion to her gratitude that to Bishop Colenso " has
been given the strength to grasp, and the courage to
teach, truths of such deep import." In the same
way, more than one popular writer has compared him
>5 to Luther. Now it is just this kind of false estimate
which the critical spirit is, it seems to me, bound to
resist. It is really the strongest possible proof of the
low ebb at which, in England, the critical spirit is,
that while the critical hit in the religious literature
20 of Germany is Dr. Strauss's book, in that of France
M. Renan's book, the book of Bishop Colenso is the
critical hit in the religious literature of England.
Bishop Colenso's book reposes on a total misconcep-
tion of the essential elements of the religious problem,
25 as that problem is now presented for solution. To
criticism, therefore, which seeks to have the best that
is known and thought on this problem, it is, however
well meant, of no importance whatever. M. Renan's
book attempts a new synthesis of the elements
30 furnished to us by the Four Gospels. It attempts,
in my opinion, a synthesis, perhaps premature, per-
haps impossible, certainly not successful. Up to the
3© THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
present time, at any rate, we must acquiesce in
Fleury's sentence on such recastings of the Gospel-
story : Quiconqtte s 1 imagine la pouvoir mieux ecrire,
7ie Ventend pas. M. Renan had himself passed by
anticipation a like sentence on his own work, when 5
he said : " If a new presentation of the character of
Jesus were offered to me, I would not have it ; its
very clearness would be, in my opinion, the best
proof of its insufficiency." His friends may with
perfect justice rejoin that at the sight of the Holy 10
Land, and of the actual scene of the Gospel-story,
all the current of M. Renan's thoughts may have
naturally changed, and a new casting of that story
irresistibly suggested itself to him ; and that this is
just a case for applying Cicero's maxim : Change of 15
mind is not inconsistency — nemo doctus unquam muta-
tionem consilii inconstantiam dixit esse. Nevertheless,
for criticism, M. Renan's first thought must still be
the truer one, as long as his new casting so fails more
fully to commend itself, more fully (to use Coleridge's 20
happy phrase about the Bible) to find us. Still
M. Renan's attempt is, for criticism, of the most real
interest and importance, since, with all its difficulty,
a fresh synthesis of the New Testament data, — not a
making war on them, in Voltaire's fashion, not a 23
leaving them out of mind, in the world's fashion, but
the putting a new construction upon them, the taking
them from under the old, traditional, conventional
point of view and placing them under a new one, —
is the very essence of the religious problem, as now 30
presented ; and only by efforts in this direction can
it receive a solution.
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 3 1
Again, in the same spirit in which she judges
Bishop Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest
liberals of our practical race, both here and in
America, herself sets vigorously about a positive
5 reconstruction of religion, about making a religion
of the future out of hand, or at least setting about
making it. We must not rest, she and they are
always thinking and saying, in negative criticism, we
must be creative and constructive ; hence we have
10 such works as her recent Religious Duty, and works
still more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will
be in every one's mind. These works often have
much ability ; they often spring out of sincere con-
victions, and a sincere wish to do good ; and they
15 sometimes, perhaps, do good. Their fault is (if I
may be permitted to say so) one which they have in
common with the British College of Health, in the
New Road. Every one knows the British College of
Health ; it is that building with the lion and the
20 statue of the Goddess Hygeia before it; at least
I am sure about the lion, though I am not absolutely
certain about the Goddess Hygeia. This building
does credit, perhaps, to the resources of Dr. Morrison
and his disciples ; but it falls a good deal short of
25 one's idea of what a British College of Health ought
to be. In England, where we hate public inter-
ference and love individual enterprise, we have a
whole crop of places like the British College of
Health ; the grand name without the grand thing.
30 Unluckily, creditable to individual enterprise as they
are, they tend to impair our taste by making us for-
get what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful charac f er
32 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
properly belongs to a public institution. The same
may be said of the religions of the future of Miss
Cobbe and others. Creditable, like the British Col-
lege of Health, to the resources of their authors, they
yet tend to make us forget what more grandiose, 5
noble, or beautiful character properly belongs to
religious constructions. The historic religions, with
all their faults, have had this ; it certainly belongs
to the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to
have this ; and we impoverish our spirit if we allow 10
a religion of the future without it. What then is the
duty of criticism here ? To take the practical point
of view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its
works, — its New Road religions of the future into the
bargain, — for their general utility's sake ? By no 15
means ; but to be perpetually dissatisfied with these
works, while they perpetually fall short of a high
and perfect ideal.
For criticism, these are elementary laws ; but they
never can be popular, and in this country they have 20
been very little followed, and one meets with immense
obstacles in following them. That is a reason for
asserting them again and again. Criticism must
maintain its independence of the practical spirit and
its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the practi- 25
cal spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the
sphere of the ideal they seem impoverishing and
limiting. It must not hurry on to the goal because
of its practical importance. It must be patient, and
know how to wait ; and flexible, and know how to 30
attach itself to things and how to withdraw from
them. It must be apt to study and praise elements
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 33
that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted,
even though they belong to a power which in the
practical sphere may be maleficent. It must be apt
to discern the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of
5 powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent.
And this without any notion of favouring or injur-
ing, in the practical sphere, one power or the other ;
without any notion of playing off, in this sphere,
one power against the other. When one looks, for
10 instance, at the English Divorce Court, — an institu-
tion which perhaps has its practical conveniences,
but which in the ideal sphere is so hideous ; an
institution which neither makes divorce impossible
nor makes it decent, which allows a man to get rid
15 of his wife, or a wife of her husband, but makes them
drag one another first, for the public edification,
through a mire of unutterable infamy, — when one
looks at this charming institution, I say, with its
crowded trials, its newspaper reports, and its money
20 compensations, this institution in which the gross
unregenerate British Philistine has indeed stamped
an image of himself, — one may be permitted to find
the marriage theory of Catholicism refreshing and
elevating. Or when Protestantism, in virtue of its
25 supposed rational and intellectual origin, gives the
law to criticism too magisterially, criticism may and
must remind it that its pretensions, in this respect, are
illusive and do it harm ; that the Reformation was a
moral rather than an intellectual event ; that Luther's
30 theory of grace no more exactly reflects the mind of
the spirit than Bossuet's philosophy of history reflects
it ; and that there is no more antecedent probability
34 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
of the Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas being agree-
able to perfect reason than of Pope Pius the Ninth's.
But criticism will not on that account forget the
achievements of Protestantism in the practical and
moral sphere ; nor that, even in the intellectual 5
sphere, Protestantism, though in a blind and stumb-
ling manner, carried forward the Renascence, while
Catholicism threw itself violently across its path.
I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrast-
ing the want of ardour and movement which he now ia
found amongst young men in this country with what
he remembered in his own youth, twenty years ago.
"What reformers we were then!" he exclaimed;
"what a zeal we had ! how we canvassed every insti-
tution in Church and State, and were prepared to 15
remodel them all on first principles ! " He was
inclined to regret, as a spiritual flagging, the lull which
he saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as a pause
in which the turn to a new mode of spiritual progress
is being accomplished. Everything was long seen, by 20
the young and ardent amongst us, in inseparable con-
nection with politics and practical life. We have
pretty well exhausted the benefits of seeing things in
this connection, we have got all that can be got by so
seeing them. Let us try a more disinterested mode of 25
seeing them ; let us betake ourselves more to the
serener life of the mind and spirit. This life, too,
may have its excesses and dangers ; but they are not
for us at present. Let us think of quietly enlarging
our stock of true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon as 30
we get an idea or half an idea, be running out with it
into the street, and trying to make it rule there. Our
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 35
ideas will, in the end, shape the world all the better
for maturing a little. Perhaps in fifty years' time it
will in the English House of Commons be an objec-
tion to an institution that it is an anomaly, and my
5 friend the Member of Parliament will shudder in his
grave. But let us in the meanwhile rather endeavour
that in twenty years' time it may, in English literature,
b.e an objection to a proposition that it is absurd.
That will be a change so vast, that the imagination
10 almost fails to grasp it. Ab iniegro scedorum nascitur
ordo.
If I have insisted so much on the course which
criticism must take where politics and religion are
concerned, it is because, where these burning matters
15 are in question, it is most likely to go astray. I
have wished, above all, to insist on the attitude which
criticism should adopt towards things in general ; on
its right tone and temper of mind. But then comes
another question as to the subject-matter which literary
20 criticism should most seek. Here, in general, its
course is determined for it by the idea which is the
law of its being ; the idea of a disinterested endeavour
to learn and propagate the best that is known and
thought in the world, and thus to establish a current
25 of fresh and true ideas. By the very nature of things,
as England is not all the world, much of the best that
is known and thought in the world cannot be of
English growth, must be foreign ; by the nature of
things, again, it is just this that we are least likely to
30 know, while English thought is streaming in upon us
from all sides, and takes excellent care that we shall
not be ignorant of its existence. The English critic
3<5 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
of literature, therefore, must dwell much on foreign
thought, and with particular heed on any part of it,
which, while significant and fruitful in itself, is for any
reason specially likely to escape him. Again, judging
is often spoken of as the critic's one business, and so 5
in some sense it is ; but the judgment which almost
insensibly forms itself in a fair and clear mind, along
with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one ; and thus
knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be the
critic's great concern for himself. And it is by com- 10
municating fresh knowledge, and letting his own judg-
ment pass along with it, — but insensibly, and in the
second place, not the first, as a sort of companion and
clue, not as an abstract lawgiver, — that the critic will
generally do most good to his readers. Sometimes, ij
no doubt, for the sake of establishing an author's place
in literature, and his relation to a central standard
(and if this is not done, how are we to get at our best
in the world?) criticism may have to deal with a sub-
ject-matter so familiar that fresh knowledge is out of 20
the question, and then it must be all judgment ; an
enunciation and detailed application of principles.
Here the great safeguard is never to let oneself become
abstract, always to retain an intimate and lively con-
sciousness of the truth of what one is saying, and, the 25
moment this fails us, to be sure that something is
wrong. Still, under all circumstances, this mere judg-
ment and application of principles is, in itself, not the
most satisfactory work to the critic ; like mathematics,
it is tautological, and cannot well give us, like fresh 50
learning, the sense of creative activity.
But stop, some one will say ; all this talk is of no
IO
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 37
practical use to us whatever ; this criticism of yours
is not what we have in our minds when we speak of
criticism ; when we speak of critics and criticism, we
mean critics and criticism of the current English
5 literature of the day ; when you offer to tell criticism
its function, it is to this criticism that we expect you
to address yourself. I am sorry for it, for I am afraid
I must disappoint these expectations. I am bound by
my own definition of criticism :(a disinterested endea-
vour to learn and propagate the best that is known and
thought in the world. J How much of current English
literature comes into this "best that is known and
thought in the world ? " Not very much, I fear
certainly less, at this moment, than of the currem.
15 literature of France or Germany. Well, then, am I to
alter my definition of criticism, in order to meet the
requirements of a number of practising English critics,
who, after all, are free in their choice of a business?
That would be making criticism lend itself just to one
20 of those alien practical considerations, which, I have
said, are so fatal to it. One may say, indeed, to those
who have to deal with the mass — so much better dis-
regarded — of current English literature, that they may
at all events endeavour, in dealing with this, to try it,
25 so far as they can, by the standard of the best that is
known and thought in the world ; one may say, that
to get anywhere near this standard, every critic should
try and possess one great literature, at least, besides
his own, and the more unlike his own, the better.
30 But, after all, the criticism I am really concerned
with, — the criticism which alone can much help us
for the future, the criticism which, throughout Europe,
38 THE FUNCTION CF CRITICISM
is at the present day meant, when so much stress is
laid on the importance of criticism and the critical
spirit, — is a criticism which regards Europe as being,
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con-
federation, bound to a joint action and working to a 5
common result ; and whose members have, for their
proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and
Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special, local,
and temporary advantages being put out of account,
that modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual 10
sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly
carries out this programme. And what is that but
saying that we too, all of us, as individuals, the more
thoroughly we carry it out, shall make the more
progress ? 15
There is so much inviting us ! — what are we to
take ? what will nourish us in growth towards perfec-
tion ? That is the question which, with the immense
field of life and of literature lying before him, the critic
has to answer ; for himself first, and afterwards for 20
others. In this idea of the critic's business the essays
brought together in the following pages have had their
origin ; in this idea, widely different as are their sub-
jects, they have, perhaps, their unity.
I conclude with what I said at the beginning : to 25
have the sense of creative activity is the great happi-
ness and the great proof of being alive, and it is not
denied to criticism to have it ; but then criticism must
be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its
knowledge. Then it may have, in no contemptible 3a
measure, a joyful sense of creative activity ; a sense
which a man of insight and conscience will prefer to
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 39
what he might derive from a poor, starved, fragmen-
tary, inadequate creation. And at some epochs no
other creation is possible.
Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity
5 belongs only to genuine creation; in literature we
must never forget that. But what true man of letters
ever can forget it ? It is no such common matter for
a gifted nature to come into possession of a current
of true and living ideas, and to produce amidst the
10 inspiration of them, that we are likely to underrate it.
The epochs of yEschylus and Shakspeare make us
feel their pre-eminence. In an epoch like those is, no
doubt, the true life of literature ; there is the promised
land, towards which criticism can only beckon. That
15 promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we
shall die in the wilderness ; but to have desired to
enter it, to have saluted it from afar, is already, per-
haps, the best distinction among contemporaries ; it
will certainly be the best title to esteem with pos-
terity. — Essays, I,, ed. 1896, pp. 1-41.
®n {Translating Ibomer.
. . . Nunquamne reponam ?
It has more than once been suggested to me that I
should translate Homer. That is a task for which I
have neither the time nor the courage ; but the sug-
gestion led me to regard yet more closely a poet whom
I had already long studied, and for one or two years 5
the works of Homer were seldom out of my hands.
The study of classical literature is probably on the
decline ; but, whatever may be the fate of this study
in general, it is certain that, as instruction spreads and
the number of readers increases, attention will be 10
more and more directed to the poetry of Homer, not
indeed as part of a classical course, but as the most
important poetical monument existing. Even within
the last ten years two fresh translations of the Iliad
have appeared in England : one by a man of great 15
ability and genuine learning, Professor Newman ; the
other by Mr. Wright, the conscientious and painstak-
ing translator of Dante. It may safely be asserted
that neither of these works will take rank as the
standard translation of Homer; that the task of 20
rendering him will still be attempted by other trans-
lators. It may perhaps be possible to render to these
some service, to save them some loss of labour, by
pointing out rocks on which their predecessors have
40
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 4*
split, and the right objects on which a translator of
Homer should fix his attention.
It is disputed what aim a translator should propose
to himself in dealing with his original. Even this
5 preliminary is not yet settled. On one side it is said
that the translation ought to be such " that the reader
should, if possible, forget that it is a translation at all,
and be lulled into the illusion that he is reading an
original work — something original " (if the translation
10 be in English), "from an English hand." The real
original is in this case, it is said, " taken as a basis on
which to rear a poem that shall affect our countrymen
as the original may be conceived to have affected its
natural hearers." On the other hand, Mr. Newman,
15 who states the foregoing doctrine only to condemn it,
declares that he " aims at precisely the opposite: to
retain every peculiarity of the original, so far as he is
able, with the greater care the more foreign it may
happen to be "; so that it may " never be forgotten
2othat he is imitating, and imitating in a different
material." The translator's " first duty," says Mr.
Newman, " is a historical one, to be faithful"
Probably both sides would agree that the translator's
"first duty is to be faithful'"; but the question at
25 issue between them is, in what faithfulness consists.
My one object is to give practical advice to a trans-
lator ; and I shall not the least concern myself with
theories of translation as such. But I advise the
translator not to try " to rear on the basis of the Iliad,
30 a poem that shall affect our countrymen as the
original may be conceived to have affected its natural
hearers "; and for this simple reason, that we cannot
42 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
possibly tell how the Iliad "affected its natural
hearers." It is probably meant merely that he should
try to affect Englishmen powerfully, as Homer affected
Greeks powerfully ; but this direction is not enough,
and can give no real guidance. For all great poets 5
affect their hearers powerfully, but the effect of one
poet is one thing, that of another poet another thing ;
it is our translator's business to reproduce the effect
of Homer, and the most powerful emotion of the
unlearned English reader can never assure him 10
whether he has reproduced this, or whether he has
produced something else. So, again, he may follow
Mr. Newman's directions, he may try to be ''faithful,"
he may "retain every peculiarity of his original";
but who is to assure him, who is to assure Mr. New- 15
man himself, that, when he has done this, he has done
that for which Mr. Newman enjoins this to be done,
" adhered closely to Homer's manner and habit of
thought" ? Evidently the translator needs some more
practical directions than these. No one can tell him 20
how Homer affected the Greeks : but there are those
who can tell him how Homer affects them. These are
scholars ; who possess, at the same time with knowl-
edge of Greek, adequate poetical taste and feeling.
No translation will seem to them of much worth com- 25
pared with the original ; but they alone can say
whether the translation produces more or less the
same effect upon them as the original. They are the
only competent tribunal in this matter : the Greeks
are dead ; the unlearned Englishman has not the data 30
for judging ; and no man can safely confide in his
own single judgment of his own work. Let not the
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 43
translator, then, trust to his notions of what the
ancient Greeks would have thought of him ; he will
lose himself in the vague. Let him not trust to what
the ordinary English reader thinks of him ; he will
5 be taking the blind for his guide. Let him not trust
to his own judgment of his own work ; he may be
misled by individual caprices. Let him ask how his
work affects those who both know Greek and can
appreciate poetry ; whether to read it gives the Pro-
iovost of Eton, or Professor Thompson at Cambridge,
or Professor Jowett here in Oxford, at all the same
feeling which to read the original gives them. I con-
sider that when Bentley said of Pope's translation,
" It was a pretty poem, but must not be called
15 Homer," the work, in spite of all its power and
attractiveness, was judged.
'fis av 6 (frpovinos opLaucv, — "as the judicious would
determine," — that is a test to which every one pro-
fesses himself willing to submit his works. Unhappily,
20 in most cases, no two persons agree as to who "the
judicious " are. In the present case, the ambiguity
is removed : I suppose the translator at one with me
as to the tribunal to which alone he should look for
judgment ; and he has thus obtained a practical test
25 by which to estimate the real success of his work.
How is he to proceed, in order that his work, tried
by this test, may be found most successful ?
First of all, there are certain negative counsels
which I will give him. Homer has occupied men's
30 minds so much, such a literature has arisen about
him, that every one who approaches him should
resolve strictly to limit himself to that which may
44 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
directly serve the object for which he approaches
him. I advise the translator to have nothing to do
with the questions, whether Homer ever existed ;
whether the poet of the Iliad be one or many ;
whether the Iliad be one poem or an Achilleis and an 5
Iliad stuck together ; whether the Christian doctrine
of the Atonement is shadowed forth in the Homeric
mythology ; whether the Goddess Latona in any way
prefigures the Virgin Mary, and so on. These are
questions which have been discussed with learning, 10
with ingenuity, nay, with genius ; but they have two
inconveniences, — one general for all who approach
them, one particular for the translator. The general
inconvenience is that there really exist no data for
determining them. The particular inconvenience is 15
that their solution by the translator, even were it
possible, could be of no benefit to his transla-
tion.
I advise him, again, not to trouble himself with
constructing a special vocabulary for his use in trans- 20
lation ; with excluding a certain class of English
words, and with confining himself to another class, in
obedience to any theory about the peculiar qualities
of Homer's style. Mr. Newman says that " the entire
dialect of Homer being essentially archaic, that of a 25
translator ought to be as much Saxo-Norman as
possible, and owe as little as possible to the elements
thrown into our language by classical learning." Mr.
Newman is unfortunate in the observance of his own
theory ; for I continually find in his translation words 30
of Latin origin, which seem to me quite alien to the
simplicity of Homer, — '" responsive," for instance,
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 45
which is a favourite word of Mr. Newman, to repre*
sent the Homeric d/x.et/3o'/A£vos : —
" Great Hector of the motley helm thus spake to her responsive*
" But thus responsively to him spake god-like Alexander."
5 And the word " celestial," again, in the grand address
of Zeus to the horses of Achilles,
" You, who are born celestial, from Eld and Death exempted ! "
seems to me in that place exactly to jar upon the
feeling as too bookish. But, apart from the question
roof Mr. "Newman's fidelity to his own theory, such a
theory seems to me both dangerous for a translator
and false in itself. Dangerous for a translator ;
because, wherever one finds such a theory announced
(and one finds it pretty often), it is generally followed
15 by an explosion of pedantry; and pedantry is of all
things in the world the most un-Homeric. False in
itself; because, in fact, we owe to the Latin element
in our language most of that very rapidity and clear
decisiveness by which it is contradistinguished from
20 the German, and in sympathy with the languages of
Greece and Rome : so that to limit an English trans-
lator of Homer to words of Saxon origin is to deprive
him of one of his special advantages for translating
Homer. In Voss's well-known translation of Homer,
25 it is precisely the qualities of his German language
itself, something heavy and trailing both in the struc-
ture of its sentences and in the words of which it is
composed, which prevent his translation, in spite of
the hexameters, in spite of the fidelity, from creating
30 in us the impression created by the Greek. Mr.
46 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
Newman's prescription, if followed, would just strip
the English translator of the advantage which he has
over Voss.
The frame of mind in which we approach an author
influences our correctness of appreciation of him ; and 5
Homer should be approached by a translator in the
simplest frame of mind possible. Modern sentiment
tries to make the ancient not less than the modern
world its own ; but against modern sentiment in its
applications to Homer the translator, if he would feel 10
Homer truly — and unless he feels him truly, how can
he render him truly ? — cannot be too much on his
guard. For example : the writer of an interesting
article on English translations of Homer, in the last
number of the National Review y quotes, I see, with 15
admiration, a criticism of Mr. Ruskin on the use of
the epithet 4>vo-i£oo<>, "life-giving," in that beautiful
passage in the third book of the Iliad, which follows
Helen's mention of her brothers Castor and Pollux
as alive, though they were in truth dead : — 2G
ois <p6.ro • toi)s 5' tfSr) Karix ev ^fc/foos ala
iv AaKedaifiovi adOi, <pi\y iv Trarpidi yalrj. '
"The poet," says Mr. Ruskin, "has to speak of the
earth in sadness ; but he will not let that sadness
affect or change his thought of it. No ; though 25
Castor and Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our
mother still — fruitful, life-giving." This is a just
specimen of that sort of application of modern senti-
ment to the ancients, against which a student, who
wishes to feel the ancients truly, cannot too resolutely 30
1 Iliari, iii. 243.
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 47
defend himself. It reminds one, as, alas ! so much
of Mr. Ruskin's writing reminds one, of those words
of the most delicate of living critics : " Comnie tout
genre de composition a son ecueil particulier, cclui du
5 genre romanesque, c' est le faux." The reader may feel
moved as he reads it •. but it is not the less an ex-
ample of "le faux " in criticism ; it is false. It is not
true, as to that particular passage, that Homer called
the earth </>vcrt£oos, because, " though he had to speak
ioof the earth in sadness, he would not let that sadness
change or affect his thought of it," but consoled him-
self by considering that " the earth is our mother
still — fruitful, life-giving." It is not true, as a
matter of general criticism, that this kind of senti-
15 mentality, eminently modern, inspires Homer at all.
" From Homer and Polygnotus I every day learn
more clearly," says Goethe, " that in our life here
above ground we have, properly speaking, to enact
Hell": 2 — if the student must absolutely have a key-
conote to the Iliad, let him take this of Goethe, and see
what he can do with it ; it will not, at any rate, like
the tender pantheism of Mr. Ruskin, falsify for him
the whole strain of Homer.
These are negative counsels ; I come to the posi-
25 tive. When I say, the translator of Homer should
above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of
his author ; that he is eminently rapid ; that he is
eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of
his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both
30 in his syntax and in his words ; that he is eminently
plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that
2 Brief wechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, vi. 230.
48 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
is, in his matter and ideas ; and, finally, that he is
eminently noble ; — I probably seem to be saying what
is too general to be of much service to anybody. Yet
it is strictly true that, for want of duly penetrating
themselves with the first-named quality of Homer, :
his rapidity, Cowper and Mr. Wright have failed in
rendering him : that, for want of duly appreciating
the second-named quality, his plainness and directness
of style and diction, Pope and Mr. Sotheby have
failed in rendering him ; that for want of appreciating ic
the third, his plainness and directness of ideas, Chap-
man has failed in rendering him ; while for want of
appreciating the fourth, his nobleness, Mr. Newman,
who has clearly seen some of the faults of his prede-
cessors, has yet failed more conspicuously than any of 15
them.
Coleridge says, in his strange language, speaking
of the union of the human soul with the divine
essence, that this takes place
" Whene'er the mist, which stands 'tvvixt God and thee, 20
Defecates to a pure transparency ; "
and so, too, it may be said of that union of the trans-
lator with his original, which alone can produce a
good translation, that it takes place when the mist
which stands between them — the mist of alien modes 25
of thinking, speaking, and feeling on the translator's
part — " defecates to a pure transparency," and dis-
appears. But between Cowper and Homer — (Mr.
JVright repeats in the main Cowper's manner, as
Mr. Sotheby repeats Pope's manner, and neither Mr. 30
Wright's translation nor Mr. Sotheby's has, I must
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 49
be forgiven for saying, any proper reason for existing)
— between Cowper and Homer there is interposed the
mist of Cowper's elaborate Miltonic manner, entirely
alien to the flowing rapidity of Homer ; between Pope
5 and Homer there is interposed the mist of Pope's
literary artificial manner, entirely alien to the plain
naturalness of Homer's manner ; between Chapman
and Homer there is interposed the mist of the fanci-
fulness of the Elizabethan age, entirely alien to the
10 plain directness of Homer's thought and feeling;
while between Mr. Newman and Homer is interposed
a cloud of more than Egyptian thickness — namely, a
manner, in Mr. Newman's version, eminently ignoble,
while Homer's manner is eminently noble.
is I do not despair of making all these propositions
clear to a student who approaches Homer with a free
mind. First, Homer is eminently rapid, and to this.
rapidity the elaborate movement of Miltonic blank
verse is alien. The reputation of Cowper, that most
20 interesting man and excellent poet, does not depend
on his translation of Homer ; and in his preface to
the second edition, he himself tells us that he felt, —
he had too much poetical taste not to feel, — on re-
turning to his own version after six or seven years,
25 " more dissatisfied with it himself than the most
difficult to be pleased of all his judges." And he was
dissatisfied with it for the right reason, — that " it
seemed to him deficient in the grace of ease." Yet he
seems to have originally misconceived the manner of
30 Homer so much, that it is no wonder he rendered
him amiss. " The similitude of Milton's manner to
that of Homer is such," he says, " that no person
50 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
familiar with both can read either without being re-
minded of the other ; and it is in those breaks and
pauses to which the numbers of the English poet are
so much indebted, both for their dignity and variety,
that he chiefly copies the Grecian." It would be 5
more true to say : " The unlikeness of Milton's
manner to that of Homer is such, that no person
familiar with both can read either without being
struck with his difference from the other ; and it is
in his breaks and pauses that the English poet is ia
most unlike the Grecian."
The inversion and pregnant conciseness of Milton
or Dante are, doubtless, most impressive qualities of
style ; but they are the very opposites of the direct-
ness and flovvingness of Homer, which he keeps alike 15
in passages of the simplest narrative, and in those of
the deepest emotion. Not only, for example, are
these lines of Cowper un-Homeric : —
" So numerous seemed those fires the banks between
Of Xanthus, blazing, and the fleet of Greece 20
In prospect all of Troy ; "
where the position of the word "blazing" gives an
entirely un-Homeric movement to this simple passage,
describing the fires of the Trojan camp outside of
Troy ; but the following lines, in that very highly- 25
wrought passage where the horse of Achilles answers
his master's reproaches for having left Patroclus on
the field of battle, are equally un-Homeric : —
" For not through sloth or tardiness on us
Aught chargeable, have Ilium's sons thine arms 30
Stript from Patroclus' shoulders ; but a God
Matchless in battle, offspring of bright-haired
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 5 1
Latona, him contending in the van
Slew, for the glory of the chief of Troy."
Here even the first inversion, " have Ilium's sons
thine arms Stript from Patroclus* shoulders," gives
5 the reader a sense of a movement not Homeric ; and
the second inversion, "a God him contending in the
van Slew," gives this sense ten times stronger. In-
stead of moving on without check, as in reading the
original, the reader twice finds himself, in reading the
io translation, brought up and checked. Homer moves
with the same simplicity and rapidity in the highly-
wrought as in the simple passage.
It is in vain that Cowper insists on his fidelity :
" my chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my
15 original": — "the matter found in me, whether the
reader like it or not, is found also in Homer ; and
the matter not found in me, how much soever the
reader may admire it, is found only in Mr. Pope."
To suppose that it is fidelity to an original to give its
20 matter, unless you at the same time give its manner ;
or, rather, to suppose that you can really give its
matter at all, unless you can give its manner, is just
the mistake of our pre-Raphaelite school' of painters
who do not understand that the peculiar effect of
25 nature resides in the whole and not in the parts. So
the peculiar effect of a poet resides in his manner and
movement, not in his words taken separately. It is
well known how conscientiously literal is Cowper in
his translation of Homer. It is well known how
30 extravagantly free is Pope.
"So let it be!
Portents and prodigies are lost on me:"
52 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
that is Pope's rendering of the words,
A&vde, tI poi Ba.va.rov fxavreiieai ; oidt rl ere X9"h' 3
" Xanthus, why prophesiest thou my death to me? thou needest
not at all : " —
yet on the whole, Pope's translation of the Iliad is 5
more Homeric than Cowper's, for it is more rapid.
Pope's movement, however, though rapid, is not
of the same kind as Homer's ; and here I come to the
real objection to rhyme in a translation of Homer.
It is commonly said that rhyme is to be abandoned ia
in a translation of Homer, because " the exigencies of
rhyme," to quote Mr. Newman, "positively forbid
faithfulness"; because "a just translation of any
ancient poet in rhyme," to quote Cowper, " is im-
possible." This, however, is merely an accidental 15
objection to rhyme. If this were all, it might be
supposed, that if rhymes were more abundant, Homer
could be more adequately translated in rhyme. But
this is not so ; there is a deeper, a substantial objec-
tion to rhyme in a translation of Homer. It is, that 20
rhyme inevitably tends to pair lines which in the
original are independent, and thus the movement of
the poem is changed. In these lines of Chapman, for
instance, from Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus, in the
twelfth book of the Iliad : — 25
" O friend, if keeping back
Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not
wrack
In this life's human sea at all, but that deferring now
We shurned death ever, — nor would I half this vain valor show, 3c
3 Iliad, xix. 420.
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 53
Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance ;
But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the chanc*
Proposed now, there are infinite fates," etc.
Here the necessity of making the line,
5 " Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance,"
rhyme with the line which follows it, entirely changes
and spoils the movement of the passage.
oijre Kev avrbs ivl irpwroicri fj.axolp.rii>,
oijre Ke o~k (TTiWoL/XL p.dxv & Kvdi&veipav 4
io " Neither would I myself go forth to fight with the foremost,
• Nor would I urge thee on to enter the glorious battle,"
says Homer ; there he stops, and begins an opposed
movement : —
vvv 5' — efjLTrrjs yap Kijpes icpeffraaiv davaroio —
15 '■' But — for a thousand fates of death stand close to us always" —
This line, in which Homer wishes to go away with
the most marked rapidity from the line before, Chap-
man is forced, by the necessity of rhyming, intimately
to connect with the line before.
20 " But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the
chance " —
The moment the word chance strikes our ear, we are
irresistibly carried back to advance and to the whole
previous line, which, according to Homer's own feel-
25 ing, we ought to have left behind us entirely, and to
be moving farther and farther away from.
Rhyme certainly, by intensifying antithesis, can
intensify separation, and this is precisely what Pope
4 Iliad, xii. 324.
54 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
does ; but this balanced rhetorical antithesis, though
very effective, is entirely un- Homeric. And this is
what I mean by saying that Pope fails to render
Homer, because he does not render his plainness and
directness of style and diction. Where Homer marks 5
separation by moving away, Pope marks it by antithe-
sis. No passage could show this better than the
passage I have just quoted, on which I will pause for
a moment.
Robert Wood, whose Essay on the Genius of Hornet- ia
is mentioned by Goethe as one of the books which
fell into his hands when his powers were first develop-
ing themselves, and strongly interested him, relates
of this passage a striking story. He says that in
1762, at the end of the Seven Years' War, being 15
then Under-Secretary of State, he was directed to
wait upon the President of the Council, Lord Gran-
ville, a few days before he died, with the preliminary
articles of the Treaty of Paris. "I found him," he
continues, " so languid, that I proposed postponing 20
my business for another time ; but he insisted that
I should stay, saying, it could not prolong his life to
neglect his duty ; and repeating the following passage
out of Sarpedon's speech, he dwelled with particular
emphasis on the third line, which recalled to his mind 25
the distinguishing part he had taken in public
affairs : —
<3 iriirov, d /xhv yap iroKep.ov irepl rdvde <pvybvre,
aitl 8tj fj.tWoi/jiei' dy^pu r' ddavdrw re
ea<read', oijre nev avrbs evl ■wp&Toi.Gi. /xaxolfnjv* 30
6 These are the words on which Lord Granville " dwelled with
particular emphasis."
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 55
otfre Ke <t£ (rrfWoifii p-d-xW & KiiSidveipav
vvv 5' — e/xirris yap Kijpes icpearacnv Bavdroto
fivplai, ds oik tern ipvyetv fipbrov, odd' u;ra\tf£ai—
to/iev.
5 His Lordship repeated the last word several times
with a calm and determinate resignation ; and, after a
serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the
Treaty read, to which he listened with great atten-
tion, and recovered spirits enough to declare the
io approbation of a dying statesman (I use his own
words) ' on the most glorious war, and most honour-
able peace, this nation ever saw.' " *
I quote this story, first, because it is interesting as
exhibiting the English aristocracy at its very height
15 of culture, lofty spirit, and greatness, towards the
middle of the last century. I quote it, secondly,
because it seems to me to illustrate Goethe's saying
which I mentioned, that our life, in Homer's view of
it, represents a conflict and a hell ; and it brings out
2otoo, what there is tonic and fortifying in this doctrine.
I quote it, lastly, because it shows that the passage
is just one of those in translating which Pope will be
at his best, a passage of strong emotion and oratorical
movement, not of simple narrative or description.
25 Pope translates the passage thus : —
" Could all our care elude the gloomy grave
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war :
' Robert Wood, Essay on the Original Genius and Writings
of Homer, London, 1775, p. vii.
5 6 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
But since, alas ! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom ;
The life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe."
Nothing could better exhibit Pope's prodigious!
talent, and nothing, too, could be better in its own
way. But, as Bentley said, " You must not call it
Homer." One feels that Homer's thought has passed
through a literary and rhetorical crucible, and come
out highly intellectualised ; come out in a form which 10
strongly impresses us, indeed, but which no longer
impresses us in the same way as when it was uttered
by Homer. The antithesis of the last two lines —
" The life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe " — 15
is excellent, and is just suited to Pope's heroic
couplet ; but neither the antithesis itself, nor the
couplet which conveys it is suited to the feeling or
to the movement of the Homeric Zo/xev.
A literary and intellectualised language is, however, 20
in its own way well suited to grand matters ; and
Pope, with a language of this kind and his own ad-
mirable talent, comes off well enough as long as he
has passion, or oratory, or a great crisis to deal with.
Even here, as I have been pointing out, he does not 25
render Homer; but he and his style are in themselves
strong. It is when he comes to level passages, pas-
sages of narrative or description, that he and his style
are sorely tried, and prove themselves weak. A per-
fectly plain direct style can of course convey the 30
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 57
simplest matter as naturally as the grandest ; indeed,
it must be harder for it, one would say, to convey a
grand matter worthily and nobly, than to convey a
common matter, as alone such a matter should be
5 conveyed, plainly and simply. But the style of
Rasselas is incomparably better fitted to describe a
sage philosophising than a soldier lighting his camp-
fire. The style of Pope is not the style of Rasselas ;
but it is equally a literary style, equally unfitted to
10 describe a simple matter with the plain naturalness of
Homer.
Every one knows the passage at the end of the
eighth book of the Iliad, where the fires of the Trojan
encampment are likened to the stars. It is very far
15 from my wish to hold Pope up to ridicule, so I shall
not quote the commencement of the passage, which in
the original is of great and celebrated beauty, and
in translating which Pope has been singularly and
notoriously unfortunate. But the latter part of the
20 passage, where Homer leaves the stars, and comes to
the Trojan fires, treats of the plainest, most matter-of-
fact subject possible, and deals with this, as Homer
always deals with every subject, in the plainest and
most straightforward style. " So many in number,
25 between the ships and the streams of Xanthus, shone
forth in front of Troy the fires kindled by the Trojans.
There were kindled a thousand fires on the plain ; and
by each one there sat fifty men in the light of the
blazing fire. And the horses, munching white barley
so and rye, and standing by the chariots, waited for the
bright-throned Morning." 7
7 Iliad, viii. 560.
58 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
In Pope's translation, this plain story becomes the
following: —
" So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays ;
The long reflections of the distant fires 5
Gleam on the walls and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umbered arms, by fits, thick flashes send ; IO
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn."
C5
It is for passages of this sort, which, after all, form
the bulk of a narrative poem, that Pope's style is so
bad. In elevated passages he is powerful, as Homer 15
is powerful, though not in the same way ; but in plain
narrative, where Homer is still powerful and delightful,
Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is ineffective
and out of taste. Wordsworth says somewhere, that
wherever Virgil seems to have composed " with his 20
eye on the object," Dryden fails to render him.
Homer invariably composes " with his eye on the
object," whether the object be a moral or a material
one : Pope composes with his eye on his style, into
which he translates his object, whatever it is. That, 25
therefore, which Homer conveys to us immediately,
Pope conveys to us through a medium. He aims at
turning Homer's sentiments pointedly and rhetori-
cally ; at investing Homer's description with orna-
ment and dignity. A sentiment maybe changed by 30
being put into a pointed and oratorical form, yet may
still be very effective in that form ; but a description,
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 59
the moment it takes its eyes off that which it is to
describe, and begins to think of ornamenting itself, is
worthless.
Therefore, I say, the translator of Homer should
5 penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and
directness of Homer's style ; of the simplicity with
which Homer's thought is evolved and expressed.
He has Pope's fate before his eyes, to show him what
a divorce may be created even between the most
io gifted translator and Homer by an artificial evolution
of thought and a literary cast of style.
Chapman's style is not artificial and literary like
Pope's, nor his movement elaborate and self-retarding
like the Miltonic movement of Covvper. He is plain-
15 spoken, fresh, vigorous, and, to a certain degree, rapid;
and all these are Homeric qualities. I cannot say
that I think the movement of his fourteen-syllable
line, which has been so much commended, Homeric ;
but on this point I shall have more to say by and
2oby, when I come to speak of Mr. Newman's metrical
exploits. But it is not distinctly anti-Homeric, like
the movement of Milton's blank verse ; and it has a
rapidity of its own. Chapman's diction, too, is gener-
ally good, that is, appropriate to Homer ; above all,
25 the syntactical character of his style is appropriate.
With these merits, what prevents his translation from
being a satisfactory version of Homer ? Is it merely
the want of literal faithfulness to his original, imposed
upon him, it is said, by the exigencies of rhyme ?
30 Has this celebrated version, which has so many ad-
vantages, no other and deeper defect than that ? Its
author is a poet, and a poet, too, of the Elizabethan
60 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
age ; the golden age of English literature as it is
called, and on the whole truly called ; for, whatever
be the defects of Elizabethan literature (and they are
great), we have no development of our literature to
compare with it for vigour and richness. This 5
age, too, showed what it could do in translating,
by producing a masterpiece, its version of the
Bible.
Chapman's translation has often been praised as
eminently Homeric. Keats's fine sonnet in its honour 10
every one knows ; but Keats could not read the
original, and therefore could not really judge the
translation. Coleridge, in praising Chapman's version,
says at the same time, " It will give you small idea
of Homer." But the grave authority of Mr. Hallam 15
pronounces this translation to be " often exceedingly
Homeric"; and its latest editor boldly declares that
by what, with a deplorable style, he calls "his own
innative Homeric genius," Chapman " has thoroughly
identified himself with Homer"; and that " we pardon 20
him even for his digressions, for they are such as we
feel Homer himself would have written."
I confess that I can never read twenty lines of
Chapman's version without recurring to Bentley's cry,
" This is not Homer ! " and that from a deeper cause 25
than any unfaithfulness occasioned by the fetters of
rhyme.
I said that there were four things which eminently
distinguished Homer, and with a sense of which
Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully 30
as possible. One of these four things was, the plain-
ness and directness of Homer's ideas. I have just
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 6 1
been speaking of the plainness and directness of his
style ; but the plainness and directness of the con-
tents of his style, of his ideas themselves, is not less
remarkable. But as eminently as Homer is plain, so
5 eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general,
and Chapman in particular, fanciful. Steeped in
humours and fantasticality up to its very lips, the
Elizabethan age, newly arrived at the free use of the
human faculties after their long term of bondage, and
10 delighting to exercise them freely, suffers from its
own extravagance in this first exercise of them, can
hardly bring itself to see an object quietly or to de-
scribe it temperately. Happily, in the translation of
the Bible, the sacred character of their original in-
15 spired the translators with such respect that they did
not dare to give the rein to their own fancies in dealing
with it. But, in dealing with works of profane litera-
ture, in dealing with poetical works above all, which
highly stimulated them, one may say that the minds
20 of the Elizabethan translators were too active; that
they could not forbear importing so much of their
own, and this of a most peculiar and Elizabethan
character, into their original, that they effaced the
character of the original itself.
25 Take merely the opening pages to Chapman's trans*
lation, the introductory verses, and the dedications.
You will find: —
" An Anagram of the name of our Dread Prince,
My most gracious and sacred Maecenas,
30 Henry, Prince of Wales,
Our Sunn, Heyr, Peace, Life," —
62 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
Henry, son of James the First, to whom the work is
dedicated. Then comes an address,
" To the sacred Fountain of Princes,
Sole Empress of Beauty and Virtue, Anne, Queen
Of England," etc. 5
All the Middle Age, with its grotesqueness, its
conceits, its irrationality, is still in these opening
pages ; they by themselves are sufficient to indicate
to us what a gulf divides Chapman from the " clearest- 10
souled " of poets, from Homer ; almost as great a gulf
as that which divides him from Voltaire. Pope has
been sneered at for saying that Chapman writes
"somewhat as one might imagine Homer himself to
have written before he arrived at years of discretion," 15
But the remark is excellent : Homer expresses him-
self like a man of adult reason, Chapman like a man
whose reason has not yet cleared itself. For instance,
if Homer had had to say of a poet, that he hoped his
merit was now about to be fully established in the 20
opinion of good judges, he was as incapable of saying
this as Chapman says it, — " Though truth in her very
nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to
Aurora, and Ganges, few eyes can sound her, I hope
yet those few here will so discover and confirm that 25
the date being out of her darkness in this morning of
our poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun,"
— I say, Homer was as incapable of saying this in that
manner, as Voltaire himself would have been. Homer,
indeed, has actually an affinity with Voltaire in the 30
unrivalled clearness and straightforwardness of his
thinking ; in the way in which he keeps to one thought
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 63
at a time, and puts that thought forth in its complete
natural plainness, instead of being led away from it
by some fancy striking him in connection with it, and
being beguiled to wander off with this fancy till his
5 original thought, in its natural reality, knows him no
more. What could better show us how gifted a race
was this Greek race ? The same member of it has not
only the power of profoundly touching that natural
heart of humanity which it is Voltaire's weakness
10 that he cannot reach, but can also address the under-
standing with all Voltaire's admirable simplicity and
rationality.
My limits will not allow me to do more than shortly
illustrate, from Chapman's version of the Iliad, what
15 I mean when I speak of this vital difference between
Homer and an Elizabethan poet in the quality of their
thought ; between the plain simplicity of the thought
of the one, and the curious complexity of the thought
of the other. As in Pope's case, I carefully abstain
20 from choosing passages for the express purpose of
making Chapman appear ridiculous ; Chapman, like
Pope, merits in himself all respect, though he too,
like Pope, fails to render Homer.
In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have
25 said so much, Homer, you may remember, has : —
el /Mei> yap, irbXep-ov irepl rdvde <j>vy6i>Te,
alel St] fiiWoL/xev ayr/po) t' adavaru re
%<j<re<rd', —
" if indeed, but once this battle avoided,
30 We were for ever to live without growing old and immortal."
Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a
fancy to it : —
<H ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
" if keeping back
Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might
not wrack
In this life's human sea at all ; "
and so on. Again ; in another passage which I have 5
before quoted, where Zeus says to the horses of
Peleus,
tI <r<pQi dd/xev Il^X^t' olvclkti.
6vqT$ ; i/fids 5' iarbv ayrjpw t' d9a.va.Tu re- 8
" Why gave we you to royal Peleus, to a mortal ? but ye are 10
without old age, and immortal."
Chapman sophisticates this into : —
" Why gave we you t' a mortal king, when immortality
And incapacity of age so dignifies your states ? "
Again ; in the speech of Achilles to his horses, where 15
Achilles, according to Homer, says simply, "Take
heed that ye bring your master safe back to the host
of the Danaans, in some other sort than the last time,
when the battle is ended," Chapman sophisticates this
into : — 20
" When with blood, for this day s fast observed, revenge shall yield
Our heart satiety, bring us off."
In Hector's famous speech, again, at his parting from
Andromache, Homer makes him say : " Nor does my
own heart so bid me " (to keep safe behind the walls), 25
" since I have learned to be staunch always, and to
fight among the foremost of the Trojans, busy on
behalf of my father's great glory, and my own." In
5 Iliad, xvii. 443. 9 Iliad, vi. 444.
ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 65
Chapman's hands this becomes : —
" The spirit I first did breathe,
Did never teach me that ; much less, since the contempt of death
Was settled in me, and my mind knew what a worthy ivas,
5 Whose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger pass
Without improvement. In this fire must Hector's trial shine :
Here must his country, father, friends, be in him made divine."
You see how ingeniously Homer's plain thought is
tormented, as the French would say, here. Homer
10 goes on : " For well I know this in my mind and in
my heart, the day will be, when sacred Troy shall
perish ": —
effcrerai ij/xap, 6V (Lv ttot' 6\d)\y * IXtos lpi\.
Chapman makes this :
15 " And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know,
When sacred Troy shall shed her towers, for tears of over-
throw"
I might go on for ever, but I could not give you a
better illustration than this last, of what I mean by
20 saying that the Elizabethan poet fails to render Homer
because he cannot forbear to interpose a play of
thought between his object and its expression. Chap-
man translates his object into Elizabethan, as Pope
translates it into the Augustan of Queen Anne ; both
25 convey it to us through a medium. Homer, on the
other hand, sees his object and conveys it to us
immediately.
And yet, in spite of this perfect plainness and
directness of Homer's style, in spite of this perfect
66 ON TRANSLATING HOMER.
plainness and directness of his ideas, he is eminently
noble ; he works as entirely in the grand style, he is
as grandiose, as Phidias, or Dante, or Michael
Angelo. This is what makes his translators despair.
" To give relief," says Cowper, " to prosaic subjects " 5
(such as dressing, eating, drinking, harnessing, travel-
ling, going to bed), that is to treat such subjects
nobly, in the grand style, " without seeming unreason-
ably tumid, is extremely difficult." It is difficult, but
Homer has done it. Homer is precisely the incom- 10
parable poet he is, because he has done it. His
translator must not be tumid, must not be artifical,
must not be literary ; true : but then also he must not
be commonplace, must not be ignoble. I have shown
you how translators of Homer fail by wanting rapidity, 15
by wanting simplicity of style, by wanting plainness of
thought : in a second lecture I will show you how a
translator fails by wanting nobility. — On the Study
tf Celtic Literature and on Translating Homer, ed.
1895, pp. 141-168.
fl>btlologg ano Xiterature.
But Mr. Newman does not confine himself to com-
plaints on his own behalf, he complains on Homer's
behalf too. He says that my " statements about
Greek literature are against the most notorious and
5 elementary fact"; that I "do a public wrong to
literature by publishing them "; and that the Pro-
fessors to whom I appealed in my three Lectures,
"would only lose credit if they sanctioned the use
I make of their names." He does these eminent men
iothe kindness of adding, however, that, "whether they
are pleased with this parading of their names in behalf
of paradoxical error, he may well doubt," and that
" until they endorse it themselves, he shall treat my
process as a piece of forgery." He proceeds to discuss
15 my statements at great length, and with an erudition
and ingenuity which nobody can admire more than I
do. And he ends by saying that my ignorance is
great.
Alas ! that is very true. Much as Mr. Newman
20 was mistaken when he talked of my rancour, he is
entirely right when he talks of my ignorance. And
yet, perverse as it seems to say so, I sometimes find
myself wishing, when dealing with these matters of
poetical criticism, that my ignorance were even greater
25 than it is. To handle these matters properly there is
needed a poise so perfect that the least overweight in
67
68 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
any direction tends to destroy the balance. Temper
destroys it, a crotchet destroys it, even erudition may
destroy it. To press to the sense of the thing itself
with which one is dealing, not to go off on some col-
lateral issue about the thing, is the hardest matter in 5
the world. The " thing itself " with which one is
here dealing, — the critical perception of poetic truth, —
is of all things the most volatile, elusive, and evanes-
cent ; by even pressing too impetuously after it, one
runs the risk of losing it. The critic of poetry should 10
have the finest tact, the nicest moderation, the most
free, flexible, and elastic spirit imaginable ; he should
be indeed the "ondoyant et divers," the undulating
mid diverse being of Montaigne. The less he can
deal with his object simply and freely, the more things 15
he has to take into account in dealing with it, — the
more, in short, he has to encumber himself, — so much
the greater force of spirit he needs to retain his
elasticity. But one cannot exactly have this greater
force by wishing for it ; so, for the force of spirit one 20
has, the load put upon it is often heavier than it will
well bear. The late Duke of Wellington said of a
certain peer that "it was a great pity his education
had been so far too much for his abilities." In like
manner, one often sees erudition out of all proportion 25
to its owner's critical faculty. Little as I know, there-
fore, I am always apprehensive, in dealing with poetry,
lest even that little should prove " too much for my
abilities."
With this consciousness of my own lack of learning, 30
— nay, with this sort of acquiescence in it, with this
belief that for the labourer in the field of poetical
PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 69
criticism learning has its disadvantages, — I am not
likely to dispute with Mr. Newman about matters of
erudition. All that he says on these matters in his
Reply I read with great interest : in general I agree
5 with him ; but only, I am sorry to say, up to a certain
point. Like all learned men, accustomed to desire
definite rules, he draws his conclusions too absolutely ;
he wants to include too much under his rules; he
does not quite perceive that in poetical criticism the
10 shade, the fine distinction, is everything ; and that when
he has once missed this, in all he says he is in truth
but beating the air. For instance : because I think
Homer noble, he imagines I must think him elegant ;
and in fact he says in plain words that I do think
15 him so, — that to me Homer seems " pervadingly
elegant." But he does not. Virgil is elegant, —
"pervadingly elegant," — even in passages of the
highest emotion :
" O, ubi campi,
20 Spercheosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis
Taygeta ! " '
Even there Virgil, though of a divine elegance, is still
elegant : but Homer is not elegant ; the word is quite
a wrong one to apply to him, and Mr. Newman is
25 quite right in blaming any one he finds so applying it.
Again ; arguing against my assertion that Homer is
not quaint, he says : " It is quaint to call waves wet,
milk white, blood dusky, horses single-hoofed, words
winged, Vulcan Lobfoot (KuAAo7roSiW), a spear long-
1,1 O for the fields of Thessaly and the streams of Spercheios !
O for the hills alive with the dances of the Laconian maidens,
the hills of Taygetus ! " — Georgics, ii. 486.
7© PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
shadoivy," and so on. I find I know not how many
distinctions to draw here. I do not think it quaint to
call waves wet, or milk white, or words winged ; but I
do think it quaint to call horses single-hoofed, or Vul-
can Lobfoot, or a spear long shadowy. As to calling 5
blood dusky, I do not feel quite sure ; I will tell Mr.
Newman my opinion when I see the passage in which
he calls it so. But then, again, because it is quaint
to call Vulcan Lobfoot, I cannot admit that it was
quaint to call him KuAAo7roS<W ; nor that, because it 10
is quaint to call a spear longshadowy, it was quaint to
call it SoXlxoo-klov. Here Mr. Newman's erudition
misleads him : he knows the literal value of the Greek
so well, that he thinks his literal rendering identical
with the Greek, and that the Greek must stand or fall 15
along with his rendering. But the real question is,
not whether he has given us, so to speak, full change
for the Greek, but how he gives us our change : we
want it in gold, and he gives it us in copper. Again :
"It is quaint," says Mr. Newman, "to address a 20
young friend as ' O Pippin ! ' — it is quaint to com-
pare Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring."
Here, too, Mr. Newman goes much too fast, and his
category of quaintness is too comprehensive. To
address a young friend as " O Pippin ! " is, I cordially 25
agree with him, very quaint ; although I do not think
it was quaint in Sarpedon to address Glaucus as
Tciirov : but in comparing, whether in Greek or in
English, Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring,
1 do not see that there is of necessity anything quaint 3«
at all. Again ; because I said that eld, lief, in sooth,
and other words, are, as Mr. Newman uses them in
PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 7*
certain places, bad words, he imagines that I must
mean to stamp these words with an absolute reproba-
tion ; and because I said that " my Bibliolatry is ex-
cessive," he imagines that I brand all words as ignoble
5 which are not in the Bible. Nothing of the kind :
there are no such absolute rules to be laid down in
these matters. The Bible vocabulary is to be used as
an assistance, not as an authority. Of the words
which, placed where Mr. Newman places them, I have
to called bad words, every one may be excellent in some
other place. Take eld, for instance : when Shaks-
peare, reproaching man with the dependence in which
his youth is passed, says :
" all thy blessed youth
15 Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld, " . . .
it seems to me that eld comes in excellently there, in
a passage of curious meditation ; but when Mr. New-
man renders ayripus r aOavarw re by " from Eld and
20 Death exempted," it seems to me he infuses a tinge of
quaintness into the transparent simplicity of Homer's
expression, and so I call eld a bad word in that
place.
Once more. Mr. Newman lays it down as a general
25 rule that " many of Homer's energetic descriptions
are expressed in coarse physical words." He goes
on : "I give one illustration, — Tpwes irpovrvxpav doAAe'e?.
Cowper, misled by the ignis fatuus of ' stateliness,'
renders it absurdly :
30 * The powers of Ilium gave the first assault
Embattled close ; '
72 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
but it is, strictly, ' The Trojans knocked forward (or,
thumped, butted forward) in close pack. 1 The verb is
too coarse for later polished prose, and even the adjec-
tive is very strong {packed together'). I believe, that
' forward in pack the Trojans pitched,' would not be 5
really unfaithful to the Homeric colour ; and I main-
tain, that ' forward in mass the Trojans pitched,'
would be an irreprovable rendering." He actually
gives us all that as if it were a piece of scientific de-
duction ; and as if, at the end, he had arrived at an io
incontrovertible conclusion. But, in truth, one can-
not settle these matters quite in this way. Mr. New-
man's general rule may be true or false (I dislike to
meddle with general rules), but every part in what
follows must stand or fall by itself, and its soundness 15
or unsoundness has nothing at all to do with the
truth or falsehood of Mr. Newman's general rule.
He first gives, as a strict rendering of the Greek,
" The Trojans knocked forward (or, thumped, butted
forward), in close pack." I need not say that, as a 20
"strict rendering of the Greek," this is good, — all Mr.
Newman's " strict renderings of the Greek " are sure
to be, as such, good; but " in close pack," for doAAe'es ;
seems to me to be what Mr. Newman's renderings
are not always, — an excellent poetical rendering of the 25
Greek ; a thousand times better, certainly, than Cow-
per's " embattled close." Well, but Mr. Newman
goes on : "I believe that, ' forward in pack the Tro-
jans pitched,' would not be really unfaithful to the
Homeric colour." Here, I say, the Homeric colour 30
is half washed out of Mr. Newman's happy rendering
of aoAAe'es ; while in "pitched" for irpovTv\jjav } the
PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 73
literal fidelity of the first rendering is gone, while
certainly no Homeric colour has come in its place.
Finally, Mr. Newman concludes : " I maintain that
' forward in mass the Trojans pitched,' would be an
5 irreprovable rendering." Here, in what Mr. Newman
fancies his final moment of triumph, Homeric colour
and literal fidelity have alike abandoned him alto-
gether ; the last stage of his translation is much worse
than the second, and immeasurably worse than the
to first.
All this to show that a looser, easier method than
Mr. Newman's must be taken, if we are to arrive at
any good result in these questions. I now go on to
follow Mr. Newman a little further, not at all as wish-
t5 ing to dispute with him, but as seeking (and this is
the true fruit we may gather from criticisms upon us)
to gain hints from him for the establishment of some
useful truth about our subject, even when I think
him wrong. I still retain, I confess, my conviction
20 that Homer's characteristic qualities are rapidity of
movement, plainness of words and style, simplicity
and directness of ideas, and, above all, nobleness,
the grand manner. Whenever Mr. Newman drops a
word, awakens a train of thought, which leads me to
*5 see any of these characteristics more clearly, I am
grateful to him ; and one or two suggestions of this
kind which he affords, are all that now, — having ex-
pressed my sorrow that he should have misconceived
my feelings towards him, and pointed out what I think
30 the vice of this method of criticism, — I have to notice
in his Reply.
Such a suggestion I find in Mr. Newman's remarks
74 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
on my assertion that the translator of Homer must
not adopt a quaint and antiquated style in rendering
him, because the impression which Homer makes upon
the living scholar is not that of a poet quaint and
antiquated, but that of a poet perfectly simple, per- 5
fectly intelligible. I added that we cannot, I confess,
really know how Homer seemed to Sophocles, but
that it is impossible to me to believe that he seemed
to him quaint and antiquated. Mr. Newman asserts,
on the other hand, that I am absurdly wrong here ; ia
that Homer seemed " out and out " quaint and anti-
quated to the Athenians ; that " every sentence of
him was more or less antiquated to Sophocles, who
could no more help feeling at every instant the foreign
and antiquated character of the poetry than an Eng- 15
lishman can help feeling the same in reading Burns's
poems." And not only does Mr. Newman say this,
but he has managed thoroughly to convince some of
his readers of it. "Homer's Greek," says one of
them, " certainly seemed antiquated to the historical 20
times of Greece. Mr. Newman, taking a far broader
historical and philological view than Mr. Arnold,
stoutly maintains that it did seem so." And another
says : " Doubtless Homer's dialect and diction were
as hard and obscure to a later Attic Greek as Chaucer 25
to an Englishman of our day."
Mr. Newman goes on to say, that not only was
Homer antiquated relatively to Pericles, but he is
antiquated to the living scholar ; and, indeed, is in
himself, " absolutely antique, being the poet of a bar- 30
barian age." He tells us of his " inexhaustible quaint-
nesses," of his " very eccentric diction "; and he
PHILOLOGY AND LLTERATURE. 75
infers, of course, that he is perfectly right in rendering
him in a quaint and antiquated style.
Now this question, — whether or no Homer seemed
quaint and antiquated to Sophocles, — I call a delight-
5 ful question to raise. It is not a barren verbal dis-
pute ; it is a question " drenched in matter," to use an
expression of Bacon ; a question full of flesh and
blood, and of which the scrutiny, though I still think
we cannot settle it absolutely, may yet give us a
10 directly useful result. To scrutinise it may lead us
to see more clearly what sort of a style a modern
translator of Homer ought to adopt.
Homer's verses were some of the first words which
a young Athenian heard. He heard them from his
15 mother or his nurse before he went to school ; and at
school, when he went there, he was constantly occu-
pied with them. So much did he hear of them that
Socrates proposes, in the interests of morality, to
have selections from Homer made, and placed in the
20 hands of mothers and nurses, in his model republic ;
in order that, of an author with whom they were sure
to be so perpetually conversant, the young might learn
only those parts which might do them good. His
language was as familiar to Sophocles, we may be
25 quite sure, as the language of the Bible is to us.
Nay, more. Homer's language was not, of course,
in the time of Sophocles, the spoken or written lan-
guage of ordinary life, any more than the language of
the Bible, any more than the language of poetry, is
30 with us ; but for one great species of composition —
epic poetry — it was still the current language ; it was
the language in which every one who made that sort
76 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
of poetry composed. Every one at Athens who
dabbled in epic poetry, not only understood Homer's
language, — he possessed it. He possessed it as every
one who dabbles in poetry with us, possesses what
may be called the poetical vocabulary, as distinguished 5
from the vocabulary of common speech and of
modern prose : I mean, such expressions as perchance
for perhaps, spake for spoke, aye for ever, don for put on,
charmed for charm 'd, and thousands of others.
I might go to Burns and Chaucer, and, taking 10
words and passages from them, ask if they afforded
any parallel to a language so familiar and so possessed.
But this I will not do, for Mr. Newman himself sup-
plies me with what he thinks a fair parallel, in its
effect upon us, to the language of Homer in its effect 15
upon Sophocles. He says that such words as mon,
londis, libbard, withouten, muchel, give us a tolerable but
incomplete notion of this parallel ; and he finally
exhibits the parallel in all its clearness, by this poeti-
cal specimen : — 20
" Dat mon, quhich hauldeth Kyngis af
Londis yn feo, niver
(I tell 'e) feereth aught ; sith hee
Doth hauld hys londis yver."
Now, does Mr. Newman really think that Sophocles 25
could, as he says, " no more help feeling at every
instant the foreign and antiquated character of
Homer, than an Englishman can help feeling the
same in hearing " these lines ? Is he quite sure of it ?
He says he is ; he will not allow of any doubt or hesi- 30
tation in the matter. I had confessed we could not
PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 77
really know how Homer seemed to Sophocles ; — " Let
Mr. Arnold confess for himself," cries Mr. Newman,
" and not for me, who know perfectly well." And
this is what he knows !
5 Mr. Newman says, however, that I "play falla-
ciously on the words familiar and unfamiliar "; that
" Homer's words may have been familiar to the
Athenians (/. e. often heard) even when they were
either not understood by them or else, being under-
10 stood, were yet felt and known to be utterly foreign.
Let my renderings," he continues, " be heard, as Pope
or even Cowper has been heard, and no one will be
'surprised.' "
But the whole question is here. The translator
15 must not assume that to have taken place which has
not taken place, although, perhaps, he may wish it
to have taken place, — namely, that his diction is
become an established possession of the minds of
men, and therefore is, in its proper place, familiar
20 to them, will not "surprise" them. If Homer's
language was familiar, — that is, often heard, — then
to this language words like londis and libbard, which
are not familiar, offer, for the translator's purpose,
no parallel. For some purpose of the philologer they
25 may offer a parallel to it ; for the translator's purpose
they offer none. The question is not, whether a
diction is antiquated for current speech, but whether
it is antiquated for that particular purpose for which
it is employed. A diction that is antiquated for com-
30 mon speech and common prose, may very well not be
antiquated for poetry or certain special kinds of prose.
" Peradventure there shall be ten found there," is
78 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
not antiquated for Biblical prose, though for conversa-
tion or for a newspaper it is antiquated. " The
trumpet spake not to the armed throng," is not anti-
quated for poetry, although we should not write in a
letter, "he spake to me," or say, "the British soldier is 5
armid with the Enfield rifle." But when language
is antiquated for that particular purpose for which
it is employed, — as numbers of Chaucer's words, for
instance, are antiquated for poetry, — such language is
a bad representative of language which, like Homer's, 10
was never antiquated for that particular purpose for
which it was employed. I imagine that Hr)\r)'id&eo>
for Ur)\ei8ov, in Homer, no more sounded antiquated
to Sophocles than artne'd for arm'd, in Milton, sounds
antiquated to us ; but Mr. Newman's withouten and 15
muchel do sound to us antiquated, even for poetry, and
therefore they do not correspond in their effect upon
us with Homer's words in their effect upon Sophocles.
When Chaucer, who uses such words, is to pass cur-
rent amongst us, to be familiar to us, as Homer was 20
familiar to the Athenians, he has to be modernised, as
Wordsworth and others set to work to modernise him ;
but an Athenian no more needed to have Homer
modernised, than we need to have the Bible modern-
ised, or Wordsworth himself. 25
Therefore, when Mr. Newman's words bragly,
bulkin, and the rest, are an established possession
of our minds, as Homer's words were an established
possession of an Athenian mind, he may use them ;
but not till then. Chaucer's words, the words of 3a
Burns, great poets as these were, are yet not thus an
established possession of an Englishman's mind, and
PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 79
therefore they must not be used in rendering Homei
into English.
Mr. Newman has been misled just by doing that
which his admirer praises him for doing, by taking a
5 " far broader historical and philological view than "
mine. Precisely because he has done this, and has
applied the " philological view " where it was not
applicable, but where the '' poetical view " alone was
rightly applicable, he has fallen into error.
10 It is the same with him in his remarks on the diffi-
culty and obscurity of Homer. Homer, I say, is per-
fectly plain in speech, simple, and intelligible. And I
infer from this that his translator, too, ought to be
perfectly plain in speech, simple, and intelligible ;
15 ought not to say, for instance, in rendering
Oijre Ke <t£ otAXoi/u paxy es nvSidveipav . . .
" Nor liefly thee would I advance to man-ennobling
battle," — and things of that kind. Mr. Newman
hands me a list of some twenty hard words, invokes
20 Buttman, Mr. Maiden, and M. Benfey, and asks me
if I think myself wiser than all the world of Greek
scholars, and if I am ready to supply the deficiencies
of Liddell and Scott's Lexicon ! But here, again,
Mr. Newman errs by not perceiving that the question
25 is one not of scholarship, but of a poetical translation
of Homer. This, I say, should be perfectly simple
and intelligible. He replies by telling me that dSivos,
etAiVoSes, and criyaAoets are hard words. Well, but
what does he infer from that ? That the poetical
30 translator, in his rendering of them, is to give us
a sense of the difficulties of the scholar, and so is to
80 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
make his translation obscure ? If he does not mean
that, how, by bringing forward these hard words, does
he touch the question whether an English version of
Homer should be plain or not plain? If Homer's
poetry, as poetry, is in its general effect on the poetical 5
reader perfectly simple and intelligible, the uncertainty
of the scholar about the true meaning of certain words
can never change this general effect. Rather will the
poetry of Homer make us forget his philology, than
his philology make us forget his poetry. It may even ia
be affirmed that every one who reads Homer perpetu-
ally for the sake of enjoying his poetry (and no one
who does not so read him will ever translate him
well), comes at last to form a perfectly clear sense in
his own mind for every important word in Homer, 15
such as dStvo?, or rjXifiaros, whatever the scholar's
doubts about the word may be. And this sense is
present to his mind with perfect clearness and fulness,
whenever the word recurs, although as a scholar he
may know that he cannot be sure whether this sense 20
is the right one or not. But poetically he feels clearly
about the word, although philologically he may not.
The scholar in him may hesitate, like the father in
Sheridan's play ; but the reader of poetry in him
is, like the governor, fixed. The same thing happens 25
to us with our own language. How many words occur
in the Bible, for instance, to which thousands of
hearers do not feel sure they attach the precise real
meaning ; but they make out a meaning for them out
of what materials they have at hand ; and the words, 3°
heard over and over again, come to convey this mean-
ing with a certainty which poetically is adequate,
PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 81
though not philologically. How many have attached
a clear and poetically adequate sense to " the beam "
and " the mote," though not precisely the right one !
How clearly, again, have readers got a sense from
5 Milton's words, " grate on their scrannel pipes," who
yet might have been puzzled to write a commentary
on the word scrannel for the dictionary ! So we get a
clear sense from dSivos as an epithet for grief, after
often meeting with it and finding out all we can about
ioit, even though that all be philologically insufficient ;
so we get a clear sense from ti'AiVoSes as an epithet
for cows. And this his clear poetical sense about the
words, not his philological uncertainties about them,
is what the translator has to convey. Words like
15 bragly and bulkui offer no parallel to these words;
because the reader, from his entire want of familiarity
with the words bragly and bulh'n, has no clear sense
of them poetically.
Perplexed by his knowledge of the philological
20 aspect of Homer's language, encumbered by his own
learning, Mr. Newman, I say, misses the poetical
aspect, misses that with which alone we are here con-
cerned. " Homer is odd," he persists, fixing his eyes
on his own philological analysis of fxo)vv$, and fiepoips,
25 and Kv\\otto8lwv, and not on these words in their
synthetic character ; — just as Professor Max Midler,
going a little farther back, and fixing his attention on
the elementary value of the word dvyaT-qp, might say
Homer was " odd " for using that word ; — " if the
30 whole Greek nation, by long familiarity, had become
inobservant of Homer's oddities," — of the oddities of
this " noble barbarian," as Mr. Newman elsewhere
82 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
calls him, this "noble barbarian" with the "lively
eye of the savage," — " that would be no fault of mine.
That would not justify Mr. Arnold's blame of me for
rendering the words correctly." Correctly, — ah, but
what is correctness in this case ? This correctness of 5
his is the very rock on which Mr. Newman has split.
He is so correct that at last he finds peculiarity every-
where. The true knowledge of Homer becomes at
last, in his eyes, a knowledge of Homer's " peculiari-
ties, pleasant and unpleasant." Learned men know 10
these " peculiarities," and Homer is to be translated
because the unlearned are impatient to know them
too. " That," he exclaims, " is just why people want
to read an English Homer, — to know all his oddities,
just as learned men do." Here I am obliged to shake 15
my head, and to declare that, in spite of all my
respect for Mr. Newman, I cannot go these lengths
with him. He talks of my "monomaniac fancy that
there is nothing quaint or antique in Homer." Terrible
learning, — I cannot help in my turn exclaiming, — 20
terrible learning, which discovers so much ! — On the
Study of Celtic Literature and on Translating Homer,
ed. 1895, pp. 244-260.
Zhe Gkano Stgle.
Nothing has raised more questioning among my
critics than these words, — ?wble, the grand style. Peo-
ple complain that I do not define these words suffi-
ciently, that I do not tell them enough about them.
5 " The grand style, — but what is the grand style ? " —
they cry ; some with an inclination to believe in it,
but puzzled ; others mockingly and with incredulity.
Alas ! the grand style is the last matter in the world
for verbal definition to deal with adequately. One
10 may say of it as is said of faith: " One must feel it in
order to know what it is." But, as of faith, so too one
may say of nobleness, of the grand style: "Woe to
those who know it not ! " Yet this expression, though
indefinable, has a charm ; one is the better for consid-
15 ering it ; bonam est, nos hie esse; nay, one loves to try
to explain it, though one knows that one must speak
imperfectly. For those, then, who ask the question, —
What is the grand style ? — with sincerity, I will try to
make some answer, inadequate as it must be. For those
20 who ask it mockingly I have no answer, except to repeat
to them, with compassionate sorrow, the Gospel words:
Moriemini in peccatisvestris, — Ye shall die in your sins.
But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of again
giving, before I begin to try and define the grand
25 style, a specimen of what it is.
83
84 THE GRAND STYLE.
" Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues," . . .
There is the grand style in perfection ; and any one 5
who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand times
better from repeating those lines than from hearing
anything I can say about it.
Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling
what we say by examples. I think it will be found 10
that the grand style arises in poetry^ when a noble
nature, poetically gifted, treats with sinvftTicity or with
f[ severity a (Serious subject^ I think this definition will
^•^^.^e^iounfluT cover all instances of the grand style in
$$(#+* ^ptfreirywrrnch present themselves. I think it will be 15
found to exclude all poetry which is not in the grand
style. And I think it contains no terms which are
obscure, which themselves need defining. Even those
who do not understand what is meant by calling
poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, what is 20
meant by speaking of a noble nature in a man. But
the noble or powerful nature — the bedeutendes indi-
viduum of Goethe — is not enough. For instance, Mr.
Newman has zeal for learning, zeal for thinking, zeal
for liberty, and all these things are noble, they enno- 25
ble a man ; but he has not the poetical gift ; there
must be the poetical gift, the " divine faculty," also.
And, besides all this, the subject must be a serious
one (for it is only by a kind of license that we can
speak of the grand style in comedy) ; and it must be 30
treated with simplicity or severity. Here is the great
difficulty ; the poets of the world have been many ;
there has been wanting neither abundance of poetical
THE GRAND STYLE. 85
gift nor abundance of noble natures ; but a poetical
gift so happy, in a noble nature so circumstanced and
trained, that the result is a continuous style, perfect in
simplicity or perfect in severity, has been extremely
5 rare. One poet has had the gifts of nature and faculty
in unequalled fulness, without the circumstances and
training which make this sustained perfection of style
possible. Of other poets, some have caught this per-
fect strain now and then, in short pieces or single
10 lines, but have not been able to maintain it through
considerable works ; others have composed all their
productions in a style which, by comparison with the
best, one must call secondary.
The best model of the grand style simple is Homer ;
15 perhaps the best model of the grand style severe is
Milton. But Dante is remarkable for affording
admirable examples of both styles ; he has the grand
style which arises from simplicity, and he has the
grand style which arises from severity ; and from him
20 1 will illustrate them both. In a former lecture I
pointed out what that severity 6f poetical style is,
which comes from saying a thing with a kind of intense
compression, or in an allusive, brief, almost haughty
way, as if the poet's mind were charged with so many
25 and such grave matters, that he would not deign to
treat any one of them explicitly. Of this severity the
last line of the following stanza of the Purgatory is a
good example. Dante has been telling Forese that Vir*
gil had guided him through Hell, and he goes on : — ■
30 " Indi m' han tratto su gli suoi conforti,
Salendo e rigirando la Montagna
Che drizza voi che il mondo fece lorti," '
1 Purgatory ; xxiii. 124.
86 THE GRAND STYLE.
" Thence hath his comforting aid led me up, climb-
ing and circling the Mountain, which straightens you
whom the world made crooked." These last words, " la
Montagna che drizza voi die il mondo fece torti." — " the
Mountain which straightens you whom the world made $
crooked," — for the Mountain of Purgatory, I call an
excellent specimen of the grand style in severity,
where the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him
to speak more explicitly. But the very next stanza is
a beautiful specimen of the grand style in simplicity, 10
where a noble nature and a poetical gift unite to utter
a thing with the most limpid plainness and clear-
ness : —
" Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna
Ch' io saro la dove fia Beatrice ; 15
Quivi convien che senza lui rimagna."*
" So long," Dante continues, " so long he (Virgil)
saith he will bear me company, until I shall be there
where Beatrice is ; there it behoves that without him
I remain." But the noble simplicity of that in the 20
Italian no words of mine can render.
Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are
truly grand ; the severe seems, perhaps, the grandest,
so long as we attend most to the great personality, to
the noble nature, in the poet its author ; the simple 25
seems the grandest when we attend most to the
exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But the simple
is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more magical :
in the other there is something intellectual, something
which gives scope for a play of thought which may 30
9 Ibid, xxiii. 127.
THE GRAND STYLE. 87
exist where the poetical gift is either wanting or pres-
ent in only inferior degree : the severe is much more
imitable, and this a little spoils its charm. A kind of
semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may
5 say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent
production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style
in simplicity is inimitable :
at(l)v dtycpaKr/s
oiiK eyevr' o$t' AiaKida irapa Il^Xe?,
IO oijre Trap' avridiu Kadfiy Xtyovrat p.a.v fiporuv
6\j3ov inrtpraTov oi crx^v, o'i re kclI xP v(Ta P-' n 'VK(j)ii
He\irop.evav ei> 5pei NouTav, Kal iv eirTairvXois
&Cov Qrj(3ais . . . 3
There is a limpidness in that, a want of salient points
15 to seize and transfer, which makes imitation impos-
sible, except by a genius akin to the genius which
produced it. — On the Study of Celtic Literature and on
Translating Homer, ed. 1895, pp. 264-269.
3 " A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of
i'Eacus, nor of the godlike Cadmus ; howbeit these are said to
have had, of all mortals, the supreme of happiness, who heard
the golden-snooded Muses sing, one of them on the mountain
(Pelion), the other in seven-gated Thebes."
5t#e in Xfterature.
If T were asked where English poecry got these
three things, its turn for style, its turn for melan-
choly, and its turn for natural magic, for catching
and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully
near and vivid way, — I should answer, with some 5
doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a
Celtic source ; with less doubt, that it got much of
its melancholy from a Celtic source ; with no doubt
at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all its
natural magic. I0
Any German with penetration and tact in matters
of literary criticism will own that the principal de-
ficiency of German poetry is in style ; that for style,
in the highest sense, it shows but little feeling. Take
the eminent masters of style, the poets who best give 15
the idea of what the peculiar power which lies in
style is, — Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton. An example
of the peculiar effect which these poets produce, you
can hardly give from German poetry. Examples
enough you can give from German poetry of the 20
effect produced by genius, thought, and feeling ex-
pressing themselves in clear language, simple lan-
guage, passionate language, eloquent language, with
harmony and melody ; but not of the peculiar effect
exercised by eminent power of style. Every reader 25
of Dante can at once call to mind what the peculiar
88
STYLE IN LITERATURE. 89
effect I mean is ; I spoke of it in my lectures on
translating Homer, and there I took an example of
it from Dante, who perhaps manifests it more emi-
nently than any other poet. But from Milton, too,
5 one may take examples of it abundantly ; compare
this from Milton :
. . . . nor sometimes forget
Those other two equal with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
|o Blind Thamyris and blind Mseonides — ■
with this from Goethe :
Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.
Nothing can be better in its way than the style in
15 which Goethe there presents his thought, but it is
the style of prose as much as of poetry ; it is lucid,
harmonious, earnest, eloquent, but it has not received
that peculiar kneading, heightening, and recasting
which is observable in the style of the passage from
20 Milton, — a style which seems to have for its cause a
certain pressure of emotion, and an ever-surging, yet
bridled, excitement in the poet, giving a special
intensity to his way of delivering himself. In poetical
races and epochs this turn for style is peculiarly
»5 observable ; and perhaps it is only on condition of
having this somewhat heightened and difficult man-
ner, so different from the plain manner of prose, that
poetry gets the privilege of being loosed, at its best
moments, into that perfectly simple, limpid style,
30 which is the supreme style of all, but the simplicity
90 STYLE IN LITERATURE.
of which is still not the simplicity of prose. The
simplicity of Menander's style is the simplicity of
prose, and is the same kind of simplicity as that
which Goethe's style, in the passage I have quoted,
exhibits ; but Menander does not belong to a great 5
poetical moment, he comes too late for it ; it is the
simple passages in poets like Pindar or Dante which
are perfect, being masterpieces of poetical simplicity.
One may say the same of the simple passages in
Shakspeare ; they are perfect, their simplicity being 10
a poetical simplicity. They are the golden, easeful,
crowning moments of a manner which is always
pitched in another key from that of prose, a manner
changed and heightened ; the Elizabethan style, reg-
nant in most of our dramatic poetry to this day, is 15
mainly the continuation of this manner of Shak-
speare's. It was a manner much more turbid and
strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar,
Dante, or Milton ; often it was detestable ; but it
owed its existence to Shakspeare's instinctive impulse 20
towards style in poetry, to his native sense of the
necessity for it ; and without the basis of style every-
where, faulty though it may in some places be, we
should not have had the beauty of expression, unsur-
passable for effectiveness and charm, which is reached 25
in Shakspeare's best passages. The turn for style is
perceptible all through English poetry, proving, to
my mind, the genuine poetical gift of the race ; this
turn imparts to our poetry a stamp of high distinc-
tion, and sometimes it doubles the force of a poet not 30
by nature of the very highest order, such as Gray,
and raises him to a rank beyond what his natural
STYLE IN LITERATURE. 91
richness and power seem to promise. Goethe, with
his fine critical perception, saw clearly enough both
the power of style in itself, and the lack of style in
the literature of his own country ; and perhaps if we
5 regard him solely as a German, not as a European,
his great work was that he labored all his life to im-
part style into German literature, and firmly to estab-
lish it there. Hence the immense importance to
him of the world of classical art, and of the produc-
iotions of Greek or Latin genius, where style so emi-
nently manifests its power. Had he found in the
German genius and literature an element of style
existing by nature and ready to his hand, half his
work, one may say, would have been saved him, and
15 he might have done much more in poetry. But as it
was, he had to try and create, out of his own powers,
a style for German poetry, as well as to provide con-
tents for this style to carry ; and thus his labour as a
poet was doubled.
20 It is to be observed that power of style, in the
sense in which I am here speaking of style, is some-
thing quite different from the power of idiomatic,
simple, nervous, racy expression, such as the expres-
sion of healthy, robust natures so often is, such as
25 Luther's was in a striking degree. Style, in my sense
of the word, is a peculiar recasting and heightening,
under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of
what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add
dignity and distinction to it ; and dignity and distinc-
3otion are not terms which suit many acts or words of
Luther. Deeply touched with the Gemeinheit which
is the bane of his nation, as he is at the same time a
92 STYLE IN LITERATURE.
grand example of the honesty which is his nation's
excellence, he can seldom even show himself brave,
resolute, and truthful, without showing a strong dash
of coarseness and commonness all the while ; the
right definition of Luther, as of our own Banyan, is 5
that he is a Philistine of genius. So Luther's sincere
idiomatic German, — such language as this : " Hilf
lieber Gott, wie manchen Jammer habe ich gesehen,
dass der gemeine Mann doch so gar nichts weiss von
der christlichen Lehre ! " — no more proves a power of u
style in German literature, than Cobbett's sinewy
idiomatic English proves it in English literature.
Power of style, properly so called, as manifested in
masters of style like Dante or Milton in poetry,
Cicero, Bossuet, or Bolingbroke in prose, is something 15
quite different, and has, as I have said, for its charac-
teristic effect, this : to add dignity and distinction. —
On the Study of Celtic Literature, ed. 1895, pp. 102-107.
IRature in Bnglfsb fl>oetrg.
The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble and
distinguished gave his poetry style ; his indomitable
personality gave it pride and passion ; his sensibility
and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the
5 gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical
charm of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling
spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in romance.
They have a mysterious life and grace there ; they
are Nature's own children, and utter her secret in a
jo way which make them something quite different from
the woods, waters, and plants of Greek and Latin
poetry. Now of this delicate magic, Celtic romance
is so pre-eminent a mistress, that it seems impossible
to believe the power did not come into romance from
15 the Celts. 1 Magic is just the word for it, — the magic
of nature ; not merely the beauty of nature, — that the
Greeks and Latins had ; not merely an honest smack
of the soil, a faithful realism, — that the Germans had •
but the intimate life of Nature, her weird power and
20 her fairy charm. As the Saxon names of places, with
the pleasant wholesome smack of the soil in them, —
1 Rhyme, — the most striking characteristic of our modern poetry
as distinguished from that of the ancients, and a main source, to
our poetry, of its magic and charm, of what we call its romantit
element, — rhyme itself, all the weight of evidence tends to show,
comes into our poetry from the Celts.
93
94 NA TURE IN ENGLISH POE TR V.
Weathersfield, Thaxted, Shalford, — are to the Celtic
names of places, with their penetrating, lofty beauty, —
Velindra, Tyntagel, Caernarvon, — so is the homely
realism of German and Norse nature to the fairy-like
loveliness of Celtic nature. Gwydion wants a wife 5
for his pupil : " Well," says Math, " we will seek, I
and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for
him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the
oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms
of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a 10
maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever
saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name
of Flower-Aspect." Celtic romance is full of exquisite
touches like that, showing the delicacy of the Celt's
feeling in these matters, and how deeply Nature lets 15
him come into her secrets. The quick dropping of
blood is called " faster than the fall of the dewdrop
from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth, when
the dew of June is at the heaviest." And thus is
Olwen described : " More yellow was her hair than 20
the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than
the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands
and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-
anemony amidst the spray of the meadow foun-
tains." For loveliness it would be hard to beat 25
that ; and for magical clearness and nearness take
the following : —
"And in the evening Peredur entered a valley,
and at the head of the valley he came to a hermit's
cell, and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there 30
he spent the night. And in the morning he arose,
and when he went forth, behold, a shower of snow
NA TURE IN ENGLISH POETR Y. 95
had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a
wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the
horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted
upon the bird. And Peredur stood and compared
5 the blackness of the raven, and the whiteness of the
snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the
lady whom best he loved, which was blacker than
the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than
the snow, and to her two cheeks, which were redder
10 than the blood upon the snow appeared to be."
And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not less
beautiful : —
"And early in the day Geraint and Enid left the
wood, and they came to an open country, with
15 meadows on one hand and mowers mowing the
meadows. And there was a river before them, and
the horses bent down and drank the water. And
they went up out of the river by a steep bank, and
there they met a slender stripling with a satchel
20 about his neck; and he had a small blue pitcher in
his hand, and a bowl on the mouth of the pitcher."
And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek
in its clear beauty, is suddenly magicalised by the
romance touch : —
35 'And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river,
one-half of which was in flames from the root to the
top, and the other half was green and in full leaf."
Magic is the word to insist upon, — a magically
vivid and near interpretation of nature ; since it is
30 this which constitutes the special charm and power
of the effect I am calling attention to, and it is for
this that the Celt's sensibility gives him a peculiar
o6 NA TURE IN ENGLISH FOE TR Y.
aptitude. But the matter needs rather fine handling,
and it is easy to make mistakes here in our criticism.
In the first place, Europe tends constantly to become
more and more one community, and we tend to
become Europeans instead of merely Englishmen, 5
Frenchmen, Germans, Italians ; so whatever aptitude
or felicity one people imparts into spiritual work,
gets imitated by the others, and thus tends to become
the common property of all. Therefore anything so
beautiful and attractive as the natural magic I am ia
speaking of, is sure, nowadays, if it appears in the
productions of the Celts, or of the English, or of the
French, to appear in the productions of the Germans
also, or in the productibns of the Italians ; but there
will be a stamp of perfectness and inimitableness 15
about it in the literatures where it is native, which it
will not have in the literatures where it is not native.
Novalis or Riickert, for instance, have their eye fixed
on nature, and have undoubtedly a feeling for natural
magic ; a rough-and-ready critic easily credits them 20
and the Germans with the Celtic fineness of tact, the
Celtic nearness to Nature and her secret ; but the
question is whether the strokes in the German's
picture of nature 8 have ever the indefinable delicacy,
2 Take the following attempt to render the natural magic sup-
posed to pervade Tieck's poetry: — 'In diesen Dichtungen
herrscht eine geheimnissvolle Innigkeit, ein sonderbares Einver-
standniss mit der Natur, besonders mit der Pflanzen- und Stein-
reich. Der Leser fiihlt sich da wie in einem verzauberten
Walde ; er hort die unterirdischen Quellen melodisch rauschen ;
wildfremde Wunderblumen schauen ihn an mit ihren bunten
sehnsiichtigen Augen ; unsichtbare Lippen kiissen seine Wangen
mit neckender Zartlichkeit ; hohe Pilze, wie goldne Glocken,
NA TURE IN ENGLISH POE TR Y. 97
charm, and perfection of the Celt's touch in the pieces
I just now quoted, or of Shakspeare's touch in his
daffodil, Wordsworth's in his cuckoo, Keats's in his
Autumn, Obermann's in his mountain birch-tree or
5 his Easter-daisy among the Swiss farms. To decide
where the gift for natural magic originally lies,
whether it is properly Celtic or Germanic, we must
decide this question. / ee^^juJbU^^eJL,
In the second place, there (are maiwTwflys* of
10 handling n^tur^jsx^p^ are nbttftferfyMftncenred
with one, ofjtheni^^ui a roifehlland-readji critic
imaginSf tlwtAPi&jfilAfc? same\o fii%^« ^Nature
is handl^^gfttfil^ fJlV % to' draL tpVtf^^jjW^L-Q.
tinction between^io^^ojLhandlii\g her. ^BuTInese
15 modes are many!; Iwill mention four of them Stow :
there is the conventional way of handling nature,
there is the faithful way of handling nature, there is
the Greek way of handling nature, there is the
magical way of handling nature. In all these three
20 last the eye is on the object, but with a difference;
in the faithful way of handling nature, the eye is on
the object, and that is all you can say ; in the Greek,
the eye is on the object, but lightness and brightness
are added ; in the magical, the eye is on the object,
wachsen klingend empor am Fusse der Baume ; " and so on.
Now that stroke of the hohe Pilze, the great funguses, would
have been impossible to the tact and delicacy of a born lover of
nature like the Celt, and could only have come from a German
who has hineinstudirt himself into natural magic. It is a crying
false note, which carries us at once out of the world of nature-
magic and the breath of the woods, into the world of theatre-
magic and the smell of gas and orange-peel.
98 NA TURE IN ENGLISH FOE TR V.
but charm and magic are added. In the conventional
way of handling nature, the eye is not on the object ;
what that means we all know, we have only to think
of our eighteenth-century poetry : —
" As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night" — 5
to call up any number of instances. Latin poetry
supplies plenty of instances too ; if we put this from
Propertius's Hylas : —
. . . " manus heroum ....
Mollia camposita litora fronde tegit " — 10
side by side the line of Theocritus by which it was
suggested : —
" Aei/xwv yap crcpiv e/ceiro /xiyas, (rTt^ddecrffiv 6veiap " —
we get at the same moment a good specimen both of
the conventional and of the Greek way of handling 15
nature. But from our own poetry we may get speci-
mens of the Greek way of handling nature, as well as
of the conventional : for instance, Keats's : —
" What little town, by river or seashore,
Or mountain-built with quiet citadel, 20
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?"
is Greek, as Greek as a thing from Homer or The-
ocritus ; it is composed with the eye on the object, a
radiancy and light clearness being added. German
poetry abounds in specimens of the faithful way of 25
handling nature ; an excellent example is to be found
in the stanzas called Zueignutig, prefixed to Goethe's
poems ; the morning walk, the mist, the dew, the
NA TURE IN ENGLISH FOE TEY. 99
sun, are as faithful as they can be, they are given
with the eye on the object, but there the merit of
the work, as a handling of nature, stops ; neither
Greek radiance nor Celtic magic is added ; the power
5 of these is not what gives the poem in question its
merit, but a power of quite another kind, a power of
moral and spiritual emotion. But the power of Greek
radiance Goethe could give to his handling of nature,
and nobly too, as any one who will read his Wanderer,
10 — the poem in which a wanderer falls in with a
peasant woman and her child by their hut, built out
of the ruins of a temple near Cuma, — may see. Only
the power of natural magic Goethe, does not, I think,
give ; whereas Keats passes at will from the Greek
15 power to that power which is, as I say, Celtic ; from
his : —
" What little town, by river or seashore " —
to his : —
" White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine,
20 Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves " —
or his : —
. . . " magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy .lands forlorn " —
in which the very same note is struck as in those
25 extracts which I quoted from Celtic romance, and
struck with authentic and unmistakable power.
Shakspeare, in handling nature, touches this Celtic
note so exquisitely, that perhaps one is inclined to
be always looking for the Celtic note in him, and not
30 to recognise his Greek note when it comes. But if
one attends well to the difference between the two
IOC NA TURE IN ENGLISH POETR Y.
notes, and bears in mind, to guide one, such things
as Virgil's " moss-grown springs and grass softer than
sleep ": —
" Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba " —
as his charming flower-gatherer, who : — 5
" Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens
Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi " —
as his quinces and chestnuts : —
. . . " cana legam tenera lanugine mala
Castaneasque nuces " 10
then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in
Shakspeare's : —
" I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with lucious woodbine, 15
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine " —
it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then,
again in his : —
" look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! " — 20
we are at the very point of transition from the Greek
note to the Celtic ; there is the Greek clearness and
brightness, with the Celtic aerialness and magic com-
ing in. Then we have the sheer, inimitable Celtic
note in passages like this : — 2 5
" Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea " —
NATURE IN ENGLISH POETRY. ioi
or this, the last I will quote : —
" The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,
When the wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise, in such a night
5 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls —
" in such a night
Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew —
" in such a night
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,
10 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage."
And those last lines of all are so drenched and in-
toxicated with the fairy-dew of that natural magic
which is our theme, that I cannot do better than end
15 with them. — On tlie Study of Celtic Literature, ed.
1895, pp. 120-128.
Ipoetrg anD Science.
The grand power of po et ry is its interpret ative
power ; by which I mean, not a power of drawing out
in black and white an explanation of the mystery of
the universe, but the power of so dealing with things
as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and inti- 5
mate sense of them, and of our relations with them.
When this sense is awakened in us, as to objects with-
out us, we feel ourselves to be in contact with the
essential nature of those objects, to be no longer be-
wildered and oppressed by them, but to have their 10
secret, and to be in harmony with them ; and this
feeling calms and satisfies us as no other can. Poetry,
indeed, interprets in another way besides this ; but
one of its two ways of interpreting, of exercising its
highest power, is by awakening this sense in us. 1 15
will not now inquire whether this sense is illusive,
whether it can be proved not to be illusive, whether
it does absolutely make us possess the real nature of
things ; all I say is, that poetry can awaken it in us,
and that to awaken it is one of the highest powers of 20
poetry. The interpretations of science do not give us
this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of
poetry give it ; they appeal to a limited faculty and
not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish
or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or 25
water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who
POETRY AND SCIENCE. 103
makes us participate in their life ; it is Shakspeare,
with his
" daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
5 The winds of March with beauty ; "
it is Wordsworth, with his
" voice .... heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
10 Among the farthest Hebrides ; "
it is Keats, with his
" moving waters at their priestlike task
Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores ; "
it is Chateaubriand, with his, " cime indetermine'e des
is/orets j " it is Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree :
" Cette e'corce blanche, lisse etcrevasse'e ; cette tige agreste ;
ces branches qui s'inclinent vers la terre ; la mobilite des
feuilles, et tout cet abandon, simplicite' de la nature, atti'
tude des deserts." — Essays, I., ed. 1896, pp. 81-82.
Xiteraturc ano Science.
Practical people talk with a smile of Plato and of
his absolute ideas ; and it is impossible to deny that
Plato's ideas do often seem unpractical and impracti^
cablejjmd especially when one views them in con-
nexion with the life of a great work-a-day world like 5
the United States. The necessary staple of the life
of such a world Plato regards with disdain ; handi-
craft and trade and the working professions he
regards with disdain ; but what becomes of the life of
an industrial modern community if you take handi- ia
craft and trade and the working professions out of it?
The base mechanic arts and handicrafts, says Plato,
bring about a natural weakness in the principle of
excellence in a man, so that he cannot govern the
ignoble growths in him, but nurses them, and cannot 15
understand fostering any other. Those who exercise
such arts and trades, as they have their bodies, he
says marred, by their vulgar businesses, so they have
their souls, too, bowed and broken by them. And if
one of these uncomely people has a mind to seek self- 20
culture and philosophy, Plato compares him to a bald
little tinker, who has scraped together money, and
has got his release from service, and has had a bath,
and bought a new coat, and is rigged out like a bride-
groom about to marry the daughter of his master who 25
has fallen into poor and helpless estate.
104
LITER ATURE AND S CIENCE. 105
Nor do the working professions fare any better than
trade at the hands of Plato. He draws for us an
inimitable picture of the working lawyer, and of his
life of bondage ; he shows how this bondage from his
5 youth up has stunted and warped him, and made him
small and crooked of soul, encompassing him with
difficulties which he is not man enough to rely on
justice and truth as means to encounter, but has
recourse, for help out of them, to falsehood and
10 wrong. And so, says Plato, this poor creature is
bent and broken, and grows up from boy to man
without a particle of soundness in him, although
exceedingly smart and clever in his own esteem.
One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws
15 these pictures. But we say to ourselves that his ideas
show the influence of a primitive and obsolete order
of things, when the warrior caste and the priestly
caste were alone in honour, and the humble work of
the world was done by slaves. We have now changed
20 all that; the rnodern majority consists in work, as
Emerson declares ; and in work, we may add, princi-
pally of such plain and dusty kind as the work of
cultivators of the ground, handicraftsmen, men of
trade and business, men of the working professions.
25 Above all is this true in a great industrious com-
munity such as that of the United States.
Now education, many people go on to say, is still
mainly governed by the ideas of men like Plato, who
lived when the warrior caste and the priestly or
30 philosophical class were alone in honour, and the
really useful part of the community were slaves. It
is an education fitted for persons of leisure in such
106 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
a community. This education passed from Greece
and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe,
where also the warrior caste and the priestly caste
were alone held in honour, and where the really
useful and working part of the community, though 5
not nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were
practically not much better off than slaves, and not
more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is,
people end by saying, to inflict this education upon
1 an industrious modern community, where very few 10
indeed are persons of leisure, and the mass to be con-
sidered has not leisure, but is bound, for its own great
good, and for the great good of the world at large, to
plain labour and to industrial pursuits, an d the e du-
cation in question tends necessarily to make men dis- 15
satisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for them !
That is what it said. So far I must defend Plato,
as to plead that his view of education and studies is
in the general, as it seems to me, sound enough, and
fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever 20
their pursuits may be. /An intelligent man," says
Plato, " will prize those studies which result in his
soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom,
and will less value the others?7 I cannot consider
that a bad description of the aim of education, and of 25
the motives which should govern us in the choice
of studies, whether we are preparing ourselves for
a hereditary seat in the English House of Lords or
for the pork trade in Chicago.
Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that 30
his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, that he
had no conception of a great industrial community
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1 07
such as that of the United States, and that such
a community must and will shape its education to
suit its own needs. If the usual education handed
down to it from the past does not suit it, it will cer-
5 tainly before long drop this and try another. The
usual education in the past has been mainly literary.
The question is whether the studies which were long
supposed to be the best for all of us are practically
the best now ; wheth er other s are not better. The
10 tyranny of the past, many think, weighs on us injuri-
ously in the predominance given to letters in educa-
tion. The question is raised whether, to meet the
needs of our modern life, the predominance ought
not now to pass from letters to science ; and naturally
15 the question is nowhere raised with more energy than
here in the United States. The design of abasing
what is called " mere literary instruction and educa-
tion," and of exalting what is called " sound, ex-
tensive, and practical scientific knowledge," is, in this
20 intensely modern world of the United States, even
more perhaps than in Europe, a very popular design,
and makes great and rapid progress.
I am going to ask whether the present movement
for ousting letters from their old predominance in
25 education, and for transferring the predominance in
education to the natural sciences, whether this brisk
and flourishing movement ought to prevail, and
whether it is likely that in the end it really will pre-
vail. An objection may be raised which I will antici-
30 pate. My own studies have been almost wholly in
letters, and my visits to the field of the natural
sciences have been very slight and inadequate, al-
108 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
though those sciences have always strongly moved my
curiosity. A man of letters, it will perhaps be said, is
not competent to discuss the comparative merits of
letters and natural science as means of education.
To this objection I reply, first of all, that his incom- 5
petence, if he attempts the discussion but is really
incompetent for it, will be abundantly visible ; nobody
will be taken in ; he will have plenty of sharp
observers and critics to save mankind from that dan-
ger. But the line I am going to follow is, as you will 10
soon discover, so extremely simple, that perhaps it
may be followed without failure even by one who for
a more ambitious line of discussion would be quite
incompetent.
Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of 15
mine which has been the object of a good deal of
comment ; an observation to the effect that in our
culture, the aim being to know ourselves and the world, j\
we have, as the means to this end, to know the best \\
which has been thought and said in the world. A man of 20
science, who is also an excellent writer and the very
prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a discourse
at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's college at Bir-
mingham, laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by
quoting some more words of mine, which are these : 25
" The civilised world is to be regarded as now being,
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con-
federation, bound to a joint action and working to a
common result ; and whose members have for their
proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and 30
Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special local
and temporary advantages being put out of account,
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 109
that modern nation will in the intellectual and spirit-
ual sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly
carries out this programme."
Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Hux-
5 ley remarks that when I speak of the above-mentioned
knowledge as enabling us to know ourselves and the!
world, I assert literature to contain the materials^
which suffice for thus making us know ourselves and
the world. But it is not by any means clear, says he,
10 that after having learnt all which ancient and modern
literatures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently
broad and deep foundation for that criticism of life,
that knowlege of ourselves and the world, which con-
stitutes culture. On the contrary, Professor Huxley
15 declares that he finds himself " wholly unable to
admit that either nations or individuals will really
advance, if their outfit draws nothing from the stores
of physical science. An army without weapons of
precision, and with no particular base of operations,
20 might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the
Rhine, than a man, devoid of a knowledge of what
physical science has done in the last century, upon a
criticism of life."
This shows how needful it is for those who are to
25 discuss any matter together, to have a common under-
standing as to the sense of the terms they employ, —
how needful, and how difficult. What Professor
Huxley says, implies just the reproach which is so
often brought against die study of belles lettres, as they
30 are called : that the study is an elegant one, gut sligh t
a nd inef fectual ; a smattering of Gre ek and Latin and
other ornamental things, of little use for any one
\
HO LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
whose objec t is to get at truth , and to be a practical
man. So, too, M. Renan talks of the "superficial
humanism " of a school-course which treats us as if
we were all going to be poets, writers, preachers,
orators, and he opposes this humanism to positives
science, or the critical searcli after truth. And there
is always a tendency in those who are remonstrating
against the predominance of letters in education, to
understand by letters belles letlres, and by belles lettres
a superficial humanism, the opposite of science or true 10
knowledge.
But when we talk of jcnowing Gre ek and R oman
antiqui ty, for instance, which is the knowledge people
have called the humanities, I for my part mean a
knowledge which is something more than a super- 15
ficial humanism, mainly decorative. " I call all teach-
ing scientific" says Wolf, the critic of Homer, "which
is systematically laid out and followed up to its origi-
nal sources. For example : a knowledge of classical
antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical 20
antiquity are correctly studied in the original lan-
guages." There can be no doubt that Wolf is per-
fectly right; that all learning is scientific which is
systematically laid out and followed up to its original
sources, and that a genuine humanism is scientific. 25
When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman an-
tiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and
the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much
vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of
authors in the Greek and Latin languages, I mean 30
knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and
genius, and what they were and did in the world ;
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. in
what we get from them, and what is its value. That,
at least, is the ideal ; and when we talk of endeavour-
ing to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help to
knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavour-
5 ing so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however
much we may still fall short of it.
The same also as to knowing our own and other
modern nations, with the like aim of getting to under-
stand ourselves and the world. To know the best
iothat has been thought and said by the modern nations,
is to know, says Professor Huxley, " only what modern
literatures have to tell us ; it is the criticism of life
contained in modern literature." And yet " the dis-
tinctive character of our times," he urges, " lies in
15 the vast and constantly increasing part which is
played by natural knowledge." And how, therefore,
can a man, devoid of knowledge of what physical
science has done in the last century, enter hopefully
upon a criticism of modern life ?
20 Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the
terms we are using. I talk of knowing the best which
has been thought and uttered in the world ; Professor
Huxley says this means knowing literature. Litera-
ture is a large word ; it may mean everything written
25 with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's Elements
and Newton's Principia are thus literature. All
knowledge that reaches us through books is literature.
But by literature Professor Huxley means belles lettres.
He means to make me say, that knowing the best
30 which has been thought and said by the modern
nations is knowing their belles lettres and no more.
And this is no sufficient equipment, he argues, for
H2 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
a criticism of modern life. But as I do not mean, by .■
knowing ancient Rome, knowing merely more or less
of Latin belles lettres, and taking no account of Rome's
military, and political, and legal, and administrative
work in the world ; and as, by knowing ancient 5
Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of
Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of
reason and to scientific method, and the founder of our
mathematics and physics and astronomy and biology,
— I understand knowing her as all this, and not iq
merely knowing certain Greek poems, and histories,
and treatises, and speeches, — so as to the knowledge
of modern nations also. By knowing modern nations,
I mean not merely knowing their belles lettres, but
knowing also what has been done by such men as 15
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. " Our ances-
tors learned," says Professor Huxley, "that the earth
is the centre of the visible universe, and that man is
the cynosure of things terrestrial ; and more especially
was it inculcated that the course of nature has no 20
fixed order, but that it could be, and constantly was,
altered." But for us now, continues Professor Hux-
ley, " the notions of the beginning and the end of the
world entertained by our forefathers are no longer
credible. It is very certain that the earth is not the 25
chief body in the material universe, and that the world
is not subordinated to man's use. It is even more cer-
tain that nature is the expression of a definite order,
with which nothing interferes." "And yet," he cries,
"the purely classical education advocated by the 30
representatives of the humanists in our day gives no
inkling of all this ! "
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1 13
In due place and time I will just touch upon that
vexed question of classical education ; but at present
the questionis as to what is meant bv knowing th e
best which modern nations have thought and said.
5 iFTs not knowing their belles lettres merely which is
meant. To know Italian belles lettres is not to know
Italy, and to know English belles lettres is not to
know England. Into knowing Italy and England
there comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton
10 amongst it. The reproach of being a superficial
humanism, a tincture of belles lettres, may attach rightly
enough to some other disciplines ; but to the par-
ticular discipline recommended when I proposed
knowing the best that has been thought and said in
15 the world, it does not apply. In that best I cer tainl y
include what in modern times has been thought and
said by the great observers and knowers of nature.
There is, therefore, really no question between
Professor Huxley and me as to whether knowing the
20 great results of the modern scientific study of nature
is not required as a part of our culture, as well as
knowing the products of literature and art. But to
follow the processes by which those results are
reached, ought, say the friends of physical science, to
25 be made the staple of education for the bulk of man-
kind. And here there does arise a question between
those whom Professor Huxley calls with playful sar-
casm " the Levites of culture," and those whom the
poor humanist is sometimes apt to regard as its
30 Nebuchadnezzars.
The great results of the scientific investigation of
nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how much
H4 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
of our study are we bound to give to the processes by
which those results are reached ? The results have 3
their visible bearing on human life. But all the pro-!
cesses, too, all the items of fact by which those results
are reached and established, are interesting. All i
knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the
knowledge of nature is interesting to all men. It is
very interesting to know, that, from the albuminous
white of the egg, the chick in the egg gets the materials
for its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers ; while, from 10
the fatty yelk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy
which enable it at length to break its shell and begin
the world. It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it
is interesting, to know that when a taper burns, the
wax is converted into carbonic acid and water. 15
Moreover, it is quite true that the habit of dealing
with facts, which is given by the study of nature, is,
as the friends of physical science praise it for being,
an excellent discipline. The appeal, in the study of
nature, is constantly to observation and experiment ; 20
not only is it said that the thing is so, but we can be
made to see that it is so. Not only does a man tell
us that when a taper burns the wax is converted into
carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he
likes, that Charon is punting his ferry-boat on the 25
river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or
Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of statesmen ; but
we are made to see that the conversion into carbonic
acid and water does actually happen. This reality of
natural knowledge it is, which makes the friends of 3°
physical science contrast it, as a knowledge of things,
with the humanist's knowledge, which is, they say, a
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1 15
knowledge of words. And hence Professor Huxley
is moved to lay it down that, " for the purpose of
attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific educa-
tion is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary
5 education." And a certain President of the Section
for Mechanical Science in the British Association is,
in Scripture phrase, " very bold," and declares that if
a man, in his mental training, " has substituted litera-
ture and history for natural science, he has chosen
10 the less useful alternative." But whether we go these
lengths or not, we must all admit that in natural
science the habit gained of dealing with facts is a
most valuable discipline, and that every one should
have some experience of it.
15 More than this, however, is demanded by the
reformers. It is proposed to make the training in
natural science the main part of education, for the
great majority of mankind at any rate. And here, I
confess, I part company with the friends of physical
20 science, with whom up to this point I have been
agreeing. In differing from them, however, I wish to
proceed with the utmost caution and diffidence. The
smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines
of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am
25 fearful of doing these disciplines an injustice. The
ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural
science make them formidable persons to contradict.
The tone of tenative inquiry, which befits a being of
dim faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I
30 would wish to take and not to depart from. At
present it seems to me, that those who are for giving
to natural knowledge, as they call it, the chief place
Il6 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
in the education of the majority of mankind, leave
one important thing out of their account : .the con-
stitution of human nature. But I put this forward on
the strength of some facts not at all recondite, very
far from it; facts capable of being stated in the 5
simplest possible fashion, and to which, if I so state
them, the man of science will, I am sure, be willing to
allow their due weight.
Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can.
He can hardly deny, that when we set ourselves to 10
enumerate the powers which go to the building up of
human life, and say that they are the power of conduct,
the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of
beauty, and the power of social life and manners, — he
can hardly deny that this scheme, though drawn in 15
rough and plain lines enough, and not pretending to
scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true repre-
sentation of the matter. Human nature is built up by
these powers ; we have the need for them all. When
we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them 20
all, we shall then be in a fair way for getting soberness
and righteousness, with wisdom. This is evident
enough, and the friends of physical science would ad-
mi., it.
But perhaps they may not have sufficiently observed 25
another thing : namely, that the several powers just
mentioned are not isolated, but there is, in the gener-
ality of mankind, a per petu al tendency to relate them
one to another in divers ways. With one such way of
relating them I am particularly concerned now. Fol- 33
lowing our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we
acquire pieces of knowledge ; and presently, in the
LITERATURE A. YD SCIENCE. 1 17
generality of men, there arises the desire to relate
these pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to
our sense for beauty, — and there is weariness and dis-
satisfaction if the desire is baulked. Now in this
5 desire lies, I think, the strength of that hold which
letters have upon us.
All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting ;
and even items of knowledge which from the nature of
the case cannot well be related, but must stand isolated
10 in our thoughts, have their interest. Even lists of ex-
ceptions have their interest. If we are studying Greek
accents, it is interesting to know that pais and pas, and
some other monosyllables of the same form of declen-
sion, do not take the circumflex upon the last syllable
15 of the genitive plural, but vary, in this respect, from
the common rule. If we are studying physiology, it is
interesting to know that the pulmonary artery carries
dark blood and the pulmonary vein carries bright
blood, departing in this respect from the common
20 rule for the division of labour between the veins and
the arteries. But every one knows how we seek natur-
ally to combine the pieces of our knowledge together,
to bring them under general rules, to relate them to
principles ; and how unsatisfactory and tiresome it
25 would be to go on for ever learning lists of exceptions,
or accumulating items of fact which must stand
isolated.
Well, that same need of relating our knowledge,
which operates here within the sphere of our knowl-
30 edge itself, we shall find operating, also, outside that
sphere. \Ve experience, as we go on learning and
knowing, — the vast majority of us experience, — the
Il8 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
need of relating what we have learnt and known to the
sense which we have in us fo r conduct, to the sense
which we have in us for beauty._
A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in Arca-
dia, Diotima by name, once explained to the philoso- 5
pher Socrates that love, and impulse, and bent of all
kinds, is, in fact, nothing else but the desire in men
that good should for ever be present to them. This
desire for good, Diotima assured Socrates, is our fun-
damental desire, of which fundamental desire every 10
impulse in us is only some one particular form. And
therefore this fundamental desire it is, I suppose, — this (
desire in men that good should be for ever present to'
them, — which acts in us when we feel the impulse forj
relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct and 15
to our sense for beauty. At any rate, with men in
general the instinct exists. Such is human nature.
And the instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, and
human nature is preserved by our following the lead
of its innocent instincts. Therefore, in seeking to 20
gratify this instinct in question, we are following the
instinct of self-preservation in humanity.
But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot b&
made to directly serve the instinct in question, cannon-
be directly related to the sense for beauty, to the 25
sense for conduct. These are instrument-knowl-
edges ; they lead on to other knowledges, which can.
A man who passes his life in instrument-knowledges
is a specialist. They may be invaluable as instru-
ments to something beyond, for those who have the 30
gift thus to employ them ; and they may be disci-
plines in themselves wherein it is useful for every one
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. HO
to have some schooling. But it is inconceivable that
the generality of men should pass all their mental
life with Greek accents or with formal logic. My
friend Professor Sylvester, who is one of the first
5 mathematicians in the world, holds transcendental
doctrines as to the virtue of mathematics, but those
doctrines are not for common men. In the very
Senate House and heart of our English Cambridge
I once ventured, though not without an apology for
10 my profaneness, to hazard the opinion that for the
majority of man kind a little of mathematics, even.
g°jr s .i!: lo. n S AY^X.- Of course this is quite consistent
with their being of immense importance as an instru-
ment to something else ; but it is the few who have
15 the aptitude for thus using them, not the bulk of
mankind.
The natural sciences do not, however t stan d
on the same foo ting with these instrument-knowl -
edges. Experience shows us that the generality of
20 men will find more interest in learning that, when
a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic
acid and water, or in learning the explanation of the
phenomenon of dew, or in learning how the circula-
tion of the blood is carried on, than they find in
25 learning that the genitive plural of pais and/tfj does
not take the circumflex on the termination. And one
piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and
others are added to that, and at last we come to
propositions so interesting as Mr. Darwin's famous
30 proposition that "our ancestor was a hairy quadruped
furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably
arboreal in his habits." Or we come to propositions
120 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
of such reach and magnitude as those which Profes-
sor Huxley delivers, when he says that the notions
of our forefathers about the beginning and the end of
the world were all wrong, and that nature is the expres-
sion of a definite order with which nothing interferes. 5
Interesting, indeed, these results of science are,
important they are, and we should all of us be
acquainted with them. But what I now wish you to
mark is, that we are still, when they are propounded
to us and we receive them, we are still in the sphere 10
of intellect and knowledge. And for the generality
of men there will be found, I say, to arise, when they
have duly taken in the proposition that their ancestor
was " a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and
pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," there 15
will be found to arise an invincible desire to relate
this proposition to the sense in us for conduct, and
to the sense in us for beauty. But this the men of
science will not do for us, and will hardly even pro-
fess to do. They will give us other pieces of knowl- 20
edge, other facts, about other animals and their
ancestors, or about plants, or about stones, or about
stars ; and they may finally bring us to those great
" general conceptions of the universe, which are
forced upon us all," says Professor Huxley, "by the 25
progress of physical science." But still it will be
knowledge only which they give us ; knowledge not
put for us into relation with our sense for conduct,
our sense for beauty, and touc hed with emotion by
being so put ; not thus put for us, and therefore, to 30
the majority of mankind, after a certain while, un-
satisfying, wearying.
LITERATURE A AW SCIENCE. 12 1
Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what do
we mean by a born naturalist ? We mean a man in
whom the zeal for observing nature is so uncom-
monly strong and eminent, that it marks him off from
5 the bulk of mankind. Such a man will pass his life
happily in collecting natural knowledge and reasoning
upon it, and will ask for nothing, or hardly anything,
more. I have heard it said that the sagacious and
admirable naturalist whom we lost not very long ago,
10 Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his part
he did not experience the necessity for two things
which most men find so necessary to them, — religion
and poetry ; science and the domestic affections, he
thought, were enough. To a born naturalist, I can
15 well understand that this should seem so. So ab-
sorbing is his occupation with nature, so strong his
love for his occupation, that he goes on acquiring
natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has
little time or inclination for thinking about getting
20 it related to the desire in man for conduct, the desire
in man for beauty. He relates it to them for himself
as he goes along, so far as he feels the need ; and he
draws from the domestic affections all the additional
solace necessary. But then Darwins are extremely
25 rare. Another great and admirable master of natural
knowledge, Faraday, was a Sandemanian. That is to
say, he related his knowledge to his instinct for con-
duct and to his instinct for beauty, by the aid of
that respectable Scottish sectary, Robert Sandeman.
30 And so strong, in general, is the demand of religion
and poetry to have their share in a man, to associate
themselves with his knowing, and to relieve and
122 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
rejoice it, that probably, for one man amongst us with
the disposition to do as Darwin did in this respect,
there are at least fifty with the disposition to do asi
Faraday.
Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying 5
this demand. Professor Huxley holds up to scorn
mediaeval education, with its neglect of the knowledge
of nature, its poverty even of literary studies, its . .
formal logic devoted to " showing how and why that j^f
which the Church said was true must be true." But ic
the great mediaeval universities were not brought into
being, we may be sure, by the zeal for giving a
jejune and contemptible education. Kings have been
their nursing fathers, and queens have been their nurs-
ing mothers, but not for this. The mediaeval uni- 15
versities came into being, because the supposed
knowledge, delivered by Scripture and the Church, so
deeply engaged men's hearts, by so simply, easily, and
powerfully relating itself to their desire for conduct,
their desire for beauty. All other knowledge was 20
dominated by this supposed knowledge and was sub-
ordinated to it, because of the surpassing strength of
the hold which it gained upon the affections of men,
by allying itself profoundly with their sense for con-
duct, their sense for beauty. 25
But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the
universe fatal to the notions held by our forefathers
have been forced upon us by physical science.
Grant to him that they are thus fatal, that the new
conceptions must and will soon become current 30
everywhere, and that every one will finally perceive
them to be fatal to the beliefs of our forefathers. The
(jLAJLI tVM^u,» GXX W' "^X**-*-
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1 23
need of humane letters, as they are truly called,
because they ser ve the paramount desire in men th at
good should be for ever present to them, — the need_of
humane letters to establish a relation between the
5 new conceptions, and our instinct for beauty, our
instinct for conduct, is only the more visible. The
Middle Age could do without humane letters, as it
could do without the study of nature, because its sup-
posed knowledge was made to engage its emotions so
10 powerfully. Grant that the supposed knowledge dis-
appears, its power of being made to engage the
emotions will of course disappear along with it, — but
the emotions themselves, and their claim to be
engaged and satisfied, will remain. Now if we find by
15 experience that humane letters have an undeniable
power of engaging the e motions, the importance of hu-
mane letters in a man's training becomes not less, but
greater, in proportion to the success of modern science
in extirpating what it calls " mediaeval thinking/^'
20 Have humane letters, then, have poetry and elo-
quence, the power here attributed to them of engaging
the emotions, and do they exercise it ? And if they
have it and exercise it, how do they exercise it, so as
to exert an influence upon man's sense for conduct,
25 his sense for beauty ? Finally, even if they both can
and do exert an influence upon the sensgs in question,
how are they to relate to them the results, — the
modern results, — of natural science ? All these ques-
tions may be asked. First, have poetry and eloquence
30 the power of calling out the emotions? The appeal is
to experience. Experience shows that for the vast
majority of men, for mankind in general, they have the
iJrfdQjUuu-l
124 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
power. Next, do they exercise it ? They do. But
then, how do they exercise it so as to affect man's
sense for conduct, his sense for beauty ? And this is
perhaps a case for applying the Preacher's words :
" Though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not 5
find it ; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know
it, yet shall he not be able to find it." ' Why should it
be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say,
" Patience is a virtue," and quite another thing, in its
effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer, 10
tXtjtov yap Mo?pcu Ov/ibv 6£<rav avdpumoLGiv — 2
" for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed
to the children of men " ? Why should it be one
thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with the
philosopher Spinoza, Felicitas in eo cousistit quod homo 15
stium esse conservare potest — " Man's happiness consists
in his being able to preserve his own essence," and
quite another thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to
say with the Gospel, "What is a man advantaged, if he
gain the whole world, and lose himself, forfeit him- 20
self ? " H ow does this diffe rence of effect arise ? I
cannot tell, and I am not much concerned to know ;
the important thing is that it does arise, and that we
can profit by it. But how, finally, are poetry and elo-j
quence to exercise the power of relating the modern 125
results of natural science to man's instinct for conduct,!
his instinct for beauty ? And here again I answer
that I do not know hotv they will exercise it, but that
they can and will exercise it I am sure. I do not
mean that modern philosophical poets and modern 30
1 Ecclesiastes, viii. 17. 2 Iliad, xxiv. 49.
/
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 125
philosophical moralists are to come and relate for us, in
express terms, the results of modern scientific research
to our instinct for conduct, our instinct for beauty.
But I mean that we shall find, as a matter of experi-
5 ence, if we know the best that has been thought and
uttered in the world, we shall find that the art and
poetry and eloquence of men who lived, perhaps, long
ago, who had the most limited natural knowledge, who
had the most erroneous conceptions about many
10 important matters, we shall find that this art, and
poetry, and eloquence, have in fact not only the
power of refreshing and delighting us, they have also
the power, — such is the strength and worth, in essen-
tials, of their authors' criticism of life, — they have a
15 fortifying, and ele vating, and quickening, and sugge s-
tive p ower, capable of wonderfully helping us to
rela te the results of modern science to our need for
conducL our need for beauty.^ Homer's conceptions
of the physical universe were, I imagine, grotesque ;
20 but really, under the shock of hearing from modern
science that " the world is not subordinated to man's
use, and that man is not the cynosure of things terres-
trial," I could, for my own part, desire no better com-
fort than Homer's line which I quoted just now,
25 tXtjtov yap 'M.oipai 6vp.bv Oiaav avdpil)Troi<Tt.v — =
" for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to
the children of men " !
And the more that men's minds are cleared, the
more that the results of science are frankly accepted,
co the more that poetry and eloquence come to be
received and studied as what in truth they really
126 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
are, — the criticism of life by gifted men, alive and
active with extraordinary power at an unusual number
of points ; — so much the more will the value of
humane letters, and of art also, which is an utterance
having a like kind of power with theirs, be felt and 5
acknowledged, and their place in education be secured.
Let us therefore, all of us, avoid indeed as much as
possible any invidious comparison between the merits
of humane letters, as means of education, and the
merits of the natural sciences. But when some Presi- ia
dent of a Section for Mechanical Science insists on
making the comparison, and tells us that "he who in
his training has substituted literature and history for
natural science has chosen the less useful alternative,"
let us make answer to him that the student of humane 15
letters only, will, at least, know also the great general
conceptions brought in by modern physical science ;
for science, as Professor Huxley says, forces them
upon us all. But the student of the natural science^
only, will, by our very hypothesis, know nothing of 20
humane letters ; not to mention that in setting him-
self to be perpetually accumulating natural knowledge,
he sets himself to do what only specialists have in
general the gift for doing genially. And so he will
probably be unsatisfied, or at any rate incomplete, and 25
even more incomplete than the student of humane
letters only.
I once mentioned in a school-report, how a young
man in one of our English training colleges having to
paraphrase the passage in Macbeth beginning, 30
" Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ?"
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1 27
turned this line into, " Can you not wait upon the
lunatic?" And I remarked what a curious state of
things it would be, if every pupil of our national
schools knew, let us say, that the moon is two thou-
5 sand one hundred and sixty miles in diameter, and
thought at the same time that a good paraphrase for
" Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ? "
was, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" If one
is driven to choose, I think I would rather have a
10 young person ignorant about the moon's diameter,
but aware that "Can you not wait upon the lunatic ?"
is bad, than a young person whose education had
been such as to manage things the other way.
Or to go higher than the pupils of our national
15 schools. I have in my mind's eye a member of our
British Parliament who comes to travel here in
America, who afterwards relates his travels, and who
shows a really masterly knowledge of the geology of
this great country and of its mining capabilities, but
20 who ends by gravely suggesting that the United
States should borrow a prince from our Royal Family,
and should make him their king, and should create a
House of Lords of great landed proprietors after the
pattern of ours ; and then America, he thinks, would
25 have her future happily and perfectly secured.
Surely, in this case, the President of the Section for
Mechanical Science would himself hardly say that
our member of Parliament, by concentrating himself
upon geology and mineralogy, and so on, and not
30 attending to literature and history, had "chosen the
more useful alternative."
128 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
If then there is to be separation and option between
humane letters on the one hand, and the natura'
sciences on the other, the great majority of mankind
all who have not exceptional and overpowering apti-
tudes for the study of nature, would do well, I cannot 5
but think, to choose to be educated in humane letters
rather than in the natural sciences. Letters will call f
out their being at more points, will make them live \
more.
I said that before I ended I would just touch on 10
the question of classical education, and I will keep
my word. Even if literature is to retain a large place
in our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends
of progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the
grand offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. The 15
attackers of the established course of study think that
against Greek, at any rate, they have irresistible argu-
ments. Literature may perhaps be needed in educa-
tion, they say ; but why on earth should it be Greek
literature ? Why not French or German ? Nay, 20
" has not an Englishman models in his own literature
of every kind of excellence? ' As before, it is not on
any weak pleadings of my own that I rely for con-
vincing the gainsayers ; it is on the constitution of
human nature itself, and on the instinct of self-preser- 25
vation in humanity. The instinct for beauty is set in
human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge
is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the
instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and
art as it is served by no other literature and art, [30
we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in
humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture.
\
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1 29
We may trust to it for even making the study of
Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek will
come, I hope, some day to be studied more rationally
than at present ; but it will be increasingly studied as
5 men increasingly feel the need in them for beauty,
and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature
can serve this need. Women will again study Greek,
as Lady Jane Grey did ; I believe that in that chain
of forts, with which the fair host of the Amazons are
10 now engirdling our English universities, I find that
here in America, in colleges like Smith College in
Massachusetts, and Vassar College in the State of
New York, and in the happy families of the mixed
universities out West, they are studying it already.
15 Defuit una miJii symmetria prisca, — " The antique
symmetry was the one thing wanting to me," said
Leonardo da Vinci ; and he was an Italian. I
will not presume to speak for the Americans, but
I am sure that, in the Englishman, the want of
20 this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a thou-
sand times more great and crying than in any Italian.
The results of the want show themselves most glar-
ingly, perhaps, in our architecture, but they show
themselves, also, in all our art. Fit details strictly com-
25 bined, in view of a large general result nobly conceived ;
that is just the beautiful symmetria prisca of the
Greeks, and it is just where we English fail, where all
our art fails. Striking ideas we have, and well-
executed details we have ; but that high symmetry
30 which, with satisfying and delightful effect, combines
them, we seldom or never have. The glorious
beauty of the Acropolis at Athens did not come
130 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
from single fine things stuck about on that hill, a
statue here, a gateway there ; — no, it arose from all
things being perfectly combined for a supreme total
effect. What must not an Englishman feel about our
deficiencies in this respect, as the sense for beauty, 5
whereof this symmetry is an essential element, awakens
and strengthens within him ! what will not one day be
his respect and desire for Greece and its symmetria
prisca, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks
the London streets, and he sees such a lesson in mean- 10
ness as the Strand, for instance, in its true deformity !
But here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's
province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its
very sufficient guardian.
And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in 15
favour of the humanities the natural and necessary
stream of things, which seemed against them when we
started. The " hairy quadruped furnished with a tail
and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits,"
this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, appar- 20
ently, something destined to develop into a necessity
for humane letters. Nay, more ; we seem finally to
be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy
ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity for
Greek. 25
And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really
think that humane letters are in much actual danger
of being thrust out from their leading place in educa-
tion, in spite of the array of authorities against them
at this moment. So long as human nature is what it 30
is, their attractions will remain irresistible. As with
Greek, so with letters generally : they will some day
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 131
come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally,
but they will not lose their place. What will happen
will rather be that there will be crowded into educa-
tion other matters besides, far too many ; there will
5 be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion
and false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose
their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they
will get it back again. We shall be brought back to
them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor
10 humanist may possess his soul in patience, neither
strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the
partisans of physical science, and their present favour
with the public, to be far greater than his own, and
still have a happy faith that the nature of things works
15 silently on behalf of the studies which he loves, and
that, while we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with
the great results reached by modern science, and to
give ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we
can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will
20 always require humane letters; and so much the more,
as they have the more and the greater results of science
tojelate to t he need in man fnr„ rjaniiu£J T -ajuJ--^»-4-hp
need in him for beauty. — Discourses in America, ed.
1896, pp. 72-137.
(ro+J-' ■
©iforD anfc pbilfsttnfem.
Several of the Essays which are here collected and
reprinted had the good or the bad fortune to be much
criticised at the time of their first appearance. I am
not now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to
those criticisms; for one or two explanations which are 5
desirable, I shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day
to find an opportunity ; but, indeed, it is not in my
nature, — some of my critics would rather say, not in
my power, — to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even
my own, very obstinately. To try and approach truth 10
on one side after another, not to strive or cry, nor to
persist in pressing forward, on any one side, with vio-
lence and self-will, — it is only thus, it seems to me,
that mortals may hope to gain any vision of the mys-
terious Goddess, whom we shall never see except in 15
outline, but only thus even in outline. He who will
do nothing but fight impetuously towards her on his
own, one, favourite, particular line, is inevitably des-
tined to run his head into the folds of the black robe
in which she is wrapped. 20
So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this
preface, but to prevent a misunderstanding, of which
certain phrases that some of them use make me appre-
hensive. Mr. Wright, one of the many translators of
Homer, has published a letter to the Dean of Canter- 25
bury, complaining of some remarks of mine, uttered
132
OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. 133
now a long while ago, on his version of the Iliad.
One cannot be always studying one's own works, and
I was really under the impression, till I saw Mr.
Wright's complaint, that I had spoken of him with all
5 respect. The reader may judge of my astonishment,
therefore, at finding, from Mr. Wright's pamphlet, that
I had " declared with much solemnity that there is
not any proper reason for his existing." That I never
said; but, on looking back at my Lectures on trans-
iolating Homer, I find that I did say, not that Mr.
Wright, but that Mr. Wright's version of the Iliad,
repeating in the main the merits and defects of
Cowper's version, as Mr. Sotheby's repeated those of
Pope's version, had, if I might be pardoned for saying
15 so, no proper reason for existing. Elsewhere I ex-
pressly spoke of the merit of his version; but I confess
that the phrase, qualified as I have shown, about its
want of a proper reason for existing, I used. Well,
the phrase had, perhaps, too much vivacity ; we have
20 all of us a right to exist, we and our works; an
unpopular author should be the last person to call in
question this right. So I gladly withdraw the offend-
ing phrase, and I am sorry for having used it ; Mr.
Wright, however, would perhaps be more indulgent to
25 my vivacity, if he considered that we are none of us
likely to be lively much longer. My vivacity is but
the last sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark,
the last glimpse of colour before we all go into
drab, — the drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical,
30 austerely literal future. Yes, the world will soon be
the Philistines ! and then, with every voice, not of
thunder, silenced, and the whole earth filled and
134 OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM.
ennobled every morning by the magnificent roaring
of the young lions of the Daily Telegraph, we shall all
yawn in one another's faces with the dismallest, the
most unimpeachable gravity.
But I return to my design in writing this Preface. 5
That design was, after apologising to Mr. Wright for
my vivacity of five years ago, to beg him and others
to let me bear my own burdens, without saddling the
great and famous University tc which I have the
honour to belong with any portion of them. What ic
I mean to deprecate is such phrases as, " his pro-
fessorial assault," " his assertions issued ex cathedra"
" the sanction of his name as the representative of
poetry," and so on. Proud as I am of my connection
with the University of Oxford, 1 I can truly say, that 15
knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking
when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that
powerful but at present somewhat narrow-toned
organ, the modern Englishman, I have always sought
to stand by myself, and to compromise others as 20
little as possible. Besides this, my native modesty
is such, that I have always been shy of assuming the
honourable style of Professor, because this is a title
I share with so many distinguished men — Professor
Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor Frickel, and 25
others — who adorn it, I feel, much more than I do.
However, it is not merely out of modesty that I
prefer to stand alone, and to concentrate on myself,
as a plain citizen of the republic of letters, and not
as an office-bearer in a hierarchy, the whole responsi- 30
1 When the above was written the author had still the Chair of
Poetry at Oxford, which he has since vacated.
OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. 135
bility for all I write ; it is much more out of genuine
devotion to the University of Oxford, for which I
feel, and always must feel, the fondest, the most
reverential attachment. In an epoch of dissolution
5 and transformation, such as that on which we are
now entered, habits, ties, and associations are inevit-
ably broken up, the action of individuals becomes
more distinct, the shortcomings, errors, heats, dis-
putes, which necessarily attend individual action, are
10 brought into greater prominence. Who would not
gladly keep clear, from all these passing clouds, an
august institution which was there before they arose,
and which will be there when they have blown over ?
It is true, the Saturday Revietv maintains that our
15 epoch of transformation is finished ; that we have
found our philosophy ; that the British nation has
searched all anchorages for the spirit, and has finally
anchored itself, in the fulness of perfected knowledge,
on Benthamism. This idea at first made a great im-
20 pression on me; not only because it is so consoling in it-
self, but also because it explained a phenomenon which
in the summer of last year had, I confess, a good
deal troubled me. At that time my avocations led
me to travel almost daily on one of the Great Eastern
25 lines, — the Woodford Branch. Every one knows
that the murderer, Miiller, perpetrated his detestable
act on the North London Railway, close by. The
English middle class, of which I am myself a feeble
unit, travel on the Woodford Branch in large numbers.
30 Well, the demoralisation of our class, — the class which
(the newspapers are constantly saying it, so I may
repeat it without vanity) has done all the great things
f3° OXFORD 'AND PHILISTINISM.
which have ever been done in England, — the demoral-
isation, I say, of our class, caused by the Bow tragedy,
was something bewildering. Myself a transcenden-
talist (as the Saturday Review knows), I escaped the
infection; and, day after day, I used to ply my 5
agitated fellow-travellers with all the consolations
which my transcendentalism would naturally suggest
to me. I reminded them how Cassar refused to take
precautions against assassination, because life was not
worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for 10
it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all
are in the life of the world. " Suppose the worst to
happen," I said, addressing a portly jeweller from
Cheapside ; " suppose even yourself to be the victim ;
il ny a pas d'homme ne'cessaire. We should miss you 15
for a day or two upon the Woodford Branch ; but
the great mundane movement would still go on, the
gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled,
dividends would still be paid at the Bank, omnibuses
would still run, there would still be the old crush at 20
the corner of Fenchurch Street." All was of no
avail. Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the
great English middle-class, their passionate, absorb-
ing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life. At the
moment I thought this over-concern a little un- 25
worthy ; but the Saturday Review suggests a touching
explanation of it. What I took for the ignoble cling-
ing to life of a comfortable worldling, was, perhaps,
only the ardent longing of a faithful Benthamite,
traversing an age still dimmed by the last mists of 30
transcendentalism, to be spared long enough to see
his religion in the full and final blaze of its triumph.
OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. J 37
This respectable man, whom I imagined to be going
up to London to serve his shop, or to buy shares, or
to attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to assist at the
deliberations of the Marylebone Vestry, was even,
5 perhaps, in real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain
from Mr. Bentham's executors a secret bone of his
great dissected master.
And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the
Saturday Review has here, for once, fallen a victim to
ioan idea, — a beautiful but deluding idea, — and that
the British nation has not yet, so entirely as the
reviewer seems to imagine, found the last word of its
philosophy. No, we are all seekers still ! seekers
often make mistakes, and I wish mine to redound to
15 my own discredit only, and not to touch Oxford.
Beautiful city ! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged
by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so
serene !
" There are our young barbarians, all at play!"
20 And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading
her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from
her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age,
who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm,
keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of
25 us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word,
which is only truth seen from another side ? — nearer,
perhaps, than all the science of Tubingen. Adorable
dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic ! who hast
given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and
30 to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines J
home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and un-
138 OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM.
popular names, and impossible loyalties ! what ex-
ample could ever so inspire us to keep down the
Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so
save us from that bondage to which we are all prone,
that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines 5
on the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest
praise (and nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to
have left miles out of sight behind him ; the bond-
age of "was uns alle bdndigt, das gemeine ! " She will
forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn upon 10
her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy son ; for she
is generous, and the cause in which I fight is, after all,
hers. Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare
against the Philistines, compared with the warfare
which this queen of romance has been waging against 15
them for centuries, and will wage after we are gone ?
— Essays in Criticism, First Series, ed. 1896, Preface.
Ipbilistinfsm.
// Philistinism ! — we have not the expression in
f English. Perhaps we have not the word because we //
have so much of the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they
did not talk of solecisms ; and here, at the very head-
5 quarters of Goliath, nobody talks of Philistinism.
The French have adopted the term ipicier (grocer),
to designate the sort of being whom the Germans
designate by the term Philistine ; but the French
term, — besides that it casts a slur upon a respectable
10 class, composed of living and susceptible members,
while the original Philistines are dead and buried
long ago, — is really, I think, in itself much less apt
and expressive than the German term. Efforts have
been made to obtain in English some term equivalent
15 to Philister or e'picier ; Mr. Carlyle has made several
such efforts : " respectability with its thousand gigs,"
he says ; — well, the occupant of every one of these
gigs is, Mr. Carlyle means, a Philistine. However, the
word respectable is far too valuable a word to be thus
20 perverted from its proper meaning ; if the English are
ever to have a word for the thing we are speaking of, —
and so prodigious are the changes which the modern
spirit is introducing, that even we English shall per-
haps one day come to want such a word, — I think we
25 had much better take the term Philistine itself. /
Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind
139
1 4° PHIL IS TIN ISM.
of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged,
unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the
children of the light. The party of change, the
would-be remodellers of the old traditional European
order, the invokers of reason against custom, the 5
representatives of the modern spirit in every sphere
where it is applicable, regarded themselves, with the
robust self confidence natural to reformers as a chosen
people, as children of the light. They regarded their
adversaries as humdrum people, slaves to routine, 10
enemies to light ; stupid and oppressive, but at the
same time very strong. This explains the love which
Heine, that Paladin of the modern spirit, has for
France ; it explains the preference which he gives to
France over Germany : " the French," he says, " are 15
the chosen people of the new religion, its first gospels
and dogmas have been drawn up in their language ;
Paris is the new Jerusalem, and the Rhine is the
Jordan which divides the consecrated land of free-
dom from the land of the Philistines." He means so
that the French, as a people, have shown more accessi-
bility to ideas than any other people ; that prescrip-
tion and routine have had less hold upon them than
upon any other people ; that they have shown most
readiness to move and to alter at the bidding (real or 25
supposed) of reason. This explains, too, the detesta-
tion which Heine had for the English : " I might
settle in England," he says, in his exile, "if it were
not that I should find there two things, coal-smoke
and Englishmen ; I cannot abide either." What he 3c
hated in the English was the " achtbrittische Be-
schranktheit," as he calls it, — the genuine British ?iar-
PHILISTINISM. 141
rowness. In truth, thj English, profoundly as they have
modified the old Middle-Age order, great as is the
liberty which they have secured for themselves, have
in all their changes proceeded, to use a familiar
5 expression, by the rule of thumb ; what was intolera-
bly inconvenient to them they have suppressed, and as
they have suppressed it, not because it was irrational,
but because it was practically inconvenient, they have
seldom in suppressing it appealed to reason, but
10 always, if possible, to some precedent, or form, or
letter, which served as a convenient instrument for
their purpose, and which saved them from the neces-
sity of recurring to general principles. They have
thus become, in a certain sense, of all people the
15 most inaccessible to ideas and the most impatient of
them ; inaccessible to them, because of their want of
familiarity with them ; and impatient of them because
they have got on so well without them, that they
despise those who, not having got on as well as
20 themselves, still make a fuss for what they themselves
have done so well without. But there has certainly
followed from hence, in this country, somewhat of a
general depression of pure intelligence : Philistia has
come to be thought by us the true Land of Promise,
25 and it is anything but that ; the born lover of ideas,
the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this
country, that the sky over his head is of brass and
iron. The enthusiast for the idea, for reason, values
reason, the idea, in and for themselves ; he values
30 them, irrespectively of the practical conveniences
which their triumph may obtain for him ; and the
man who regards the possession of these practical
142 PHILISTINISM.
conveniences as something sufficient in itself, some-
thing which compensates for the absence or surrender
of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, a Philistine.
This is why Heine so often and so mercilessly attacks
the liberals ; much as he hates conservatism he hates 5
Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conser-
vatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not in
the name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett is
thus for him, much as he disliked our clergy and
aristocracy whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with 10
six fingers on every hand and on every foot six toes,
four-and-twenty in number : a Philistine, the staff of
whose spear is like a weaver's beam. Thus he speaks
of him : —
" While I translate Cobbett's words, the man him- 15
self comes bodily before my mind's eye, as I saw him
at that uproarious dinner at the Crown and Anchor
Tavern, with his scolding red face and his radical
laugh, in which venomous hate mingles with a mock-
ing exultation at his enemies' surely approaching 20
downfall. He is a chained cur, who falls with equal
fury on every one whom he does not know, often
bites the best friend of the house in his calves, barks
incessantly, and just because of this incessantness of
his barking cannot get listened to, even when he barks 25
at a real thief. Therefore the distinguished thieves
who plunder England do not think it necessary to
throw the growling Cobbett a bone to stop his mouth.
This makes the dog furiously savage, and he shows
all his hungry teeth. Poor old Cobbett ! England's 30
dog ! I have no love for thee, for every vulgar nature
my soul abhors ; but thou touchest me to the inmost
PHILISTINISM. M3
soul with pity, as I see how thou strainest in vain to
break loose and to get at those thieves, who make
off with their booty before thy very eyes, and mock at
thy fruitless springs and thine impotent howling."
5 There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A
chosen circle of children of the modern spirit, per-
fectly emancipated from prejudice and commonplace,
regarding the ideal side of things in all its efforts for
change, passionately despising half-measures and con-
iodescension to human folly and obstinacy, — with a
bewildered, timid, torpid multitude behind, — conducts
a country to the government of Herr von Bismarck.
A nation regarding the practical side of things in its
efforts for change, attacking not what is irrational,
15 but what is pressingly inconvenient, and attacking
this as one body, " moving altogether if it move at
all," and treating children of light like the very
harshest of stepmothers, comes to the prosperity and
liberty of modern England. For all that, however,
20 Philistia (let me say it again) is not the true promised
land, as we English commonly imagine it to be ; and
our excessive neglect of the idea, and consequent
inaptitude for it, threatens us, at a moment when the
idea is beginning to exercise a real power in human
25 society, with serious future inconvenience, and, in the
meanwhile, cuts us off from the sympathy of other
nations, which feel its power more than we do. — ■
Essays, I., ed. 1896, pp. 162-167.
Culture ano Bnarcbg.
In one of his speeches a short time ago, that fine
speaker and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion
to have a fling at the friends and preachers of culture.
"People who talk about what they call culture!"
said he, contemptously ; "by which they mean a 5
smattering of the two dead languages of Greek and
Latin." And he went on to remark, in a strain with
which modern speakers and writers have made us
very familiar, how poor a thing this culture is, how
little good it can do to the world, and how absurd it ia
is for its possessors to set much store by it. And the
other day a younger Liberal than Mr. Bright, one of
a school whose mission it is to bring into order and
system that body of truth with which the earlier
Liberals merely fumbled, a member of the University 15
of Oxford, and a very clever writer, Mr. Frederic
Harrison, developed, in the systematic and stringent
manner of his school, the thesis which Mr. Bright
had propounded in only general terms. " Perhaps
the very silliest cant of the day," said Mr. Frederic 20
Harrison, "is the cant about culture. Culture is a
desirable quality in a critic of new books, and sits
well on a possessor of belles-lettres ; but as applied to
politics, it means simply a turn for small fault-finding,
love of selfish ease, and indecision in action. The 25
man of culture is in politics one of the poorest mortals
144
CULTURE AND ANARCHY. 145
alive. For simple pedantry and want of good sense
no man is his equal. No assumption is too unreal
,io end is too unpractical for him. But the active
exercise of politics requires common sense, sympathy,
5 trust, resolution, and enthusiasm, qualities which
your man of culture has carefully rooted up, lest they
damage the delicacy of his critical olfactories. Per-
haps they are the only class of responsible beings in
the community who cannot with safety be entrusted
io with power."
Now for my part I do not wish to see men of
culture asking to be entrusted with power ; and,
indeed, I have freely said, that in my opinion the
speech most proper, at present, for a man of culture
15 to make to a body of his fellow-countrymen who get
him into a committee-room, is Socrates's : Know thy-
self ! and this is not a speech to be made by men
wanting to be entrusted with power. For this very
indifference to direct political action I have been
20 taken to task by the Daily Telegraph, coupled, by a
strange perversity of fate, with just that very one of
the Hebrew prophets whose style I admire the least,
and called "an elegant Jeremiah." It is because I
say (to use the words which the Daily Telegraph puts
25 in my mouth) : — " You mustn't make a fuss because
you have no vote, — that is vulgarity ; you mustn't
hold big meetings to agitate for reform bills and to
repeal corn laws, — that is the very height of vul-
garity," — it is for this reason that I am called some-
30 times an elegant Jeremiah, sometimes a spurious
Jeremiah, a Jeremiah about the reality of whose
mission the writer in the Daily Telegrat>h has his
146 CULTURE AND ANARCHY.
doubts. It is evident, therefore, that I have so taken
my line as not to be exposed to the whole brunt of
Mr. Frederic Harrison's censure. Still, I have often
spoken in praise of culture, I have striven to make
all my works and ways serve the interests of culture. 5
I take culture to be something a great deal more than
what Mr. Frederic Harrison and others call it : "a
desirable quality in a critic of new books." Nay,
even though to a certain extent I am disposed to
agree with Mr. Frederic Harrison, that men of culture 10
are just the class of responsible beings in this com-
munity of ours who cannot properly, at present, be
entrusted with power, I am not sure that I do not
think this the fault of our community rather than of
the men of culture. In short, although, like Mr. 15
Bright and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the editor of
the Daily Telegraph, and a large body of valued friends
of mine, I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered
by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I
am, above all, a believer in culture. Therefore 1 20
propose now to try and inquire, in the simple un-
systematic way which best suits both my taste and
my powers, what culture really is, what good it can
do, what is our own special need of it ; and I shall
seek to find some plain grounds on which a faith in 25
culture, — both my own faith in it and the faith of
others, — may rest securely. — Culture and Anarchy, ed.
1896, Introduction.
£ Jv^amSUjo/^
7-~~£«r-H*~«L^hiL **v L^JsMxafa
Sweetness^ anMLfgbt.
The disparagers of culture make its motive curi-
osity ; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere
exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is sup-
posed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and
5 Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so
intellectual as curiosity ; it is valued either out of
sheer vanity and ignorance or else as an engine of
social and class distinction, separating its holder, like
a badge or title, from other people who have not got
10 it. No serious man would call this culture % or attach
any value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real
ground for the very different estimate which serious
people will set upon culture, we must find some
motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a
15 real ambiguity ; and such a motive the word curiosity
gives us.
I have before now pointed out that we English do
not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense
as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is always
20 used in a somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal
and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind
may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of
curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a cer-
tain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In
25 the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an
estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte«
I4 3 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in my judg-
ment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in
this : that in our English way it left out of sight the
double sense really involved in the word curiosity,
thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve 5
with blame if it was said that he was impelled in his
operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either
to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many
other people with him, would consider that this was
praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out 10
why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame
and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about
intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a
disease, so there is certainly a curiosity, — a desire
after the things of the mind simply for their own 15
sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they
are, — which is, in an intelligent being, natural and
laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as
they are implies a balance and regulation of mind
which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and 20
which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased
impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame
when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : " The
first motive which ought to impel us to study is the
desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to 25
render an intelligent being yet more intelligent."
This is the true ground to assign for the genuine
scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture,
viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and it is a
worthy ground, even though we let the term curiosity 30
stand to describe it.
But there is of culture another view, in which not
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 1 49
solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see
things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent
being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view
in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses
" towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for
removing human error, clearing human confusion, and
diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to
leave the world better and happier than we found it, —
motives eminently such as are called social, — come in
ioas part of the grounds of culture, and the main and
pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described
not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its
origin in the love of perfection ; it is a study of per-
fection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily
15 of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also
of the moral and social passion for doing good. As,
in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto
Montesquieu's words : " To render an intelligent
being yet more intelligent ! " so, in the second view
20 of it, there is no better motto which it can have than
these words of Bishop Wilson : " To make reason and
the will of God prevail ! "
Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt .0
be overhasty in determining what reason and the will
25 of God say, because its turn is for acting rather than
thinking and it wants to be beginning to act ; and
whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which
proceed from its own state of development and share
in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for a
30 basis of action ; what distinguishes culture is, that it
is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by
the passion of doing good ; that it demands worthy
150 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
notions of reason and the will of God, and does not
readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute
themselves for them. And knowing that no action or
institution can be salutary and stable which is not
based on reason and the will of God, it is not so bent 5
on acting and instituting, ev&n with the great aim of
diminishing human error and misery ever before its
thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and
instituting are of little use, unless we know how and
what we ought to act and to institute. 10
This culture is more interesting and more far-reach-
ing than that other, which is founded solely on the
scientific passion for knowing. But it needs times of
faith and ardour, times when the intellectual horizon
is opening and widening all round us, to flourish in. 15
And is not the close and bounded intellectual horizon
within which we have long lived and moved now lift-
ing up, and are not new lights finding free passage to
shine in upon us ? For a long time there was no
passage for them to make their way in upon us, and 20
then it was of no use to think of adapting the world's
action to them. Where was the hope of making
reason and the will of God prevail among people who
had a routine which they had christened reason and
the will of God, in which they were inextricably 25
bound, and beyond which they had no power of
looking ? But now the iron force of adhesion to the
old routine, — social, political, religious, — has wonder-
fully yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which
is new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, 3a
not that people should obstinately refuse to allow
anything but their old routine to pass for reason and
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 15 '
the will of God, but either that they should allow some
novelty or other to pass for these too easily, or else
that they should underrate the importance of them
altogether, and think it enough to follow action for its
5 own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason
and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is
the moment for culture to be of service, culture which
believes in making reason and the will of God prevail,
believes in perfection, is the study and pursuit of per-
iofection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invinci-
ble exclusion of whatever is new, from getting
acceptance for its ideas, simply because they are
new.
The moment this view of culture is seized, the
15 moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour to
see things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge
of the universal order which seems to be intended and
aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's happi-
ness to go along with or his misery to go counter
20 to, — to learn, in short, the will of God, — the moment,
I say, culture is considered not merely as the endeavour
to see and learn this, but as the endeavour, also, to
make it prevail, the moral, social, and beneficent char-
acter of culture becomes manifest. The mere
25 endeavour to see and learn the truth for our own
personal satisfaction is indeed a commencement for
making it prevail, a preparing the way for this, which
always serves this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped
with blame absolutely in itself and not only in its
30 caricature and degeneration. But perhaps it has got
stamped with blame, and disparaged with the dubious
title of curiosity, because in comparison with this
152 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
wider endeavour of such great and plain utility it
looks selfish, petty, and unprofitable.
And religion, the greatest and most important of
the efforts by which the human race has manifested
its impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of 5
the deepest human experience, — does not only enjoin
and sanction the aim which is the great aim of cul-
ture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what
perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also, in
determining generally in what human perfection con- 10
sists, religion comes to a conclusion identical with
that which culture, — culture seeking the determination
of this question through all the voices of human ex-
perience which have been heard upon it, of art,
science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of is
religion, in order to give a greater fulness and cer-
tainty to its solution, — likewise reaches. Religion
says : The kingdom of God is within you ; and culture,
in like manner, places human perfection in an internal
condition, in the growth and predominance of our 2c
humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality.
It places it in the ever-increasing efficacy and in the
general harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought
and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity, wealth,
and happiness of human nature. As I have said on a 25
former occasion : "It is in making endless additions
to itself, in the endless expansion of its powers, in
endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit
of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal,
culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true 30
value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but a
growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 153
as culture conceives it ; and here, too, it coincides
with religion.
And because men are all members of one great
whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature
5 will not allow one member to be indifferent to the
rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the
rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea
of perfection which culture forms, must be a general
expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not
10 possible while the individual remains isolated. The
individual is required, under pain of being stunted
and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys,
to carry others along with him in his march towards
perfection, to be continually doing all he can to
15 enlarge and increase the volume of the human stream
sweeping thitherward. And here, once more, culture
lays on us the same obligation as religion, which says,
as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it, that " to pro-
mote the kingdom of God is to increase and hasten
20 one's own happiness."
But, finally, perfection, — as culture from a thorough
disinterested study of human nature and human expe-
rience learns to conceive it, — is a harmonious expan-
sion of all the powers which make the beauty and
25 worth of human nature, and is not consistent with the
over-development of any one power at the expense of
the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion, as
religion is generally conceived by us.
If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of
30 harmonious perfection, general perfection, and per-
fection which consists in becoming something rather
than in having something, in an inward condition of
154 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circum-
stances, — it is clear that culture, instead of being the
frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr.
Frederic Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt
to call it, has a very important function to fulfil for 5
mankind. And this function is particularly important
in our modern world, of which the whole civilisation
is, to a much greater degree than the civilisation of
Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends
constantly to become more so. But above all in our 10
own country has culture a weighty part to perform,
because here that mechanical character, which civil-
isation tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most
eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of
perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in 15
this country with some powerful tendency which
thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of
perfection as an inward condition of the mind and
spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material
civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have 20
said, so much in esteem as with us. The idea of per-
fection as a general expansion of the human family is
at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred
of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the indi-
vidual's personality, our maxim of "every man for 25
himself." Above all, the idea of perfection as a har-
monious expansion of human nature is at variance
with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for
seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense
energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we 30
happen to be following. So culture has a rough task
to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and
SIVEETNESS AND LIGHT. 155
are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will
much oftener be regarded, for a great while to come,
as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and
benefactors. That, however, will not prevent their
5 doing in the end good service if they persevere. And,
meanwhile, the mode of action they have to pursue,
and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought
to be made quite clear for every one to see, who
may be willing to look at the matter attentively and
io dispassionately.
Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger ;
often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to
the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good
at all, is to serve ; but always in machinery, as if it
15 had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but
machinery ? what is population but machinery ? what
is coal but machinery ? what are railroads but
machinery ? what is wealth but machinery ? what
are, even, religious organisations but machinery ?
20 Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to
speak of these things as if they were precious ends in
themselves, and therefore had some of the characters
of perfection indisputably joined to them. I have
before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for
-25 proving the greatness and happiness of England as
she is, and for quite stopping the mouths of all gain-
sayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating
this argument of his, so I do not know why I should
be weary of noticing it. " May not every man in
30 England say what he likes ? " — Mr. Roebuck perpetu-
ally asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and
when every man may say what he likes, our aspira'
156 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
tions ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of
culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satis-
fied, unless what men say, when they may say what
they like, is worth saying, — has good in it, and more
good than bad. In the same way the Times, replying 5
to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and
behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the
English ideal is that every one should be free to do
and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatiga-
bly tries, not to make what each raw person may like 10
the rule by which he fashions himself ; but to draw
ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful,
graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to
like that.
And in the same way with respect to railroads and 15
coal. Every one must have observed the strange
language current during the late discussions as to the
possible failures of our supplies of coal. Our coal,
thousands of people were saying, is the real basis of
our national greatness ; if our coal runs short, there is 20
an end of the greatness of England. But what is
greatness? — culture makes us ask. Greatness is a
spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and
admiration ; and the outward proof of possessing
greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admira- 25
tion. If England were swallowed up by the sea to-
morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence,
would most excite the love, interest, and admiration
of mankind, — would most, therefore, show the evi-
dences of having possessed greatness, — the England 30
of the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth,
of a time of splendid spiritual effort, but when our
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 157
<*oal, and our industrial operations depending on coal,
were very little developed ? Well, then, what an
unsound habit of mind it must be which makes us
talk of things like coal or iron as constituting the
5 greatness of England, and how salutary a friend is
culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and thus
dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing standards
of perfection that are real !
Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious
10 works for material advantage are directed, — the com-
monest of commonplaces tells us how men are always
apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself ; and
certainly they have never been so apt thus to regard
it as they are in England at the present time. Never
15 did people believe anything more firmly than nine
Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that
our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so
very rich. Now, the use of culture is that it helps
us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to
?o regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say,
as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but
machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is
so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought
upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the
25 future as well as the present, would inevitably belong
to the Philistines. The people who believe most that
our greatness and welfare are proved by our being
very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts
to becoming rich, are just the very people whom
30 we call Philistines. Culture says: "Consider these
people, then, their way of life, their habits, their
manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them
I5 S SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
attentively ; observe the literature they read, the
things which give them pleasure, the words which
come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which
make the furniture of their minds ; would any amount
of wealth be worth having with the condition that 5
one was to become just like these people by having
it ? " And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which
is of the highest possible value in stemming the
common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy and
industrial community, and which saves the future, 10
as one may hope, from being vulgarised, even if it
cannot save the present.
Population, again, and bodily health and vigour,
are things which are nowhere treated in such an un-
intelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. 15
Both are really machinery ; yet how many people all
around us do we see rest in them and fail to look
beyond them ! Why, one has heard people, fresh
from reading certain articles of the Times on the
Registrar-General's returns of marriages and births in 20
this country, who would talk of our large English
families in quite a solemn strain, as if they had some-
thing in itself beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in
them ; as if the British Philistine would have only
to present himself before the Great Judge with his 25
twelve children, in order to be received among the
sheep as a matter of right !
But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are
not to be classed with wealth and population as mere
machinery ; they have a more real and essential value. 30
True ; but only as they are more intimately connected
with a perfect spiritual condition than wealth or popu-
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 159
lation are. The moment we disjoin them from the
idea of a perfect spiritual condition, and pursue them,
as we do pursue them, for their own sake and as ends
in themselves, our worship of them becomes as mere
5 worship of machinery, as our worship of wealth or
population, and as unintelligent and vulgarising a
worship as that is. Every one with anything like an
adequate idea of human perfection has distinctly
marked this subordination to higher and spiritual
10 ends of the cultivation of bodily vigour and activity.
" Bodily exercise profiteth little ; but godliness is
profitable unto all things," says the author of the
Epistle to Timothy. And the utilitarian Franklin
says just as explicitly : — " Eat and drink such an
15 exact quantity as suits the constitution of thy body,
in reference to the services of the mind." But the point
of view of culture, keeping the mark of human per-
fection simply and broadly in view, and not assigning
to this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism assigns
20 to it, a special and limited character, this point of
view, I say, of culture is best given by these words
of Epictetus: — " It is a sign of d<£via," says he, — that
is, of a nature not finely tempered, — " to give your-
selves up to things which relate to the body ; to make,
25 for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss
about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss
about walking, a great fuss about riding. All these
things ought to be done merely by the way : the for-
mation of the spirit and character must be our real
30 concern." This is admirable ; and, indeed, the Greek
word cv<j>vta, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly
the notion of perfection as culture brings us to con-
160 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
ceive it : a harmonious perfection, a perfection in
which the characters of beauty and intelligence are
both present, which unites " the two noblest of things,"
— as Swift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had
himself all too little, most happily calls them in his 5
Battle of the Books, — " the two noblest of things, sweet-
ness and light.'" The e£<£u^s is the man who tends
towards sweetness and light ; the d^u^s on the other
hand, is our Philistine. The immense spiritual sig-
nificance of the Greeks is due to their having been ic
inspired with this central and happy idea of the
essential character of human perfection ; and Mr.
Bright's misconception of culture, as a smattering of
Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all,' from this
wonderful significance of the Greeks having affected 15
the very machinery of our education, and is in itself
a kind of homage to it.
In thus making sweetness and light to be charac-
ters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry,
follows one law with poetry. Far more than on our 20
freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many
amongst us rely upon our religious organisations to
save us. I have called religion a yet more important
manifestation of human nature than poetry, because
it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and 25
with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty
and of a human nature perfect on all its sides, which
is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invalu-
able idea, though it has not yet had the success that
the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our 30
animality, and of a human nature perfect on the
moral side, — which is the dominant idea of religion, —
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. i&i
has been enabled to have ; and it is destined, adding
to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to trans-
form and govern the other.
The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which
5 religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of
beauty and of a human nature perfect on all sides adds
to itself a religious and devout energy, and works in
the strength of that, is on this account of such sur-
passing interest and instructiveness for us, though it
iowas, — as, having regard to the human race in general,
and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves,
we must own, — a premature attempt, an attempt
which for success needed the moral and religious fibre
in humanity to be more braced and developed than it
15 had yet been. But Greece did not err in having the
idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human per-
fection, so present and paramount. It is impossible
to have this idea too present and paramount ; only,
the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, because
20 we have braced the moral fibre, are not on that
account in the right way, if at the same time the idea
of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection,
is wanting or misapprehended amongst us ; and evi-
dently it is wanting or misapprehended at present.
25 And when we rely as we do on our religious organisa-
tions, which in themselves do not and cannot give us
this idea, and think we have done enough if we make
them spread and prevail, then I say, we fall into our
common fault of overvaluing machinery.
30 Nothing is more common than for people to con-
found the inward peace and satisfaction which follows
the subduing of the obvious faults of our animality
1 62 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
with what I may call absolute inward peace and satis-
faction, — the peace and satisfaction which are reached
as we draw near to complete spiritual perfection, and
not merely to moral perfection, or rather to relative
moral perfection. No people in the world have done 5
more and struggled more to attain this relative moral
perfection than our English race has. For no people
in the world has the command to resist the devil, to
overcome the wicked one, in the nearest and most obvi-
ous sense of those words, had such a pressing force 10
and reality. And we have had our reward, not only
in the great worldly prosperity which our obedience to
this command has brought us, but also, and far more,
in great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me
few things are more pathetic than to see people, on 15
the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction
which their rudimentary efforts towards perfection
have brought them, employ, concerning their incom-
plete perfection and the religious organisations within
which they have found it, language which properly 20
applies only to complete perfection, and is a far-off
echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. Religion
itself, I need hardly say, supplies them in abund-
ance with this grand language. And very freely do
they use it ; yet it is really the severest possible 25
criticism of such an incomplete perfection as alone
we have yet reached through our religious organi-
sations.
The impulse of the English race towards moral
development and self-conquest has nowhere so power- 30
fully manifested itself as in Puritanism. Nowhere
has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 163
the religious organisation of the Independents. The
modern Independents have a newspaper, the Noncon-
formist, written with great sincerity and ability. The
motto, the standard, the profession of faith which this
5 organ of theirs carries aloft, is : " The Dissidence of
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant reli-
gion." There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of
complete harmonious human perfection ! One need
not go to culture and poetry to find language to judge
10 it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, supplies
language to judge it, language, too, which is in our
mouths every day. " Finally, be of one mind, united
in feeling," says St. Peter. There is an ideal which
judges the Puritan ideal : "The Dissidence of Dissent
15 and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion!"
And religious organisations like this are what people
believe in, rest in, would give their lives for ! Such, I
say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of
perfection, of having conquered even the plain fauhs
20 of our animality, that the religious organisation which
has helped us to do it can seem to us something
precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when
it wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead
as this. And men have got such a habit of giving to
25 the language of religion a special application, of
making it a mere jargon, that for the condemnation
which religion itself passes on the shortcomings of
their religious organisations they have no ear ; they
are sure to cheat themselves and to explain this con-
30 demnation away. They can only be reached by the
criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a lan-
guage not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing
1 64 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
these organisations by the ideal of a human perfection
complete on all sides, applies to them.
But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are
again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in
the necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, 5
in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our
animality, which it is the glory of these religious
organisations to have helped us to subdue. True,
they do often so fail. They have often been without
the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan ; it has ia
been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puri-
tan's faults that they too much neglected the practice
of his virtues. 1 will not, however, exculpate them at
the Puritan's expense. They have often failed in
morality, and morality is indispensable. And they 15
have been punished for their failure, as the Puritan
has been rewarded for his performance. They have
been punished wherein they erred ; but their ideal of
beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature
complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of per- 20
fection still ; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfection
remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he
did well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstand-
ing the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage,
they and their standard of perfection are rightly 25
judged when we figure to ourselves Shakspeare or
Virgil, — souls in whom sweetness and light, and
all that in human nature is most humane, were
eminent, — accompanying them on their voyage, and
think what intolerable company Shakspeare and Vir- 30
gil would have found them ! In the same way let us
Judge the religious organisations which we see all
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. I&5
around us. Do not let us deny the good and the
happiness which they have accomplished ; but do not
let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human per-
fection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissi-
5 dence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protes-
tant religion will never bring humanity to its true
goal. As I said with regard to wealth : Let us look
at the life of those who live in and for it, — so I say
with regard to the religious organisations. Look at
10 the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Noncon-
formist, — a life of jealousy of the Establishment, dis-
putes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons ;
and then think of it as an ideal of a human life com-
pleting itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its
15 organs after sweetness, light, and perfection !
Another newspaper, representing, like the Noncon-
formist, one of the religious organisations of this
country, was a short time ago giving an account of
the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the
20 vice and hideousness which was to be seen in that
crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly round
upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how he pro-
posed to cure all this vice and hideousness without
religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask the asker
25 this question : and how do you propose to cure it
with such a religion as yours ? How is the ideal of a
life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so nar-
row, so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal
of human perfection, as is the life of your religious
30 organisation as you yourself reflect it, to conquer and
transform all this vice and hideousness? Indeed, the
strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued
166 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
by culture, the clearest proof of the actual inadequacy
of the idea of perfection held by the religious organis-
ations, — expressing, as I have said, the most wide-
spread effort which the human race has yet made
after perfection, — is to be found in the state of our 5
life and society with these in possession of it, and
having been in possession of it I know not how many
hundred years. We are all of us included in some
religious organisation or other ; we all call ourselves,
in the sublime and aspiring language of religion which 10
I have before noticed, children of God. Children of
God ; — it is an immense pretension ! — and how are
we to justify it ? By the works which we do, and the
words which we speak. And the work which we
collective children of God do, our grand centre of 15
life, our city which we have builded for us to dwell in,
is London ! London, with its unutterable external
hideousness, and with its internal canker of publice
egestas, privatim opulentia, — to use the words which
Sallust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome, — un-20
equalled in the world ! The word, again, which we
children of God speak, the voice which most hits our
collective thought, the newspaper with the largest
circulation in England, nay, with the largest circula-
tion in the whole world, is the Daily Telegraph ! I 25
say that when our religious organisations, — which I
admit to express the most considerable effort after
perfection that our race has yet made, — land us in no
better result than this, it is high time to examine
carefully their idea of perfection, to see whether it 30
does not leave out of account sides and forces of
human nature which we might turn to great use ;
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 167
whether it would not be more operative if it were
more complete. And I say that the English reliance
on our religious organisations and on their ideas of
human perfection just as they stand, is like our reli-
5 ance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on popula-
tion, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in machinery,
and unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely counter-
acted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are,
and on drawing the human race onwards to a more
10 complete, a harmonious perfection.
Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of
perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the
will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its
attitude towards all this machinery, even while it insists
15 that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief
men do themselves by their blind belief in some
machinery or other, — whether it is wealth and indus-
trialism, or whether it is the cultivation of bodily
strength and activity, or whether it is a political organ-
2oisation,— or whether it is a religious organisation,—
oppose with might and main the tendency to this or
that political and religious organisation, or to games
and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrialism,
and try violently to stop it. But the flexibility which
25 sweetness and light give, and which is one of the
rewards of culture pursued in good faith, enables a
man to see that a tendency may be necessary, and
even, as a preparation for something in the future,
salutary, and yet that the generations or individuals
30 who obey this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they
fall short of the hope of perfection by following it ;
and that its mischiefs are to be criticised, lest it should
l68 SWEETNESS A AW LIGHT.
take too firm a hold and last after it has served its
purpose.
Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at
Paris, — and others have pointed out the same thing, —
how necessary is the present great movement towards 5
wealth and industrialism, in order to lay broad founda-
tions of material well-being for the society of the
future. The worst of these justifications is, that they
are generally addressed to the very people engaged,
body and soul, in the movement in question ; at all 10
events, that they are always seized with the greatest
avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite
justifying their life ; and that thus they tend to harden
them in their sins. Now, culture admits the necessity
of the movement towards fortune-making and exagger- 15
ated industrialism, readily allows that the future may
derive benefit from it ; but insists, at the same time,
that the passing generations of industrialists,-— form-
ing, for the most part, the stout main body of Philis-
tinism, — are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the 20
result of all the games and sports which occupy the
passing generation of boys and young men may be
the establishment of a better and sounder physical type
for the future to work with, Culture does not set
itself against the games and sports; it congratulates 25
the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its
improved physical basis ; but it points out that our
passing generation of boys and young men is, mean-
time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary to
develop the moral fibre of the English race, Noncon- 30
formity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination
over men's minds and to prepare the way for freedom
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. I&9
of thought in the distant future ; still, culture points
out that the harmonious perfection of generations of
Puritans and Nonconformists have been, in conse-
quence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech may be
5 necessary for the society of the future, but the young
lions of the Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile are
sacrificed. A voice for every man in his country's
government may be necessary for the society of the
future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh
loare sacrificed.
Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ;
and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isola-
tion, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we
in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweet-
15 ness of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize
one truth, — the truth that beauty and sweetness are
essential characters of a complete human perfection.
When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradi-
tion of Oxford. I say boldly that this our sentiment
20 for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against
hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom of
our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our
opposition to so many triumphant movements. And
the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly de-
25 feated, and has shown its power even in its defeat.
We have not won our political battles, we have not
carried our main points, we have not stopped our ad-
versaries' advance, we have not marched victoriously
with the modern world ; but we have told silently upon
30 the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of
feeling which sap our adversaries' position when it
seems gained, we have kept up our own communica'
170 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
tions with the future. Look at the course of the great
movement which shook Oxford to its centre some
thirty years ago ! It was directed, as any one who
reads Dr. Newman's Apology may see, against what in
one word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism 5
prevailed ; it was the appointed force to do the work
of the hour ; it was necessary, it was inevitable that it
should prevail. The Oxford movement was broken, it
failed ; our wrecks are scattered on every shore : —
Qua; regio in terris nostri non plena laboris? 10
But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw
it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement? It
was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for
the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of
1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the 15
social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition,
and the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the
religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not
say that other and more intelligent forces than this 20
were not opposed to the Oxford movement : but this
was the force which really beat it ; this was the force
which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with ; this
was the force which till only the other day seemed to
be the paramount force in this country, and to be in 25
possession of the future ; this was the force whose
achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible
admiration, and whose rule he was so horror-struck
to see threatened. And where is this great force of
Philistinism now? It is thrust into the second rank, 30
it is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 171
future. A new power has suddenly appeared, a
power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but
which is certainly a wholly different force from mid-
dle-class liberalism ; different in its cardinal points of
5 belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere. It
loves and admires neither the legislation of middle-
class Parliaments, nor the local self-government of
middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition
of middle-class industrialists, nor the dissidence of
10 middle-class Dissent and the Protestantism of middle-
class Protestant religion. I am not now praising this
new force, or saying that its own ideals are better ;
all I say is, that they are wholly different. And who
will estimate how much the currents of feeling created
15 by Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for
beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep
aversion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity
of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned
on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class
20 Protestantism, — who will estimate how much all these
contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction
which has mined the ground under self-confident
liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared
the way for its sudden collapse and supersession ?
25 It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for
beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner
long may it continue to conquer !
In this manner it works to the same end as culture,
and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have
30 said that the new and more democratic force which is
now superseding our old middle-class liberalism can-
not yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies
172 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
still to form. We hear promises of its giving us
administrative reform, law reform, reform of educa-
tion, and I know not what ; but those promises come
rather from its advocates, wishing to make a good
plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle- 5
class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it
has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has
plenty of well-intentioned friends against whom
culture may with advantage continue to uphold
steadily its ideal of human perfection ; that this is 10
an inward spiritual activity, having for its characters
increased sweetness, increased light, increased life,
increased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in
both worlds, the world of middle-class liberalism and
the world of democracy, but who brings most of his 15
ideas from the world of middle-class liberalism in
which he was bred, always inclines to inculcate that
faith in machinery to which, as we have seen, Eng-
lishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane
of middle-class liberalism. He complains with a 29
sorrowful indignation of people who " appear to have
no proper estimate of the value of the franchise"; he
leads his disciples to believe, — what the Englishman
is always too ready to believe, — that the having a
vote, like the having a large family, or a large busi-25
ness, or large muscles, has in itself some edifying and
perfecting effect upon human nature. Or else he
cries out to the democracy, — "the men," as he calls
them, " upon whose shoulders the greatness of Eng-
land rests," — he cries out to them : "See what you 30
have done ! I look over this country and see the
cities you have built, the railroads you have made,
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 173
the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes
which freight the ships of the greatest mercantile
navy the world has ever seen ! I see that you have
converted by your labours what was once a wilder-
5 ness, these islands, into a fruitful garden ; I know
that you have created this wealth, and are a nation
whose name is a word of power throughout all
the world." Why, this is just the very style of
laudation with which Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Lowe
10 debauches the minds of the middle classes, and makes
such Philistines of them. It is the same fashion of
teaching a man to value himself not on what he is,
not on his progress in sweetness and light, but on
the number of the railroads he has constructed, or
15 the bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the
middle classes are told they have done it all with
their energy, self-reliance, and capital, and the
democracy are told they have done it all with their
hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to
so put its trust in achievements of this kind is merely
training them to be Philistines to take the place of
the Philistines whom they are superseding ; and they
too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to sit
down at the banquet of the future without having on
25 a wedding garment, and nothing excellent can then
come from them. Those who know their besetting
faults, those who have watched them and listened to
them, or those who will read the instructive account
recently given of them by one of themselves, the
30 Journeyman Engineer, will agree that the idea which
culture sets before us of perfection, — an increased
spiritual activity, having for its characters increased
174 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased
sympathy, — is an idea which the new democracy
needs far more than the idea of the blessedness of the
franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own industrial
performances. 5
Other well-meaning friends of this new power are
for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class
Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring
to the feet of democracy, though in this country they
are novel and untried ways. I may call them the iq
ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the
past, abstract systems of renovation applied whole-
sale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for
elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational
society for the future, — these are the ways of Jacob- 15
inism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples
of Comte, — one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an old
friend of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity
of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and
character, — are among the friends of democracy who 20
are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic
Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural
enough motive; for culture is the eternal opponent
of the two things which are the signal marks of
Jacobinism, — its fierceness, and its addiction to an 25
abstract system. Culture is always assigning to
system-makers and systems a smaller share in the
bent of human destiny than their friends like. A
current in people's minds sets towards new ideas ;
people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of 30
Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other;
and some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 175
real merit of having early and strongly felt and helped
the new current, but who brings plenty of narrowness
and mistakes of his own into his feeling and help of
it, is credited with being the author of the whole
5 current, the fit person to be entrusted with its regula-
tion and to guide the human race.
The excellent German historian of the mythology
of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome
under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god
ioof light, healing, and reconciliation, will have us
observe that it was not so much the Tarquins who
brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a
current in the mind of the Roman people which set
powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this
15 kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine
religious ideas. In a similar way, culture directs our
attention to the natural current there is in human
affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let
us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings.
20 It makes us see not only his good side, but also how
much in him was of necessity limited and transient ;
nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased
freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing.
I remember, when I was under the influence of a
25 mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the
mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity
and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems
to me, whom America has yet produced, — Benjamin
Franklin, — I remember the relief with which, after
30 long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable
common-sense, I carne upon a project of his for a new
version of the Book of Job, to replace the old ver«
176 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
sion, the style of which, says Franklin, has become
obsolete, and thence less agreeable. " I give," he
continues, " a few verses, which may serve as a
sample of the kind of version I would recommend."
We all recollect the famous verse in our translation : 5
" Then Satan answered the Lord and said : ' Doth
Job fear God for nought ? ' " Franklin makes this :
" Does your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct
is the effect of mere personal attachment and affec-
tion?" I well remember how, when first I read that, 10
I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself :
"After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond
Franklin's victorious good sense ! " So, after hearing
Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern
society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as 15
the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology. There
I read : " While Xenophon was writing his history
and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato
were talking nonsense under pretence of talking wis-
dom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted 2c
in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of
matters known to every man's experience." From
the moment of reading that, I am delivered from the
bondage of Bentham ! the fanaticism of his adherents
can touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of 25
his mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human
society, for perfection.
Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of
a system, of disciples, of a school ; with men like
Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. How- 30
ever much it may find to admire in these personages,
or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers the
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 177
text : "Be not ye called Rabbi! " and it soon passes
on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi ;
it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit
of a future and still unreached perfection ; it wants
5 its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, that
they may with the more authority recast the world ;
and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture, — eternally
passing onwards and seeking, — is an impertinence
and an offence. But culture, just because it resists
10 this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man
with limitations and errors of his own along with the
true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the
world and Jacobinism itself a service.
So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past
15 and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the
past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgence
proper to culture, the consideration of circumstances,
the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful
judgment of persons. "The man of culture is in
20 politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, " one of the
poorest mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants
to be doing business, and he complains that the man
of culture stops him with a " turn for small fault-
finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action."
25 Of what use is culture, he asks, except for "a critic
of new books or a professor of belles-lettres ? " Why,
it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exaspera-
tion which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses
through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic
30 Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the
perfection of human nature is sweetness and light.
It is of use because, like religion, — that other effort
1
T7S SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
after perfection, — it testifies that, where bitter envy-
ing and strife are, there is confusion and every evil
work.
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of
sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness 5
and light, works to make reason and the will of God
prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works
for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks
beyond machinery, culture hates hatred ; culture has
one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light, iq
Tt has one even yet greater ! — the passion for making
them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a
perfect man ; it knows that the sweetness and light
of the few must be imperfect until the raw and un-
kindled masses of humanity are touched with sweet- 15
ness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying
that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither
have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad
basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as
possible. Again and again I have insisted how those 2a
are the happy moments of humanity, how those are
the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are
the flowering times for literature and art and all the
creative power of genius, when there is a national glow
of life and thought, when the whole of society is in 25
the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to
beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real
thought and real beauty ; real sweetness and real
light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses,
as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and 3c
adapted in the way they think proper for the actual
condition of the masses. The ordinary popular litera-
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 179
ture is an example of this way of working on the
masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the
masses with the set of ideas and judgments constitut-
ing the creed of their own profession or party. Our
5 religious and political organisations give an example
of this way of working on the masses. I condemn
neither way ; but culture works differently. It does
not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes ;
it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its
10 own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords.
It seeks to do away with classes ; to make the best
that has been thought and known in the world current
everywhere ; to make all men live in an atmosphere
of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as
15 it uses them itself, freely, — nourished, and not bound
by them.
This is the social idea ; and the men of culture are
the true apostles of equality. The great men of cul-
ture are those who have had a passion for diffusing,
20 for making prevail, for carrying from one end of
society to the other, the best knowledge, the best
ideas of their time ; who have laboured to divest
knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult,
abstract, professional, exclusive ; to humanise it, to
25 make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated
and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge
and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore,
of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in
the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections ;
30 and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm
which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and
Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century;
180 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.
and their services to Germany were in this way in-
estimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary
monuments will accumulate, and works far more per-
fect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be
produced in Germany ; and yet the names of these 5
two men will fill a German with a reverence and
enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted
masters will hardly awaken. And why ? Because
they humanised knowledge ; because they broadened
the basis of life and intelligence ; because they worked 10
powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make
reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint
Augustine they said : " Let us not leave thee alone
to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst
before the creation of the firmament, the division of 15
light from darkness ; let the children of thy spirit,
placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon
the earth, mark the division of night and day, and
announce the revolution of the times; for the old
order is passed, and the new arises ; the night is 20
spent, the day is come forth ; and thou shalt crown
the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth
labourers into thy harvest sown by other hands than
theirs; when thou shalt send forth new labourers to
new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." 25
— Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1896, pp. 5-39.
Ibebrafem an& Ifocllentem.
This fundamental ground is our preference of doing
to thinking. Now this preference is a main element
in our nature, and as we study it we find ourselves
opening up a number of large questions on every side.
5 Let me go back for a moment to Bishop Wilson,
who says : " First, never go against the bes't light you
have ; secondly, take care that your light be not dark-
ness." We show, as a nation, laudable energy and
persistence in walking according to the best light we
iohave, but are' not quite careful enough, perhaps, to see
that our light be not darkness. This is only another
version of the old story that energy is our st rong
point and favourable characterij lic^r ather than inte l-
ligence. But we may give to this idea a more general
15 form still, in which it will have a yet larger range of
application. We may regard this energy driving at
practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of
duty, self-control, and work, this earnestness in going
manfully with the best light we have, as one force.
20 And we may regard the intelligence driving at those
ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice,
the ardent sense for all the new and changing com-
binations of them which man's development brings
with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust
25 them perfectly, as another force. And these two
forces we may regard as in some sense rivals, — rivals
181
1 8 2 HEBRA ISM AND HELLENISM.
not by the necessity of their own nature, but as exhib-
ited in man and his history,— and rivals dividing the
empire of the world between them. And to give
these forces names from the two races of men who
have supplied the most signal and splendid manifesta- 5
tions of them, we may call them respectively the forces
l of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellen-
/ ism, — between these two points of influence moves our
/world. At one time it feels more powerfully the
attraction of one of them, at another time of the io
other ; and it ought to be, though it never is, evenly
and happily balanced between them.
The final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as
of all great spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same:
man's perfection or salvation. The very language 15
which they both of them use in schooling us to reach
this aim is often identical. Even when their language
indicates by variation, — sometimes a broad variation,
often a but slight and subtle variation, — the different
courses of thought which are uppermost in each dis- 20
cipline, even then the unity of the final end and aim
is still apparent. To employ the actual words of that
discipline with which we ourselves are all of us most
familiar, and the words of which, therefore, come
most home to us, that final end and aim is " that we 25
might be partakers of the divine nature." These are
the words of a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism and
Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim. When the
two are confronted, as they very often are confronted,
it is nearly always with what I may call a rhetorical 30
purpose ; the speaker's whole design is to exalt and
enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only as
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 183
a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his
purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism
which is thus reduced to minister to the triumph of
Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and the
5 Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without
interest and respect, Frederick Robertson, in which
this rhetorical use of Greece and the Greek spirit,
and the inadequate exhibition of them necessarily
consequent upon this, is almost ludicrous, and would
jo be censurable if it were not to be explained by the
exigencies of a sermon. On the other hand, Heinrich
Heine, and other writers of his sort, give us the
spectacle of the tables completely turned, and of
Hebraism brought in just as a foil and contrast to
15 Hellenism, and to make the superiority of Hellenism
more manifest. In both these cases there is injustice
and misrepresentation. The aim and end of both
Hebraism and Hellenism is, as I have said, one
and the same, and this aim and end is august and
20 admirable.
Still, they pursue this aim by very different courses.
The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as
tfiey really are ; the uppermost i dea with Hebraism
is c onduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with
25 this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with
the body and its desires is, that they hinder right
thinking ; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they
hinder right acting. "He that keepeth the law,}
happy is he;" "Blessed is the man that feareth theL
30 Eternal, that delighteth greatly in his command-
ments ;" — that is the Hebrew notion of felicity ; and,
pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion would
1 84 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM.
not let the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had
at last got out of the law a network of prescriptions
to enwrap his whole life, to govern every moment of
it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion of
felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in 5
these words of a great French moralist : C'est le
bonheur des hommes, — when ? when they abhor that
which is evil ? — no ; when they exercise themselves
in the law of the Lord day and night? — no ; when
they die daily ? — no ; when they walk about the New 10
Jerusalem with palms in their hands ? — no ; but when
they think aright, when their thought hits : quand
Us pensent juste. At the bottom of both the Greek
and the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man,
for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the 15
universal order, — in a word, the love of God. But
while Hebraism seizes upon certain plain, capital
intimations of the universal order, and rivets itself,
one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness
and intensity on the study and observance of them, 20
the bent of Hellenism is to follow, with flexible activ-
ity, the whole play of the universal order, to be
apprehensive of missing any part of it, of sacrificing
one part to another, to slip away from resting in this
or that intimation of it, however capital. An un- 25
clouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play of
/. thought, is what this bent drives at. The governing /
/// idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness ; that/
*l' of Hebraism, strictness 0/ conscience.
Christianity changed nothing in this essentia; bent of 30
Hebraism to set doing above knowing. Self-conquest,
self-devotion, the following not our own individual
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 185
will, but the will of God, obedience, is the fundamental
idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we
have attached the general name of Hebraism. Only,
as the old law and the network of prescriptions with
5 which it enveloped human life were evidently a motive-
power not driving and searching enough to produce
the result aimed at, — patient continuance in well-
doing, self-conquest, — Christianity substituted for
them boundless devotion to that inspiring and affect-
loing pattern of self-conquest offered by Jesus Christ;
and by the new motive-power, of which the essence
was this, though the love and admiration of Christian
churches have for centuries been employed in varying,
amplifying, and adorning the plain description of it,
15 Christianity, as St. Paul truly says, " establishes the
law," and in the strength of the ampler power which
she has thus supplied to fulfil it, has accomplished the
miracles, which we all see, of her history.
So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism and
20 Hebraism are profound and admirable manifestations
of man's life, tendencies, and powers, and that both of
them aim at a like final result, we can hardly insist too
strongly on the divergence of line and of operation
with which they proceed. It is a divergence so great
25 that it most truly, as the prophet Zechariah says,
" has raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O
Greece ! " The difference whether it is by doing or
by knowing that we set most store, and the practical
consequences which follow from this difference, leave
30 their mark on all the history of our race and of its
development. Language may be abundantly quoted
from both Hellenism and Hebraism to make it seem
186 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM.
that one follows the same current as the other towards
the same goal. They are, truly, borne towards the
same goal ; but the currents which bear them are
infinitely different. It is true, Solomon will praise
knowing : " Understanding is a well-spring of life unto 5
him that hath it." And in the New Testament, again,
Jesus Christ is a " light," and " truth makes us free."
It is true, Aristotle will undervalue knowing : " In
what concerns virtue," says he, "three things are
necessary — knowledge, deliberate will, and persever- 10
ance ; but, whereas the two last are all-important, the
first is a matter of little importance." It is true that
with the same impatience with which St. James
enjoins a man to be not a forgetful hearer, but a doer
of the work, Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have 15
demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do ; or he
taunts us with futility, for being armed at all points to
prove that lying is wrong, yet all the time continuing
to lie. It is true, Plato, in words which are almost the
words of the New Testament or the Imitation, calls 20
life a learning to die. But underneath the superficial
agreement the fundamental divergence still subsists.
The understanding of Solomon is " the walking in the
way of the commandments "; this is " the way of
peace," and it is of this that blessedness comes. In 25
the New Testament, the truth which gives us the
peace of God and makes us free, is the love of Christ
constraining us to crucify, as he did, and with a like
purpose of moral regeneration, the flesh with its affec-
tions and lusts, and thus establishing as we have seen, 30
the law. The moral virtues, on the other hand, are with
Aristotle but the porch and access to the intellectual,
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 187
and with these last is blessedness. That partaking of
the divine life, which both Hellenism and Hebraism,
as we have said, fix as their crowning aim, Plato
expressly denies to the man of practical virtue merely,
5 of self-conquest with any other motive than that of per-
fect intellectual vision. He reserves it for the lover of
pure knowledge, as seeing things as they really are,— -
the <f>i\ofjLa6tf<;.
Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise ou t of th e
10 wants of human n ature, and address themselves to
satisfying those wants. But their methods are so
different, they lay stress on such different points,
and call into being by their respective disciplines
such different activities, that the face which human
15 nature presents when it passes from the hands of
one of them to those of the other, is no longer the
same. To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things
as they are, and by seeing them as they are to see
them in their beauty, is the simple and attractive
20 ideal which Hellenism holds out before human
nature ; and from the simplicity and charm of this
ideal, Hellenism, and human life in the hands of
Hellenism, is invested with a kind of aerial ease,
clearness, and radiancy ; they are full of what we
25 call sweetness and light. Difficulties are kept out
of view, and the beauty and rationalness of the
ideal have all our thoughts. " The best man is he
who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest
man is he who most feels that he is perfecting him-
30 self," — this account of the matter by Socrates, the
true Socrates of the Memorabilia, has something so
simple, spontaneous, and unsophisticated about itv
1 88 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM.
that it seems to fill us with clearness and hope when
we hear it. But there is a saying which I have
heard attributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates, —
a very happy saying, whether it is really Mr. Car-
lyle's or not, — which excellently marks the essentials
point in which Hebraism differs from Hellenism.
"Socrates," this saying goes, "is terribly at ease in
Zion." Hebraism, — and here is the source of its
wonderful strength, — has always been severely pre-
occupied with an awful sense of the impossibility of 10
being at ease in Zion ; of the difficulties which oppose
themselves to man's pursuit or attainment of that
perfection of which Socrates talks so hopefully, and,
as from this point of view one might almost say, so
glibly. It is all very well to talk of getting rid of 15
one's ignorance, of seeing things in their reality,
seeing them in their beauty ; but how is this to be
done when there is something which thwarts and
spoils all our efforts ?
This something is sin ; and the space which sin 20
fills in Hebraism, as compared with Hellenism, is
indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills
the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and
rising away from earth, in the background. Under
the name of sin, the difficulties of knowing oneself 25
and conquering oneself which impede man's passage
to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active
entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I
heard Dr. Pusey the other day, in one of his impres-
sive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated 3a
on our shoulders, and which it is the main business
of our lives to hate and oppose. The discipline of
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 189
*= = - v /— t
the Old Testament may be summed up as a disci-
pline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin ; the
discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline!
teaching us to die to it. As Hellenism speaks of
5 thinking clearly, seeing things in their essence and
beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to
achieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious
of sin, of awakening to a sense of sin, as a feat of
this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence
10 these differing tendencies, actively followed, must
lead. As one passes and repasses from Hellenism to
Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined
to rub one's eyes and ask oneself whether man is
indeed a gentle and simple being, showing the traces
15 of a noble and divine nature ; or an unhappy chained
captive, labouring with groanings that cannot be ut-
tered to free himself from the body of this death.
Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of
human nature which was unsound, for the world
20 could not live by it. Absolutely to call it unsound,
however, is to fall into the common error of its
Hebraising enemies ; but it was unsound at that
particular moment of man's development, it was pre-
mature. The indispensable basis of conduct and
25 self-control, the platform upon which alone the per-
fection aimed at by Greece can come into bloom, was
not to be reached by our race so easily ; centuries of
probation and -discipline were needed to bring us to
it. Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded,
30 and Hebraism ruled the world. Then was seen that
astonishing spectacle, so well marked by the often-
quoted words of the prophet Zechariah, when men of
19° HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM.
all languages and nations took hold of the skirt of
him that was a Jew, saying : — "We will go with you,
for we have heard that God is with you." And the
Hebraism which thus received and ruled a world all
gone out of the way and altogether become unprofit- S
able, was, and could not but be, the later, the more
spiritual, the more attractive development of Hebra
ism. It was Christianity ; that is to say, Hebraism
aiming at self-conquest and rescue from the thrall of
vile affections, not by obedience to the letter of a law, ig
but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing
example. To a world stricken with moral enervation
Christianity offered its spectacle of an inspired self-
sacrifice ; to men who refused themselves nothing, it
showed one who refused himself everything; — "wyi5
Saviour banished joy /" says George Herbert. When
the alma Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power
of nature, so fondly cherished by the Pagan world,
could not save her followers from self-dissatisfaction
and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came brae- 20
ingly and refreshingly : " Let no man deceive you
with vain words, for because of these things cometh
the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience."
Through age after age and generation after genera-
tion, our race, or all that part of our race which was 25
most living and progressive, was baptized into a death;
and endeavoured, by suffering in the flesh, to cease
from sin. Of this endeavour, the animating labours
and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching
asceticism of mediaeval Christianity, are the great his- 39
torical manifestations. Literary monuments of it,
each in its own way incomparable, remain in the
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 191
Epistles of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's Confessions,
and in the two original and simplest books of the
Imitation. 1
Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the
5 one, on clear intelligence, the other, on firm obedi-
ence ; the one, on comprehensively knowing the
grounds of one's duty, the other, on diligently prac-
tising it ; the one, on taking all possible care (to use
Bishop Wilson's words again) that the light we have
iobe not darkness, the other, that according to the
best light we have we diligently walk, — the priority
naturally belongs to that discipline which braces all
man's moral powers, and founds for him an indis-
pensable basis of character. And, therefore, it is
15 justly said of the Jewish people, who were charged
with setting powerfully forth that side of the divine
order to which the words conscience and self-conquest
point, that they were "entrusted with the oracles of
God"; as it is justly said of Christianity, which fol-
20 lowed Judaism and which set forth this side with
a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influ-
ence, that the wisdom of the old Pagan world was
foolishness compared to it. No words of devotion
and admiration can be too strong to render thanks to
25 these beneficent forces which have so borne forward
humanity in its appointed work of coming to the
knowledge and possession of itself ; above all, in
those great moments when their action was the whole-
somest and the most necessary.
30 But the evolution of these forces, separately and in
themselves, is not the whole evolution of humanity, —
1 The two first books.
192 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM.
their single history is not the whole history of man ;
whereas their admirers are always apt to make it
stand for the whole history. Hebraism and Hellenism
are, neit her of them, the law of human developme nt,
as their admirers are prone to make them ; they are, 5
ea ch of them, contributions to human deye lopjrien t , —
august contributions, invaluable contributions ; and
each showing itself to us more august, more invaluable,
more preponderant over the other, according to the
moment in which we take them and the relation in ic
which we stand to them. The nations of our modern
world, children of that immense and salutary move-
ment which broke up the Pagan world, inevitably
stand to Hellenism in a relation which dwarfs it, and
to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it. They ii>
are inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of
human development, and not as simply a contribution
to it, however precious. And yet the lesson must
perforce be learned, that the human spirit is wider
thah the most priceless of the forces which bear it 20
onward, and that to the whole development of man
Hebraism itself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution.
— Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1896, pp. 109-121.
Gbe Dangers of jpudtanfem.
The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines
himself in possession of a rule telling him the unum
necessarium, or one thing needful, and that he then
remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what
5 this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he has
now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and,
in this dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfac-
tion, proceeds to give full swing to a number of the
instincts of his ordinary self. Some of the instincts
loof his ordinary self he has, by the help of his rule of
life, conquered ; but others which he has not con-
quered by this help he is so far from perceiving to
need subjugation, and to be instincts of an inferior
self, that he even fancies it to be his right and duty,
ib in virtue of having conquered a limited part of him-
self, to give unchecked swing to the remainder. He
is, I say, a victim of Hebraism, of the tendency to
cultivate strictness of conscience rather than spon-
taneity of consciousness. And what he wants is a
20 larger conception of human nature, showing him the
number of other points at which his nature must
come to its best, besides the points which he himself
knows and thinks of. There is no unum necessarium,
or one thing needful, which can free human nature
25 from the obligation of trying to come to its best
at all these points. The real unum necessarium for
193
194 THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM.
us is to come to our best at all points. Instead of
our " one thing needful," justifying in us vulgarity,
hideousness, ignorance, violence, — our vulgarity,
hideousness, ignorance, violence, are really so many
touchstones which try our one thing needful, and 5
which prove that in the state, at any rate, in which
we ourselves have it, it is not all we want. And as
the force which encourages us to stand staunch and
fast by the rule and ground we have is Hebraism, so
the force which encourages us to go back upon this 10
rule, and to try the very ground on which we appear
to stand, is Hellenism, — a turn for giving our con-
sciousness free play and enlarging its range. And
what I say is, not that Hellenism is always for every-
body more wanted than Hebraism, but that for Mr. 15
Murphy at this particular moment, and for the great
majority of us his fellow-countrymen, it is more
wanted.
Nothing is more striking than to observe in how
many ways a limited conception of human nature, the 20
notion of a one thing needful, a one side in us to be
made uppermost, the disregard of a full and harmoni-
ous development of ourselves, tells injuriously on our
thinking and acting. In the first place, our hold
upon the rule or standard, to which we look for our 25
one thing needful, tends to become less and less near
and vital, our conception of it more and more
mechanical, and more and more unlike the thing
itself as it was conceived in the mind where it origi-
nated. The dealings of Puritanism with the writings 3c
of St. Paul, afford a noteworthy illustration of this.
Nowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, and
THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 195
in that great apostle's greatest work, the Epistle to
the Romans, has Puritanism found what seemed to
furnish it with the one thing needful, and to give it
canons of truth absolute and final. Now all writings,
5 as has been already said, even the most precious writ-
ings and the most fruitful, must inevitably, from the
very nature of things, be but contributions to human
thought and human development, which extend wider
than they do. Indeed, St. Paul, in the very Epistle
10 of which we are speaking, shows, when he asks,
" Who hath known the mind of the Lord ? " — who
hath known, that is, the true and divine order of
things in its entirety, — that he himself acknowledges
this fully. And we have already pointed out in
£5 another Epistle of St. Paul a great and vital idea of
the human spirit, — the idea of immortality, — trans-
cending and overlapping, so to speak, the expositor's
power to give it adequate definition and expression.
But quite distinct from the question whether St.
so Paul's expression, or any man's expression, can be a
perfect and final expression of truth, comes the ques-
tion whether we rightly seize and understand his
expression as its exists. Now, perfectly to seize
another man's meaning, as it stood in his own mind,
25 is not easy ; especially when the man is separated
from us by such differences of race, training, time,
and circumstances as St. Paul. But there are degrees
of nearness of getting at a man's meaning ; and
though we cannot arrive quite at what St. Paul had
30 in his mind, yet we may come near it. And who,
that comes thus near it, must not feel how terms
which St. Paul employs, in trying to follow with his
196 THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM.
analysis of such profound power and originality some
of the most delicate, intricate, obscure, and contra-
dictory workings and states of the human spirit, are
detached and employed by Puritanism, not in the
connected and fluid way in which St. Paul employs 5
them, and for which alone words are really meant,
but in an isolated, fixed, mechanical way, as if they
were talismans ; and how all trace and sense of St.
Paul's true movement of ideas, and sustained masterly
analysis, is thus lost ? Who, I say, that has watched 10
Puritanism, — the force which so strongly Hebraises,
which so takes St. Paul's writings as something abso-
lute and final, containing the one thing needful, —
handle such terms as grace, faith, election, righteous-
ness, but must feel, not only that these terms have for 15
the mind of Puritanism a sense false and misleading,
but also that this sense is the most monstrous and
grotesque caricature of the sense of St. Paul, and that
his true meaning is by these worshippers of his words
altogether lost ? 20
Or to take another eminent example, in which not
Puritanism only, but, one may say, the whole re-
ligious world, by their mechanical use of St. Paul's
writings, can be shown to miss or change his real
meaning. The whole religious world, one may say, 25
use now the word resurrection, — a word which is so
often in their thoughts and on their lips, and which
they find so often in St. Paul's writings, — in one sense
only. They use it to mean a rising again after the
physical death of the body. Now it is quite true 30
that St. Paul speaks of resurrection in this sense,
that he tries to describe and explain it, and that he
THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 197
condemns those who doubt and deny it. But it is
true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St.
Paul thinks and speaks of resurrection, he thinks and
speaks of it in a sense different from this ; — in the
5 sense of a rising to a new life before the physical
death of the body, and not after it. The idea on
which we have already touched, the profound idea of
being baptized into the death of the great exemplar
of self-devotion and self-annulment, of repeating in
10 our own person, by virtue of identification with our
exemplar, his course of self-devotion and self-annul-
ment, and of thus coming, within the limits of our
present life, to a new life, in which, as in the death
going before it, we are identified with our exemplar,
15 — this is the fruitful and original conception of being
risen with Christ which possesses the mind of St. Pa
and this is the central point round which, with such
incomparable emotion and eloquence, all his teaching
moves. For him, the life after our physical death is
20 really in the main but a consequence and continuation
of the inexhaustible energy of the new life thus origi-
nated on this side the grave. This grand Pauline
idea of Christian resurrection is worthily rehearsed in
one of the noblest collects of the Prayer-Book, and is
25 destined, no doubt, to fill a more and more important
place in the Christianity of the future. But mean-
while, almost as signal as the essentialness of this
characteristic idea in St. Paul's teaching, is the com-
pleteness with which the worshippers of St. Paul's
30 words as an absolute final expression of saving truth
have lost it, and have substituted for the apostle's
living and near conception of a resurrection now, their
ng
ul, (
ch }
I9« THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM.
mechanical and remote conception of a resurrection
hereafter.
In short, so fatal is the notion of possessing, even
in the most precious words or standards, the one
thing needful, of having in them, once for all, a fulls
and sufficient measure of light to guide us, and of
there being no duty left for us except to make our
practice square exactly with them, — so fatal, I say, is
this notion to the right knowledge and comprehension
of the very words or standards we thus adopt, and to ic
such strange distortions and perversions of them does
it inevitably lead, that whenever we hear that common-
place which Hebraism, if we venture to inquire what
a man knows, is so apt to bring out against us, in
disparagement of what we call culture, and in praise 15
of a man's sticking to the one thing needful, — he
knows, says Hebraism, his Bible ! — whenever we hear
this said, we may, without any elaborate defence
of culture, content ourselves with answering simply :
"No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his 20
Bible."
Now the force which we have so much neglected,
Hellenism, may be liable to fail in moral strength
and earnestness, but by the law of its nature, — the
very same law which makes it sometimes deficient in 25
intensity when intensity is required, — it opposes
itself to the notion of cutting our being in two, of
attributing to one part the dignity of dealing with
the one thing needful, and leaving the other part to
take its chance, which is the bane of Hebraism. 30
Essential in Hellenism is the impulse to the develop-
ment of the whole man, to connecting and harmon-
THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 199
ising all parts of him, perfecting all, leaving none to
take their chance.
The characteristic bent of Hellenism, as has been
said, is to find the intelligible law of things, to see
5 them in their true nature and as they really are.
But many things are not seen in their true nature
and as they really are, unless they are seen as beauti-
ful. Behaviour is not intelligible, does not account
for itself to the mind and show the reason for its
10 existing, unless it is beautiful. The same with dis-
course, the same with song, the same with worship,
all of them modes in which man proves his activity
and expresses himself. To think that when one pro-
duces in these what is mean, or vulgar, or hideous,
15 one can be permitted to plead that one has that
within which passes show ; to suppose that the pos-
session of what benefits and satisfies one part of our
being can make allowable either discourse like Mr.
Murphy's, or poetry like the hymns we all hear, or
20 places of worship like the chapels we all see, — this it
is abhorrent to the nature of Hellenism to concede.
And to be, like our honoured and justly honoured
Faraday, a great natural philosopher with one side of
his being and a Sandemanian with the other, would to
25 Archimedes have been impossible.
It is evident to what a many-sided perfecting of
man's powers and activities this demand of Hellenism
for satisfaction to be given to the mind by everything
which we do, is calculated to impel our race. It has
30 its dangers, as has been fully granted. The notion of
this sort of equipollency in man's modes of activity
may lead to moral relaxation ; what we do not make
200 THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM.
our one thing needful, we may come to treat not
enough as if it were needful, though it is indeed very
needful and at the same time very hard. Still, what
side in us has not its dangers, and which of our
impulses can be a talisman to give us perfection out- 5
right, and not merely a help to bring us towards it ?
Has not Hebraism, as we have shown, its dangers as
well as Hellenism ? or have we used so excessively
the tendencies in ourselves to which Hellenism makes
appeal, that we are now suffering from it ? Are we i<
not, on the contrary, now suffering because we have
not enough used these tendencies as a help towards
perfection ?
For we see whither it has brought us, the long
exclusive predominance of Hebraism, — the insisting 15
on perfection in one part of our nature and not in all ;
the singling out the moral side, the side of obedience
and action, for such intent regard ; making strictness
of the moral conscience so far the principal thing,
and putting off for hereafter and for another world 20
the care for being complete at all points, the full and
harmonious development of our humanity. Instead
of watching and following on its ways the desire
which, as Plato says, " for ever through all the
universe tends towards that which is lovely," we 25
think that the world has settled its accounts with
this desire, knows what this desire wants of it, and
that all the impulses of our ordinary self which do
not conflict with the terms of this settlement, in our
narrow view of it, we may follow unrestrainedly, 30
under the sanction of some such text as " Not sloth-
ful in business," or, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth
THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 201
to do, do it with all thy might," or something else of
the same kind. And to any of these impulses we
soon come to give that same character of a mechani-
cal, absolute law, which we give to our religion ; we
5 regard it, as we do our religion, as an object for
strictness of conscience, not for spontaneity of con-
sciousness ; for unremitting adherence on its own
account, not for going back upon, viewing in its con-
nection with other things, and adjusting to a number
10 of changing circumstances. We treat it, in short, just
as we treat our religion, — as machinery. It is in this
way that the Barbarians treat their bodily exercises,
the Philistines their business, Mr. Spurgeon his volun-
taryism, Mr. Bright the assertion of personal liberty,
15 Mr. Beales the right of meeting in Hyde Park. In ,
all those cases what is needed is a freer play of con- J
sciousness upon the object of pursuit ; and in all of /
them Hebraism, the valuing staunchness and earnest-
ness more than this free play, the entire subordina-
2otion of thinking to doing, has led to a mistaken and
misleading treatment of things.
The newspapers a short time ago contained an
account of the suicide of a Mr. Smith, secretary to
some insurance company, who, it was said, " laboured
25 under the apprehension that he would come to poverty,
and that he was eternally lost." And when I read
these words, it occurred to me that the poor man who
came to such a mournful end was, in truth, a kind of
type, — by the selection of his two grand objects of
30 concern, by their isolation from everything else, and
their juxtaposition to one another, — of all the
strongest, most respectable, and most representative
202 THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM.
part of our nation. " He laboured under the appre-
hension that he would come to poverty, and that he
was eternally lost." The whole middle class have a
conception of things, — a conception which makes us
call them Philistines, — just like that of this poor man ; 5
though we are seldom, of course, shocked by seeing it
take the distressing, violently morbid, and fatal turn,
which it took with him. But how generally, with how
many of us, are the main concerns of life limited to
these two : the concern for making money, and the ia
concern for saving our souls ! And how entirely does
the narrow and mechanical conception of our secular
business proceed from a narrow and mechanical con-
ception of our religious business ! What havoc do the
united conceptions make of our lives ! It is because 15
the second-named of these two master-concerns pre-
sents to us the one thing needful in so fixed, nar-
row, and mechanical a way, that so ignoble a fellow
master-concern to it as the first-named becomes possi-
ble ; and, having been once admitted, takes the same 20
rigid and absolute character as the other.
Poor Mr. Smith had sincerely the nobler master-
concern as well as the meaner, — the concern for saving
his soul (according to the narrow and mechanical con-
ception which Puritanism has of what the salvation 25
of the soul is), as well as the concern for making
money. But let us remark how many people there
are, especially outside the limits of the serious and
conscientious middle class to which Mr. Smith be-
longed, who take up with a meaner master-concern, — 3a
whether it be pleasure, or field-sports, or bodily
exercises, or business, or popular agitation, — who
THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 203
take up with one of these exclusively, and neglect
Mr. Smith's nobler master-concern, because of the
mechanical form which Hebraism has given to this
noble master-concern. Hebraism makes it stand, as
5 we have said, as something talismanic, isolated, and
all-sufficient, justifying our giving our ordinary selves
free play in bodily exercises, or business, or popular
agitation, if we have made our accounts square with
this master-concern ; and, if we have not, rendering
10 other things indifferent, and our ordinary self all we
have to follow, and to follow with all the energy that
is in us, till we do. Whereas the idea of perfection
at all points, the encouraging in ourselves spontaneity
of consciousness, and letting a free play of thought
15 live and flow around all our activity, the indisposition
to allow one side of our activity to stand as so all-
important and all-sufficing that it makes other sides
indifferent, — this bent of mind in us may not only
check us in following unreservedly a mean master-
20 concern of any kind, but may even, also, bring new
life and movement into that side of us with which
alone Hebraism concerns itself, and awaken a healthier
and less mechanical activity there. Hellenism may
thus actually serve to further the designs of Hebra«
25 ism. — Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1896, pp. 134-145.
Gbe IRot Ourselves.
The Old Testament, nobody will ever deny, is filled
with the word and thought of righteousness. " In
the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway
thereof is no death ; " " Righteousness tendeth to
life ; " " He that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own 5
death ; " " The way of transgressors is hard ; " —
nobody will deny that those texts may stand for the
fundamental and ever-recurring idea of the Old Testa-
ment. 1 No people ever felt so strongly as the people
of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, that con- 10
duct is three-fourths of our life and its largest con-
cern. No people ever felt so strongly that succeeding,
going right, hitting the mark in this great concern,
was the way of peace, the highest possible satisfaction.
" He that keepeth the law, happy is he ; its ways are is
ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace ; if
thou hadst walked in its ways, thou shouldst have
dwelt in peace for ever!" 2 Jeshurun, one of the
ideal names of their race, is the upright ; Israel, the
other and greater, is the wrestler with God, he who has 20
known the contention and strain it costs to stand
upright. That mysterious personage by whom their
history first touches the hill of Sion, is Melchisedek,
the righteous king. Their holy city, Jerusalem, is the
1 Prov. xii. 28 ; xi. 19 ; xiii. 15.
1 Prov. xxix. 18 ; iii. 17. Baruch iii. 13.
204
THE NOT OURSELVES. 205
foundation, or vision, or inheritance, of that which
righteousness achieves, — peace. The law of righteous-
ness was such an object of attention to them, that its
words were to "be in their heart, and thou shalt teach
5 them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of
them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou
walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and
when thou risest up." 3 That they might keep them
ever in mind, they wore them, went about with them,
10 made talismans of them. "Bind them upon thy
fingers, bind them about thy neck ; write them upon
the table of thine heart ! " 4 " Take fast hold of her,"
they said of the doctrine of conduct, or righteousness,
" let her not go ! keep her, for she is thy life ! " 5
15 People who thus spoke of righteousness could not
but have had their minds long and deeply engaged
with it ; much more than the generality of mankind,
who have nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the
notion of morals or conduct. And, if they were so
20 deeply attentive to it, one thing could not fail to
strike them. It is this : the very great part in
righteousness which belongs, we may say, to not our-
selves. In the first place, we did not make ourselves
and our nature, or conduct as the object of three-
25 fourths of that nature ; we did not provide that happi-
ness should follow conduct, as it undeniably does ;
that the sense of succeeding, going right, hitting the
mark, in conduct, should give satisfaction, and a very
high satisfaction, just as really as the sense of doing
30 well in his work gives pleasure to a poet or painter, 01
3 Deuteronomy vi. 6, 7. 4 Prov. vii. 3 ; iii. 3.
h Prov. iv. 13.
2c6 THE NOT OURSELVES.
accomplishing what he tries gives pleasure to a man
who is learning to ride or to shoot ; or as satisfying
his hunger, also, gives pleasure to a man who is
hungry.
All this we did not make ; and, in the next place, 5
our dealing with it at all, when it is made, is not
wholly, or even nearly wholly, in our own power. Our
conduct is capable, irrespective of what we can our-
selves certainly answer for, of almost infinitely differ-
ent degrees of force and energy in the performance of io
it, of lucidity and vividness in the perception of it, of
fulness in the satisfaction from it ; and these degrees
may vary from day to day, and quite incalculably.
Facilities and felicities, — whence do they come?
suggestions and stimulations, — where do they tend? 15
hardly a day passes but we have some experience of
them. And so Henry More was led to say, that
" there was something about us that knew better,
often, what we would be at than we ourselves." For
instance : every one can understand how health and 20
freedom from pain may give energy for conduct, and
how a neuralgia, suppose, may diminish it. It does
not depend on ourselves, indeed, whether we have the
neuralgia or not, but we can understand its impairing
our spirit. But the strange thing is, that with the same 25
neuralgia we may find ourselves one day without
spirit and energy for conduct, and another day with
them. So that we may most truly say : " Left to
ourselves, we sink and perish ; visited, we lift up our
heads and live." And we may well give ourselves, in 30
6 " Relicti mergimur et perimus, visitati vero erigimur et
vivimus."
THE NOT OURSELVES. 207
grateful and devout self-surrender, to that by which we
are thus visited. So much is there incalculable, so
much that belongs to not ourselves, in conduct ; and
the more we attend to conduct, and the more we value
5 it, the more we shall feel this.
The not ourselves, which is in us and in the world
around us, has almost everywhere, as far as we can
see, struck the minds of men as they awoke to con-
sciousness, and has inspired them with awe. Every
10 one knows how the mighty natural objects which most
took their regards became the objects to which this
awe addressed itself. Our very word God is a remi-
niscence of these times, when men invoked " The
Brilliant on high," sublime hoc candens quod invocant
15 omnes Jovem, as the power representing to them that
which transcended the limits of their narrow selves,
and that by which they lived and moved and had their
being. Every one knows of what differences of opera-
tion men's dealing with this power has in different
20 places and times shown itself capable ; how here they
have been moved by the ?wt ourselves to a cruel terror,
there to a timid religiosity, there again to a play of
imagination ; almost always, however, connecting
with it, by some string or other, conduct.
25 But we are not writing a history of religion ; we are
only tracing its effect on the language of the men from
whom we get the Bible. At the time they produced
those documents which give to the Old Testament its
power and its true character, the not ourselves which
30 weighed upon the mind of Israel, and engaged its awe,
was the not ourselves by which we get the sense for
righteousness, and whence we find the help to do right,
208 THE NOT OURSELVES.
This conception was indubitably what lay at the bot-
tom of that remarkable change which under Moses, at
a certain stage of their religious history, befell the
Hebrew people's mode of naming God. 7 This was
what they intended in that name, which we wrongly 5
convey, either without translation, by Jehovah, which
gives us the notion of a mere mythological deity, or
by a wrong translation, Lord, which gives us the
notion of a magnified and non-natural man. The
name they used was : The Eternal. 10
Philosophers dispute whether moral ideas, as they
call them, the simplest ideas of conduct and righteous-
ness which now seem instinctive, did not all grow,
were not once inchoate, embryo, dubious, unformed. 8
That may have been so ; the question is an interesting 15
one for science. But the interesting question for con-
duct is whether those ideas are unformed or formed
now. They are formed now ; and they were formed
when the Hebrews named the power, out of them-
selves, which pressed upon their spirit : The Eternal. 20
Probably the life of Abraham, the friend of God, how-
ever imperfectly the Bible traditions by themselves
convey it to us, was a decisive step forwards in the
development of these ideas of righteousness. Proba-
bly this was the moment when such ideas became 25
fixed and ruling for the Hebrew people, and marked it
permanently off from all others who had not made the
same step. But long before the first beginnings of
recorded history, long before the oldest word of Bible
7 See Exodus Hi. 14.
8 " Qu'est-ce-que la nature ? " says Pascal : " peut eire une pre-
miere coulwne, comme la coutume est une seconde nature."
THE NOT OURSELVES. 209
literature, these ideas must have been at work. We
know it by the result, although they may have for a
long while been but rudimentary. In Israel's earliest
history and earliest literature, under the name of
5 Eloah, Elohim, The Mighty, there may have lain and
matured, there did lie and mature, ideas of God more
as a moral power, more as a power connected, above
everything, with conduct and righteousness, than were
entertained by other races. Not only can we judge
10 by the result that this must have been so, but we can
see that it was so. Still their name, The Mighty, does
not in itself involve any true and deep religious ideas,
any more than our name, The Shining. With The
Eternal it is otherwise. For what did they mean by
15 the Eternal ; the Eternal what? The Eternal cause?
Alas, these poor people were not Archbishops of York.
They meant the Eternal righteous, who loveth right-
eousness. They had dwelt upon the thought of
conduct and right and wrong, till the not ourselves
20 which is in us and all around us, became to them
adorable eminently and altogether as a power which
makes for righteousness ; which makes for it unchange-
ably and eternally, and is therefore called The
Eternal.
25 There is not a particle of metaphysics in their use
of this name, any more than in their conception of the
not ourselves to which they attached it. Both came to
them not from abstruse reasoning but from experience,
and from experience in the plain region of conduct.
30 Theologians with metaphysical heads render Israel's
Eternal by the self -existent, and Israel's not ourselves
by the absolute, and attribute to Israel their own sub*
2io THE NOT OURSELVES.
tleties. According to them, Israel had his head full of
the necessity of a first cause, and therefore said, The
Eternal; as, again, they imagine him looking out into
the world, noting everywhere the marks of design and
adaptation to his wants, and reasoning out and infer- 5
ring thence the fatherhood of God. All these fancies
come from an excessive turn for reasoning, and a
neglect of observing men's actual course of thinking
and way of using words. Israel, at this stage when
The Eternal was revealed to him, inferred nothing, ic
reasoned out nothing ; he felt and experienced. When
he begins to speculate, in the schools of Rabbinism,
he quickly shows how much less native talent than the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester he has for this
perilous business. Happily, when The Eternal was 15
revealed to him, he had not yet begun to speculate.
Israel personified, indeed, his Eternal, for he was
strongly moved, he was an orator and poet. Man
never knows how anthropomorphic he is, says Goethe,
and so man tends always to represent everything under 2c
his own figure. In poetry and eloquence, man may
and must follow this tendency, but in science it often
leads him astray. Israel, however, did not scientifi-
cally predicate personality of God ; he would not even
have had a notion what was meant by it. He called 25
him the maker of all things, who gives drink to all out
of his pleasures as out of a river ; but he was led to
this by no theory of a first cause. The grandeur of
the spectacle given by the world, the grandeur of the
sense of its all being not ourselves, being above and 30
beyond ourselves and immeasurably dwarfing us, a
man of imagination instinctively personifies as a single,
THE NOT OURSELVES. 211
mighty, living and productive power ; as Goethe tells
us that the words which rose naturally to his lips, when
he stood on the top of the Brocken, were : "Lord,
what is man, that thou mindest him, or the son of man,
5 that thou makest account of him?" 9 But Israel's
confessing and extolling of this power came not even
from his imaginative feeling, but came first from his
gratitude for righteousness. To one who knows what
conduct is, it is a joy to be alive ; and the not ourselves,
10 which by bringing forth for us righteousness makes
our happiness, working just in the same sense, brings
forth this glorious world to be righteous in. That is
the notion at the bottom of a Hebrew's praise of a
Creator ; and if we attend, we can see this quite
15 clearly. Wisdom and understanding mean, for Israel,
the love of order, of righteousness. Righteousness,
order, conduct, is for Israel at once the source of all
man's happiness, and at the same time the very essence
of The Eternal. The great work of the Eternal is the
20 foundation of this order in man, the implanting in
mankind of his own love of righteousness, his own
spirit, his own wisdom and understanding ; and it is
only as a farther and natural working of this energy
that Israel conceives the establishment of order in the
25 world, or creation. " To depart from evil, that is un-
derstanding ! Happy is the man that findeth wisdom,
and the man that getteth understanding. The Eternal
by wisdom hath founded the earth, by understanding hath
he established the heavens" ;™ and so the Bible-writer
30 passes into the account of creation. It all comes to
him from the idea of righteousness.
8 Psalm cxliv. 3. 10 Prov. iii. 13-20.
212 THE NOT OURSELVES.
And it is the same with all the language our
Hebrew religionist uses. God is a father, because the
power in and around us, which makes for righteous-
ness, is indeed best described by the name of this
authoritative but yet tender and protecting relation. 5
So, too, with the intense fear and abhorrence of
idolatry. Conduct, righteousness, is, above all, a
matter of inward motion and rule. No sensible forms
can represent it, or help us to it ; such attempts at
representation can only distract us from it. So, too, 10
with the sense of the oneness of God. " Hear, O
Israel ! The Lord our God is one Lord." " People
think that in this unity of God, — this monotheistic
idea, as they call it, — they have certainly got meta-
physics at last. They have got nothing of the kind. 15
The monotheistic idea of Israel is simply seriousness.
There are, indeed, many aspects of the not ourselves;
but Israel regarded one aspect of it only, that by
which it makes for righteousness. He had the advan-
tage, to be sure, that with this aspect three-fourths of 20
human life is concerned. But there are other aspects
which may be set in view. " Frail and striving
mortality," says the elder Pliny in a noble passage,
"mindful of its own weakness, has distinguished these
aspects severally, so as for each man to be able to 25
attach himself to the divine by this or that part,
according as he has most need." I2 That is an apology
for polytheism, as answering to man's many-sidedness.
11 Dent. vi. 4.
12 " Fragilis et laboriosa mortalitas in partes ista digessit, infir-
mitatis suae memor, ut portionibus coleret quisque, quo maxime
indigeret." — Nat. Hist. ii. 5.
THE NOT OURSELVES. 213
But lsiael felt that being thus many-sided degenerated
into an imaginative play, and bewildered what Israel
recognized as our sole religious consciousness, — the
consciousness of right. "Let thine eyelids look right
5 on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee ;
turn not to the right hand nor to the left ; remove thy
foot from evil ! " 1J
For does not Ovid say,' 4 in excuse for the immorality
of his verses, that the sight and mention of the gods
10 themselves, — the rulers of human life, — often raised
immoral thoughts ? And so the sight and mention of
all aspects of the not ourselves must. Yet how tempt-
ing are many of these aspects ! Even at this time of
day, the grave authorities of the University of Cam-
15 bridge are so struck by one of them, that of pleasure,
life, and fecundity, — of the hominum divomque voluntas,
alma Venus, — that they set it publicly up as an object
for their scholars to fix their minds upon, and to
compose verses in honour of. That is all very well
20 at present ; but with this natural bent in the authori-
ties of the University of Cambridge, and in the Indo-
European race to which they belong, where would
they be now if it had not been for Israel, and for the
stern check which Israel put upon the glorification
25 and divinisation of this natural bent of mankind, this
attractive aspect of the not ourselves ? Perhaps going in
procession, Vice-Chancellor, bedels, masters, scholars,
13 Prov. iv. 25, 27.
14 Trislia ii. 287 :—
"Quis locus est templis augustior? haec quoque vitet
In culpam si qua est ingeniosa suam."
See the whole passage.
214 THE NOT OURSELVES.
and all, in spite of their Professor of Moral Philosophy,
to the Temple of Aphrodite ! Nay, and very likely
Mr. Birks himself, his brows crowned with myrtle
and scarcely a shade of melancholy on his countenance,
would have been going along with them ! It is Israel 5
and his seriousness that have saved the authorities of
the University of Cambridge from carrying their
divinisation of pleasure to these lengths, or from
making more of it, indeed, than a mere passing intel-
lectual play ; and even this play Israel would have 10
beheld with displeasure, saying : O turn away mine
eyes lest they behold vanity, but quicken Thou me in thy
way I 16 So earnestly and exclusively were Israel's
regards bent on one aspect of the not ourselves : its
aspect as a power of making for conduct, righteous- 15
ness. Israel's Eternal was the Eternal which says :
" To depart from evil, that is understanding ! Be ye
holy, for I am holy ! " Now, as righteousness is but a
heightened conduct, so holiness is but a heightened
righteousness ; a more finished, entire, and awe-filled 20
righteousness. It was such a righteousness which was
Israel's ideal ; and therefore it was that Israel said,
not indeed what our Bibles make him say, but this :
" Hear, O Israel ! The Eternal is our God, The
Eternal alone." 25
And in spite of his turn for personification, his want
of a clear boundary-line between poetry and science,
his inaptitude to express even abstract notions by
other than highly concrete terms, — in spite of these
scientific disadvantages, or rather, perhaps, because of 30
them, because he had no talent for abstruse reasoning
16 Psalm cxix. 37,
THE NOT OURSELVES. 215
to lead him astray,— the spirit and tongue of Israel
kept a propriety, a reserve, a sense of the inadequacy
of language in conveying man's ideas of God, which
contrast strongly with the licence of affirmation in
5 our Western theology. " The high and holy One
that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy," 16 is far
more proper and felicitous language than " the moral
and intelligent Governor of the universe," just because
it far less attempts to be precise, but keeps to the
10 language of poetry and does not essay the language of
science. As he had developed his idea of God from
personal experience, Israel knew what we, who have
developed our idea from his words about it, so often
are ignorant of : that his words were but thrown
isoutsit a vast object of consciousness, which he could
not fully grasp, and which he apprehended clearly by
one point alone, — that it made for the great concern
of life conduct. How little we know of it besides, how
impenetrable is the course of its ways with us, how we
20 ire baffled in our attempts to name and describe it,
how, when we personify it and call it "the moral and
intelligent Governor of the universe," we presently
find it not to be a person as man conceives of person,
nor moral as man conceives of moral, nor intelligent
25 as man conceives of intelligent, nor a governor as man
conceives of governors, — all this, which scientific
theology loses sight of, Israel, who had but poetry and
eloquence, and no system, and who did not mind
contradicting himself, knew. " Is it any pleasure to
30 the Almighty, that thou art righteous ? " " What a
blow to our ideal of that magnified and non-natural
15 Isaiah lvii. 15. "Job xxii. 3.
216 THE NOT OURSELVES.
man, "the moral and intelligent Governor!" Say
what we can about God, say our best, we have yet,
Israel knew, to add instantly : " Lo, these are parts of
his ways ; but hotv little a portion is heard of him ! " 18
Yes, indeed, Israel remembered that far better than 5
our bishops do. " Canst thou by searching find out
God ; canst thou find out the perfection of the
Almighty ? It is more high than heaven, what canst
thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know ? " !9
Will it be said, experience might also have shown ia
to Israel a not ourselves which did not make for his
happiness, but rather made against it, baffled his
claims to it ? But no man, as we have elsewhere
remarked, 20 who simply follows his own consciousness,
is aware of any claims, any rights, whatever ; what he 15
gets of good makes him thankful, what he gets of ill
seems to him natural. His simple spontaneous feeling
is well expressed by that saying of Izaak Walton :
" Every misery that I miss is a new mercy, and there-
fore let us be thankful." It is true, the not ourselves 20
of which we are thankfully conscious we inevitably
speak of and speak to as a man; for "man never
knows how anthropomorphic he is." And as time
proceeds, imagination and reasoning keep working
upon this substructure, and build from it a magnified 25
and non-natural man. Attention is then drawn, after-
wards, to causes outside ourselves which seem to make
for sin and suffering ; and then either these causes
have to be reconciled by some highly ingenious scheme
with the magnified and non-natural man's power, or a 30
18 Job xxvi. 14. 19 Job xi. 7, 8.
80 Culture and Anarchy, p. 165.
THE NOT OURSELVES. 217
second magnified and non-natural man has to be sup-
posed, who pulls the contrary way to the first. So
arise Satan and his angels. But all this is secondary,
and comes much later. Israel, the founder of our
5 religion, did not begin with this. He began with
experience. He knew from thankful experience the
not ourselves which makes for righteousness, and knew
how little we know about God besides. — Literature and
Dogma, ed. 1895, pp. 23-36.
Iparis anO tbe Senses.
And if Assyria and Babylon seem too remote, let
us look nearer home for testimonies to the inexhaust-
ible grandeur and significance of the Old Testament
revelation, according to that construction which we
here put upon it. Every educated man loves Greece, 5
owes gratitude to Greece. Greece was the lifter-up
to the nations of the banner of art and science, as
Israel was the lifter-up of the banner of righteousness.
Now, the world cannot do without art and science.
And the lifter-up of the banner of art and science 10
was naturally much occupied with them, and conduct
was a homely plain matter. Not enough heed, there-
fore, was given by him to conduct. But conduct,
plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life, while art
and science are only two-eighths. And this brilliant 15
Greece perished for lack of attention enough to
conduct; for want of conduct, steadiness, character.
And there is this difference between Greece and
Judaea: both were custodians of a revelation, and
both perished ; but Greece perished of tf?vr-fidelity to 2a
her revelation, and Judaea perished of ////^/--fidelity to
hers. Nay, and the victorious revelation now, even
now, — in this age when more of beauty and more of
knowledge are so much needed, and knowledge, at
any rate, is so highly esteemed, — the revelation which 25
rules the world even now, is not Greece's revelation,
PARIS AND THE SENSES. 219
but Judaea's ; not the pre-eminence of art and science,
but the pre-eminence of righteousness.
It reminds one of what is recorded of Abraham,
before the true inheritor of the promises, the humble
5 and homely Isaac, was born. Abraham looked upon
the vigorous, bold, brilliant young Ishmael, and said
appealingly to God: "Oh that Ishmael might live
before thee ! " ' But it cannot be : the promises are
to conduct, conduct only. And so, again, we in like
10 manner behold, long after Greece has perished, a
brilliant successor of Greece, the Renascence, present
herself with high hopes. The preachers of righteous-
ness, blunderers as they often were, had for centuries
had it all their own way. Art and science had been
[5 forgotten, men's minds had been enslaved, their bodies
macerated. But the gloomy, oppressive dream is now
over. " Let us return to Nature! " And all the world
salutes with pride and joy the Renascence, and prays
to Heaven: " Oh that Ishmael might live before thee ! "
no Surely the future belongs to this brilliant new-comer,
with his animating maxim : Let us return to Nature !
Ah, what pitfalls are in that word Nature ! Let us
return to art and science, which are a part of Nature ;
yes. Let us return to a proper conception of right-
(85 eousness, to a true use of the method and secret
of Jesus, which have been all denaturalized; yes.
But, " Let us return to Nature j " — do you mean
that we are to give full swing to our inclinations, to
throw the reins on the neck of our senses, of those
30 sirens whom Paul the Israelite called " the deceitful
lusts," 2 and of following whom he said " Let no man
1 Genesis xvii. 18. ' Eph. iv. 22.
220 PARIS AND THE SENSES.
beguile you with vain words, for because of these
things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of
disobedience ! " 3 Do you mean that conduct is not
three-fourths of life, and that the secret of Jesus has
no use ! And the Renascence did mean this, or half- 5
meant this ; so disgusted was it with the cowled and
tonsured Middle Age. And it died of it, this brilliant
Ishmael died of it ! it died of provoking a collision
with the homely Isaac, righteousness. On the Conti-
nent came the Catholic reaction ; in England, as we 38
have said elsewhere, " the great middle class, the
kernel of the nation, entered the prison of Puritanism,
and had the key turned upon its spirit there for
two hundred years." After too much glorification
of art, science, and culture, too little ; after Rabelais, 15
George Fox.
France, again, how often and how impetuously for
France has the prayer gone up to Heaven : " Oh that
Ishmael might live before thee ! " It is not enough
perceived what it is which gives to France her attrac- 20
tiveness for everybody, and her success, and her
repeated disasters. France is Vhomtne sensuel moyen,
the average sensual man ; Paris is the city of Vhotnmc
sensuel moyen. This has an attraction for all of us.
We all have in us this homnie sensuel, the man of the 25
"wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts";
but we develop him under checks and doubts, and
unsystematically and often grossly. France, on the
other hand, devolops him confidently and harmoni-
ously. She makes the most of him, because she 30
knows what she is about and keeps in a mean, as her
3 Eph. v. 6.
PARIS AND THE SENSES. 22 1
climate is in a mean, and her situation. She does not
develop him with madness, into a monstrosity, as the
Italy of the Renascence did; she develops him equably
and systematically. And hence she does not shock
5 people with him but attracts them, she names herself
the France of tact and measure, good sense, logic. In
a way, this is true. As she develops the senses, the
apparent self, all round, in good faith, without misgiv-
ings, without violence, she has much reasonableness
ioand clearness in all her notions and arrangements ; a
sort of balance even in conduct ; as much art and
science, and it is not a little, as goes with the ideal of
Vhomme sensuel moyen. And from her ideal of the
average sensual man France has deduced her famous
rs gospel of the Rights of Man, which she preaches with
such an infinite crowing and self-admiration. France
takes "the wishes of the flesh and of the current
thoughts" for a man's rights; and human happiness,
and the perfection of society, she places in everybody's
20 being enabled to gratify these wishes, to get these
rights, as equally as possible and as much as possible.
In Italy, as in ancient Greece, the satisfying develop-
ment of this ideal of the average sensual man is broken
by the imperious ideal of art and science disparaging
25 it ; in the Germanic nations, by the ideal of morality
disparaging it. Still, whenever, as often happens, the
pursuers of these higher ideals are a little weary of
them or unsuccessful with them, they turn with a sort
of envy and admiration to the ideal set up by France,
2o — so positive, intelligible, and up to a certain point
satisfying. They are inclined to try it instead of
their own, although they can never bring themselves
2 22 PARIS AND THE SENSES.
to try it thoroughly, and therefore well. But this
explains the great attraction France exercises upon
the world. All of us feel, at some time or other in
our lives, a hankering after the French ideal, a dis-
position to try it. More particularly is this true of 5
the Latin nations ; and therefore everywhere, among
these nations, you see the old indigenous type of city
disappearing, and the type of modern Paris, the city
of Vhomme sensuel moyen, replacing it. La Boheme, the
ideal, free, pleasurable life of Paris, is a kind of 10
Paradise of Ishmaels. And all this assent from every
quarter, and the clearness and apparent reasonable-
ness of their ideal besides, fill the French with a kind
of ecstatic faith in it, a zeal almost fanatical for
propagating what they call French civilisation every- 15
where, for establishing its predominance, and their
own predominance along with it, as of the people
entrusted with an oracle so showy and taking. Oh
that Ishmael might live before thee ! Since everybody
has something which conspires with this Ishmael, his 20
success, again and again, seems to be certain. Again
and again he seems drawing near to a worldwide suc-
cess, nay, to have succeeded ; — but always, at this
point, disaster overtakes him, he signally breaks
down. At this crowning moment, when all seems 25
triumphant with him, comes what the Bible calls a
crisis, or judgment. Now is the judgment of this
world! now shall the prince of this world be cast out ! *
Cast out he is, and always must be, because his ideal,
which is also that of France in general, however she 3a
may have noble spirits who contend against it and
4 John xii. 31.
PARIS AND THE SENSES. 223
seek a better, is after all a false one. Plausible and
attractive as it may be, the constitution of things
turns out to be somehow or other against it. And
why ? Because the free development of our senses
5 all round, of our appare?it self, has to undergo a pro-
found modification from the law of our higher real
self, the law of righteousness ; because he, whose
ideal is the free development of the senses all round,
serves the senses, is a servant. But : The servant
10 abideth ?iot in the house for ever j the son abideth for
ever. b
Is it possible to imagine a grander testimony to
the truth of the revelation committed to Israel?
What miracle of making an iron axe-head float on
15 water, what successful prediction that a thing should
happen just so many years and months and days
hence, could be really half so impressive ? — Literature
and Dogma, ed. 1896, pp. 319-325.
6 John viii. 35.
XLbe Celt ano tbe teuton.
Let me repeat what I have often said of the char«
acteristics which mark the English spirit, the English
genius. This spirit, this genius, judged, to be sure,
rather from a friend's than an enemy's point of view,
yet judged on the whole fairly, is characterised, 1 5
have repeatedly said, by energy with honesty. Take
away some of the energy which comes to us, as I
believe, in part from Celtic and Roman sources ;
in steady of energy, say rather steadiness; and you
have the Germanic genius : steadiness with honesty. 10
, It is evident how nearly the two characterisations
approach one another ; and yet they leave, as we
shall see, a great deal of room for difference. Steadi-
ness with honesty; the danger for a national spirit
thus composed is the humdrum, the plain and ugly, 15
the ignoble : in a word, das Gemeine, die Getneinheit,
that curse of Germany, against which Goethe was all
his life fighting. The excellence of a national spirit
thus composed is freedom from whim, flightiness,
perverseness ; patient fidelity to Nature, — in a word, 20
science, — leading it at last, though slowly, and not by
the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the
humdrum and common, into the better life. The uni-
versal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the
lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, 25
the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the
324
THE CELT AND THE TEUTON, 225
eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank
commonness everywhere, pressing at last like a
weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern
Germany, and making him impatient to be gone, — ■
5 this is the weak side ; the industry, the well-doing,
the patient steady elaboration of things, the idea of
science governing all departments of human activity,
— this is the strong side ; and through this side of
her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent
10 results, and is destined, we may depend upon it, how-
ever her pedantry, her slowness, her fumbling, her
ineffectiveness, her bad government, may at times
makes us cry out, to an immense development. 1
For dulness, the creeping Saxons, — says an old Irish
15 poem, assigning the characteristics for which different
nations are celebrated :
j For acuteness and valour, the Greeks,
For excessive pride, the Romans,
For dulness, the creeping Saxons ;
20 For beauty and amorousness, the Gaedhils.
We have seen in what sense, and with what explana-
tion, this characterisation of the German may be
allowed to stand; now let us come.. to the beautiful
and amorous GaedhjJL Or. rather, .let us find a defini-
2| tion which may suit both branches of the Celtic
family, the Cym ri as well as the Gael. It is clear
that special circumstances may have developed some
one side in the national character of Cymri or Gael,
Welshman or Irishman, so that the observer's notice
1 1t is to be remembered that the above was written before
the recent war between Prussia and Austria.
226 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON.
shall be readily caught by this side, and yet it may
be impossible to adopt it as characteristic ol theCeltic
nature generally. For instance, in his beautiful essay
on the poetry of the Celtic races, M. Renan, with his
eyes fixed on the Bretons and the Welsh, is s truck 5
with the timidity, the shyness, the delicacy of the
Celtic nature, its preference for a retired life, its
embarrassment at having to deal with the great-world.
He talks of the douce petite race naturellement chretienne,
his race fiere et timide, a Vexte'rieur gauche et evibar- 10
rass/e. But it is evident that this description, however
well it may do for the Cymri, will never do for the
Gael, never do for the typical Irishman of Donny-
brook fair. Again, M. Renan's infinie d/iicqtesse de
I s entiment gut car act e rise la race Celtique, how l ittle 15
that accords with the popular conception of an Irish-
man who wants to borrow money ! Sentiment is, how-
ever, the word which marks where the Celtic races
really touch and are one ; sentimental, if the Celtic
nature is to be characterised by a single term, is the 20
best term to take. An organisation quick to feel
impressions, and feeling them very strongly ; a
lively personality therefore, keenly sensitive to joy
and to sorrow ; this is the main point. If the downs
of life too much outnumber the ups, this temperament, 25
just because it is so quickly and nearly conscious of
all impressions, may no doubt be seen shy and
wounded ; it may be seen in wistful regret, it may be
seen in passionate, penetrating melancholy ;. but its
essence is to aspire ardently after life, light, and ~w
ii emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our
'vord gay, it is said, is itself Celtic. It is not from
THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 227
gaudium, but from the Celtic gair,. to laugh; 2 and
the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is
the more down because it is so his nature to be up —
'j to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring
L way brilliantly. He loves bright colours, he easily
becomes audacious, overcrowing, full of fanfaronade.
The German, say the physiologists, has the larger
volume of intestines (and who that has ever seen a
German at a table-d'hote will not readily believe this ?),
:othe Frenchman has the m^re_dcvelnped organs of
respiration. That- is. just-the- expansive, enger -Celtic
natu re ; the he ad in the a ir, s miffing and snortin g ; a
proud look and a high sto//jachyJLsAht Psalmis-Lsays,
but without any such settled savage temper as the
15 Psalmist seems to impute by those words. For good
and for bad, the Celtic genius is more airy and unsub-
stantial, goes less near the ground, than the German.
The Celt is often called sensual ; but it is not so much
the vulgar satisfactions of sense that attract him as
20 emotion and excitement; he is truly, as I began by
saying, sentimental.
Sentimental, — a/ways ready to react against the
despotism of fact; that is the description a great
2 The etymology is Monsieur Henri Martin's, but Lord Strang-
ford says : — " Whatever gai may be, it is assuredly not Celtic.
Is there any authority for this word gair, to laugh, or rather
'laughter,' beyond O'Reilly? O'Reilly is no authority at all
except in so far as tested and passed by the new school. It is
hard to give up gavisus. But Di ez^jihief authority in Romanic
I matters, is content to accept Muratori's reference to an old High-
| German gdhi, modern jahe, sharp, quick, sudden, brisk, and so
1 to the s ense of_ lively, animated, lngli_iu .spirits."
228 TffE CELT AND THE TEUTON.
friend 3 of the Celt gives of him ; and it is not a bad
description of the sentimental temperament ; it lets
us into the secret of its dangers and of its habitual
want of success. Balance, measure, and patience,
these are the eternal conditions, even supposing the 5
happiest temperament to .start with, of high success ;
and balance, measure, and patience are just what the
Celt has never^had. Even in the world of spiritual
creation, he has never, in spite of his admirable gifts
of quick perception and warm emotion, succeeded 10
perfectly, because he never has had steadiness, pa-
tience, sanity enough to comply with the conditions
under which alone can expression be perfectly given
to the finest perceptions and emotions. The Gree k
h as the same perceptive, emotional temperament, as 15
the Celt ; but he adds to this temperament _the_sense
o f measure ± hence his admirable success in the. plastic
arts, in which the Celtic genius, with its chafing
against the despotism of fact, its perpetual straining
< after mere emotion, has accomplished nothing. In 20
the comparatively petty art of ornamentation, in rings,
brooches, crosiers, relic-cases, and so on, he has done
just enough to show his delicacy of taste, his happy
temperament ; but the grand difficulties_o.f__painting
and sculpture, the prolonged dealings of spirit with 25
matter^ h e has never had patience for. Take the
> more spiritual arts of music and poetry. All that
emotion alone can do in music the Celt has done ; the
very soul of emotion breathes in the Scotch and Irish
airs ; but with all this power of musical feeling, what 30
3 Monsieur Henri Martin, whose chapters on the Celts, in his
Histoire de France, are full of information and interest.
„
THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 229
-has the Celt, so eager for emotion that he has not
patience for science, effected in music, to be compared
with what the less emotional German, steadily develop-
ing his nmsii a! feeling with the science of a Sebastian
i Bac.ljL.oi a^eetkaver^Jias^efiected ? In poetry, again,
— poetry which the Celt has so passionately, so nobly
loved ; poetry where emotion counts for so much, but
where reason, too, reason, measure, sanity, also count for
so much, — the Celt has shown genius, indeed, splendid
10 genius; but even here his faults have clung to him,
and hindered him from producing great works, such
as other nations with a genius for poetry, — the Greeks,
say, or the Italians, — have produced. The Celt has
f not produced great poetical works, he has only pro-
duced poetry with an air of greatness investing it all,
and sometimes giving, moreover, to short pieces, or to
passages, lines, and snatches of long pieces, singular
beauty and power. And yet he loved poetry so much
that he grudged no pains to it ; but. _the-i«ie-art, the
20 architectonic^ which shapes great works, such as the
Agamemnon or the -Divine Comedy, comes only after a
steady, deep-searching survey, a firm conception of
the facts of human life, which the Celt has not pa-
Itierice for! So he runs off into technic, where he
25 employs the utmost elaboration, and attains, astonish-
ing skil] ; but in the contents of his poetry you have
only so much interpretation of the world as the first
dash of a quick, strong perception, and then sentiment,
infinite sentiment, can bring you. Here, too, his want
30 of sanity and steadfastness has kept the Celt back
from the highest success.
If his rebellion against fact has thus lamed the Celt
230 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON.
even in spiritual work, how much more must it have
lamed him in the world of business and politics !
The skilful and resolute appliance of means to ends
which is needed both to make progress in material
civilisation, and also to form powerful states, is just 5
what the Celt has least turn for. He is sensual, as I
have said, or at least sensuous ; loves bright colours,
company, and pleasure ; and here he is like the Greek
and Latin races ; but compare the talent the Greek
and Latin (or Latinised) races have shown for gratify- 10
ing their senses, for procuring an outward life, rich,
luxurious, splendid, with the Celt's failure to reach
any material civilisation sound and satisfying, and
not out at elbows, poor, slovenly, and half-barbarous.
The sensuousness of the Greek made Syhaxis and 15
Corinth, the sensuo usne s s of _the_La tin made R ome
and Baiae, the- .seoisuousn^ss-o-f— the— Latinised French-
man makes Par is ; the sensuousness of . the. Celt
proper has made Ireland. Even in his ideal heroic
times, his gay and sensuous nature cannot carry him, 20
in the appliances of his favourite life of sociability
and pleasure, beyond the gross and creeping Saxon
whom he despises ; the regent Breas, we are told in
the Battle of Moytura of the Foromians, became un-
popular because " the knives of his people were not 25
greased at his table, nor did their breath smell of ale
at the banquet." In its grossness and barbarousness
is not that Saxon, as Saxon as it can be ? just what
the Latinised Norman, sensuous and sociable like the
Celt, but with the talent to make this bent of his 30
serve to a practical embellishment of his mode of
living, found so disgusting in the Saxon.
THE CELT AND THE TEUTON.
231
And as in material civilisation he has been inef-
fectual, sq has the Celt been ineffectual in politics.
This colossal, impetuous, adventurous wanderer, the
Titan of the early world, wjlio in primitive times fills
; so large a place on earth's scene, dwindles and dwindles
as history goes on, and at last is shrunk to what we
now see him. For ages and ages the world has been
constantly slipping, ever more and more, out of the
Celt's grasp. " They went forth to the war," Ossian
10 says most truly, " but they always fell."
And yet, if one sets about constituting an ideal
genius, what a great deal of the Celt does one find
oneself drawn to put into it ! Of an ideal genius
one jdj3ej5jaoJ_jvant the elements, any of them, to be
15 in a state of weakne ss : on the contrary, one wants
alTofjthem to be. inJ.heJiigliesi„slate-af— pawer ; but
with a law of measure, of harmony, presiding over
the whole. So the sensibility of the Celt, if every-
thing else were not sacrificed to it, is a beautiful and
20 admirable force. For se nsibility , the power of jjujck
and stron g perception and emotion, is one of the
very pr ime constituents of genius , perhaps its m ost
positi ve cons ti tuen t ; it is to the soul what good
senses are to the body, the grand natural condition
25 of successful activity. Sensibility gives genius its
materials ; one cannot have too much of it, if one can
but keep its master and not be its slave. JJo not let
us wish th at the Celt had _had less sensibiHty but
that _he had be en more master of it . Even as it is,
30 if his sensibility has been a source of weakness to
him, it has been a source of power too, and a source
of happiness. Some people have found in the Celtic
2c>2 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON.
nature and its sensibility the main root out of which
chivalry and romance and the glorification of a femi-
nine ideal spring ; this is a great question, with
which I cannot deal here. Let m e notice in passing,
hj>weyjejyjjiatjhere_is i _in truth, a Cehic ai r abo ut the 5
extravag ance of c hi valry, its reaction against the
despotism of fact, its straining human _naj.ure further
than_Lt„wjn_sland. But putting all this question of
chivalry and its origin on one side, no doubt the
sensibility of the Celtic nature, its nervous exaltation, iq
have something feminine in them, and the Celt is
thus peculiarly disposed to feel the spell of the femi-
nine idiosyncrasy ; he has an affinity to it ; he is not
j far from its secret. Again, his sensibility givesjiim
a peculiarly n ear and intj mate_fg_eling of_jiaiLir£-ajid 15
th e life of n atu re ; here, too, he jseems in a special
way attracted by the secret before hjm_, the_secret .of
natural beauty and natural magic, and to be close to
it. t o half-divine it . In the productions of the Celtic
genius, nothing, perhaps, is so interesting as the evi- 20
dences of this power : I shall have occasion to give
specimens of them by and by. The same sensib ility
made the Celts full of reverence and enthusiasm for
genius, learning, and the things of the mind ; to_be a
bard, freed a man, — that js a characteri stic stro ke of 25
this generous and ennobling a rdour of theirs, which
no__race has ever show n more strong ly. Even the
extravagance and exaggeration of the sentimental
Celtic nature has often something romantic and attrac-
tive about it, something which has a sort of smack of 30
misdirected good. The Celt, undisciplinable, anarchi-
cal, and turbulent by nature, but out of affection
THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 233
and admiration giving himself body and soul to some
leader, that is not a promising political temperament,
it is just the opposite of the Anglo-Saxon tempera-
ment, disciplinable and steadily obedient within cer-
5 tain limits, but retaining an inalienable part of freedom
and self-dependence ; but it is a temperament for
which one has a kind of sympathy notwithstanding.
I And very often, for the gay defiant reaction against
fact of the lively Celtic nature one has more than
10 sympathy ; one feels, in spite of the extravagance, in
spite of good sense disapproving, magnetised and ex-
hilarated by it. The Gauls had a rule inflicting a
i fine on every warrior who, when he appeared on
parade, was found to stick out too much in front, — to
13 be corpulent, in short. Such a rule is surely the
maddest article of war ever framed, and to people to
whom nature has assigned a large volume of intes-
tines, must appear, no doubt, horrible ; but yet has it
not an audacious, sparkling, immaterial manner with
26 it, which lifts one out of routine, and sets one's spirits
in a glow ?
All tendencies of human nature are in themselves
vital and profitable ; when they are blamed, they are
only to be blamed relatively, not absolutely. This
zfe holds true of the Saxon's phlegm as well as of the
Celt's sentiment. Out of the steady humdrum habit
of the creeping Saxon, as the Celt calls him, — out of
his way of going near the ground, — h as com e, no
doubt, Philistinism, that plant. of essentially Germanic
30 growth, fl^urishing^ith_its - gejmin£_marks .only in the
Ge rman _fatherland, Great Britain and her colonies,
and the United States of America ; but what a soul
234 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON.
of goodness there is in Philistinism itself ! and this
soul of goodness I, who am often supposed to be
Philistinism's mortal enemy merely because I do not
wish it to have things all its own way, cherish as
much as anybody. This steady-going habit leads at 5
last, as I have said, up to science, up to the compre-
hension and interpretation of the world. With us in
Great Britain, it is true, it does not seem to lead so
far as that ; it is in Germany, where the habit is
more unmixed, that it can lead to science. Here with 10
us it seems at a certain point to meet with a conflict-
ing force, which checks it and prevents its pushing on
to science ; but before reaching this point what con-
quests has it not won ! and all the more, perhaps, for
stopping short at this point, for spending its exertions 15
within a bounded field, the field of plain sense, of
direct practical utility. How it has augmented the
comforts and conveniences of life for us ! Doors that
open, windows that shut, locks that turn, razors that
shave, coats that wear, watches that go, and a thou- 20
sand more such good things, are the invention of the
Philistines. — On the Study of Celtic Literature, ed
l8 95> PP- 73~ 8 ^
Zhe /IfcoDem JEngltsbman.
We, on the other hand, do not necessarily gain by
the commixture of elements in us ; we have seen how
the clashing of natures in us hampers and embarrasses
our behaviour ; we might very likely be more at-
5 tractive, we might very likely be more successful,
if we were all of apiece. Our want of_ suieness- of
taste, our eccentricity, come in great measure, _no
doubt, from our not being all of a piece, from pur
having no fixed, fatal, spiritual centre of gravity.
ib The Rue de Rivoli is one thing, and Nuremberg is
another, and Stonehenge is another ; but we have a
turn for all three, and lump them all up together.
Mr. Tom Taylor's translations from Breton poetry
offer a good example of this mixing ; he has a genuine
i|5 feeling for these Celtic matters, and often, as in the
Evil Tribute of Nome/we, or in Lord Nairn and the
Fairy, he is, both in movement and expression, true
and appropriate ; but he has a sort of Teutonism and
Latinism in him too, and so he cannot forbear mixing
20 with his Celtic strain such disparates as : —
" 'Twas mirk, mirk night, and the water bright
Troubled and drumlie flowed " —
which is evidently Lowland-Scotchy ; or as:—
" Foregad, but thou'rt an artful hand ! "
25 which is English-stagey ; or as : —
235
236 THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN.
" To Gradlon's daughter, bright of blee,
Her lover he whispered tenderly —
Bethink thee, sweet Dahut ! the key ! "
which is Anacreontic in the manner of Tom Moore.
Yes, it is not a sheer advantage_to have several strings 5
to^ one's bow ! if we had been all German, we might
have had the science of Germany ; if we had been all
Celtic, we might have been popular and agreeable ; if
we had been all Latinised, we might have governed
Ireland as the French govern Alsace, without getting 10
ourselves detested. But now we have Germanism
enough to make us Philistines, and Normanism
enough to make us imperious, and Celtism enough
to make us self-conscious and awkward ; but German
fidelity to Nature, and Latin precision and clear rea- 15
son, and Celtic quick-wittedness and spirituality, we
fall short of. Nay, perhaps, if we are doomed to
perish (Heaven avert the omen !), we sJiaHj^erisiL-by
our Celtism, by our self-will and want of patience
wit h ideas, our-ir ability tn SPf> the way the wor ld is 20
going; and yet those very Celts, by our a ffinity with
whom we are perishing, will be hating and upbr aiding
us all the tim e.
This is a somewhat unpleasant view to take of the
matter ; but if it is true, its being unpleasant does not 25
make it any less true, and we are always the better
for seeing the truth. What we here see is not the
whole truth, however. So long as this mixed consti-
tution of our nature possesses us, we pay it tribute
and serve it ; so soon as we possess it, it pays us 3a
tribute and serves us. So long as we are blindly and
ignorantly rolled about by the forces of our nature,
THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 237
tneir contradiction baffles us and lames us ; so soon
as we have clearly discerned what they are, and begun
to apply to them a law of measure, control, and guid-
ance, they may be made to work for our good and to
5 carry us forward. Then we may have the good of
our German part, the good of our Latin part, the
good of our Celtic part ; and instead of one part
clashing with the other, we may bring it in to continue
and perfect the other, when the other has given us
10 all the good it can yield, and by being pressed further,
could only give us its faulty excess. Then we may
use the German faithfulness to Nature to give us
science, and to free us from insolence and self-will ;
we may use the Celtic quickn ess of perce ption to give
15 us de licacy, and to free us from hardn ess and Philis-
tinis m ; we may us e the Latin decisiven ess_togive us
strenuous clear method, and to free us from fumbling
a nd id ling! Already, in their untrained state, these
elements give signs, in our life and literature, of their
20 being present in us, and a kind of prophecy of what
they could do for us if they were properly observed,
trained, and applied. But this they have not yet
been ; we ride one force of our nature to death ; we
will be nothing but Anglo-Saxons in the Old World
25 or in the New ; and when our race has built Bold
Street, Liverpool, and pronounced it very good, it
hurries across the Atlantic, and builds Nashville, and
Jacksonville, and Milledgeville, and thinks it is fulfill-
ing the designs of Providence in an incomparable
30 manner. But true Anglo-Saxons, simply and sincerely
rooted in the German nature, we are not and cannot
be ; all we have accomplished by our onesideness is
238 THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN.
to blur and confuse the natural basis in ourselves
altogether, and to become something eccentric, unat-
tractive, and inharmonious.
A man of exquisite intelligence and charming
character, the late Mr. Cobden, used to fancy that as
better acquaintance with the United States was the
grand panacea for us ; and once in a speech he
bewailed the inattention of our seats of learning to
them, and seemed to think that if our ingenuous
youth at Oxford were taught a little less about the 10
Ilissus, and a little more about Chicago, we should all
be the better for it. Chicago has its claims upon us,
no doubt ; but it is evident that from the point of
view to which I have been leading, a stimulation of
our Anglo-Saxonism, such as is intended by Mr. Cob- 15
den's proposal, does not appear the thing most need-
ful for us ; seeing our American brothers themselves
have rather, like us, to try and moderate the flame of
Anglo-Saxonism, in their own breasts, than to ask us
to clap the bellows to it in ours. So I am inclined to 20
beseech Oxford, instead of expiating her over-addic-
tion to the Ilissus by lectures on Chicago, to .give us
an expounder for a still more. remote-looking- object
than the Ilissus, — t he Celtic languages and literat ure.
And yet why should I call it remote ? if, as I have 25
been labouring to show, in the spiritual frame of us
English ourselves, a Celtic fibre, little as we may have
ever thought of tracing it, lives and works. Aliens in
speech, in religion, in blood ! said Lord Lyndhurst ; the
philologists have set him right about the speech,_the 30
physiologists about the bloo d ; and perhaps, taking
religion in the wide but true sense of our whole
„
THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 239
spiritual activity, those who have followed what I have
been saying here will think that the Celt is not so
wholly alien to us in religion. But, at any rate, let
us consider that of tjie_shrunken^_an d dimini shed
£ remains of this great primitive race, all, with o ne
' insignificant exception, belongs to the English empi re ;
only Brittany is not ours ; we have Ireland ; the
Scotch Highlands, Wales, the Isle of Man,_Cornwall.
They are a part of ourselves, we are deeply interested
inl:n_owing_them, they are deeply interested in being
known by us ; and yet in the great and rich univer-
sities of this great and rich country there is no chair
of Celtic, there is no study or teaching of Celtic mat-
ters ; those who want them must go abroad for them.
15 It is neither right nor reasonable that this should be
so. Ireland has had in the last half century a band
of Celtic students, — a band with which death, alas !
has of late been busy, — from whence Oxford or Cam-
bridge might have taken an admirable professor of
20 Celtic ; and with the authority of a university chair,
a great Celtic scholar, on a subject little known, and
where all would have readily deferred to him, might
have by this time doubled our facilities for knowing
the Celt, by procuring for this country Celtic docu-
25 ments, which were inaccessible here, and preventing
the dispersion of others which were accessible. .It is
not much that the English Governmental oes for science
or literature ; but if Eugene O'Curry, from a chair of
Celtic at'Oxford, had appealed to the Government to
3b get him copies or the originals of the Celtic treasures
in the Burgundian Library at Brussels, or in the
library of St. Isidore's College at Rome, even the
24° THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN.
English Government could not well have refused him.
The invaluable Irish manuscripts in the Stowe Library
the late Sir Robert Peel proposed, in 1849, to buy for
the British Museum ; Lord Macaulay, one of the
trustees of the Museum, declared, with the confident 5
shallowness which makes him so admired by public
speakers and leading-article writers, and so intolerable
to all searchers for truth, that he saw nothing in the
whole collection worth purchasing for the Museum,
except the correspondence of Lord Melville on the ia
American war. That is to say, this correspondence
of Lord Melville's was the only thing in the collection
about which Lord Macaulay himself knew or cared.
Perhaps an Oxford or Cambridge professor of Celtic
might have been allowed to make his voice heard, on 15
a matter of Celtic manuscripts, even against Lord
Macaulay. The manuscripts were bought by Lord
I Ashburnham, who keeps them shut up, and will let no
one consult them (at least up to the date when O'Curry
published his Lectures he did so) " for fear an actual 20
acquaintance with their contents should decrease their
value as matter of curiosity at some future transfer or
sale." Who knows? Perhaps an Oxford professor
of Celtic might have touched the flinty heart of Lord
Ashburnham. 25
At this moment, when the narrow Philistinism,
I which has long had things its own way in England,
is showing its natural fruits, and we are beginning to
feel ashamed, and uneasy, and alarmed at it ; now,
when we are becoming aware that we have sacrificed 30
to Philistinism culture, and insight, and dignity, and
acceptance, and weight among the nations, and hold
THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 241
on events that deeply concern us, and control of the
future, and yet that it cannot even give us the fool's
paradise it promised us, but is apt to break down, and
to leave us with Mr. Roebuck's and Mr. Lowe's lauda-
; tions of our matchless happiness, and the largest cir-
culation in the world assured to the Daily Telegraphy
for our only comfort ; at such a moment it needs some
moderation not to be attacking Philistinism by storm,
but to mine it through such gradual means as the slow
10 approaches of culture, and the introduction of chairs
of Celtic. But the hard unintelligence, which is just
now our bane, cannot be conquered by storm ; it
must be suppled and reduced by culture, by a growth
in the variety, fulness, and sweetness of our spiritual
15 life ; and this end can only be reached by studying
things that are outside of ourselves, and by studying
them disinterestedly. Let us unite ourselves with our
better mind and with the world through science ;
; and let it be one of our angelic revenges on the Phil-
2oistines, who among their other sins are the guilty
1 authors of Fenianism, to found at Oxford a chair of
Celtic, and to send, through the gentle ministration
\of science, a message of peace to Ireland. — On the Study
of Celtic Literature, ed. 1895, pp. 131-137.
Compulsory Eoucatfon.
Grubb Street, April 21, 1867.
Sir:—
I take up the thread of the interesting and impor-
tant discussion on compulsory education between
Arminius and me where I left it last night.
"But," continued Arminius, "you were talking of 5
compulsory education, and your common people's
want of it. Now, my dear friend, I want you to
understand what this principle of compulsory educa-
tion really means. It means that to ensure, as far as
you can, every man's being fit for his business in life, io
you put education as a bar, or condition, between him
and what he aims at. The principle is just as good
for one class as another, and it is only by applying it
impartially that you save its application from being
insolent and invidious. Our Prussian peasant stands 15
our compelling him to instruct himself before he may
go about his calling, because he sees we believe in
instruction, and compel our own class, too, in a way
to make it really feel the pressure, to instruct itself
before it may go about its calling. Now, you propose 20
to make old Diggs's boys instruct themselves before
they may go bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want
to know what you do to make those three worthies in
242
compulsory education; 243
that justice-room instruct themselves before they may
go acting as magistrates and judges." "Do?" said
I ; "why, just look what they have done all of them-
selves. Lumpington and Hittall have had a public-
5 school and university education; Bottles has had Dr.
Silverpump's, and the practical training of business.
What on earth would you have us make them do
more ? " " Qualify themselves for administrative or
judicial functions, if they exercise them," said Ar-
iominius. " That is what really answers, in their case,
to the compulsion you propose to apply to Diggs's
boys. Sending Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall to
school is nothing; the natural course of things takes
them there. Don't suppose that, by doing this, you
15 are applying the principle of compulsory education
fairly, and as you apply it to Diggs's boys. You are
not interposing, for the rich, education as a bar or
condition between them and that which they aim at.
But interpose it, as we do, between the rich and things
20 they aim at, and I will say something to you. I
should like to know what has made Lord Lumpington
a magistrate ? " " Made Lord Lumpington a magis-
trate ? " said I; " why, the Lumpington estate, to be
sure." "And the Reverend Esau Hittall?" con-
25 tinued Arminius. " Why, the Lumpington living, of
course," said I. " And that man Bottles ? " he went on.
" His English energy and self-reliance," I answered
very stiffly, for Arminius's incessant carping began
to put me in a huff ; " those same incomparable and
30 truly British qualities which have just triumphed over
every obstacle and given us the Atlantic telegraph ! —
and let me tell you, Von T., in my opinion it will be
244 COMPULSORY EDUCATION.
a 'long time before the ' Geist ' of any pedant of a
Prussian professor gives us anything half so valuable
as that." " Pshaw ! " replied Arminius, contemptu-
ously; " that great rope, with a Philistine at each end
of it talking inutilities! 5
" But in my country," he went on, "we should have
begun to put a pressure on these future magistrates at
school. Before we allowed Lord Lumpington and
Mr. Hittall to go to the university at all, we should
have examined them, and we should not have trusted 10
the keepers of that absurd cockpit you took me down
to see, to examine them as they chose, and send them
jogging comfortably off to the university on their
lame Jongs and shorts. No; there would have been
some Mr. Grote as School Board Commissary, pitch- 15
ing into them questions about history, and some Mr.
Lowe, as Crown Patronage Commissary, pitching into
them questions about English literature; and these
young men would have been kept from the university,
as Diggs's boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till 20
they instructed themselves. Then, if, after three
years of their university, they wanted to be magis-
trates, another pressure ! — a great Civil Service exam-
ination before a board of experts, an examination in
English law, Roman law, English history, history of 25
jurisprudence " " A most abominable liberty to
take with Lumpington and Hittall ! " exclaimed I.
" Then your compulsory education is a most abomi-
nable liberty to take with Diggs's boys," retorted Ar-
minius. " But, good gracious ! my dear Arminius," 30
expostulated I, " do you really mean to maintain that
a man can't put old Diggs in quod for snaring a hare
COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 245
without all this elaborate apparatus of Roman law and
history of jurisprudence ? " " And do you really mean
to maintain," returned Arminius, " that a man can't
go bird-scaring or sheep-tending without all this elab-
5 orate apparatus of a compulsory school ? " " Oh,
but," I answered, " to live at all, even at the lowest
stage of human life, a man needs instruction." " Well,"
returned Arminius, "and to administer at all, even at
the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs
10 instruction." " We have never found it so," said I.
Arminius shrugged his shoulders and was silent.
By this time the proceedings in the justice-room were
drawn to an end, the majesty of the law had been
vindicated against old Diggs, and the magistrates were
15 coming out. I never saw a finer spectacle than my
friend Arminius presented, as he stood by to gaze on
the august trio as they passed. His pilot-coat was
tightly buttoned round his stout form, his light blue
eye shone, his sanguine cheeks were ruddier than ever
20 with the cold morning and the excitement of dis-
course, his fell of tow was blown about by the March
wind, and volumes of tobacco-smoke issued from his
lips. So in old days stood, I imagine, his great name-
sake by the banks of the Lippe, glaring on the Roman
25 legions before their destruction.
Lord Lumpington was the first who came out. His
lordship good-naturedly recognised me with a nod,
and then eyeing Arminius with surprise and curiosity:
' Whom on earth have you got there ? " he whispered.
30" A very distinguished young Prussian savant," replied
I; and then dropping my voice, in my most impressive
undertones I added: " And a young man of very good
246 COMPULSORY EDUCATION.
family, besides, my lord." Lord Lumpington looked
at Arminius again; smiled, shook his head, and then,
turning away, and half aloud: " Can't compliment you
on your friend," says he.
As for that centaur Hittall, who thinks on nothings
on earth but field-sports, and in the performance of
his sacred duties never warms up except when he
lights on some passage about hunting or fowling, he
always, whenever he meets me, remembers that in my
unregenerate days, before Arminius inoculated me io
with a passion for intellect, I was rather fond of shoot-
ing, and not quite such a successful shot as Hittall
himself. So, the moment he catches sight of me:
"How d'ye do, old fellow?" he blurts out; "well,
been shooting any straighter this year than you used 15
to, eh ? "
I turned from him in pity, and then I noticed
Arminius, who had unluckily heard Lord Lumping-
ton's unfavourable comment on him, absolutely purple
with rage and blowing like a turkey-cock. "Never 20
mind, Arminius," said I soothingly; " run after
Lumpington, and ask him the square root of thirty-
six." But now it was my turn to be a little annoyed,
for at the same instant Mr. Bottles stepped into his
brougham, which was waiting for him, and observing 25
Arminius, his old enemy of the Reigate train, he took
no notice whatever of me who stood there, with my
hat in my hand, practising all the airs and graces I
have learnt on the Continent; but, with that want of
amenity I so often have to deplore in my countrymen, 3a
he pulled up the glass on our side with a grunt and a
jerk, and drove off like the wind, leaving Arminius in
COMPULSORY EDUCATION. -2\1
a very bad temper indeed, and me, I confess, a good
deal shocked and mortified.
However, both Arminius and I got over it, and have
now returned to London, where I hope we shall before
5 long have another good talk about educational mat-
ters. Whatever Arminius may say, I am still for
going straight, with all our heart and soul, at compul-
sory education for the lower orders. Why, good
heavens ! Sir, with our present squeezable Ministry,
ioweare evidently drifting fast to household suffrage,
pure and simple ; and I observe, moreover, a Jacob-
inical spirit growing up in some quarters which gives
me more alarm than even household suffrage. My
elevated position in Grub Street, Sir, where I sit cora-
15 mercing with the stars, commands a view of a certain
spacious and secluded back yard ; and in that back
yard, Sir, I tell you confidentially that I saw the other
day with my own eyes that powerful young publicist,
Mr. Frederic Harrison, in full evening costume, fur-
sobishingup a guillotine. These things are very seri-
ous ; and I say, if the masses are to have power, let
them be instructed, and don't swamp with ignorance
and unreason the education and intelligence which
now bear rule amongst us. For my part, when I think
25 of Lumpington's estate, family, and connections when
I think of Hittall's shooting, and of the energy and
self-reliance of Bottles, and when I see the unex-
ampled pitch of splendour and security to which these
have conducted us, I am bent, I own, on trying to
30 make the new elements of our political system
worthy of the old ; and I say kindly, but firmly, to
the compound householder in the French poet's beau-
248 COMPULSORY EDUCATION.
tiful words, 1 slightly altered: "Be Great, O working
class, for the middle and upper class are great ! "
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
Matthew Arnold. 5
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.
(From the autumn of this year (1867) dates one 01
the most painful memories of my life. I have men-
tioned in the last letter but one how in the spring I
was commencing the study of German philosophy 10
with Arminius. In the autumn of that year the cele-
brated young Comtist, Mr. Frederic Harrison, resent-
ing some supposed irreverence of mine towards his
master, permitted himself, in a squib, brilliant indeed,
but unjustifiably severe, to make game of my inapti- 15
tude for philosophical pursuits. It was on this occa-
sion he launched the damning sentence: " We seek
vainly in Mr. A. a system of philosophy with prin-
ciples coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and
derivative." The blow came at an unlucky moment 20
for me. I was studying, as I have said, German phi-
losophy with Arminius ; we were then engaged on
Hegel's " Phenomenology of Geist" and it was my
habit to develop to Arminius, at great length, my views
of the meaning of his great but difficult countryman. 25
One morning I had, perhaps, been a little fuller than
usual over a very profound chapter. Arminius was
suffering from dyspepsia (brought on, as I believe,
«. •<
Et tachez d'etre grand, car le peuple grandit."
COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 249
by incessant smoking); his temper, always irritable,
seemed suddenly to burst from all control, — he flung
the Phdnomenologie to the other end of the room, ex-
claiming : "That smart young fellow is quite right !
5 it is impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's
ear ! '' This led to a rupture, in which I think I may
fairly say that the chief blame was not on my side.
But two invaluable years were thus lost ; Arminius
abandoned me for Mr. Frederic Harrison, who must
10 certainly have many memoranda of his later conver-
sations, but has never given them, as I always did mine
of his earlier ones, to the world. A melancholy occa-
sion brought Arminius and me together again in
1869; the sparkling pen of my friend Leo has luckily
15 preserved the record of what then passed.) — Ed.
Friendship's Garland, ed. 1896, pp. 266-273.
** Xffe a Dream ! "
Versailles, November 26, 1870.
Mon Cher, —
An event has just happened which I confess frankly
will afflict others more than it does me, but which you
ought to be informed of.
Early this morning I was passing between Rueil and 5
Bougival, opposite Mont Valerien. How came I in
that place at that hour ? Mon c/ier, forgive my folly !
You have read Romeo and Juliet, you have seen me at
Cremorne, and though Mars has just now this belle
France in his gripe, yet you remember, I hope, enough 10
of your classics to know that, where Mars is, Venus is
never very far off. Early this morning, then, I was be-
tween Rueil and Bougival, with Mont Valerien in grim
proximity. On a bank by a poplar-tree at the road-
side, I saw a knot of German soldiers, gathered evi- 15
dently round a wounded man. I approached and
frankly tendered my help, in the name of British
humanity. What answer I may have got I do not
know ; for, petrified with astonishment, I recognised
in the wounded man our familiar acquaintance, Ar- 20
minius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh. A Prussian helmet
was stuck on his head, but there was the old hassock
of whity-brown hair, — there was the old square face, —
250
"LIFE A DREAM!" 251
there was the old blue pilot coat ! He was shot
through the chest, and evidently near his end. He
had been on outpost duty ; — the night had been quiet,
but a few random shots had been fired. One of these
5 had struck Arminius in the breast, and gone right
through his body. By this stray bullet, without glory,
without a battle, without even a foe in sight, had
fallen the last of the Von Thunder-ten-Tronckhs !
He knew me, and with a nod, " Ah," said he, " the
10 rowdy Philistine ! " You know his turn, outre in my
opinion, for flinging nicknames right and left. The
present, however, was not a moment for resentment.
The Germans saw that their comrade was in friendly
hands, and gladly left him with me. He had evi-
15 dently but a few minutes to live. I sate down on the
bank by him, and asked him if I could do anything to
relieve him. He shook his head. Any message to his
friends in England ? He nodded. I ran over the
most prominent names which occurred to me of the
20 old set. First, our Amphitryon, Mr. Bottles. " Say to
Bottles from me," said Arminius coldly, " that I hope
he will be comfortable with his dead wife's sister."
Next, Mr. Frederic Harrison. "Tell him," says
Arminius, " to do more in literature, — he has a talent
25 for it ; and to avoid Carlylese as he would the devil."
Then I mentioned a personage to whom Arminius had
taken a great fancy last spring, and of whose witty
writings some people had, absurdly enough, given Mr.
Matthew Arnold the credit, — Azamat-Batuk. Both
30 writers are simple ; but Azamat's is the simplicity of
shrewdness, the other's of helplessness. At hearing
the clever Turk's name, " Tell him only," whispers
252 "LIFE A DREAM.'"
Arminius, "when he writes about the sex, not to show
such a turn for sailing so very near the wind ! "
Lastly, I mentioned Mr. Matthew Arnold. I hope I
rate this poor soul's feeble and rambling performances
at their proper value ; but I am bound to say that at 5
the mention of his name Arminius showed signs of
tenderness. " Poor fellow ! " sighed he ; " he had a
soft head, but I valued his heart. Tell him I leave
him my ideas, — the easier ones ; and advise him from
me," he added, with a faint smile, " to let his Dissen- 10
ters go to the devil their own way ! "
At this instant there was a movement on the road at
a little distance from where we were, — some of the
Prussian Princes, I believe, passing ; at any rate, we
heard the honest German soldiers Hoch-ing, hur- 15
rahing, and God-blessing, in their true-hearted but
somewhat rococo manner. A flush passed over Von
Thunder-ten-Tronckh's face. " God bless Germany"
he murmured, " and confound all her kings and
princelings !" These were his last coherent words. 20
His eyes closed and he seemed to become uncon-
scious. I stooped over him and inquired if he had
any wishes about his interment. " Pangloss — Mr.
Lowe — mausoleum — Caterham," was all that, in
broken words, I could gather from him. His breath 25
came with more and more difficulty, his fingers felt
instinctively for his tobacco-pouch, his lips twitched ;
■ — he was gone.
So died, mon cher, an arrant Republican, and, to
speak my real mind, a most unpleasant companion. 30
His great name and lineage imposed on the Bottles
family, and authors who had never succeeded with the
"LIFE A DREAM!" 253
British public took pleasure in his disparaging criti-
cisms on our free and noble country; but for my part
I always thought him an overrated man.
Meanwhile I was alone with his remains. His
5 notion of their being transported to Caterham was of
course impracticable. Still, I did not like to leave an
old acquaintance to the crows, and I looked round in
perplexity. Fortune in the most unexpected manner
befriended me. The grounds of a handsome villa
10 came down to the road close to where I was ; at the
end of the grounds and overhanging the road was
a summer-house. Its shutters had been closed when
I first discovered Arminius; but while I was occupied
with him they had been opened, and a gay trio was
15 visible within the summer-house at breakfast. I could
scarcely believe my eyes for satisfaction. Three Eng-
lish members of Parliament, celebrated for their
ardent charity and advanced Liberalism, were sitting
before me adorned with a red cross and eating a
2oStrasburg pie ! I approached them and requested
their aid to bury Arminius. My request seemed to
occasion them painful embarrassment ; they muttered
something about " a breach of the understanding,"
and went on with their breakfast. I insisted, how-
25 ever ; and at length, having stipulated that what they
were about to do should on no account be drawn into
a precedent, they left their breakfast, and together we
buried Arminius under the poplar-tree. It was a
hurried business, for my friends had an engagement
30 to lunch at Versailles at noon. Poor Von Thunder-
ten-Tronckh, the earth lies light on him, indeed! I
could see, as I left him, the blue of his pilot coat and
254 "LIFE A DREAM!"
the whity-brown of his hair through the mould we had
scattered over him.
My benevolent helpers and I then made our way
together to Versailles. As I parted from them at the
Hotel des Reservoirs I met Sala. Little as I liked 5
Arminius, the melancholy scene I had just gone
through had shaken me, and I needed sympathy. I
told Sala what had happened. " The old story,"
says Sala; " life a dream ! Take a glass of brandy."
He then inquired who my friends were. " Three ia
admirable members of Parliament," I cried, "who,
donning the cross of charity " "I know," inter-
rupted Sala ; " the cleverest thing out ! "
But the emotions of this agitating day were not
yet over. While Sala was speaking, a group had 15
formed before the hotel near us, and our attention
was drawn to its central figure. Dr. Russell, of the
Times, was preparing to mount his war-horse. You
know the sort of thing, — he has described it himself
over and over again. Bismarck at his horse's head, 20
the Crown Prince holding his stirrup, and the old
King of Prussia hoisting Russell into the saddle.
When he was there, the distinguished public servant
waved his hand in acknowledgment, and rode slowly
down the street accompanied by the gamins of Ver-25
sailles, who even in their present dejection could not
forbear a few involuntary cries of "Quel ho mine J '"
Always unassuming, he alighted at the lodgings of
the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, a potentate of the
second or even the third order, who had beckoned to 30
him from the window.
The agitation of this scene for me, however (may
"LIFE A DREAM!" 255
I not add, mon c/ier, for you also, and for the whole
British press ?), lay in a suggestion which it called
forth from Sala. " It is all very well," said Sala,
" but old Russell's guns are getting a little honey-
5 combed ; anybody can perceive that. He will have
to be pensioned off, and why should you not succeed
him ? " We passed the afternoon in talking the thing
over, and I think I may assure you that a train has
been laid of which you will see the effects shortly.
10 For my part, I can afford to wait till the pear is
ripe ; yet I cannot, without a thrill of excitement,
think of inoculating the respectable but somewhat
ponderous Times and its readers with the divine
madness of our new style, — the style we have formed
15 upon Sala. The world, mon cher, knows that man
but imperfectly. I do not class him with the great
masters of human thought and human literature,
— Plato, Shakspeare, Confucius, Charles Dickens.
Sala, like us his disciples, has studied in the book of
20 the world even more than in the world of books.
But his career and genius have given him somehow
the secret of a literary mixture novel and fascinating
in the last degree : he blends the airy epicureanism
of the salons of Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety
25 of our English Cider-cellar. With our people and
country, mon cher, this mixture, you may rely upon
it, is now the very thing to go down ; there arises
every day a larger public for it ; and we, Sala's
disciples, may be trusted not willingly to let it die. —
50 Tout a vous, A Young Lion. 1
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.
1 1 am bound to say that in attempting to verify Leo's graphic
256 "LIFE A DREAM!"
(I have thought that the memorial raised to
Arminius would not be complete without the follow-
ing essay, in which, though his name is not actually
mentioned, he will be at once recognised as the lead-
ing spirit of the foreigners whose conversation is 5
quoted.
Much as I owe to his intellect, I cannot help some-
times regretting that the spirit of youthful paradox
which led me originally to question the perfections
of my countrymen, should have been, as it were, 10
prevented from dying out by my meeting, six years
ago, with Arminius. The Saturday Review, in an
article called " Mr. Matthew Arnold and his Country-
men," had taken my correction in hand, and I was
in a fair way of amendment, when the intervention 15
of Arminius stopped the cure, and turned me, as has
been often said, into a mere mouthpiece of this
dogmatic young Prussian. It was not that I did
not often dislike his spirit and boldly stand up to
him ; but, on the whole, my intellect was (there is 20
description of Dr. Russell's mounting on horseback, from the
latter's own excellent correspondence, to which Leo refers us, I
have been unsuccessful. Repeatedly I have seemed to be on
the trace of what my friend meant, but the particular descrip-
tion he alludes to I have never been lucky enough to light 25
upon.
I may add that, in spite of what Leo says of the train he and
Mr. Sala have laid, of Dr. Russell's approaching retirement, of
Leo's prospect of succeeding him, of the charm of the leonine
style, and of the disposition of the public mind to be fascinated 30
by it, — I cannot myself believe that either the public, or the
proprietors of the Times, are yet ripe for a change so revolu-
tionary. But Leo was always sanguine. — Ed.
"LIFE A DREAM I" 257
no use denying it) overmatched by his. The follow-
ing essay, which appeared at the beginning of 1866,
was the first proof of this fatal predominance,'
which has in many ways cost me so dear.)— Ed.
5 Friendship's Garland, ed. 1896. pp. 309-316.
JiS(Xj Our* topic at this moment Is the influence of
■^j^tX Religious establishments on culture ; and it is remark-
/v^m^ able that Mr. Bright, who has taken lately to repre-
J *-se*iting himself as, above all, a promoter of reason
ana of the simple natural truth of things, and hiss
| policy as a fostering of the growth of intelligence, —
*¥*&#£_, just the aims, as is well known, of culture also, — Mr.
[^Ij^^Biight, in a speech at Birmingham about education,
■^mjyJ seized on the very point which seems to concern our
U- - Jtopic, when he said : " I believe the people of the 10
United States have offered to the world more
'valuable information during the last forty years, than
all Europe put together." So . America, without
eligious establishments, seems to get ahead of us
all, even in light and the things of the mind. 15
On the other hand, another friend of reason and
the simple natural truth of things, M. Renan, says of
America, in a book he has recently published, what
seems to conflict violently with what Mr. Bright says.
Mr. Bright avers that not only have the United States 20
thus informed Europe, but they have done it without
a great apparatus of higher and scientific instruction
and by dint of all classes in America being " suffi-
ciently educated to be able to read, and to compre-
hend, and to think; and that, I maintain, is the 25
foundation of all subsequent progress." And then
458
AMERICA. 259
comes M. Renan, and says : " The sound instruction
of the people is an effect of the high culture of certain /+
classes. The count/ ies which, like the United States,
have created a considerable popular instruction without
5 any serious higher instruction, will long have to expiate
this fault by their intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity
of manners, their superficial spirit \ their lack of general
intelligence." x y^Ji dUu^tku^f & C^ctcX &I«-*~^
Now, which of these two friends of light are we<4io -u/^ixf_i
10 believe? M. Renan seems more to have in view^fcL^cLa £j
what we ourselves mean by culture ; because Mn 1
Bright always has in his eye what he calls " a com- « .
mendable interest" in politics and in political agita^ ^Hi^
tions. As he "said only the other day at Birminhham M»^ QJft
15 " At this moment, — in fact, I may say at every/ 'W-o.
moment in the history of a free country, — there is^
nothing that is so much worth discussing as politics."*
And he keeps repeating, with all the powers of his
noble oratory, the old story, how to the thoughtful-
2oness and intelligence of the people of great towns we
owe all our improvements in the last thirty years, and
how these improvements have hitherto consisted in
Parliamentary reform, and free trade, and abolition
of Church rates, and so on ; and how they are now
25 about to consist in getting rid of minority-members,
and in introducing a free breakfast-table, and in
abolishing the Irish Church by the power of the
1 " Les pays qui, comme les Etats-Unis, ont cree un enseigne-
ment populaire considerable sans instruction superieure serieuse,
30 expieront longtemps encore leur faute par leur mediocrite intel-
lectuelle, leur grossierete de mceurs, leur esprit superficiel, leui
manque d'intelligence generale."
260 AMERICA.
Nonconformists' antipathy to establishments, and
much more of the same kind. And though our
pauperism and ignorance, and all the questions which
are called social, seem now to be forcing themselves
upon his mind, yet he still goes on with his glorifying 5
of the great towns, and the Liberals, and their opera-
tions for the last thirty years. It never seems to occur
to him that the present troubled state of our social
life has anything to do with the thirty years' blind
worship of their nostrums by himself and our Liberal 10
friends, or that it throws any doubts upon the suffi-
ciency of this worship. But he thinks that what is
still amiss is due to the stupidity of the Tories, and
will be cured by the thoughtfulness and intelligence
of the great towns, and by the Liberals going on 15
gloriously with their political operations as before ; or
that it will cure itself. So we see what Mr. Bright
means by thoughtfulness and intelligence, and in what
matter, according to him, we are to grow in them.
And, no doubt, in America all classes read their news- 2a
paper, and take a commendable interest in politics,
more than here or anywhere else in Europe.
But in the following essay we have been led to
doubt the efficiency of all this political operating,
pursued mechanically as our race pursues it ; and we 25
found that general intelligence, as M. Renan calls it, or,
as we say, attention to the reason of things, was just
what we were without, and that we were without it
because we worshipped our machinery so devoutly.
Therefore, we conclude that M. Renan, more than 3a
Mr. Bright, means by reason and intelligence the same
thing as we do. And when M. Renan says that
AMERICA. 26 1
America, that chosen home of newspapers and politics,
is without general intelligence, we think it likely, from
the circumstances of the case, that this is so ; and
that in the things of the mind, and in culture and
5 totality, America, instead of surpassing us all, falls
short.
And, — to keep to our point of the influence of
religious establishments upon culture and a high
development of our humanity, — we can surely see
10 reasons why, with all her energy and fine gifts,
America does not show more of this development, or
more promise of this.^Tn the following essay it will
be seen how our society distributes itself into Bar-
barians, Philistines, and Populace ; and America is
15 just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and
the Populace nearly. This leaves the Philistines for
the great bulk of the nation ; — a livelier sort of Philis-
tine than ours, and with the pressure and false ideal
of our Barbarians taken away, but left all the more to
20 himself and to have his full swing. And as we have
found that the strongest and most vital part of English
Philistinism was the Puritan and Hebraising middle
class, and that its Hebraising keeps it from culture
and totality, so it is notorious that the people of the
25 United States issues from this class, and reproduces
its tendencies, — its narrow conception of man's
spiritual range and of his one thing needful. From
Maine to Florida, and back again, all America He-
braises.y/tHfficult as it is to speak of a people merely
30 from whjft one reads, yet that, I think, one may with-
out much fear of contradiction say. I mean, when in
the United States any spiritual side in man is wakened
262 AMERICA.
to activity, it is generally the religious side, and the
religious side in a narrow way ./'Social reformers go
\ to Moses or St. Paul for their doctrines, and have no
^^4 notion there is anywhere else to go to ; earnest young
/V*^ men at schools and universities, instead of conceivings
-u 1 salvation as a harmonious perfection only to be won
J"T Yr by unreservedly cultivating many sides in us, conceive
^ %P^\ of it in the old Puritan fashion, and fling themselves
jT^y ardently upon it in the old, false ways of this fashion,
which we know so well, and such as Mr. Hammond, ia
the American revivalist, has lately at Mr. Spurgeon's
Tabernacle been refreshing our memory with.
Now, if America thus Hebraises more than either
England or Germany, will any one deny that the absence
of religious establishments has much to do with it ? 15
We have seen how establishments tend to give us a
sense of a historical life of the human spirit, outside
and beyond our own fancies and feelings ; how they
thus tend to suggest new sides and sympathies in us
to cultivate ; how, further, by saving us from having 20
to invent and fight for our own forms of religion, they
give us leisure and calm to steady our view of religion
itself, — the most overpowering of objects, as it is the
grandest, — and to enlarge our first crude notions of
the one thing needful. But, in a serious people, 25
where every one has to choose and strive for his own
order and discipline of religion, the contention about
these non-essentials occupies his mind. His first
crude notions about the one thing needful do not get
purged, and they invade the whole spiritual man in 30
him, and then, making a solitude, they call it heavenly
peace.
AMERICA. 2 6 3
I remember a Nonconformist manufacturer, in a
t,wn of the Midland counties, telling me that when he
** came there, some years ago, the place had no
Ussenters ; but he had opened an Independent chapel
T'/f T c , hurch and Dissent u ' ere P rett y W
d de d , Wlth harp CQntests beuveen them 4 ^.7
flit this seemed a pity. " A pity ? ■■ cried he ; " not
ST r ° n,y f nk ° f aU the ZeaI a «d activity which
th .collision calls forth ! » "Ah, but, my dear friend »
»I iswered, "only think of all the nonsense which
ya now hold quite firmly, which you would never
ha held if you had not been contradicting your
adlrsary m it all these years ! " The more serious
people, and the more prominent the religious side
*5 in , the greater is the danger of this side, if set to
chQe out forms for itself and fight for existence
sweng and spreading till it swallows all other
TX\ S1 t\ UP ' ilUerce P ts and ^sorbs all nutriment
win should have gone to them, and leaves Hebraism
2oramnt in us and Hellenism stamped out.
Cure, and the harmonious perfection of our
whob ein and what we caU to ^^^ ^
3rM ry , maUerS - And eVGn the institutions,
whicshould develop these, take the same narrow
*5 and ; t,al view of humanity and its wants as the free
of mC C °r imitieS take - J«st as the free churches
of Mheecher or Brother Noyes, with their provin-
ciahind want of centrality, make mere Hebraisers
m rel, n and not perfect men, so the university of
3 oMr. la Cornell, a really noble monument of his
muniface, yet seems to rest on a misconception of
what ure truly is, and to be calculated to produce
264 , AMERICA.
miners, or engineers, or architects, not sweetness aid
light.
And, therefore, when Mr. White asks the same kiid
of question about America that he has asked about
■ England, and wants to know whether, without religims 5
establishments, as much is not done in America or
\the higher national life as is done for that life hre,
we answer in the same way as we did before, tha as
much is not done. Because to enable and stir up
people to read their Bible and the newspapers, ari to 10
get a practical knowledge of their business, doe not
serve to the higher spiritual life of a nation so mch
as culture, truly conceived, serves ; and a trueon-
ception of culture is, as M. Renan's words shovjust
3-vhat America fails in. 15
To the many who think that spirituality, and ^eet-
ness, and light, are all moonshine, this will not pear
to matter much ; but with us, who value thei and
who think that we have traced much of our esent
discomfort to the want of them, it weighs a gre deal. 20
So not only do we say that the Nonconforms have
got provincialism and lost totality by the wt of a
religious establishment, but we say that t very
example which they bring forward to help t'r case
makes against them ; and that when they triuihantly 25
show us America without religious establments,
they only show us a whole nation touched, *dst all
its greatness and promise, with that procialism
which it is our aim to extirpate in the Enjh Non-
conformist. — Culture a?id Anarchy, ed. i8o>p. xxi-30
xxviii - GjuutJU^ (^amajuTt i$&- t*_
Emerson. «/£*> Ou* ^/*^\jL
Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at ^iff/d,
Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my
memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible
season of youth hears such voices ! they are a posses-
5 sion to him for ever. No such voices as those which
we heard in our youth at Oxford are sounding there
now. Oxford has more criticism now, more knowl-
edge, more light ; but such voices as those of our
•H /fe^ 1 *' nas no l° n S er - The name of Cardinal New-
^X^4ornan is a great name to the imagination still ; his
■* genius and his style are still things of power. But he
is over eighty years old ; he is in the Oratory at Bir-
mingham ; he has adopted, for the doubts and difficul-
ties which beset men's minds to-day, a solution which,
15 to speak frankly, is impossible. Forty years ago he
was in the very prime of life ; he was close at hand
to us at Oxford ; he was preaching in St. Mary's pul-
pit every Sunday ; he seemed about to transform and
to renew what was for us the most national and
20 natural institution in the world, the Church of Eng-
land. Who could resist the charm of that spiritual
apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through
the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and
then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the
25 silence with words and thoughts which were a reli-
gious music, — subtle, sweet, mournful ? I seem to
265
hear him still, saying: "After the fever of life, aftel
wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despondings,
languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding ;
after all the changes and chances of this troubled,
unhealthy state, — at length comes death, at length 5
the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision." /I
Or, if we followed him back to his seclusion at Little-
more, that dreary village by the London road, and to
the house of retreat and the church which he built
there, — a mean house such as Paul might have lived 10
in when he was tent-making at Ephesus, a church
plain and thinly sown with worshippers, — who could
resist him there either, welcoming back to the severe
joys of church-fellowship, and of daily worship and
prayer, the firstlings of a generation which had well- 15
nigh forgotten them ? Again I seem to hear him :
" The season is chill and dark, and the breath of the
morning is damp, and worshippers are few ; but all
this befits those who are by their profession penitents
and mourners, watchers and pilgrims. More dear to 20
them that loneliness, more cheerful that severity, and
more bright that gloom, than all those aids and appli-
ances of luxury by which men nowadays attempt to
make prayer less disagreeable to them. True faith
does not covet comforts ; they who realise that awful 25
day, when they shall see Him face to face whose eyes
are as a flame of fire, will as little bargain to pray
pleasantly now as they will think of doing so then."
Somewhere or other I have spoken of those "last
enchantments of the Middle Age" which Oxford 30
sheds around us, and here they were ! But there
were other voices sounding in our ear besides New-
EMERSON. 267
man's. There was the puissant voice of Carlyle ; sG
sorely strained, over-used, and misused since, but
then fresh, comparatively sound, and reaching our
hearts with true, pathetic eloquence.^^Who can forget
5 the emotion of receiving in its first freshness such a
sentence as that sentence of Carlyle upon Edward
Irving, then just dead : " Scotland sent him forth a
herculean man ; our mad Babylon wore and wasted
him with all her engines, — and it took her twelve
10 years ! , / >yA greater voice still, — the greatest voice of
the century, — came to us in those youthful years
through Carlyle : the voice of Goethe^To this day,
— such is the force of youthful associations, — I read
the Wilhelm Meister with more pleasure in Carlyle's
15 translation than in the original. The large, liberal
view of human life in Wilhelm Meister, how novel it
was to the Englishman in those days ! and it was
salutary, too, and educative for him, doubtless, as
well as novel. But what moved us most in Wilhelm
20 Meister was that which, after all, will always move
the young most, — the poetry, the eloquence. Never,
surely, was Carlyle's prose so beautiful and pure as
in his rendering of the Youths' dirge over Mignon ! —
" Well is our treasure now laid up, the fair image of
25 the past. Here sleeps it in the marble, undecaying ;
in your hearts, also, it lives, it works. Travel, travel,
back into life ! Take along with you this holy earnest-
ness, for earnestness alone makes life eternity." Here
we had the voice of the great Goethe ; — not the stiff,
30 and hindered, and frigid, and factitious Goethe who
speaks to us too often from those sixty volumes of
his, but of the great Goethe, and the true one.
268 EMERSON.
And besides those voices, there came to us in that
old Oxford time a voice also from this side of the
Atlantic, — a clear and pure voice, which for my ear,
at any rate, brought a strain as new, and moving, and
unforgettable, as the strain of Newman, or Carlyle, or 5
Goethe^ 3vlr. Lowell has well described the appari-
tion of Emerson to your young generation here, in
that distant time of which I am speaking, and of his
workings upon them. He was your Newman, your
man of soul and genius visible to you in the flesh, 10
speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for
your heart and imagination. That is surely the most
potent of all influences ! nothing can come up to it.
/TTo us at Oxford Emerson was but a voice speaking
from three thousand miles away. But so well he 15
spoke, that from that time forth Boston Bay and
Concord were names invested to my ear with a senti-
ment akin to that which invests for me the names of
Oxford and of Weimar*; and snatches of Emerson's
strain fixed themselves in my mind as imperishably as 20
any of the eloquent words which I have been just
now quoting. " Then dies the man in you ; then
once more perish the buds of art, poetry, and science
as they have died already in a thousand thousand
men." " What Plato has thought, he may think ; what 25
a saint has felt, he may feel ; what at any time has
befallen any man, he can understand." "Trust thy-
self ! every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept
the place the Divine Providence has found for you,
the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of 30
events. Great men have always done so, and con-
fided themselves childlike to the genius of their age j
betraying their perception that the Ettrnal was stir* . y^^x^.
ring at their heart, working through their hands, pre- f^
dominating in all their being. And we are now men,
and must accept in the highest spirit the same tran-
5 scendent destiny ; and not pinched in a corner, not
cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers
and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay
plastic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and
advance on chaos and the dark ! " These lofty sen-
iotences of Emerson, and a hundred others of like
strain, I never have lost out of my memory ; I never
can lose them.
At last I find myself in Emerson's own country,
and looking upon Boston Bay. Naturally I revert to
15 the friend of my youth. It is not always pleasant
to ask oneself questions about the friends of one's
youth ; they cannot always well support it. Carlyle,
for instance, in my judgment, cannot well support
such a return upon him. Yet we should make the
20 return ; we should part with our illusions, we should
know the truth. When I come to this country, where
Emerson now counts for so much, and where such
high claims are made for him, I pull myself together,
and ask myself what the truth about this object of
25 my youthful admiration really is. Improper elements
often come into our estimate of men. We have lately
seen a German critic make Goethe the greatest of all
poets, because Germany is now the greatest of mili-
tary powers, and wants a poet to match. Then, too,
30 America is a young country; and young coun-
tries, like young persons, are apt sometimes to evince
in their literary judgments a want of scale and meas-
2 7° EMERSON.
ure. I set myself, therefore, resolutely to come at a
real estimate of Emerson, and with a leaning even to
strictness rather than to indulgence. That is the safer
course. Time has no indulgence ; any veils of
illusion which we may have left around an objects
because we loved it, Time is sure to strip away.
I was reading the other day a notice of Emerson
by a serious and interesting American critic. Fifty
or sixty passages in Emerson's poems, says this
critic, — who had doubtless himself been nourished 10
on Emerson's writings, and held them justly dear, —
fifty or sixty passages from Emerson's poems have
already entered into English speech as matter of
familiar and universally current quotation. Here is
a specimen of that personal sort of estimate which, for 15
my part, even in speaking of authors dear to me, I
would try to avoid. What is the kind of phrase of
which we may fairly say that it has entered into Eng-
ligh speech as matter of familiar quotation ! Such
a phrase, surely, as the " Patience on a monument "20
of Shakespeare ; as the " Darkness visible " of Milton ;
as the " Where ignorance is bliss " of Gray. Of not
one single passage in Emerson's poetry can it be truly
said that it has become a familiar quotation like
phrases of this kind. It is not enough that it should 25
be familiar to his admirers, familiar in New England,
familiar even throughout the United States ; it must
be familiar to all readers and lovers of English
poetry. Of not more than one or two passages in
Emerson's poetry can it, I think, be truly said, that 30
they stand ever-present in the memory of even many
lovers of English poetry. A great number of pas-
sages from his poetry are no doubt perfectly familiar
to the mind and lips of the critic whom I have men-
tioned, and perhaps a wide circle of American readers.
5 But this is a very different thing from being matter of
universal quotation, like the phrases of the legitimate
poets.
And, in truth, one of the legitimate poets, Emer-
son, in my opinion, is not. His poetry is interesting,
ioit makes one think ; but it is not the poetry of one of
the born poets. I say it of him with reluctance,
although I am sure that he would have said it of him-
self ; but I say it with reluctance, because I dislike
giving pain to his admirers, and because all my own
15 wish, too, is to say of him what is favourable. But I
regard myself, not as speaking to please Emerson's
admirers, not as speaking to please myself ; but rather,
I repeat, as communing with Time and Nature con-
cerning the productions of this beautiful and rare
20 spirit, and as resigning what of him is by their unalter-
able decree touched with caducity, in order the better
to mark and secure that in him which is immortal.
Milton says that poetry ought to be simple, sensu-
ous, impassioned. Well, Emerson's poetry is seldom
25 either simple, or sensuous, or impassioned. In
general it lacks directness ; it lacks concreteness ; it
lacks energy. His grammar is often embarrassed ;
in particular, the want of clearly-marked distinction
between the subject and the object of his sentence is
30 a frequent cause of obscurity in him. A poem which
shall be a plain, forcible, inevitable whole he hardly
ever produces. Such good work as the noble lines
272 EMERSON.
graven on the Concord Monument is the exception
with him ; such ineffective work as the " Fourth of
July Ode " or the " Boston Hymn " is the rule.
Even passages and single lines of thorough plainness
and commanding force are rare in his poetry. They 5
exist, of course ; but when we meet with them they
give us a slight shock of surprise, so little has Emer-
son accustomed us to them. Let me have the pleasure
of quoting one or two of these exceptional passages : —
" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, IO
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must.
The youth replies, I can."
Or again this : —
" Though love repine and reason chafe, 15
There came a voice without reply :
' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.'"
Excellent ! but how seldom do we get from him
a strain blown so clearly and firmly ! Take another 20
passage where his strain has not only clearness, it
has also grace and beauty : —
" And ever, when the happy child
In May beholds the blooming wild,
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing, 25
4 Onward,' he cries, ' your baskets bring !
In the next field is air more mild,
And in yon hazy west is Eden's balmier spring.' "
In the style and cadence here there is a reminis-
cence, I think, of Gray ; at any rate the pureness, 30
grace, and beauty of these lines are worthy even of
EMERSON. 273
Gray. But Gray holds his high rank as a poet, not
merely by the beauty and grace of passages in his
poems ; not merely by a diction generally pure in an
age of impure diction : he holds it, above all, by the
5 power and skill with which the evolution of his poems
is conducted. Here is his grand superiority to Collins,
whose diction in his best poem, the "Ode to Even-
ing," is purer than Gray's; but then the "Ode to
Evening " is like a river which loses itself in the
10 sand, whereas Gray's best poems have an evolution
sure and satisfying./^ Emerson's "Mayday," from
which I just now quoted, has no real evolution at all ;
it is a series of observations. And, in general, his
poems have no evolution.^Take, for example, his
15 " Titmouse." Here he has an excellent subject ; and
his observation of Nature, moreover, is always marvel-
lously close and fine. But compare what he makes
of his meeting with his titmouse with what Cowper
or Burns makes of the like kind of incident ! One
20 never quite arrives at learning what the titmouse
actually did for him at all, though one feels a strong
interest and desire to learn it ; but one is reduced to
guessing, and cannot be quite sure that after all one
has guessed right. He is not plain and concrete
25 enough, — in other words, not poet enough, — to be
able to tell us. And a failure of this kind goes
through almost all his verse, keeps him amid sym-
bolism and allusion and the fringes of things, and,
in spite of his spiritual power, deeply impairs his
30 poetic value.// Through the inestimable virtue of
concreteness, a simple poem like " The Bridge " of
Longfellow, or the " School Days " of Mr. Whittier,
274 EMERSON.
is of more poetic worth, perhaps, than all the verse
of Emerson.^
I do not, then, place Emerson among the great
poets. But I go further, and say that I do not place
him among the great writers, the great men of letters. 5
Who are the great men of letters ? They are men like
Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire, — writers
with, in the first place, a genius and instinct for style ;
writers whose prose is by a kind of native necessity
true and sound. Now the style of Emerson, like the 10
style of his transcendentalist friends and of the " Dial "
so continually, — the style of Emerson is capable of
falling into a strain like this, which I take from the
beginning of his " Essay on Love " : " Every soul is a
celestial being to every other soul. The heart has its 15
sabbaths and jubilees, in which the world appears as
a hymeneal feast, and all natural sounds and the circle
of the seasons are erotic odes and dances." Emerson
altered this sentence in the later editions. Like
Wordsworth, he was in later life fond of altering ; and 20
in general his later alterations, like those of Words-
worth, are not improvements. He softened the pass-
age in question, however, though without really
mending it. I quote it in its original and strongly-
marked form. Arthur Stanley used to relate that 25
about the year 1840, being in conversation with some
Americans in quarantine at Malta, and thinking to
please them, he declared his warm admiration for
Emerson's Essays, then recently published. How-
ever, the Americans shook their heads, and told him 30
that for home taste Emerson was decidedly too greeny.
We will hope, for their sakes, that the sort of thing
EMERSON. 27 5
they had in their heads was such writing as I have just
quoted. Unsound it is, indeed, and in a style almost
impossible to a born man of letters.
It is a curious thing that quality of style which
5 marks the great writer, the born man of letters. It
resides in the whole tissue of his work, and of his work
regarded as a composition for literary purposes. Bril-
liant and powerful passages in a man's writings do
not prove his possession of it ; it lies in their whole
10 tissue. Emerson has passages of noble and pathetic
eloquence, such as those which I quoted at the begin-
ning ; he has passages of shrewd and felicitous wit ;
he has crisp 'epigram ; he has passages of exquisitely
touched observation of nature. /'Yet he is not a great
15 writer ; his style has not the requisite wholeness of
good tissue. Even Carlyle is not, in my judgment, a
great writer. He has surpassingly powerful qualities
of expression, far more powerful than Emerson's, and
reminding one of the gifts of expression of the great
20 poets, — of even Shakespeare himself. What Emerson
so admirably says of Carlyle's " devouring eyes and
portraying hand." " those thirsty eyes, those portrait-
eating, portrait-painting eyes of thine, those fatal per-
ceptions," is thoroughly true.// What a description is
25 Carlyle's of the first publisher of Sartor Rcsartus, " to
whom the idea of a new edition of Sartor is frightful,
or rather ludicrous unimaginable " ; of this poor
Fraser, in whose " wonderful world of Tory pam-
phleteers, conservative Younger-brothers, Regent Street
50 loungers, Crockford gamblers, Irish Jesuits, drunken
reporters, and miscellaneous unclean persons (whom
nitre and much soap will not wash clean), not a sou]
276 EMERSON.
has expressed the smallest wish that way ? " What a
portrait, again, of the well-beloved John Sterling /
" One, and the best, of a small class extant here, who,
nigh drowning in a black wreck of Infidelity (lighted
up by some glare of Radicalism only, now growing 5
dim too), and about to perish, saved themselves into a
Coleridgian Shovel-Hattedness." What touches in
the invitation of Emerson to London ! "You shall
see block-heads by the million ; Pickwick himself
shall be visible, — innocent young Dickens, reserved for 10
a questionable fate. The great Wordsworth shall talk
till you yourself pronounce him to be a bore.
Southey's complexion is still healthy mahogany brown,
with a fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem run-
ning at full gallop. Leigh Hunt, man of genius in the 15
shape of a cockney, is my near neighbour, with good
humour and no common-sense ; old Rogers with his
pale head, white, bare, and cold as snow, with those
large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that sardonic
shelf chin. ' How inimitable it all is ! And finally, 20
for one must not go on forever, this version of a Lon-
don Sunday, with the public-houses closed during the
hours of divine service ! " It is silent Sunday ; the
populace not yet admitted to their beer-shops, till
the respectabilities conclude their rubric mummeries — 25
a much more audacious feat than beer.' )/ Yet even
Carlyle is not, in my judgment, to be called a great
writer ; one cannot think of ranking him with men
like Cicero and Plato and Swift and Voltaire. Emer-
son freely promises to Carlyle immortality for his 30
histories. They will not have it. Why? Because
the materials furnished to him by that devouring eye
EATER SO JV. 277
of his, and that portraying hand, were not wrought in
and subdued by him to what his work, regarded as a
composition for literary purposes, required. Occur-
ring in conversation, breaking out in familiar corre-
5 spondence, they are magnificent, inimitable ; nothing
more is required of them ; thus thrown out anyhow,
they serve their turn and fulfil their function. And,
therefore, I should not wonder if really Carlyle lived,
in the long run, by such an invaluable record as that
10 correspondence between him and Emerson, of which
we owe the publication to Mr. Charles Norton, — by
this and not by his works, as Johnson lives in Boswell,
not by his works. For Carlyle's sallies, as the staple
of a literary work, become wearisome ; and as time
15 more and more applies to Carlyle's works its stringent
test, this will be felt more and more. Shakespeare,
Moliere, Swift, — they, too. had, like Carlyle, the
devouring eye and the portraying hand. But they are
great literary masters, they are supreme writers, because
20 they knew how to work into a literary composition
their materials, and to subdue them to the purposes of
literary effect. Carlyle is too wilful for this, too * .
turbid, too vehement. "Q^JiXuJjL *-*- -^O^V 9 **-<*-*-*£
You will think I deal in nothing* but negatives. I %-UAVi
25 have been saying that Emerson is not one of the great 1
poets, the great writers. He has not their quality of
style. He is, however, the propounder of a phi-
losophy. The Platonic dialogues afford us the ex-
ample of exquisite literary form and treatment given
30 to philosophical ideas. Plato is at once a great liter-
ary man and a great philosopher. If we speak care-
fully, we cannot call Aristotle or Spinoza or Kant
278 EMERSON.
great literary men, or their productions great literary
works. But their work is arranged with such construc-
tive power that they build a philosophy, and are justly
called great philosophical writers. Emerson cannot,
I think, be called with justice a great philosophical 5
writer. He cannot build ; his arrangement of philo-
sophical ideas has no progress in it, no evolution ; he
does not construct a philosophy. Emerson himself
knew the defects of his method, or rather want of
method, very well ; indeed, he and Carlyle criticise 10
themselves and one another in a way which leaves
little for any one else to do in the way of formulating
their defects. Carlyle formulates perfectly the defects
of his friend's poetic and literary production when he
says of the " Dial " : "For me it is too ethereal, 15
speculative, theoretic ; I will have all things condense
themselves, take shape and body, if they are to have
my sympathy." And, speaking of Emerson's orations,
he says : " I long to see some concrete Thing, some
Event, Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of 20
Creation, which this Emerson loves and wonders at,
well Emersonised, — depictured by Emerson, filled with
the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him, then to
live by itself. If these orations balk me of this, how
profitable soever they may be for others, I will not 25
love them." Emerson himself formulates perfectly
the defect of his own philosophical productions, when
he speaks of his " formidable tendency to the lapidary
style. I build my house of boulders." " Here I sit
and read and write," he says again, "with very little 30
system, and, as far as regards composition, with the
mosi fragmentary result ; paragraphs incomprehensi-
EMERSON. 279
ble, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle."
Nothing can be truer ; and the work of a Spinoza or
Kant, of the men who stand as great philosophical
writers, does not proceed in this wise.
i Some people will tell you that Emerson's poetry7l~4tlX(_^
indeed, is too abstract, and his philosophy too v^ague,
but that his best work is his English TrafajJ^hzfpL .
English Traits are beyond question very pleasant <»./*
reading. It is easy to praise them, easy (KTcommendV ^vf\
10 the author of them. But I insist on always trying/
Emerson's work by the highest standards. I esteem ~U/HMH
him too much to try his work by any other. Tried) »*-**^
by the highest standards, and compared with th/ ° 1 ' VU-*
work of the excellent markers and recorders of the A _^
15 traits of human life, — of writers like Montaigne, LA
Bruyere, Addison, — the English Traits will not stand\ %?*&
the comparison. Emerson's observation has not the / ^
disinterested quality of the observation of these mas-
ters. It is the observation of a man systematically
20 benevolent, as Hawthorne's observation in Our Old
Hotne is the work of a man chagrined. Hawthorne's
literary talent is of the first order. His subjects are
generally not to me subjects of the highest interest ;
but his literary talent is of the first order, the finest, I
25 think, which America has yet produced, — finer, by
much, than Emerson's. Yet Our Old Home is not a
masterpiece any more than English Traits. In neither
of them is the observer disinterested enough. The
author's attitude in each of these cases can easily be
30 understood and defended. Hawthorne was a sensi-
tive man, so situated in England that he was perpetu-
ally in contact with the British Philistine ; and the
280 EMERSON.
British Philistine is a trying personage. Emerson's
systematic benevolence comes from what he himself
calls somewhere his " persistent optimism"; and his
persistent optimism is the root of his greatness and
the source of his charm. But still let us keep ours
literary conscience true, and judge every kind of
literary work by the laws really proper to it. The
kind of work attempted in the English Traits and in
Our Old Home is work which cannot be done per-
fectly with a bias such as that given by Emerson's 10
optimism or by Hawthorne s chagrin. Consequently,
neither English Traits nor Our Old Home is a work
of perfection in its kind.
Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the
Platos and Spinozas, not with the Swifts and Vol- 15
taires, not with the Montaignes and Addisons, can we
rank Emerson. His work of various kinds, when one
compares it with the work done in a corresponding
kind by these masters, fails to stand the comparison.
No man could see this clearer than Emerson himself. 20
It is hard not to feel despondency when we contem-
plate our failures and short-comings : and Emerson,
the least self-flattering and the most modest of men,
saw so plainly what was lacking to him that he had his
moments of despondency. "Alas, my friend," he 25
writes in reply to Carlyle, who had exhorted him to
creative work, — " Alas, my friend, I can do no such
gay thing as you say. I do not belong to the poets,
but only to a low department of literature, — the
reporters; suburban men." He deprecated his 30
friend's praise ; praise " generous to a fault," he calls
it ; praise " generous to the shaming of me, — cold,
EMERSON. 281
fastidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a
former letter you had said too much good of my poor
little arid book, which is as sand to my eyes. I can
only say that I heartily wish the book were better ;
5 and I must try and deserve so much favour from the
kind gods by a bolder and truer living in the months
to come, — such as may perchance one day release and
invigorate this cramp hand of mine. When I see how
much work is to be done ; what room for a poet, for
10 any spiritualist, in this great, intelligent, sensual, and
avaricious America, — I lament my fumbling fingers
and stammering tongue." Again, as late as 1870, he
writes to Carlyle : " There is no example of con-
stancy like yours, and it always stings my stupor into
15 temporary recovery and wonderful resolution to
accept the noble challenge. But ' the strong hours
conquer us '; and I am the victim of miscellany, —
miscellany of designs, vast debility, and procrastina-
tion." The forlorn note belonging to the phrase,
20 "vast debility," recalls that saddest and most dis-
couraged of writers, the author of Obennann, Senan-
cour, with whom Emerson has in truth a certain
kinship. He has, in common with Senancour, his
pureness, his passion for nature, his single eye ; and
25 here we find him confessing, like Senancour, a sense in
himself of sterility and impotence.
And now I think I have cleared the ground. I
have given up to Envious Time as much of Emerson
as Time can fairly expect ever to obtain. We have
30 not in Emerson a great poet, a great writer, a great
philosophy-maker. His relation to us is not that of
282 EMERSON.
one of those personages ; yet it is a relation of, I
think, even superior importance. His relation to us
is more like that of the Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is not a great writer, a
great philosophy-maker ; he is the friend and aider of 5
those wio would live in the spirit. Emerson is the
same^He is the friend and aider of those who would
live in the spirit. (/KM the points in thinking which
are necessary for this purpose he takes ; but he does
not combine them into a system, or present them as a io
regular philosophy. Combined in a system by a man
with the requisite talent for this kind of thing, they
would be less useful than as Emerson gives them to
us ; and the man with the talent so to systematise
them would be less impressive than Emerson. They 15
do very well as they now stand ; like " boulders," as
he says ; in " paragraphs incompressible, each sen-
tence an infinitely repellent particle." In such sen-
tences his main points recur again and again, and
become fixed in the memory. 20
We all know them. First and foremost, character.
Character is everything. " That which all things tend
to educe, — which freedom, cultivation, intercourse,
revolutions, go to form and deliver, — is character."
Character and self-reliance. 'Trust thyself! every 25
heart vibrates to that iron string." And yet we have
our being in a not ourselves. ' There is a power above
and behind us, and we are the channels of its com-
munications." But our lives must be pitched higher.
" Life must be lived on a higher plane; we must go up 30
to a higher platform, to which we are always invited
to ascend; there the whole scene changes." The good
EMERSON. 283
we need is for ever close to us, though we attain it
not. '' On the brink of the waters of life and truth,
we are miserably dying." This good is close to us,
moreover, in our daily life, and in the familiar, homely
5 places. "The unremitting retention of simple and
high sentiments in obscure duties, — that is the maxim
for us. Let us be poised and wise, and our own to-
day. Let us treat the men and women well, — treat
them as if they were real; perhaps they are. Men
10 live in their fancy, like drunkards whose hands are
too soft and tremulous for successful labour. I settle
myself ever firmer in the creed, that we should not
postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice
where we are, by whomsoever we deal with; accepting
15 our actual companions and circumstances, however
humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the
universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us.
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay,
you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of
20 foreign and classic topography. But here we are;
and if we will tarry a little we may come to learn that
here is best. See to it only that thyself is here."
Furthermore, the good is close to us all. " I resist
the scepticism of our education and of our educated
25 men. I do not believe that the differences of opinion
and character in men are organic. I do not recog-
nise, besides the class of the good and the wise, a
permanent class of sceptics, or a class of conserva-
tives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do not
30 believe in the classes. Everyman has a call of the
power to do something unique." Exclusiveness is
deadly. " The exclusive in social life does not see
284 EMERSON.
that he excludes himself from enjoyment in the at-
tempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion
does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on him-
self in striving to shut out others. Treat men as
pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as 5
they. If you leave out their heart you shall lose
your own. The selfish man suffers more from his
selfishness than he from whom that selfishness with-
holds some important benefit." A sound nature will
be inclined to refuse ease and self-indulgence. " To 10
live with some rigour of temperance, or some extreme
of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which com-
mon good nature would appoint to those who are at
ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood
with the great multitude of suffering men.'' Compen- 15
sation, finally, is the great law of life; it is everywhere,
it is sure, and there is no escape from it. This is that
" law alive and beautiful, which works over our heads
and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our
success when we obey it, and of our ruin when we 20
contravene it. We are all secret believers in it. It
rewards actions after their nature. The reward of a
thing well done is to have done it. The thief steals
from himself, the swindler swindles himself. You
must pay at last your own debt." 25
This is tonic indeed ! And let no one object that
t is too general; that more practical, positive direc-
A.-44O tion is what we want; that Emerson's optimism, self-
reliance, and indifference to favourable conditions for
< r^ i ^- our life and growth have in them something of dan- 30
ger. " Trust thyself;" " what attracts my attention
shall have it;" "though thou shouldst walk the world
EMERSON. 285
over thou shalt not be able to find a condition inop-
portune or ignoble;" " what we call vulgar society is
that society whose poetry is not yet written, but which
you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as
5 any." With maxims like these, we surely it may be
said, run some risk of being made too well satisfied
with our own actual self and state, however crude and
inperfect they may be. '' Trust thyself ? '' It may be
said that the common American or Englishman is
;o more than enough disposed already to trust himself.
I often reply, when our sectarians are praised for fol-
lowing conscience : Our people are very good in
following their conscience ; where they are not so
good is in ascertaining whether their conscience tells
*5 them right. ' What attracts my attention shall have
it?'' Well, that is our people's plea when they run
after the Salvation Army and desire Messrs. Moody
and Sankey. ' Thou shalt not be able to find a con-
dition inopportune or ignoble ? ' But think of the
20 turn of the good people of our race for producing a
life of hideousness and immense ennui ; think of that
specimen of your own New England life which Mr.
Howells gives us in one of his charming stories which
I was reading lately; think of the life of that ragged
25 New England farm in the Lady of the Aroostook; think
of Deacon Blood, and Aunt Maria, and the straight-
backed chairs with black horse-hair seats and Ezra
Perkins with perfect self-reliance depositing his trav-
ellers in the snow ! I can truly say that in the little
30 which I have seen of the life of New England, I am
more struck with what has been achieved than with
the crudeness and failure. Ikit no d -ubt there is still
286 EMERSON.
a great deal of crudeness also. Your own novelists
say there is, and I suppose they say true. In the New
England, as in the Old, our people have to learn, I
suppose, not that their modes of life are beautiful and
excellent already; they have rather to learn that they 5
must transform them.
To adopt this line of objection to Emerson's deliver-
ances would, however, be unjust. In the first place,
Emerson's points are in themselves true, if understood
in a certain high sense ; they are true and fruitful. 10
And the right work to be done, at the hour when he
appeared, was to affirm them generally and absolutely.
Only thus could he break through the hard and fast
barrier of narrow, fixed ideas, which he found con-
fronting him, and win an entrance for new ideas. 15
Had lie attempted developments which may now
strike us as expedient, he would have excited fierce
antagonism, and probably effected little or nothing.
The time might come for doing other work later, but
the work which Emerson did was the right work to be 20
done then.
In the second place, strong as was Emerson's
optimism, and unconquerable as was his belief in a
good result to emerge from all which he saw going on
around him, no misanthropical satirist ever saw short- 25
comings and absurdities more clearly than he did. or
exposed them more courageously. When he sees " the
meanness," as he calls it, ''of American politics,' he
congratulates Washington on being '' long already
happily dead," on being 'wrapt in his shroud and 30
for ever safe." With how firm a touch he delineates
the faults of your two great political parties of forty
EMERSON. 287
years ago! The Democrats, he says, "have not at
heart the ends which give to the name of democracy
what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our
American radicalism is destructive and aimless ; it is
5 not loving ; it has no ulterior and divine ends, but is
destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On
the other side, the conservative party, composed of the
most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the popu-
lation, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It
10 vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it
brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy.
From neither party, when in power, has the world any
benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all
commensurate with the resources of the nation." Then
15 with what subtle though kindly irony he follows the
gradual withdrawal in New England, in the last half
century, of tender consciences from the social
organisations, — the bent for experiments such as that
of Brook Farm and the like, — follows it in all its
20 " dissidence of dissent and Protestantism of the Pro-
testant religion ! " He even loves to rally the New
Englander on his philanthropical activity, and to find
his beneficence and its institutions a bore ! " Your
miscellaneous popular charities, the education at col-
25 lege of fools, the building of meeting-houses to the
vain end to which many of these now stand, alms to
sots, and the thousand-fold relief societies, — though I
confess with shame that I sometimes succumb and
give the dollar, yet it is a wicked dollar, which by and.
30 by I shall have the manhood to withhold." "Our
Sunday schools and churches and pauper societies
are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please
288 EMERSON.
nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the
same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive."
" Nature does not like our benevolence or our learning
much better than she likes our frauds and wars.
When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the 5
Abolition convention, or the Temperance meeting, or
the Transcendental club, into the fields and woods,
she says to us : ' So hot, my little sir ? ' "
Yes, truly, his insight is admirable ; his truth is
precious. Yet the secret of his effect is not even in 10
these ; it is in his temper. It is in the hopeful, serene,
beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are
indissolubly joined ; in which they work, and have
their being. He says himself : " We judge of a man's
wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of 15
the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth."
If this be so, how wise is Emerson ! for never had
man such a sense of the inexhaustibleness of nature,
and such hope. It was the ground of his being ; it
never failed him. Even when he is sadly avowing 20
the imperfection of his literary power and resources,
lamenting his fumbling fingers and stammering tongue,
he adds : " Yet, as I tell you, I am very easy in my
mind and never dream of suicide. My whole phi-
losophy, which is very real, teaches acquiescence and 25
optimism. Sure I am that the right word will be
spoken, though I cut out my tongue." In his old age,
with friends dying and life failing, his tone of cheerful,
forward-looking hope is still the same. "A multitude
of young men are growing up here of high promise, 30
and I compare gladly the social poverty of my youth
with the power on which these draw." His abiding
EMERSON. 289
word for us, the word by which being dead he yet
speaks to us, is this : " That which befits us, embosomed
in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and
courage, and the endeavour to realise our aspirations.
5 Shall not the heart, which has received so much, trust
the Power by which it lives ? "
// One can scarcely overrate the importance of thus
holding fast to happiness and hope. It gives to Em-
erson's work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth's
10 poetry is, in my judgment, the most important work
done in verse, in our language, during the present
century, so Emerson's Essays are, I think, the most
important work done in prose. His work is more im-
portant than Carlyle's. Let us be just to Carlyle,
15 provoking though he often is. Not only has he that
genius of his which makes Emerson say truly of his
letters, that, " they savour always of eternity." More
than this may be said of him. The scope and upshot
of his teaching are true ; " his guiding genius," to
20 quote Emerson again, is really "his moral sense, his
perception of the sole importance of the truth and
justice." But considei Carlyle's temper, as we have
been considering Emerson's ! take his own account of
it ! " Perhaps London is the proper place for me
25 after all, seeing all places are /^proper : who knows ?
Meanwhile, I lead a most dyspeptic, solitary, self-
shrouded life ; consuming, if possible in silence, my
considerable daily allotment of pain ; glad when any
strength is left in me for writing, which is the only
30 use I can see in myself, — too rare a case of late. The
ground of my existence is black as death ; too black,
when all void too ; but at times there paint themselves
290 EMERSON.
on it pictures of gold, and rainbow, and lightning ; all
the brighter for the black ground, I suppose. Withal,
I am very much of a fool." — No, not a fool, but turbid
and morbid, wilful and perverse. " We judge of a
man's wisdom by his hope." 5
Carlyle's perverse attitude towards happiness cuts
him off from hope. He fiercely attacks the desire for
happiness ; his grand point in Sartor, his secret in
which the soul may find rest, is that one shall cease to
desire happiness, that one should learn to say to one- 10
self : " What if thou wert born and predestined not to
be happy, but to be unhappy ! " He is wrong ; Saint
Augustine is the better philosopher, who says : "Act
we must in pursuance of what gives us most delight."
Epictetus and Augustine can be severe moralists 15
enough ; but both of them know and frankly say that
the desire for happiness is the root and ground of
man's being. Tell him and show him that he places
his happiness wrong, that he seeks for delight where
delight will never be really found ; then you illumine 20
and further him. But you only confuse him by telling
him to cease to desire happiness ; and you will not
tell him this unless you are already confused yourself.
Carlyle preached the dignity of labour, the necessity
of righteousness, the love of veracity, the hatred of 25
shams. He is said by many people to be a great
teacher, a great helper for us, because he does so.
But what is the due and eternal result of labour, right-
eousness, veracity ? — Happiness. And how are we
drawn to them by one who, instead of making us feel 30
that with them is happiness, tells us that perhaps we
were predestined not to be happy but to be unhappy ?
EMERSON. 291
You will find, in especial, many earnest preachers of
our popular religion to be fervent in their praise and
admiration of Carlyle. His insistence on labour,
righteousness, and veracity, pleases them ; his con-
5 tempt for happiness pleases them too. I read the
other day a tract against smoking, although I do not
happen to be a smoker myself. "Smoking," said the
tract, " is liked because it gives agreeable sensations.
Now it is a positive objection to a thing that it gives
10 agreeable sensations. An earnest man will expressly
avoid what gives agreeable sensations." Shortly after-
wards I was inspecting a school, and I found the chil-
dren reading a piece of poetry on the common theme
that we are here to-day and gone to-morrow. I shall
15 soon be gone, the speaker in this poem was made
to say, —
" And I shall be glad to go,
For the world at best is a dreary place,
And my life is getting low."
20 How usual a language of popular religion that is, on
our side of the Atlantic at any rate ! But then our
popular religion, in disparaging happiness here below,
knows very well what it is after. It has its eye on a
happiness in a future life above the clouds, in the
25 New Jerusalem, to be won by disliking and rejecting
happiness here on earth. And so long as this ideal
stands fast it is very well. But for very many it now
stands fast, no longer ; for Carlyle, at any rate, it had
failed and vanished. Happiness in labour, righteous-
3oness, and veracity, — in the life of the spirit, — here was
a gospel still for Carlyle to preach, and to help others
by preaching. But he baffled them and himself by
*9 2 EMERSON.
preferring the paradox that we are not born for hap-
piness at all.
Happiness in labour, righteousness, and veracity ;
in all the life of the spirit ; happiness and eternal
hope ; — that was Emerson's gospel. I hear it said 5
that Emerson was too sanguine ; that the actual gen-
eration in America is not turning out so well as he ex-
pected. Very likely he was too sanguine as to the
near future ; in this country it is difficult not to be too
sanguine. Very possibly the present generation may 10
prove unworthy of his high hopes ; even several gen-
erations succeeding this may prove unworthy of them.
But by his conviction that in the life of the spirit is
happiness, and by his hope that this life of the spirit
will come more and more to be sanely understood, ts
and to prevail, and to work for happiness, — by this
conviction and hope Emerson was great, and he will
surely prove in the end to have been right in them.
In this country it is difficult, as I said, not to be san-
guine. Very many of your writers are over-sanguine, 20
and on the wrong grounds. But you have two men
who in what they have written show their sanguineness
in a line where courage and hope are just, where they
are also infinitely important, but where they are not
easy. The two men are Franklin and Emerson. 1 25
These two are, I think, the most distinctively and
honourably American of your writers ; they are the
most original and the most valuable. Wise men
1 I found with pleasure that this conjunction of Emerson's
name with Franklin's had already occurred to an accomplished 30
writer and delightful man, a friend of Emerson, left almost the
EMERSON: 293
everywhere know that we must keep up our courage
and hope ; they know that hope is, as Wordsworth
well says, —
" The paramount duty which Heaven lays,
5 For its own honour, on man's suffering heart."
But the very word duty points to an effort and a strug-
gle to maintain our hope unbroken. Franklin and
Emerson maintained theirs with a convincing ease,
an inspiring'joy. Franklin's confidence in the happi-
ioness with which industry, honesty, and economy will
crown the life of this work-day world, is such that he
runs over with felicity. With a like felicity does
Emerson run over, when he contemplates the happi-
ness eternally attached to the true life in the spirit.
15 You cannot prize him too much, nor heed him too
diligently. He has lessons for both the branches of
our race. I figure him to my mind as visible upon
earth still, as still standing here by Boston Bay, or at
his own Concord, in his habit as he lived, but of
20 sole survivor, alas ! of the famous literary generation of Boston, —
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Holmes has kindly allowed
me to print here the ingenious and interesting lines, hitherto un-
published, in which he speaks of Emerson thus : —
" Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song,
25 Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong?
He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise,
Born to unlock the secret of the skies ;
And which the nobler calling — if 'tis fair
Terrestrial with celestial to compare —
30 To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame,
Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came
Amidst the sources of its subtile fire,
And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre ?
294 EMERSON.
heightened stature and shining feature, with one hand
stretched out towards the East, to our laden and
labouring England; the other towards the ever-growing
West, to his own dearly-loved America, — "great, intel-
ligent, sensual, avaricious America." To us he shows 5
for guidance his lucid freedom, his cheerfulness and
hope ; to you his dignity, delicacy, serenity, elevation.
— Discourses in America, ed. 1896, pp. 138-207.
NOTES.
I. — The Function of Criticism. This essay stands first
in Arnold's Essays in Criticism : First Series (1865). It
may be regarded as a "programme" of Arnold's subse-
quent prose writing. It suggests nearly all the various
uses to which he afterward turned criticism: his applica-
tion of it to social conditions, to science, to philosophy, and
to religion, as well as to literature. Properly read, it has
also something to say of the causes that gradually led
Arnold away from poetry to prose.
1 : 4. — / said. See On Translating Homer, ed. 1883,
p. 199.
1 : 20. — Mr. Shairp's excellent notice. An essay on
Wordsworth: The Man and the Poet, that appeared in
the North British Review for August, 1864, vol. xli.
" Mr. Shairp " was in 1865 Professor of Humanity at the
United College in St. Andrews University, In 186S he
was made Principal of the College. In 1877 he became
Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. He is
best remembered by a series of lectures delivered at
Oxford on Aspects of Poetry (188 1). On the Poetic Inter-
pretation of Nature had appeared in 1877. He died in
1885.
2 : 5. — Wordsworth, . . . in one of his letters. See
Memoirs of William Wordsworth, ed. TS51, ii. 51. The
passage occurs in a letter of 1816 to the Quaker poet,
Bernard Barton (Lamb's friend and correspondent), who,
on the appearance of the Excursion, had "addressed
some verses to Wordsworth expressing his own admiration,
unabated by the strictures of the reviewers."
3 : 16. — Irenes. Johnson's play of Irene was produced
295
296 NOTES.
in 1749. " One of the heaviest and most unreadable of
dramatic performances; interesting now, if interesting at
all, solely as a curious example of the result of bestowing
great powers upon a totally uncongenial task. . . The
play was carried through nine nights by Garrick's friendly
zeal, so that the author had his three nights' profits. . .
When asked how he felt upon his ill-success, he replied :
' Like the monument.' " Leslie Stephen's Johnson (Eng-
lish Men of Letters Series), p. 36.
3 : 17. — Lives of the Poets. In these Lives (1779-81)
Johnson is at his best. His wide and accurate informa-
tion, vigorous understanding, and strong common sense
give his judgments permanent value, despite the limita-
tions of the eighteenth-century horizon.
3 : 19.— Ecclesiastical Sonnets. This series of 132 son-
nets (1821-22) deals with the history of the Church in
England " from the introduction of Christianity " to " the
present times." Despite Arnold's sneer, several of the
sonnets — notably those on Cranmer and on Walton's Book
of Lives— are in Wordsworth's best manner.
3 : 20. — Celebrated Preface. The allusion is to the
Preface prefixed to the second edition (1800) of the Lyrical
Ballads. Passages in the Preface remain among the most
suggestive and memorable things that have been said of
poetry. " Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all
knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in
the countenance of all science." . . "The remotest dis-
coveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist will
be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it
can be employed; if the time should ever come when these
things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under
which they are contemplated by the followers of these
respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably mate-
rial to us as enjoying and suffering beings; if the time
should ever come when what is now called science, thus
familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were,
a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine
spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the
NOTES. 297
Being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the
household of man." Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 3d
ed., London, 1802, pp. xxxvii and xxxix.
3 : 23. — Goethe. The student should specially note the
recurrence of Goethe's name throughout this " pro-
gramme " of Arnold's critical work. Cf. Introduction,
p. lxxix.
6 : n. — Too abstract. Cf. Selections, p. 36, 1. 24, and
Introduction, pp. xliii-xlix.
8 : 20. — No national glow of life and thought. Cf. Kuno
Francke's Social Forces in German Literature, p. 528.
" There is a deep pathos in the fact that the principal
character of the play with which Goethe in 1815 celebrated
the final triumph of the German cause should have been a
dim figure of Greek antiquity — Epimenides, the legendary
sage who awakens from a sleep of long years to find himself
alone among a people whose battles he has not fought,
whose pangs he has not shared."
10 : 13. — The old woman. On July 23, 1637, the attempt
was made in St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh, to read the
new service prescribed by Charles I. for Scotland. A dan-
gerous riot followed. According to tradition, the riot was
started by one Jenny Geddes, who threw her stool at the
Dean's head, crying out, " Villain, dost thou say mass at
my lug! " The latest authorities regard Jenny as legend-
ary. See Burton's History of Scotland (1S73), vi. 150,
12 : i.—Joubert. See Pense'es de J. Joubert, Paris,
1869, i. 178. The sentence quoted is the second aphorism
under Titre xv.—De la liberie" , de la justice et des lois.
12 : 31. — Burke. For representative extracts from
Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, see Bliss
Perry's Selections from Burke (1S96), pp. 143-202.
13 : 23. — Dr. Price. Richard Price, D. D. (1723-91),
long a preacher at various meeting-houses in Hackney,
London, was one of the most prominent English advocates
of the " Rights of Man." Because of his defense of the
American revolutionists he was in 1788 invited by Congress
to " come and reside among a people who knew how to
298 NOTES.
appreciate his talents." From 17S9 to 1791 he defended
vigorously in England the new order of things in France.
13 : 29. — " To party gave up." From Goldsmith's epi-
taph (in Retaliation) on " good Edmund."
15 : 6 — Lord Auckland. William Eden (1744-1814), was
in 1785 Pitt's special envoy for the negotiation of an im-
portant treaty with France. During the next few years
he was of the utmost service to Pitt through his skillful
conduct of many pieces of diplomatic business. He
received a peerage as Baron Auckland in 1789.
15 : 28. — Curiosity. Cf. what Arnold says, in 1867, on
this same point in his lecture on Culture and its Enemies,
a lecture that later became chap. i. of Culture and A7iar-
<r/£/(i869). See Selections, pp. 147-148.
19:15. — 77/i? Home and Foreign Review. Published
in London from 1862 to 1864.
20 : 15. — Sir Charles Adderley. A Conservative states-
man, who held important offices in the Colonial and Edu-
cational Departments, under Lord Derby, 1858-59 and
1866-6S.
20 : 24. — Mr. Roebuck. Member for Sheffield and a
typical representative in 1S65 of the advanced Liberal
party. Cf. Selections, p. 173, 1. 9.
21 : 4. — " D is IVenige." From Goethe's Iphigenie auf
Tauris, I. ii. 91-92.
24: 2. — Detachment. For the Indian Buddhist, the per-
fect life involves withdrawal from the world, " habitual
silence," and severe "meditation." Cf. J. Barthelemy
Saint-Hilaire's The Buddha and his Religion, translated
by Laura Ensor, London, 1895, pp. 160-161.
25 : 17. — Lord Somcrs (1650-1716). The great cham-
pion of the English Constitution as determined by the
Revolution of 16S8. See the brilliant characterization of
Somers in Macaulay's History of England, chap. xx.
25 : 18. — Philistines. See Selections and Notes, pp. 132
and 139.
25 : iS. — Cobbett. William Cobbett (1762-1S35) was one
of the most violent of English democratic agitators. He
NOTES. 299
was in America for a time, and from 1796 to 1801 published
in Philadelphia Peter Porcupine's Gazette. On his re-
turn to England he took back with him what was left of
Tom Paine. He was Member of Parliament from 1S32
to 1835. For Heine's opinion of Cobbett see Selections,
p. 142. Cobbett was continually producing newspaper
articles and pamphlets, and was also author of many pre-
tentious works. He wrote on a large variety of subjects :
English grammar, European politics, English party poli-
tics, economic problems, religion, the Reformation. A
collected edition of some of his more permanently valuable
writings on politics was issued in six volumes by his sons
in 1835. In the Study of Celtic Literature {Selections,
p. 02), Arnold speaks of " Cobbett's sinewy, idiomatic
English."
25 : 23.— Latter-Day Pamphlets. The first of these
was published in February, 1850. While admitting the
inevitableness of Democracy, they attacked many popular
democratic superstitions, and urged that all men devote
themselves to honest work and give over cheap oratory
and political agitations.
25 : 24. — Mr. Ruskin. See, for example, Mr. Ruskin's
Fors Clavigcra.
27 : 6. — Obermann. See Senancour's Obermann, ed.
1863, Letter xc: — " L'homme est perissable. — II se peut ;
mais perissons en resistant, et, si le neant nous est reserve,
ne faisons pas que ce soit une justice." ' Man is doomed to
perish. — It may be so; but let us perish while resisting, and,
if nothingness awaits us, let us ensure that it be not a just
apportionment.' Arnold's writings contain many admiring
allusions to Senancour (1770-1846). Obermann (1804) is the
story of a dreamer of delicately romantic temperament,
recited through a series of letters that are exquisite in
phrase and in imaginative quality. Spiritual, philosophic,
religious, and artistic problems come up for finely melan-
choly moralizing, and there is much sensitive transcription
from nature. Amiel seems to have been an attempt on
the part of the world-order to realize Obermann.
300 NOTES.
27 : 10. — Bishop Colenso. The first volume of his The
Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined was
published in 1862. It urged the "impossibility of regard-
ing the Mosaic story as a true narrative of actual historical
matters of fact." Arnold's essay on Colenso bore the title
The Bishop and the Philosopher (the philosopher is
Spinoza), and appeared in AT ac mi Han's Magazine for
January, 1863. Arnold found Colenso's book not spirit-
ually edifying for the uninstructed, and too cheap in its
scholarship and methods for people of real cultivation.
Colenso was Bishop of Natal ; he died in 1883.
28 : 3. — Joubert. See Pensees de J. Joubert, ed. 1869, i.
311, Titre xxiii., Des Oualites de I'i'crivain. " L'ignor-
ance, qui, en morale, attenue la faute, est, elle-meme, en
litterature, une faute capitale."
28 : 12. — Dr. Stanley. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean
of Westminster. Cf. 274 : 25. The book in question is The
Bible : Its Form and its Substance (1863). It admits the
indefensibility of the theory of literal inspiration, but con-
tends that in the study of the Scriptures " the main end to
be sought is an increased acquaintance with the Bible, and
increased appreciation of its instruction."
28 : 23. — Eighty and odd pigeons. The allusion is to one
of the mathematical problems by which Bishop Colenso
would discredit the Pentateuch. Arnold's account in his
Macmillan article of this particular problem is as follows :
" If three priests have to eat 264 pigeons a day, how many
must each priest eat? That disposes of Leviticus."
29 : 1. — A lady. Frances Power Cobbe (b. 1822). She
has been very influential as a writer for periodicals, as a
lecturer on social topics, as an advocate of women's rights,
and of late years as an opponent of vivisection. She has
written much on religion from the point of view of a theist
and Unitarian.
29 : 5. — AT. Penan's (1823-92) book was the famous Vie
de Jesus (1863). Of Renan's many works on Hebrew lit-
erature the best known is the elaborate Histoire des
Origines du Chrislianisme, of which the prefatory volume
NOTES. 3 01
was the Vie de Jhus. Later volumes were Les Apotres
(1S66), I'L^glise chretienne (1879).
29: 11. — " Has been given the strength.'''' The quota-
tion conies from 'p. 134 of Miss Cobbe's Broken Lights
(1864), a book in which, as Matthew Arnold has just noted,
she makes a general " survey of the religious state of
Europe."
29 : 20. — Dr. Strauss 's book. Strauss (1808-74) published
his original Life of fesas (" Das Leben Jesu, kritisch
bearbeitet ") in 1835. His attempt was to account for the
miraculous element in New Testament story as the product
of the myth-making popular imagination working under the
influence of the Messianic ideal. He published, in 1864,
a popular edition of his " Leben Jesu," with the title " Das
Leben Jesu ; fur das Deutsche Volk bearbeitet." This is
the book alluded to in the text. The earlier book, it may be
noted, was translated into English by George Eliot in 1846.
30 : 16. — Nemo doctus. See Cicero's Alt., xv. 7 :
" Nemo doctus umquam (multa autem de hoc genere
scripta sunt) mutationem consilii, inconstantiam dixit
esse."
30 : 20. — Coleridge's . . . phrase. See Coleridge's Con-
fessions of an Inquiring Spirit : " In my last letter I said
that in the Bible there is more that finds me than I have
experienced in all other books put together ; that the
words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being ;
and that whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible
evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit."
Letter II.
31 : 10. — Religious Duty. Published in 1864 ; a kind of
Unitarian guide to spirituality and morality.
33 '• 31. — Bossuet's philosophy of history. In his Dis-
cours sur I'histoire universe! le (1681) Bossuet, though
attaining something like a conception of the continuity of
history, nevertheless explains the course of events as
divinely directed in rather obviously providential ways for
the benefit of Christianity in general and of the Roman
Church in particular. Arnold's point is, of course, that
3°2 NOTES,
what was perhaps the most characteristic doctrine of the
Reformation, " Luther's theory of grace," is, when judged
by philosophical standards, no more satisfactory as a piece
of theorizing than Bossuet's attempt to expound all history
as merely preparing the way for the ecclesiasticism of the
age of Louis Quatorze.
34 : i. — Bishop of Durham 's. In 1865 the Bishop of
Durham was Charles Baring, a prelate of whom nothing
seems preserved beyond the historical fact of his prelacy.
35 : 10. — Ab integro. From Vergil's Eclogues, iv. 5 ;
best translated by a line from Shelley's Hellas, " The
world's great age begins anew."
40. — On Translating Homer. Matthew Arnold was
made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857. He pub-
lished, in 1858, Merope, a tragedy, in imitation of the
Greek ; the preface expounded the theory of Greek
tragedy. In i860 he began a special series of three lec-
tures on translating Homer. In a letter dated October 29,
i860, he writes: " I am in full work at my lecture on
Homer, which you have seen advertised in the Times.
I give it next Saturday. I shall try to lay down the true
principles on which a translation of Homer should be
founded, and I shall give a few passages translated by
myself to add practice to theory. This is an off lecture,
given partlv because I have long had in my mind some-
thing to say about Homer, partly because of the com-
plaints that I did not enough lecture on poetry. I shall
still give the lecture, continuing my proper course, toward
the end of the term." Letters, i. 145-146. These lectures
were published in 1861. The Selection, pp. 40-66, is the
entire first lecture.
40. — Nunquamne reponam? See Juvenal's Satires, i. 1 :
" Semper ego auditor tantum? Numquamne reponam
Vexatus toties ranci Theseide Cordi? "
' Shall I be always a hearer only ? Shall I be vexed so often by
the T/ieseis of husky-voiced Cordus and never take revenge ? '
40 : 16. — Professor Newman. Francis W. Newman
(b. 1805), brother of Cardinal Newman, studied at Oxford
NOTES. 3°3
and, after various experiences as tutor and traveler, was,
in 1846, made Professor of Latin in University College,
London ; he resigned this position in 1863. His translation
of the Iliad was published in 1856. Professor Newman
has written essays and treatises on a wide range of subjects
from theology and elementary geometry to Arabic. His
scholarship is universally admitted ; his poetic accomplish-
ments may be judged from the following extract from his
Iliad:
" Achilles, image of the gods ! thy proper sire remember,
Who on the deadly steps of Eld far on like me is carried.
And haply him the dwellers-round with many an outrage harry,
Nor standeth any by his side to ward annoy and ruin.
Yet doth he verily, I wis, while thee alive he learneth
Joy in his soul, and every day the hope within him cherish,
His loved offspring to behold, returned from land of Troas."
— Iliad, xxiv. 486-492.
The measure is the septenarius, with feminine ending —
i. e., the seven-foot Iambic line, ending with an unaccented
extra syllable. There is no rhyme. Chapman in his
translation of Homer uses rhyming seven-foot Iambic
lines, ending in an accented syllable.
40 : 17. — Mr. Wright. See " The Iliad of Homer,
translated into blank verse, by I. C. Wright, M. A., trans-
lator of Dante; late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford."
London, 1861.
41 : 14. — Mr. Newman declares. The passage occurs in
the preface to Newman's Iliad.
43 : l 3- — Bentley. See J. H. Monk's Life of Bentley,
London, 1830, p. 626: " The common story of his having
told Pope, whom he met at Bishop Atterbury's table
shortly after the publication of his translation of the Iliad,
' that it was a very pretty poem, but that he must not call
it Homer,' is told in different forms; and its truth is very
probable, from his having himself, when asked in his latter
days what had been the cause of Pope's dislike, replied:
' I talked against his Homer; and the portentous cub
never forgives.' "
304 NOTES.
43 : 17. — 'fis hv 6 4>p6vinos dpiveiev. This famous definition
of the standard of excellence in an art comes from Aristotle s
Nichomachcean Ethics, II., vi. 15.
45 : 24. — Voss. The translation of the Odyssey was pub-
lished in 1 781; that of the Iliad, with the revised Odyssey,
in 1793.
46 : 15. — Article on English translations of Homer. See
the National Review for October, i860, vol. xi. p. 283.
47 : 3. The most delicate of living critics. Of course,
Sainte-Beuve. Cf. Arnold's Letters, i. 155, where he
calls Sainte-Beuve " the first of living critics."
48:6. — Cowpcr. His Homer was published in 1791; a
revised edition with many alterations appeared in 1802,
after his death.
48 : 9.— Mr. Sotheby. William Sotheby's (1757-1833)
translation of the Iliad into heroic couplets was published
ini83i; the Iliad and the Odyssey, with seventy-five de-
signs by John Flaxman, were published in 1834.
48 : 11. — Chapman. Parts of the Iliad appeared in 1598;
the entire Iliad about 161 1; half the Odyssey in 1614; the
Iliad and the Odyssey together in 1616. His measure,
as already noted, is the septenarius, with masculine end-
ing; the verses rhyme in couplets. The measure had been
largely used in ballads. Cf. 60 : 10.
51 : 23. — Our pre-Raphaelite school. See Mr. Ruskin's
Lectures on Architecture and Painting, Lecture IV.,
Pre-Raphaelitism: " Pre-Raphaelitism has but one prin-
ciple — that of absolute, uncompromising truth in all that it
does, obtained by working everything, down to the most
minute detail, from nature, and from nature only. Every
pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last
touch, in the open air, from the thing itself. Every pre-
Raphaelite figure, however studied in expression, is a true
portrait of some living person. Every minute accessory is
painted in the same manner. . . The habit of constantly
carrying everything up to the utmost point of completion
deadens the pre-Raphaelites in general to the merits of
men who, with an equal love of truth up to a certain point,
NOTES. 305
yet express themselves habitually with speed and power,
rather than with finish, and give abstracts of truth rather
than total truth." Further discussions of pre-Raphael-
itism may be found in Robert de la Sizeranne's La Pein-
ture Anglaise Contemporaine (Paris, 1895), Harry Quilter's
Preferences in Art, Knight's Life of Rossetti, Sharp's Life
of Rossetti, William Bell Scott's Reminiscences, and in an
article of F. G. Stephen's in the Portfolio, 1894.
54:10 — Robert Wood (1716-71). He traveled widely
in the Orient in the interests of history and archaeology,
and published two famous illustrated works on Eastern
antiquities : The Ruins of Palmyra, 1753 ; The Ruins of
Balbec, 1757. He was called Palmyra Wood ; cf. Athen-
ian Stewart.
57 : 6. — Rasselas. In Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
(1759), the Latinized style of Johnson and his trifoliate
sentence structure is luxuriantly developed. The dia-
logues as well as the author's own moralizings are all in
polysyllables and periodic sentences. " The little fishes
talk like whales."
58 : 20.—" With his eye on the object:'' The phrase first
occurs in a letter of 1805 to Scott, who was planning an
edition of Dryden. See Memoirs of William Wordsworth,
by Christopher Wordsworth (ed. Boston, 1851), i. 317.
" Dryden had neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of
moral dignity. Whenever his language is poetically im-
passioned, it is mostly upon unpleasing subjects, such as
the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of men, or of indi-
viduals. That his cannot be the language of imagination
must have necessarily followed from this ; that there is
not a single image from nature in the whole body of
his works ; and in his translation from Virgil, when-
ever Virgil can be fairly said to have his eye upon his
object, Dryden always spoils the passage." See also
in Wordsworth's Essay, Supplementary to the Preface
(1815), his famous comment on the artificiality of the
eighteenth-century treatment of nature : " Excepting the
nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or
306 NOTES.
two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period
intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost
and the Seasons does not contain a single new image of
external nature, and scarcely presents a familiar one from
which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet had been
steadily fixed upon his object." Wordsworth's Poetical
Works, ed. John Morley, 1890, p. 870.
59: 17. — Fourteen-sy liable line. Cf. 40: 16 and 48 : 11.
60 : 10. — Keats 's fine sonnet.
"Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ;
Round many Western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brovv'd Homer ruled as his demesne :
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific— and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
Mr. Swinburne's praise of this sonnet should not be for-
gotten : " While anything of English poetry shall endure
the sonnet of Keats will be the final word of comment, the
final note of verdict on Chapman's Homer." Chapman's
Works (ed. London, 1875), vol. ii. p. lvii.
60 : 13. — Coleridge. See his Miscellanies, Aesthetic
and Literary, ed. 1885, p. 289, Chapman 's Homer: "It
is as truly an original poem as the Faery Queene ; — it will
give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than
Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome most anti-Ho-
meric Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a
poet — as Homer might have written had he lived in Eng-
land in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an
exquisite poem, in spite of its frequent and perverse quaint-
nesses and harshnesses, which are, however, amply repaid
by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty of language,
all over spirit and feeling."
NOTES. 3° 7
60: 15. — Mr. Ha Ham. See his Liter xture of Europe
(ed. New York, 1874), ii. 226.
60 : 17. — Its latest editor. The allusion is to Rev. Rich-
ard Hooper's edition of Chapman's Homer, London, 1857.
62: 10. — " Clearesi-souled." From Arnold's sonnet To
a Friend : Poems, ed. 1878, p. 2.
62 : 12. — Voltaire. He stands here as typical of modern
illumination and rationalism.
62: 14. — "Somewhat as one might imagine." These
words occur toward the close of Pope's Preface to his
translation of the Iliad.
62 : 22. — As Chapman says it. See the Commentaries
at the end of book i. of Chapman's Iliad; Chapman's
Works, ed. R. H. Shepherd, London, 1874-75, iii. 25.
66. — Philology and Literature. As regards the general
significance of Arnold's distrust of philology, see Introduc-
tion, pages xxvii and xlv.
66 : 5. — To give relief. Cf. the preface to Cowper's
Homer, p. xv : " It is difficult to kill a sheep with dignity in
a modern language, to flay and to prepare it for the table,
detailing every circumstance of the process. . . Homer,
who writes always to the eye, with all his sublimity and
grandeur, has the minuteness of a Flemish painter."
67 : 1.— Mr. Newman. In 1861 Professor Newman (cf,
40 : 16) published Homeric Translation in Theory and
Practice. A Reply to Matthew Arnold, Esq., Professor
of Poetry at Oxford. In answer to this Reply Arnold
delivered one or two additional lectures on translating
Homer which, for the most part, had to do with Newman's
arguments, but which also carried out suggestively some
new lines of thought. His important discussion of Eng-
lish Hexameters occurs in these Last Words. The pres-
ent Selection comes from the early part of these additional
lectures, which, with the title Last Words, are printed at
the end of the original three lectures.
68 : 13. — See Montaigne's Essais, livre II., chap, x.,
Des Livre s : " Plutarque est plus uniforme et constant ;
Seneque, plus ondoyant et divers."
3°8 NOTES.
71 : 14. — "All thy blessed youth." See Measure for
Measure, III. i. 36.
74 : 7. — Homer seemed to Sophocles. As regards the
date of the Homeric poems, "the view that the poems
were essentially in their present condition before the
historical period in Greece began, early in the eighth
century b. c, is moderate." Sophocles lived from 495 to
406 b. c.
74 : 28. — Pericles (495-429 B. C). The statesman who
ruled in Athens during the period of its greatest artistic
glory.
77 : 3. — And this is what he knows ! The climax is cer-
tainly effective. The reader should note the rhetorical
ingenuity with which Professor Newman's incompetence
is thrown into relief. Cf. the last sentence of this
Selection, p. 82: "Terrible learning, — I cannot help in
my turn exclaiming, — terrible learning, which discovers so
much ! "
79 : 20. — Pullman, Mr. Maiden, and M. Penfey.
Three well-known Greek scholars. Buttmann (1 764-1 829)
was librarian of the Royal Library at Berlin and the
author of various Greek grammars. Mr. Maiden (b. 1800)
long held the chair of Greek in University College,
London. Theodor Benfey (b. 1809) was the author of
a Dictionary of Greek Roots (1839).
81 : 5. — Milton's words. See Lycidas, 1. 124.
81 : 23. — The father in Sheridan's play. See Sheridan's
The Critic, II. ii :
Governor : " No more ; I would not have thee plead in vain :
The father softens— but the governor
Isfix'd!"
81 : 26. — Professor Max Mailer. Corpus Professor of
Comparative Philology and Fellow of All Souls College
in the University of Oxford. His best known works are
Lectures on the Science of Language (1859), an d Chips
from a German Workshop (1868-75).
83 : 15. — Ponum est. From the Vulgate : Matthew,
NOTES. 3°9
xvii. 4. The disciples are on the mount of transfigura-
tion ; Peter exclaims, " Lord, it is good for us to be here."
Arnold, in his Letters (i. 191), notes the fact that, when
quoting from the Bible, he always uses the Vulgate Latin,
in case he is " not earnestly serious."
83 : 22.— Moriemini in peccatis vestris. From the Vul-
gate, John viii. 24.
84 : 1.—" Standing on earth." From Milton's Paradise
Lost, bk. vii. 23-26.
84 : XT,— Definition. As regards Arnold's distrust of
definitions and of all abstract discussions of literature, see
Introduction, p. xliii. ff.
84 : 22.— Bedeutendes. This word in the sense of note-
worthy, or chargedwith significance, was a special favorite
with Goethe, by whom it was really made current. See
the very long list of quotations from Goethe in the Grimms'
Deutsches Worterbuch, under bedeutend.
85 : 5. — One poet. Shakespeare. Cf. the essay, A
French Critic on Milton in Mixed Essays, p. 200: "Shakes-
peare himself, divine as are his gifts, has not, of the marks
of the master, this one : perfect sureness of hand in his
style." Cf. also Essays in Criticism, ii. 135: "Shakes-
peare frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite
false, and which are entirely unworthy of him. But one
can imagine his smiling if one could meet him in the
Elysian Fields and tell him so ; smiling and replying that
he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it matter ? "
87 : 4. — Young. His Complaint or Night Thoughts on
" Life, Death, and Immortality," was published in 1742-45.
87 : 8. — alibv a<T(pa\7)s. See Pindar's Pythian Odes, iii.
11. 153-161.
88 : 7. — Celtic source. Arnold delivered a series of lec-
tures at Oxford in 1865-66, on the Study of Celtic Literature.
These lectures were published in the Comhill Magazine
during the first half of 1866, and issued as a book in 1867.
They are specially interesting as an attempt on Arnold's
part to apply the historical method for the explanation of
the characteristics of English literature. Arnold describes
310 NOTES.
the typical Celt, Teuton, and Norman, and accounts for the
typical Englishman as the resultant of these types. English
literature he finds to be the direct imaginative expression of
the various mental and moral qualities derived from these
widely dissimilar sources. Despite, however, his nominal
acceptance of the scientific and historical point of view,
Arnold's method is largely one of divination and intuition,
and his accounts of the various original types seem not to
have been founded on any thorough study of early docu-
ments or historical facts. His philological mistakes, he has
in several cases admitted in his notes. Notwithstanding
such shortcomings this work of Arnold's has been influential
in popularizing the view that accounts for literature scien-
tifically as an expression of national characteristics.
Taine's Histoire de la litteratnre anglaise had appeared
in 1864. When Arnold wrote, Taine's book was — and
indeed it long remained — the most considerable attempt
to explain an entire national literature scientifically in
terms of national life.
89 : 7. — Nor sometimes forget. See Milton's Paradise
Lost, iii. 11. 32-35-
89 : 12. — Es bildet ein Talent. See Goethe's Tasso,
I. ii.
90 : 2. — Menander (ca. 340-ca. 290 B. C). He was the
foremost representative of the " New Comedy " in Greece.
He kept close in his art to real life and portrayed it with
great truth and subtlety. Of preceding dramatists Eurip-
ides most influenced him. "O Life and Menander," ex-
claimed the Grammarian Aristophanes, " which of you two
imitated the other ? " For an excellent contrast between
the Old and the New Comedy, see Coleridge's Lectures on
Shaksfiere, ed. 1890, p. 191. See also Mr. Churton Col-
lins's Essays and Studies (London, 1895) and Mr George
Meredith's The Comic Spirit (London, 1897).
91:31. — Gemeinheit. 'Commonness, mediocity.' Cf.
138 : 9.
92 : 11. — Cobbetfs sinewy . . . English. Cf. 25 : 18.
92 : 15. — Bossuet (1627-1704). The famous Bishop of
NOTES. 3 1 *
Meaux, called because of his eloquence the "Eagle of
Meaux." Cf. Arnold's translation {Essays, i. 295) of Jou-
bert's characterization of Bossuet's style : " Bossuet em-
ploys all our idioms, as Homer employed all the dialects.
The language of kings, of statesmen, and of warriors ;
the language of the people and of the student, of the coun-
try and of the schools, of the sanctuary and of the courts
of law ; the old and the new, the trivial and the stately,
the quiet and the resounding, — he turns all to his use ;
and out of all this he makes a style, simple, grave, majes-
tic. His ideas are, like his words, varied, — common and
sublime together. Times and doctrines in all their multi-
tude were ever before his spirit, as things and words in all
their multitude were ever before it. He is not so much a
man as a human nature, with the temperance of a saint,
the justice of a bishop, the prudence of a doctor, and the
might of a great spirit."
92:15. — Bolingbroke. Henry St. John (1678-1751),
Viscount Bolingbroke, the famous Tory statesman of the
time of Queen Anne. He was a distinguished patron of
literature, an intimate friend of Pope's, who addresses him
in the opening lines of the Epistle on Man, and a versa-
tile writer on political, historical, and pseudo-philosophical
topics. His written style is conspicuous for its easy
strength, its well-bred colloquialism, and its union of ad-
roitness with apparent negligence. Of his style as an ora-
tor, Arnold speaks incidentally in his Celtic Literature :
" Stafford, Bolingbroke, the two Pitts, Fox, — to cite no
other names, — I imagine few will dispute that these
call up the notion of an oratory, in kind, in extent, in
power, coming nearer than any other body of modern
oratory to the oratory of Greece and Rome." Celtic Lit-
erature, p. 89.
93 : 22. — Rhyme. At present, scholars are pretty well
agreed that rhyme " comes into our poetry " from Proven-
cal verse and the lyrics of the " Norman minstrels." See
Gummere's Handbook of Poetics, 153-154. Cf. Schipper's
E ng Use he Metrik, i. 30-38.
312 NOTES.
94 : ^.—Gwydion. See Math the son of Mathonivy in
Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, ed. 1849, iii. 239.
94 : 20. — Olwen. See Kilhwch and Olwen, as above,
ii. 275.
94 : 28. — Peredur. See Peredur the Son of Evrawc, as
above, i. 324.
95 : 13. — Geraint and Enid. See Geraint the Son of
Erbin, as above, ii. 112.
96: 26. — In die sen Dichtungen, etc. 'These poems are
full of a weird moodiness, and show a marvelous sympa-
thy with nature, especially with plants and stones. The
reader feels as if he were in a magic forest ; he hears hid-
den springs musically purling ; mystical wild flowers
gaze at him with strange wistful eyes ; invisible lips kiss
his cheeks with teasing tenderness ; great funguses,
like golden bells, spring up musically at the foot 6f the
trees.'
97 : i.—Shakspeare's . . . daffodil. See Perdita's
speech in Winter's Tale, IV. iv. :
" Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."
Cf. Selections, p. 103.
97 : 3. — Wordsworth's . . . cuckoo. The allusion is
probably to the famous stanza in the Solitary Reaper :
" A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides."
The Poetical Works of Wordsworth, ed. John Morley,
p. 192. Cf. Selections, p. 103.
Possibly, however, Arnold has in mind the poem To the
Cuckoo; two of its most "magical" stanzas run as
follows : —
" Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring 1
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery ;
NOTES. 3*3
" And I can listen to thee yet
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again."
— Ibid-, p. 204.
97:3. — Keats's . . . Autumn. See the well-known ode,
beginning :
" Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! "
97 : 4. — Obermann's . . . birch-tree. See Selections,
p. 103, and for Senancour, see 27 : 6.
97 : 4. — Easter-daisy. The last paragraphs of Senan-
cour's Obermann describe very tenderly and imaginatively
the violet and the Easter-daisy, — la hdtive pdquerette.
97 : 15. — Four of them. This classification of Arnold's
is characteristically based on no principle. See the Intro-
duction, p. xlix.
98 : 5. — As when the moon. From Pope's Iliad, bk.
viii. 11. 687 ff.
98 : 9. — Manus heroum. See Propertius's Elegies, xx.
11. 21-22.
" Hie manus heroum, placidis ut constitit oris,
Mollia composita litora fronde tegit."
' Here the band of heroes, when they had set foot on the peaceful
shores, covered the pleasant beach with well-woven leaves and
branches.'
98 : 11. — The line of Theocritus. See Theocritus' Idyls,
13 : 34 : ' For a great mead lay before them, rich with
rushes for beds.' The reading at present accepted gives
e/cetro, ju^ya for e/c«ro /u^yas ; in this case, of course, niya
modifies 6veiap.
98 : 19. — What little town. See Keats's Ode on a
Grecian Urn.
99 : 19. — White hawthorn. This quotation and the fol-
lowing one are from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale.
100 : 4. — Muscosi fontes. Vergil's Eclogues, vii. 45.
100 : 6. — Pallentes violas. Ibid., ii. 47-48 : ' For thee the
fair Naiad plucks pale violets and the tallest poppies and
314 NOTES.
daintily interweaves with them the narcissus and the
flower of the fragrant dill.'
ioo : 9. — Cana legam. Ibid., 11. 51-52 : ' I myself will
pluck quinces, white with tender down, and chest-
nuts.'
100 : 13. — I know a bank. Midsummer Nighfs Dream,
II. 1.
100 : 19. — Look how the floor. The Merchant of Venice,
V. i.
100 : 26. — Met we on hill. Midsummer Night's Dream,
II. 1.
101 : 2. — The moon shines bright. The Merchant of
Venice, I. 1.
I0 3 : 3- — Daffodils. See 97 : 2.
I0 3 ' 7- — Voice . . . heard. See 97 : 3.
103 : 12. — Moving waters. See Keats's Last Sonnet.
Arnold misquotes; for " cold" read "pure."
103 : 15. — Mountain birch-tree. Cf. 27 : 6 and 97 : 4
The quotation may be found in Senancour's Obermann,
ed. Paris, 1863, p. 72.
104 : 1. — Literature and Science. This is one of the
three lectures that Arnold gave repeatedly during his visit
to America in 1883-84. It was " originally given as the
Rede Lecture at Cambridge [England], was recast for de-
livery in America, and is reprinted here as so recast."
See the preface to Discourses in America. The lecture is
a temperate but comprehensive and vigorous plea for the
humanities in education ; to many believers in " the
classics " its arguments seem still unanswered. The student
should note particularly its easy conversational tone, and
its method of " winding into a subject," its concreteness and
close adherence to life, its pleasant use of illustrations, its
delicately venomous irony, its mocking repetition of catch-
words and quotations, and its fine sanity and sublimated
worldly wisdom ; in all these respects it is a thoroughly
characteristic piece of Arnold's prose at its best. Arnold
himself rated his Discourses in America very high ; he
declared it to be " the book by which, of all his prose-
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129:5. — La Roger.-- m has left in his
31 6 NOTES.
Scholemaster a delightful account of an interview with
this charming girl-pedant: " Before I went into Germanie,
I came to Brodegate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of
that noble Ladie Jane Grey, to whom I was exceding
moch beholdinge. Hir parentes. the Duke and Duches,
with all the houshold, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen,
were huntinge in the Parke: I founde her, in her Chamber,
readinge Phaedon Platonis in Greeke, and that with as
moch delite, as som jentlemen wold read a merie tale in
Bocase. After salutation, and dewtie done, with some other
taulke, I asked hir, whie she wold leese soch pastime in the
Parke ? smiling she answered me: I wisse, all their sporte
in the Parke is but a shadoe to that pleasure, that I find in
Plato : Alas good folke, they never felt, what trewe pleas-
ure ment." Ascham's Scholemaster, Arber's ed., 46-47.
132 : 24. — Mr. Wright. See 40 : 17.
134 : 2. — The young lions. According to Arnold, the
Daily Telegraph (the London morning journal circulating
most widely among the English middle classes), fostered
many of the worst tendencies in the British public;
their love of cheap, patriotic bluster; their fondness for
tinsel and claptrap in literary style ; in short, all the lit-
erary and moral vulgarities of Philistinism. Leo Adoles-
cens or Young Leo is Arnold's favorite nickname for the
typical newswriter of the Daily Telegraph. Leo figures
frequently in Friendship 's Garland ; one of his letters is
given in the Selections, pp. 250-255. Cf. Selections, p. 145
and p. 166.
135 : 19- — Benthamism. The doctrine in its ethical sig-
nificance is popularly expounded in John Stuart Mill's
essay on Utilitarianism, in his Dissertations and Dis-
cussions, vol. iii. Bentham limits all knowledge to
phenomena, denies free-will, and makes virtue coin-
cident with action for the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. Benthamism is used here by Arnold as
a general synonym for materialism, and stands for any
system of belief that opposes itself directly to a religious
or transcendental conception of the universe.
NOTES. 3 X 7
136 : 15. — liny a pas d'homme necessaire. In Fenelon's
Telemaque, bk. xiii., an account is given of the process by
which an intriguing man of affairs may render himself
necessary to his prince. It may have been partly with
reference to this classical passage that Chateaubriand said :
"Je ne me crois pas un homme necessaire, et je pense
qu'il n'y a pas plus d'hommes necessaires aujourd'hui."
The exact phrase in the text is usually ascribed to Napo-
leon.
x 37 : 3- — Exeter Hall. The favorite place in London
for large sectarian meetings.
137:4. — Marylebone Vestry. "The poor law, and
management of the paving, cleansing, and lighting are
still in the hands of the inhabitants of the parishes, or
unions of parishes, or districts of them, and their repre-
sentatives. The most important of these assemblies are
the vestries of Marylebone and St. Pancras." Bonn's Ztf«-
don, 1854, p. 99. The Church of Marylebone is in a popu-
lous district in the northwest of London ; a well-to-do
tradesman might naturally belong to the vestry and be
vaingloriously busy with the details of local administra-
tion. Cf. Selections, p. 171, 1. 8.
137 : 6. — His great dissected master. Jeremy Bentham
(d. 1832) left his body to be dissected in the interests of
science ; his skeleton is preserved in the museum of Uni-
versity College, London.
J 37 : I( 3- — Our young barbarians. A humorous adapta-
tion of a line from Byron's description of the Dying
Gladiator in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv.
stanza cxli.
137:27. — Tubingen. F. C. Baur, who was made Pro-
fessor of Theology in Tubingen in 1826, is regarded as the
founder of the so-called '• Tubingen school." The work of
the school was the scientific interpretation of the Gospels
and Epistles with the view of determining the various con-
flicting conceptions of Jesus' character and mission that
they embody and of fixing the historical relations of these
conceptions. Baur laid special stress on the conflict be-
318 NOTES.
tween Petrinism and Paulism. In Arnold's mind, Tubin-
gen stands for all that is characteristically scientific in the
treatment of theological and religious questions. In God
and the Bible (1875) Arnold has much to say of Baur and
the Tubingen school, e. g., on pp. 19S and 232.
J 38 : 5. — Goethe . . . on the death of Schiller. See Goe-
the's Epilog zn Schillers Glocke in Goethe's Werke (ed.
Stuttgart, 1867), xv. 360 :
" Indessen schritt sein Geist gewaltig fort
InsEwige des Wahren, Guten, Schonen,
Und hinter ihm, in wesenlosen Scheine,
Lag, was uns alle bandigt, das Gemeine."
' Meanwhile his spirit fared bravely on into the realms
where eternally abide the True, the Good, the Beautiful;
and behind him, — a mere shadowy illusion, — lay that
which holds us all in bondage, — the petty world of
custom.'
139 : 1. — Philistinism. In German student slang a Phil-
ister is anyone outside of the student class and hostile to
it — particularly perhaps a man to whom money is owed, a
proprietor of rooms, or a smug tradesman. More broadly,
the term is applied to foes of the children of light, to ene-
mies of ideas and art, to those who are slaves to the petty
routine of " use and wont," to men who have no interest
beyond the "main chance." An early instance of the
word in this sense occurs in Goethe's Satyros (1773), in the
opening monologue of Einsiedler. The crude Philistine is
described as looking on the sprouting buds and plants of
the new year, and thinking simply and solely of the crops
that they promise to him and his kin. Heine has probably
done more than any other German writer to make the
word Philistine known outside of Germany. An instance
of his use of it may be found in the first chapter of the
Reisebilder, ii., Italien (182S-29). In England Carlyle uses
the word as eai - ly as 1S27 in his essay on the State of Ger-
man Literature ; Essays, London, 1872, i. 5S. He explains
the term as the nickname bestowed on the partisans of the
AZOTES. 319
Auflarung or Rationalistic movement during the latter
part of the eighteenth century, by those who refused to
find in Rationalism and Utilitarianism the complete phi-
losophy of life. Again, in 1831, Carlyle uses the term, in
his review of William Taylor's Historic Survey of German
Poetry. After describing Taylor's character Carlyle adds-.
" To a German we might have compressed all this long
description into a single word. Mr. Taylor is what they
call a Philister; every fiber of him is Philistine. With us
such men usually take into politics and become Code-
makers and Utilitarians." Carlyle's Essays, ed. London,
1372, iii. 241. Thackeray's Student Quarter, dealing with
Paris in 1839-40, speaks of the Philister and the German
Bursch, as contrasted types. In an essay on Macaulay,
whom, it may be noted, Arnold once called " the great
Apostle of the Philistines" (Arnold's Essays in Criticism,
i. 304), Mr. Leslie Stephen comments as follows on the
term Philistine: It is a " word which I understand prop-
erly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual inter-
ests. The word may also be defined, however, as the
name applied by prigs to the rest of their species. . .
There is much that is good in your Philistine." Leslie
Stephen's Hours in a Library, iii. 306. For Arnold's
account of the "good " in Philistinism, see Selections, pp.
233-234-
I 39 • 3- — Soli. A place on the northeast shore of the
Mediterranean, just north from Cyprus. The bad Greek
spoken there was proverbial and originated the name
solecism for any incorrectness of speech.
139 : 16. — Respectability. In the report of a trial in some
English court a witness characterized the defendant as
a respectable man. When asked what he meant by
respectable, he explained that the man in question " kept
a gig." Carlyle seized upon this naive definition and wove
from it the numerous phrases about " gigmanity, " "re-
spectability with its thousand gigs," and so on, that abound
in his writings.
140 : 15. — " The French, . . . are the chosen people. y
320 NOTES.
Txiese are the closing words of Heine's Englische Frag-
mente. See Heine's Werke, ed. Stuttgart, vi. 252.
140 : 27. — " I might settle in England.''' Two of Heine's
most amusing attacks on the English character are the
chapter called Jofm Bull in the Englische Fragmente,
and chap. xlix. of Lutetia, Heine's Werke, ed. Stuttgart,
xii. 36 ff.
141 : 5. — The rule of thumb. See Heine's Englische
Fragmente, chap. xiii. Die Befreiung, and cf. John
Morley's On Compromise .
142 : 8. — Cobbett. See 25 : 18. The passage that Ar-
nold translates is taken from chap. ix. of the Englische
Fragmente.
143 : 16. — " Moving altogether.'- This is an adaptation
of the last line of stanza xi. of Wordsworth's Resolution
and Independence.
144. — Culture and Anarchy. The preface to Culture
and Anarchy and the first chapter, Sweetness and Light,
are made up, with few alterations, from the last lecture
that Arnold gave as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. This
lecture was published under the title Culture and its
Enemies in the Cornhill Magazine for July, 1867, xvi. 36.
To make thelecture available for Culture and Anarchy,
Arnold converted the first few paragraphs into a preface,
broke the text in general into shorter paragraphs, made
a few verbal changes, and did away, at the beginning
and the close, with allusions to the Oxford audience.
Except in these unimportant ways the Cornhill article
was unaltered. Culture and Anarchy was published in
1869.
144 : 16. — Mr. Frederic Harrison. The article in ques-
tion, Culture: A Dialogue, appeared originally in the
Fortnightly Review for November, 1867, viii. 603. The
tone and tenor of the article are indicated by the quota-
tion frcm Shakespeare that stands as its motto :
"The sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise."
NOTES. 321
These are the words of advice the fop in Henry IV.
gives to Hotspur after the battle. The implication is that
Arnold, with his debonair prescription of Culture for the
terrible evils of modern society, is no better than a fop in
the midst of the carnage and horrors of war. Cf. 174 : 16,
and Selections, p. 177.
145 : 20. — 77/i? Daily Telegraph. See 134 : 2.
147. — Sweetness and Light. This Selection, pp. 147-180,
is the first chapter of Culture and Anarchy, and directly
follows the Introduction, given in the preceding Selection.
For the title see 160 : 6.
147 : 26. — M. Sainte-Beuve. See the Quarterly Review
for January, 1866, cxix. 80. The article sketches Sainte-
Beuve's life and summarizes his more important writings;
it gives no adequate analysis of his method or style.
148 : 4.— Curiosity. Cf. Se lections, p. 15, where in The
Function of Criticism (1865) Arnold makes a similar plea
for the value of Curiosity.
148 : 23. — Montesquieu says. The quotation comes from
Montesquieu's Discours sur les motifs qui doivent nous
encourager aux sciences, prononce le 15 Novembre 1725.
Montesquieu's CEuvres completes; ed. Laboulaye, vii. 78.
149 : 21.— Bishop Wilson. Thomas Wilson (1663-1755)
was Bishop of the Isle of Man— Lord Bishop of Sodor and
Man — from 1697 to his death. For the details of his biog-
raphy, see the folio edition of his Works, London, 1782.
It is interesting to note that in 1785 copies of this folio edi-
tion were presented by Dr. Wilson, Prebendary of West-
minster, son of the Bishop, to "the United States in
Congress assembled," and by the Secretary of Congress,
through the " Delegates," transmitted to various Colleges
and Universities. Arnold has prefixed to Culture and
Anarchy a brief appreciation of Bishop Wilson's religious
writings. "In the essay which follows," Arnold says,
" the reader will often find Bishop Wilson quoted. To
me and to the members of the Society for Promoting Chris-
tian Knowledge, his name and writings are still, no doubt,
familiar. But the world is fast going away from old-fash-
322 NOTES.
ioned people of his sort, and I learnt with consternation
lately, from a brilliant and distinguished votary of the nat-
ural sciences, that he had never so much as heard of
Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have invented
him." . . "On a lower range than the Imitation, and
awakening in our nature chords less poetical and delicate,
the Maxims of Bishop Wilson are, as a religious work, far
more solid. To the most sincere ardor and unction.
Bishop Wilson unites in these Maxims, that downright
honesty and plain good sense which our English race has
so powerfully applied to the divine impossibilities of reli-
gion; by which it has brought religion so much into practi-
cal life, and has done its allotted part in promoting upon
earth the Kingdom of God."
A perhaps over-ingenious speculation suggests itself as
regards Arnold's use of Bishop Wilson's name. In 1858
died Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, who was for many
years a curate or rector in London, and who was widely
known among Low Churchmen by somewhat voluminous
writings. Arnold's calm and complete ignoring of any
Bishop Wilson save the historical Bishop of Sodor and
Man may have been an intentional bit of satire at the
expense of the Low Church party and one of its typical
representatives.
149:21. — To make reason. Cf. Bishop Wilson's Max-
ims, in his Works, ed. 17S2, i. 290 : "A prudent Christian
will resolve at all times to sacrifice his inclinations to
reason, and his reason to the Will and Word of God."
152 : 26. — Making end/ess additions. Cf. Celtic Liter-
ature, p. 137: "The hard unintelligence, which is just
now our bane, cannot be conquered by storm ; it must be
suppled and reduced by culture, by a growth in the vari-
ety, fullness, and sweetness of our spiritual life ; and this
end can only be reached by studying things that are
outside of ourselves, and by studying them disinter-
estedly."
153 : 18. — To promote. The Thirty-fourth of Bishop
Wilson's Sermons — that on the Great Duty of Instruct-
A"OTES. 323
z'ng the Ig?iorant — urges " that the promoting the King-
dom of God is very consistent with the ordinary business
of life." Bishop Wilson's Works, ii. 221. This sermon is
specially interesting because it emphasizes from the Chris-
tian point of view the need and value of very much that
kind of quiet instruction of the people to which Arnold so
largely devoted himself. " Amongst other means [for
promoting the Kingdom of God] that of instructing the
ignorant is the foundation of all the rest. . . For thus
men are dealt with as reasonable creatures. . . To be
dealt with as reasonable creatures, we must be informed, —
What our condition is ;— in what relation we stand to
God ; what it is he expects from us," etc.
155 : 24.— J/r. Roebuck's. Cf. 20 : 24.
159 : 14-—" Eat and drink" This is the first of Frank-
lin's Rules of Health, as given in Poor Richard's Alma-
nack, 1742. Arnold misquotes ; Franklin writes, " such an
exact quantity as the constitution of thy body allows of."
159 : 22. — " // is a sign," etc. This sentence forma
chapter xli. of the Enchiridion of Epictetus.
160 : 6. — Sweetness and light. This is the phrase by
which ^Esop, in Swift's Battle of the Books, sums up the
superiority of the ancients over the moderns. " As for us,
the ancients, we are content, with the bee, to pretend to
nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice, that is
to say, our flights and our language ; for the rest, whatever
we have got has been by infinite labor and search, and
ranging through every corner of nature ; the difference is,
that instead of dirt and poison we have rather chose to fill
our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind
with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and
light." Swift's Works, ed. Scott, 1824, x. 240.
163 : 1. — Independents. In America Independents are
known as Congregationalists, — Orthodox or Unitarian.
The sect originated in England about 1570. Its distin-
guishing principle is the right of every congregation of
believers to independence and self-government.
l( >Z : 5-—" The Dissidence of Dissent. ' From Burke's
324 NOTES.
speech on Conciliation with America. See Burke's Works,
ed. London, 1823, iii. 53.
164 : 24. — The Pilgrim Fat tiers' Voyage. The Pilgrim
Fathers landed from the Mayflower at what is now Plym-
outh in November, 1620. There were one hundred and
one in the company, all Independents.
166 : 18. — Publice egestas. See Sallust's Catiline, lii. :
•'• Pro his nos habemus luxuriam atque avaritiam ; publice
egestatem, privatim opulentiam." ' In place of all this
former excellence we have to-day luxury and avarice ;
public want and private wealth.'
166 : 25. — The Daily Telegraph. See 134 : 2.
169 : 9. — Mr. Beales. Edmond Beales was a prominent
member of Parliament and a very active champion of the
cause of democracy. He was President of the league for
securing Manhood Suffrage and made himself conspicuous
in the summer of 1866 by helping to organize huge popular
demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, in
furtherance of the cause of Reform. Cf. Selections, p. 201,
1. 15.
169 : 9. — Charles Bradlaugh. At this time Mr. Brad-
laugh had not entered Parliament ; he was chiefly known
as editor of the National Reformer, as a radical lecturer on
religion, and as an almost rabid advocate by pen and voice
of extreme democratic opinions. His famous and ulti-
mately successful struggle for the right to take his seat in
Parliament without the customary formal oath began much
later.
170 : 4. — Dr. Newman's Apology. Cardinal Newman's
Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) was ostensibly a reply to
Charles Kingsley's charge that Newman taught the justi-
fiableness of lying, but was really an account of Newman's
whole life as teacher, preacher, and ecclesiastic, and an
explanation of the causes that led him from Evangelical-
ism through the Via Media to Romanism. Newman's
hostility to " Liberalism " is specially described on pp. 30,
214, and 261 of the Apologia, ed. 1890. Cf. Selections
and Notes, 265 : 9.
NOTES. 3 2 5
170 : 10. — Qucr regio. See the sEneid, i. 460. ^neas
finds scenes from the war about Troy carved upon Dido's
temple and exclaims to Achates: "What region of the
earth is not filled with the tale of our woe ? "
170 : 27. — Mr. Lowe. Robert Lowe, afterward Viscount
Sherbrooke, had held several offices in the Board of Edu-
cation and the Board of Trade, and had been conspicuous
during 1866-67 as one of the bitterest opponents of Dis-
raeli's Reform Bill. His speeches on this subject were
published in 1867.
171 : 8. — Middle-class vestries. Cf. 137 '.4.
173 : 9. — Mr. Roebuck. Cf. 20 : 24.
174 : \\.—Jacobi)iism. The term, of course, comes from
the name of the famous political club, Les Jacobins, to
which Robespierre belonged in 17S9-94. The essential
characteristics of Jacobinism as a habit of mind are given
by Arnold in the lines that follow.
174 : 16. — Mr. Frederic Harrison. A prominent Lon-
don barrister and man of letters, one of the most active of
the English Positivists or followers of Comte. Cf. 144:16,
and Selections, pp. 177, 247-248, and 251.
174 : 17. — Comte. Auguste Comte (1798 -1857), the French
philosopher whose system goes by the name of Positivism.
He taught that all our knowledge is confined to phenom-
ena, that all metaphysical speculation is misleading, that
the aim of science is by observation, experiment, and
generalization, to reduce to order all the facts of human
experience and to find for them formulas of ever in-
creasing scope. Speculation, he taught, goes through
three stages : first, the theological, where existence and
its facts are explained as directly dependent on the
capricious action of supernatural agents ; secondly, the
metaphysical, where existence and its facts are explained
as the expressions of unknown substances acting according
to law ; thirdly, the positive, where the verifiable facts of
existence are alone attended to and the attempt is made to
find the sequences by which these facts follow one another.
Positivism was the most considerable attempt, prior to the
326 NOTES.
Theory of Evolution, to limit all knowledge to such knowl*
edge as is derivable through the methods of the natural
sciences and to reduce this knowledge into a complete and
harmonious system of carefully determined facts and cor-
related principles. Comte substituted for supernatural
religion the Religion of Humanity and for the worship of
God the cult of great men. Positivism has been flippantly
described as the system that spells God with a small g and
humanity with a large h.
174 : 17. — Mr. Congreve. Richard Congreve, b. 18 18,
was for a time a tutor at Wadham College, Oxford, has
published various essays on historical and social questions,
and has translated Comte's Catechism of Positive Religion
(1858). Mr. Congreve is more given to ecclesiasticism
than is Mr. Frederic Harrison, and whereas Mr. Harrison
has little to say of the Religion of Humanity and is chiefly
concerned for the intellectual and moral welfare of Posi-
tivists, Mr. Congreve lays great stress on the value of
Religion, and holds weekly meetings in London where
Positivistic worship is conducted with a good deal of
ornate detail. For an account of Positivist churches in
London, see the New York Na lion, vol. 1. No. 1285, p. 128.
174 : 28.—^ current in people 's minds. Here and in the
next paragraph Arnold recognizes in a curiously incidental
fashion the theory that regards opinion as depending nec-
essarily upon social conditions, and as subject to law in
its apparently whimsical changes. There is something a
trifle grotesque in his arrogating to himself and to " Cul-
ture " special ownership in this conception of the growth
of opinion — a conception which is distinctively scientific
and tends to reduce even the flurries of popular whim to
law, and to systematize even the caprices of fashion.
175 : 8. — Preller. Ludwig Preller (1809-61) was from
1846 to 1861 Librarian-in-chief at Weimar ; he had pre-
viously been a Professor in several German universities, in-
cluding Jena. His most important works were his Greek
Mythology (1854-55) and his Roman Mythology (1858).
175 : 31. — A new version of the Book of fob. Arnold
NOTES. 3 2 7
misrepresents Franklin. The " project " for a new version
of Job was merely a somewhat elaborate joke. Among the
" Bagatelles," now included in the second volume of Frank-
lin's Works, is a piece called The Levee, in which Frank-
lin translates the account in Job of Satan's visit to God into
the language of the ceremonial of a European court ; the
translation is obviously meant to be amusing. Immediately
after this piece comes the so-called " project " for a new ver-
sion of the Book of Job, with a half-dozen specimen verses.
In one of these verses the phrasing is the same with that
of The Levee, and in all of them the account of the Bible
incidents is so managed as to be absurdly suggestive of
modern politics and intrigue. Take for example, Frank-
lin's paraphrase of verse ii. ; the original is as follows :
" But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he
hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." With Franklin
this becomes, " Try him;— only withdraw your favor, turn
him out of his places, and withhold his pensions, and you
will soon find him in the opposition." Arnold criticises
Franklin's bit of burlesque with astonishing seriousness
and literalness. For The Levee and the Proposed New
Version, see Franklin's Works, ed. Boston, 1S36, ii. 164.
176 : ib.— Deontology. Bentham's Deontology, or The
Science of Morality (the theory of what is fitting,— of the
ought,— Grk. to Seov, that which is binding or right), was
published in 1S34, two years after Bentham's death. For
the passage Arnold quotes, see i. 39. Cf. 135 : 19-
176 : 30. — Comte. Cf. 174 : 17.
176 : 30 —Mr. Buckle. He is remembered through his
heroic attempt, in his History of Civilization in England
(vol. i., 1857 ;ii., 1S61), to put history on a scientific basis and
to trace the laws that have determined the development ot
national life. He was without university training, studied
for the most part alone, and was doubtless in some degree
victimized by his theories. His History of Civilisation is
full of brilliant suggestion, and shows enormous reading,
but is not always sure in its facts, and is often unsafe in its
speculation. His maim thesis, that progress depends wholly
328 NOTES.
on intellectual enlightenment, does not tally with the later
sociological theories of evolutionists. Buckle wrote before
the days of evolution. His History has been recently de-
fended at great length by Mr. J. M. Robertson in Buckle
and his Critics : A Study in Sociology, London, 1895.
176 : 30— Mr. Mill. John Stuart Mill (1806-73), the
most prominent perpetuator in the middle of the century of
the Locke and Hume tradition in philosophy, before it was
transformed by the assimilation of the results of modern
science. He was the immediate disciple of his father
James Mill and of Jeremy Bentham. The history of his
intellectual life from his earliest years is given in his
Autobiography, a book which should be read at the
same time with Mark Pattison's Memoirs and Cardinal
Newman's Apologia. His System of Logic appeared in
1843 and his Political Economy in 1848. His three most
characteristic short works are, On Liberty (1859), Utilitari-
anism (1862), and the Subjection of Women (1869).
179 : 28. — Abelard. Pierre Abailard (1079-1142) was one
of the most brilliant thinkers and famous teachers of the
Middle Ages. During the first years of the twelfth century
he lectured in Paris to crowds of students from all over
Europe. Later, after many mischances largely due to
his romantic passion for Helo'ise, the story of which
has entered so variously into European literature, he
turned hermit and took up his abode in the wilderness.
But he was soon besieged once more with pupils, who
lived in huts in the desert to be near him and listen to
his teaching. Some years later Abelard was accused of
heresy by Bernard, through whose influence he was con-
demned by a church Council about 1140. See Abailard :
sa vie sa philosophic et sa theologie, by Charles Remusat,
Paris, 1845.
179 : 31. — Lessing. G. E. Lessing (1729-81) was the
re-creator of German literature. He assailed the slavish
imitation of French pseudo-classicism, prevalent in
the writings of such men as Gottsched, and turned to
English literature for his models. In his Laocoon and
\
NOTES. 3 2 9
Dramaturgie he interpreted Classical art anew and freed
it from the false glosses of French pseudo-classical criti-
cism. As a dramatist he dealt frankly and powerfully
with actual life, and did much to make German literature
the imaginative and sincere expression of German national
ideals. In Nathan der Weise, he pleaded for religious
tolerance. Everywhere he stood for clear thought, genu-
ine emotion, national enthusiasm against pedantry, artifici-
ality, and academicism. During his later years he was
head Librarian at Wolfenbiittel, near Brunswick.
179 : 32. — Herder (1744-1803). Probably Herder's great-
est claim to remembrance lies in the fact that he first
grasped firmly and applied widely the conception of litera-
ture that explains it as a growth and development depend-
ent upon social conditions. He was also one of the earliest
of the Germans to feel the artistic charm of the Middle
Ages, and it was through him that Goethe was led to an ap-
preciation of Medieevalism. His mind was astonishingly
active and fertile, but his artistic sense was not sure, and
he produced little work that lives through sheer beauty.
His beneficial influence on his contemporaries cannot be
measured by the actual survival of his writings During
the latter part of his life he was court-preacher at
Weimar.
180 : 12. — St. Augustine. See the Confessions of St.
Augustine, bk. xiii. ch. xviii. ; J. G. Pilkington's transla-
tion, Edinburgh, 18S6, p. 369.
181. — Hebraism and Hellenism. The terms are probably
taken from Heine. See Heine's Uber Ludwig Borne,
bk. i. Werke, ed. Stuttgart, x. 12 : " 'Jew ' and ' Chris-
tian ' are for me words of quite similar meaning and
are both opposed to Hellene, by which name also I denote
no special nation, but a mental habit and a mode of con-
ceiving life, which are both innate and the result of train-
ing. In this connection I might say : All men are either
Jews or Hellenes, men ascetic in their instincts, hostile to
culture, spiritual fanatics, or men of vigorous good cheer,
full of the piide of life, Naturalists. Thus there have been
33° NOTES.
Hellenes in the families of German pastors, and there have
been Jews who were born in Athens and perhaps the
direct descendants of Theseus. The beard makes not the
Jew, nor the peruke the Christian." It should be noted
that somewhat later in this Selection (p. i S3), Arnold speaks
of Heine's recognition of the contrast between Hellene and
Hebraist and asserts that Heine brings in Hebraism " just
as a foil and contrast to Hellenism, and to make the superi-
ority of Hellenism more manifest."
In Wordsworth's Preface to the 18 15 edition of his
Poems there is an interesting contrast between the Hebrew
mind and imagination and those of the Greeks and Romans.
Milton is " a Hebrew in soul." See Wordsworth's Works,
ed. Morley, 882-8S3. The comparison is, however, brief,
and hardly goes beyond artistic matters.
181 : 1. — This fundamental ground. These are the
opening words of chap. iv. of Cult tire and Anarchy. In
chap. iii. Arnold has described the various defective types
of which English society consists, — Barbarians, Philistines,
the Populace, — and has exemplified the evils that arise from
the self-will with which each type lives out its own life irre-
sponsibly. The tendency of all English life and thought,
Arnold insists, is to overemphasize the right of the individ-
ual to go his own way ; confusion and a kind of anarchy
result. "We see, then," Arnold concludes, "how indis-
pensable to that human perfection which we seek is, in the
opinion of good judges, some public recognition and estab-
lishment of our best self, or right reason. We see how our
habits and practice oppose themselves to such a recogni-
tion, and the many inconveniences which we therefore
suffer. But now let us try to go a little deeper, and to find
beneath our actual habits and practice the very ground
and cause out of which they spring." Now follows the
.Selection in the text.
181 : 6. — The best light you have. " Two things a Chris-
tian will do : Never go against the best light he has ; this
will prove his sincerity : — and secondly, to take care that
his light be not darkness ; that is, that he mistake not his
NOTES. 33 1
rule by which he ought to go." Bishop Wilson's Maxims,
Works, ed. 1782, i. 290.
183 : 6. — Frederick Robertson (1816-53). Robertson of
Brighton — he went to Brighton in 1S47 — was one of the
most eloquent preachers of his day. He belonged to no
special party in the Church of England, at times ran coun-
ter to the prejudices of all parties, was fearless in his advo-
cacy of his own ideas, was embroiled with various social
cliques in Brighton because of his contention for reforms,
and wore out his nervous, eager temperament in his strug-
gle to maintain his ideals. See Rev. Stopford Brooke's
Life and Letters of Frederick Robertson (1865). The
sermon Arnold alludes to is doubtless the Advent Lecture
of December 6, 1S49, The Grecian. " Four characteris-
tics," Robertson urges, " marked Grecian life and Grecian
religion: Restlessness — Worldliness — The Worship of the
Beautiful — The Worship of the Human." See Robertson's
Sermons, ed Boston, 1869, i. 195.
183 : n. — Heinrich Heine. See 181. For an interesting
discussion of Heine's Paganism, see Emile Hennequin's
E.crivains francises, Paris, 1SS9, p. 82.
186 : S. — Aristotle will undervalue knowing. See the
Nicomachean Ethics, bk. ii. chap. iii.
186 : 15. — Epictetus exhorts us. See, for example, the
chapter " Concerning those who Embrace Philosophy in
Words," The Discourses of Epictetus, bk. ii. chap. xix. :
"Show me a Stoic, if you have one. Where? Orhowshould
you? You can show, indeed, a thousand who repeat the
Stoic reasonings. . . Show me one who is sick, and
happy ; in danger, and happy ; dying, and happy ; exiled,
and happy ; disgraced, and happy. . . Why then do you
not finish your work, if you have the proper aims?" The
Works of Epictetus, translated by T. W. Higginson,
160-161, (revised ed. I., 187-8).
186 : 19. — Plato . . . calls life. Seethe Gorgias, where
Socrates discusses with Callicles the need of self-control.
Callicles insists that the truly happy life consists in allow-
ing one's desires "to wax to the uttermost" and then
332 NOTES.
ministering to them. Socrates contends for the life of
absolutely controlled desires. Callicles finds such a life
absurd ; the life of " those who want nothing " cannot be
the ideal happy life, "for then stones and the dead
would be the happiest of all." " Yes," replies Socrates,
" and your words may remind us that life is a fearful
thing ; and I think that Euripides was probably right in
saying ' Who knows if life be not death and death life ? '
for I think that we are very likely dead." Socrates then
goes on to preach the doctrine of the mortification of de-
sires. See Jowett's Dialogues of Plato, i. 81-82.
186:20. — The Imitation. The famous mediaeval devo-
tional manual usually ascribed to Thomas a Kempis, a
monk of the fifteenth century, who spent his life in a con-
vent near Utrecht. The doctrine of asceticism pervades
the whole manual. See the chapter that treats " Of the
Royal Road of the Holy Cross," bk. ii. chap, xii.: " Behold
all is in the Cross, and in dying lies all ; and there is no
other way to life and to true inward peace but the way of
the holy cross and of daily mortification." . . " Know for
certain that thou must lead a dying life ; and the more a
man dies to himself, the more he begins to live to God."
The Imitation of Christ, Kegan Paul & Co., 1881 (Parch-
ment Library), pp. 90, 95.
186 : 31. — The moral virtues . . . the porch. See the
Nicomachean Ethics, bk. x. chap. viii. : "It is only in a
secondary sense that the life which accords with other,
i. e., non-speculative, virtue can be said to be happy ; for
the activities of such virtue are human, they have no
divine element." Aristotle goes on to demonstrate that
the activity of the Gods consists in speculation, and that
" the life of men is blessed in so far as it possesses a cer-
tain resemblance to their speculative activity." Welldon's
translation, Macmillan, 1S92, pp. 338 and 341.
187 : 3 — Plato expressly denies. " But he who is a phi-
losopher or lover of learning (<j>i\o[xa8r)s), and is entirely pure
at departing, is alone permitted to reach the gods. " Plato's
Phcedo, 82, D. See Jowett's Dialogues of Plato, i. 411.
NOTES. 333
187 : 27. — The best man is he. The passage occurs in
Socrates's talk with Hermogenes over his approaching
trial. Socrates justifies his serenity of mind and explains
wherein he seems to himself to have obtained happiness
through living well. See Xenophon's Memorabilia, bk. iv.
chap. viii.
190 : 15. — My Saviour banished joy. Arnold seems to
have in mind Herbert's poem, The Size :
"Content thee, greedie heart.
Modest and moderate joyes to those that have
Title to more hereafter when they part
Are passing brave."
The fifth stanza begins :
" Thy Saviour sentenc'd joy,
And in the flesh condemned it as unfit ;
At least in lump."
Herbert's Works, ed. Grosart, 1874, i. 157.
191 : 1. — St. Augustine's Confessions. Seethe admirable
translation by J. G. Pilkington, Edinburgh, 1886.
191 : 2. — The Imitation. Cf. 186 : 20.
194 : 15. — Mr. Murphy. See the second chapter of Cul-
ture and Anarchy : " Mr. Murphy lectures at Birmingham,
and showers on the Catholic population of that town ' words,'
says the Home Secretary, ' only fit to be addressed to
thieves or murderers.' What then? Mr. Murphy has his
own reasons of several kinds. . . He is doing as he likes ,
or, in worthier language, asserting his personal liberty. . .
The moment it is plainly put before us that a man is
asserting his personal liberty, we are half disarmed ; be-
cause we are believers in freedom, and not in some dream
of a right reason to which the assertion of our reason is to
be subordinated." Mr. Murphy and his religious extrava-
gance form for Arnold an illustration of the kind of " an-
archy" in English social conditions that can be corrected
solely by " Culture." See Culture and Anarchy, p. 47.
194 : 30. — Puritanism . . . St. Paul. Arnold treats
334 NOTES.
this topic at length in his St. Paul and Protestantism
(1870).
195 : 14. — Already pointed out. See Culture and Anar-
chy, p. 121.
197 : 19. — Life after our physical death. Cf. Arnold's
Sonnet, Immortality :
" No, no ! the energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun ;
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing — only he,
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."
Arnold's Poetical Works, ed. 1890, p. 183.
197 : 24. — One of the noblest collects. The Collect for
Easter Even: "Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized
into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be
buried with him ; and that through the grave, and gate of
death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection ; for his
merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us,
thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord."
199 : 23. — Faraday. Cf. 121 : 26.
200 : 24. — As Plato says. For the classic passage in
which Plato describes the development of the soul through
its devotion to Beauty see the Symposium, 199-212; Jowett's
Dialogues of Plato, i. 491-503.
201 : 13. — Mr. Spurgeon . . . voluntaryism. By vol-
untaryism is meant the advocacy of a Free as opposed to
a State Church. Cf. Culture and Anarchy, p. 61 : "Again,
as culture's way of working for reason and the will of God
is by directly trying to know more about them, while the
Dissidence of Dissent is evidently in itself no effort of this
kind, nor is its Free Church, in fact, a church with worthier
conceptions of God and the ordering of the world than the
State Church professes, but with mainly the same concep-
tions of these as the State Church has, only that every
man is to comport himself as he likes in professing them —
NOTES. 335
this being so, I cannot at once accept the non-conformity
any more than the industrialism and the other great works
of our Liberal middle class as proof positive that this
class is in possession of light, and that here is the true seat
of authority for which we are in search."
201 : 14. — Mr. Brig/it . . . persona/ liberty. Cf. Cul-
ture and Anarchy, p. 43 : " Mr. Bright . . . said forcibly
in one of his great speeches, what many other people are
every day saying less forcibly, that the central idea of
English life and politics is the assertion of personal lib-
erty. Evidently this is so ; but evidently, also, as feudal-
ism, which with its ideas and habits of subordination was
for many centuries silently behind the British Constitu-
tion, dies out, and we are left with nothing but our system
of checks, and our notion of its being the great right and
happiness of an Englishman to do as far as possible what
he likes, we are in danger of drifting toward anarchy."
201 : IS-— Mr. Beales. Cf. 169 : 9.
206 : 17.— Henry More (1614-87). He is commonly
called Henry More the Platonist. He was one of the four
Cambridge men— the others were Cudworth, Smith, and
Whichcote— who in the latter part of the seventeenth cen-
tury withstood the influence of the mechanical philosophy
of Descartes and Hobbes through recourse to Plato and
Idealism. His Divine Dialogues are perhaps his most
representative work from the point of view of literature.
He is studied suggestively and some of his ideas and
phrases are reproduced in Mr. Shorthouse's John Ingle-
sant. " His great discovery," says Mr. A. C. Benson in a
recent essay, "burst upon him like a flash of light — the
nearness and accessibility of God, whom he had been seek-
ing so far off and at such a transcendent height ; his reali-
zation of the truth that the Kingdom of God does not dwell
in great sublimities, and, so to speak, upon the mountain
tops, but that it is within each one of us." See A. C. Ben-
son's Essays, New York, 1S96, p. 65, and Arnold's Last
Essays, p. 197.
207 : 14. — Sublime hoc candens. Cicero quotes the
336 NOTES.
phrase from Ennius in De Natura Deorum, ii. 25 : " As-
pice hoc sublime candens quod invocant omnes Jovem."
' Behold this Brilliant on high which all men call Jupiter.'
Arnold's text misprints invocenl for invocant, and Arnold
transposes hoc and sublime.
208 : 31. — Qu'est-ce-que la nature? See Les Pense'es
de Blaise Pascal, ed. Molinier, 1879, i. 69, De la justice.
Coutumes et prejugdes.
210 : 12. — Rabbinism. Rabbis are authenticated Teach-
ers of the Jewish Law. Rabbinism is the religious and
philosophic doctrine developed in the schools of the
Rabbis.
213 : 8. — Ovid. " QiAs locus," etc. ' What place is
more awful than a temple? Yet temples also must a
woman shun, if she be prone to err.'
213 : 16. — Hominum divomque. Part of the first lines of
the opening invocation of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura :
" ^Eneadum genetrix hominum," etc. 'Great mother of
the Romans, delight of men and gods, divine Venus.'
214 : 3. — Air. Birks. Thomas Rawdon Birks, author of
" The Two Later Visions of Daniel," " Memoirs of the
late Rev. E. Bickersteth,"etc , had in 1873 just been made
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.
215 : 21. — The moral and intelligent. The phrase has
been reiterated by Arnold in Literature and Dogma as
characteristic of scientific theology. Cf. the Preface,
p. ix. : " Now, the assumption with which all the churches
and sects set out, that there is ' a Great Personal First
Cause, the moral and intelligent governor of the universe,'
and that from him the Bible derives its authority, cannot
at present, at any rate, be verified." Cf. also Arnold's
ridicule of attempts to describe God's ways to man in the
phraseology of an Anglo-Saxon man of business : St. Paul
and Protestantism, p. 14.
216 : 18. — Saying of Izaak Walton. See the last chap-
ter of the first part of Walton's Complete Angler. Piscator,
who is on his way home from a good day's fishing, moralizes
for the benefit of the Scholar: " And that our present happi-
NOTES. 337
ness may appear to be the greater, and we the more thank-
ful for it, I will beg you to consider with me, how many do,
even at this very time, lie under the torment of the stone,
the gout, and toothache ; and this we are free from. And
every misery that I miss is a new mercy : and therefore let
us be thankful." Complete Angler, ed. Major, 1844, p. 248.
220 : 12. — The prison of Puritanism. See Arnold's essay
on Heinrich Heme, Essays, i. 176. The sentence specially
commended itself to Arnold, and is quoted also in the essay
on Falkland, Mixed Essays, p. 170.
220 : 15.— Rabelais (ca. 1490-1553). The incorrigible
jester of the early Renaissance. His Gargantua and Pan-
tagruel comment recklessly on the whole scope of life as it
shaped itself in the imaginations of men newly emanci-
pated from the asceticism of the Middle Ages.
220 : 16. — George Fox (1624-90). The first of the
Quakers.
221 : 15. — Rights of Man. In August, 1789, the Constit-
uent Assembly in Paris voted the " Declaration of the
Rights of Man." This was a kind of Confession of Faith
of the new Revolutionary religion. The first two articles
were as follows :
I. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
II. These rights are : liberty, property, security, and
resistance to oppression. See Martin's France, i. 78.
222 : 9. — La Boheme. The world of those chartered
libertines— struggling young painters and poets. George
Sand was the first to use the word in this sense in her La
Derniere Aldini (1837), which closed with the exclama-
tion : Vive la Boheme! Henri Murger's famous Scenes
de la vie de Boheme was published in 1848.
224 : 16. — Das Gemeine. Cf. Selections and Notes,
138 : 9-
225 : 17. — For aculeness . . . the Greeks. These lines
are quoted in MacFirbis's Book of Genealogies, a curious
Irish work of the seventeenth century. Arnold omits sev-
eral characterizations between those of the Saxons and the
Gaedhils:
33 8 NOTES.
" For haughtiness, the Spaniards;
For covetousess and revenge, the French," etc.
See Eugene O'Curry's Lectures, Dublin, 1861, p. 224.
226 : 4. — M. Renan (1823-92), the famous French sava*J,
author of the well-known Vie de Jesus. For the essay
from which Arnold quotes, see Renan's Essais de Morale
et de Critique, Paris, 1859, p. 375.
227 : 22. — Always ready to react. See Martin's France,
ed. 1857, i. 36.
229 : 20 — Architectonice. '0 apxir^KTuv was " the mas-
ter builder " whose conception governed the whole struc-
ture of a building. 'H dpxireKToviKr) with rex"V, art,
understood, means the complete mastery in art that is
characteristic of the perfectly accomplished artist and
that secures the highest results.
229 : 21. — Agamemnon. One of iEschylus's tragedies.
230 : 15. — Sybaris. A Greek city in the south of Italy,
that in the sixth century b. c. developed great wealth
and luxury. Sybarite became the traditional name for a
rich and careless pleasure-taker.
250 : 17. — Baicr. A town on the Mediterranean not far
from what is now Naples, the site of the villas m* many
wealthy Romans. Cf. Horace's first Epistle, 1. 83:
" Nullus in orbe sinus Baiis praelucet amcenis."
' No bay in the world outshines that of lovely Baias.
230 : 25. — The knives. This quotation and an abstract
of the Battle may be found in O'Curry's Lectures, p. 248.
The battle occurred, according to the Annals, in the year
of the world 3330.
231 : 9. — Forth to the war. Cf. The Forms of Ossian,
ed. iS22, ii. 38: " Cormul went forth to the strife, the
brother of car-borne Crothar. He went forth, but he fell.
The sigh of his people rose." Also, ii. 24: '• Our young
heroes, O warriors ! are like the renown of our fathers.
They fight in youth. They fall. Their names are in
song." Both passages are from Temora.
NOTES. 339
233 : 29. — Philistinism. Cf. 139 : 1.
235 : 10. — Rue de Rivoli. A famous street of shops and
hotels in Paris; it is taken by Arnold as symbolic of
French taste, or rather of " Latin precision and clear rea-
son." Stonehenge, with its Druidic circle, stands pre-
sumably for Celtic "spirituality"; just how Nuremberg
corresponds to or expresses Teutonic " fidelity to nature,"
or the " steady humdrum habit of the creeping Saxon," it
is not so easy to see.
235 : 13. — Mr. Tom Taylor's translations. Tom Tay-
lor (1817-80), an oddly versatile man of letters, who pro-
duced successful plays, readable biographies, and confident
art criticism with the utmost facility. He was editor of
Punch from 1874 to 1880. His best known play is Masks
and Faces. His Bat/ads and Sotigs of Brittany ap-
peared in 1865. It is specially interesting as containing
several engravings of Millais's and at least one each of
Charles Keene's and John Tenniel's.
238 : 5. — Mr. Cobden. Richard Cobden (1804-65), the
famous Liberal politician and Anti-Corn Law agitator.
The passage to which Arnold objects, commented severely
on English ignorance of American geography as illustrated
by a Times article, in which three or four of the largest
North American rivers were absurdly confused and mal-
treated. " When I was at Athens," said Cobden, " I
sallied out one summer morning to see the far-famed
river, the Ilyssus, and after walking for some hundred
yards up what appeared to be the bed of a winter torrent,
I came up to a number of Athenian laundresses, and I
found they had dammed up this far-famed classic river,
and that they were using every drop of water for their
linen and such sanitary purposes. I say, Why should not
the young gentlemen who are taught all about the geog-
raphy of the Ilyssus know something about the geography
of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Missouri ? " See John
Morley's Cobden, ii. 479. Cf. Mr. Balfour's Cobden and the
Manchester School in his Essays and Addresses.
238 : 28. — Aliens in speech. Lord Lyndhurst, John
34° NOTES.
Singleton Copley (1772-1863), strenuously disowned the
phrase. He was charged with having used it during the
debates of 1836. Cf. Sir Theodore Martin's Lord Lynd-
hurst, p. 346.
239 : 28. — Eugene O'Curry (1795-1S62). He held the
chair of Irish History in the Catholic University at Dub-
lin — the university of which Newman was for a time
rector.
240 : 10. — Lord Melville. Henry Dundas, Viscount
Melville (1741-1811), was one of the most strenuous sup-
porters of Lord North's policy toward the American
colonies.
241 : 4. — Mr. Roebuck's and Mr. Lowe's. For Mr.
Roebuck, see Selections and Notes, 20 : 24, and 173 : 9.
For Mr. Lowe, see 170 : 27.
241 : 6. — Daily Telegraph. Cf. 134 : 2.
241 : 21. — Fenianisni. The Fenians were a secret
society, founded about i860, to obtain by force indepen-
dence for Ireland. They derive their name from Fin, a
legendary Irish hero, MacPherson's Fingal, father of
Ossian.
242. — Compulsory Education. This and the following
Selection are Letters vi. and xii. of Friendship's Gar-
land, published in book form in 1871, with the motto
Manibus date lilia plenis — Bring handfuls of lilies.
Friendship's Garland, originally contributed to the Pall
Mall Gazette a.?, a series of Letters, is far more searchingly
ironical in its treatment of English life than Culture and
Anarchy. Its essential ideas, however, remain those of
the earlier book. It insists on the need of culture (which
here goes by the German name, Geist) and on the ina-
bility of mere political machinery to remedy existing
evils; it illustrates the absurdities of outworn mediaeval
traditions and the grotesqueness of sectarian prejudices.
Most of the Letters are signed by Arnold himself, who
poses as a humble candidate for higher knowledge, tempo-
rarily under the engrossing influence of a young German
philosopher, Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh. A few of
NOTES. 341
the Letters purport to be from Arminius, and one, No.
xii., from Young Leo, the typical newswriter of the Daily
Telegraph. By the use of Arminius's fierce intellectualism
Arnold exposes unsparingly many of the most ludicrous
imperfections in English life; yet, by his clever suggestion
of Arminius's Prussian pedantries and pedagogic crocheti-
ness of temper, he makes it possible for an English reader to
take Arminius humorously, feel some of his own superi-
ority, and hence accept criticism without fatal injury
to his self-esteem. Meanwhile, Arnold deprecates the
charge of self-sufficiency by means of much droll self-
caricature.
No attempt is made in the Notes to explain the continual
allusions in these Selections to current events and to other
parts of Friendship's Garland. Arnold's general inten-
tion and the quality of his irony are plain enough.
258. — America. This was written before Arnold's visit
to America in 1SS3-S4. For Arnold's direct impressions of
American life, — impressions that, despite some acerbity
and some desire to "hold an English review of his
Maker's grotesques," are, on the whole, kindly and appre-
ciative, — the reader should turn to the second volume of
the Letters. Numbers, in Discourses in Afnerica, gives a
formal criticism of the special clangers of American life.
259 : i.—M. Renan. Cf. 226 : 4 and no : 2. For the
passage quoted, see Renan's Questions Contemporai7ies,
Preface, vii; cf. p. 76 of the essay.
263 : 27. — Mr. Beecher. Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87),
for many years pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn.
263 : 27. — Brother Noyes. J. H. Noyes (181 1-86),
founder of the so-called Oneida Community. Hepworth
Dixon gave in 1867 a picturesque account of this com-
munity in New America, chap. 53.
263 : 30. — Mr. Ezra Cornell (1807-74), founder of Cor-
nell University, Ithaca, N. Y. According to its charter
the university was established with the purpose of teach-
ing "such branches of learning as are related to agri-
culture and the mechanic arts, including military tactics.''
342 NOTES.
264 : 3. — Mr. White. See Culture and Anarchy, Pref-
ace, p. xvi : "A Nonconformist minister, the Rev.
Edward White, who has written a temperate and well-
reasoned pamphlet against Church establishments, says
that ' the unendowed and unestablished communities of
England exert full as much moral and ennobling influ-
ence upon the conduct of statesmen as that Church which
is both established and endowed.' "
265. — Emerson. This appreciation of Emerson, one of
the three "Discourses" that Arnold gave on his lecture-
tour in America, illustrates well the limitations as well as
the excellences of his literary criticism. The lack of any
strenuous attempt to get at the real substance of Emer-
son's teaching and to correlate it with the intellectual
tendencies of the times is conspicuous and characteristic;
the essay does not put us at the center of Emerson's
thought and reveal it in its entirety and self-consistency,
and in its necessary connection with the social conditions
by which it was largely determined. On the other hand,
the ethical quality of Emerson's work is delicately per-
ceived and described; the emotional quality of his thought
and moods and style, in so far as they react upon charac-
ter, is appi-eciated with fine sensitiveness of taste and ex-
quisite sympathy. Here, as ever, Arnold as a critic is
most distinctively an appreciator of the beauty of the art
of those "that live in the spirit." Cf. the Introduction,
pp. xxxvi-xliii.
265 : 1. — Forty years ago. As regards Arnold's style in
this essay, see the Introduction, pp. lxiv-lxv.
265 : 9. — Cardinal Newman (1801-90). Cf. 170 : 4. He
was the leader of the Oxford movement, 1830-41, and at
the time of which Arnold speaks was still preaching and
writing with the purpose of reviving the spiritual life of
the Anglican Church and reinvesting the Church with
mediaeval dignity and splendor. He resigned his position
as preacher to the University in 1843 and withdrew to
Littlemore, where he had planned founding a monastery.
In 1S45 he entered the Church of Rome. In 1854 he was
NOTES. 343
made Rector of the new Catholic University at Dublin.
After a few years he took up his abode in the Oratory near
Birmingham, where he died in 1890.
265 : 17. — St. Mary's pulpit. St. Mary's is the Cathedral
Church of Oxford.
266 : 1. — After the fever of life. See Newman's Sermon
on Peace in Believing; Parochial and Plain Sermons,
vi. 369. The sermon was preached May 29, 1839.
266 : 7. — Littlemore. A small town within an easy walk
of Oxford. In 1828, when Newman was made incumbent
of St. Mary's, he was also made chaplain of Littlemore.
He withdrew to Littlemore in 1S41, though he did not re-
sign from St. Mary's till TS43.
266 : 29. — Somewhere or other. See Selections, p. 137.
267 : 6. — Edward Irving (1 792-1 S34). He was famous
as an eloquent pulpit orator, and afterward as the founder
of a new sect, the so-called Holy Catholic Apostolic Church,
which still exists in London. His pretensions as a prophet
became finally so extreme that he was deserted by all his
followers save a few fanatics. Cf. Carlyle's Reminiscences.
Irving was for a time engaged to Jane Welch, afterward
Mrs. Carlyle.
267 : 12. — Goethe. Arnold here substantially admits his
discipleship of Goethe. Cf. Introduction, p. lxxix.
267:14. — IVilhelm Meister. Carlyle's translation ap-
peared in 1824.
267 : 23. — Dirge over Mignon. See Wilhelm Meister,
bk. viii. chap viii.
268 : 19. — Weimar. Goethe's home.
269 : 27. — A German critic. Hermann Grimm, now
Professor in Berlin University. See Arnold's A French
Critic on Goethe : " Then there comes a scion of the ex-
cellent stock of the Grimms, a Professor Hermann Grimm,
and lectures on Goethe at Berlin, now that the Germans
have conquered the French, and are the first military
power in the world, and have become a great nation, and
require a national poet to match; and Professor Grimm
says of Faust, of which Tieck had spoken so coldly: ' The
344 NOTES.
career of this, the greatest work of the greatest poet of all
times and of all peoples, has but just begun, and we have
been making only the first attempts at drawing forth its
contents.' " Mixed Essays, ed. 1883, p. 208.
271 : 23. — Milton. See Milton's Of Education : " To
which [/. e. logic and rhetoric] poetry would be made subse-
quent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtile
and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate."
Prose Works, London, 1806, i. 281.
272 : 10. — So nigh is grandeur. The last lines of the
third of Emerson's Voluntaries: Poems, ed. 1883, p. 237.
272 : 15. — Though love repine. One of the Quatrains,
Sacrifice: Poems, p. 314.
272 : 23. — And ever. From May-Day: Poems, p. 190.
273 : is. — Cowper. Several of Cowper's poems moralize
gracefully on the lives of insects, birds, or animals; e. g.,
the Pineapple and the Bee, the Raven, the Nightingale
and the Glowworm. Possibly Arnold, with his customary
desire to eulogize totality, means to call to mind the moral
of the Nightingale and Glowworm:
" Hence jarring sectaries may learn
Their real interest to discern;
That brother should not war with brother,
And worry and devour each other;
But sing and shine with sweet consent,
Till life's poor transient night is spent,
Respecting in each other's case
The gifts of nature and of grace."
273 : 19. — Bums. See his To a Mouse: Poems, Globe
ed., p. 54.
274:11.-77^ Dial. "The literary achievments of
Transcendentalism are best exhibited in the Dial, a
quarterly ' Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Re-
ligion,' begun July, 1S40, and ending April, 1S44. The
editors were Margaret Fuller and R. W. Emerson. . .
Mr. Emerson's bravest lectures and noblest poems were
first printed there. Margaret Fuller, besides numerous
NOTES. 345
pieces of miscellaneous criticism, contributed the article
on Goethe, alone enough to establish her fame as a dis-
cerner of spirits." O. B. Frothingham's Transcendental-
ism, p. 132. Among the other contributors were George
Ripley, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, Henry
Thoreau, theChannings, and C. P. Cranch.
274 : 25. — Arthur Stanley (1815-S1). He is best re-
membered as Dean of Westminster. In 1S44 he published
a Life of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, Matthew Arnold's father.
Cf. 28:11.
275 : 25. — Sartor Resartus. The poor publisher was not
so wrong-headed as he is made to appear; he was simply
not a prophet. Sartor, as a serial in Fraser's Magazine
in 1833-34, had led to many violent protests on the part
of subscribers, and, when published as a book in 1838, had
called forth but two letters of commendation, — one from
Ralph Waldo Emerson and one from a Roman Catholic
priest in Ireland. Under the circumstances, the publisher
can hardly be blamed for having hesitated about " a new
edition."
275 : 29. — Regent Street. A street of fashionable shops
in London, not far from Club-land.
275 : 30. — Crockford. The house on St. James's Street
that is now used by the Devonshire Club, Avas formerly a
famous gambling house kept by one Crockford.
276 : 2.— John Sterling (1806-44). He is now for the
most part remembered as Coleridge's disciple and Carlyle's
friend. Carlyle's Life of Sterling appeared in 1851 ; the
closing paragraph suggests vividly Sterling's peculiar
charm : " Here, visible to myself, for some while, was a
brilliant human presence, distinguishable, honorable, and
lovable amid the dim common populations ; among the
million little beautiful, once more a beautiful human soul ;
whom I, among others, recognized and lovingly walked
with, while the years and the hours were."
276 : 15. — Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). Libeler of the
Prince Regent ; author of Rimini; inveterate man of let-
ters ; friend of Keats and Shelley and Carlyle ; cherishei
346 NOTES.
of the unpractical ; the first thorough-going English anti-
Philistine.
276 : 17. — Old Rogers (1763-18 5 5). The banker-poet,
patron of art and letters, and epigrammatic diner-out. His
Pleasures of Memory appeared in 1792.
2 79 : 7- — English Traits. Emerson's account of his
visit to England (1856). Hawthorne's Our Old Home
appeared in 1863.
281 : 2i. — Senancour (1770-1S46). Cf. 27 : 6, 97 : 4, and
103 : 15.
282 : 3. — Marcus Aurelius (121-180). The great Impe-
rial moralist of Rome. See the Thoughts of Marcus
Aurelius, translated by George Long (1S62). See also
Arnold's Essays, i. 344, and Walter Pater's Marius the
Epicurean.
285 : 10. — Disposed . . . to trust himself. The
dangers of arbitrariness and of self-will are, of course, the
burden of Arnold's whole discourse in Culture and Anar-
chy. Cf. Selections, p. 181 ff. , and especially Doing as one
Likes, chap. ii. of Culture and Anarchy.
286 : n. — The hour when he appeared. Emerson's
work was part of the "Liberal movement" in English
literature. He strove to free the individual from the bond-
age of old traditions and to give him the courage of new
feelings and aspirations. Only through over-emphasis on
the rights of the individual was the richer emotional and
spiritual development of the later century possible. For
this reason Arnold approves Emerson's incitement to
"self-will."
287 : 19. — Brook Farm. The Brook Farm "association
was simply an attempt to return to first principles, to
plant the seeds of a new social order, founded on respect
for the dignity, and sympathy with the aspirations of
man. . . It was felt at this time, 1842, that, in order to
live a religious and moral life in sincerity, it was necessary
to leave the world of institutions, and to reconstruct the
social order from new beginnings. A farm was bought in
close vicinity to Boston (at West Roxbury) ; agriculture
NOTES. 347
was made the basis of the life, as bringing man into direct
and simple relations with nature, and restoring labor to
honest conditions. To a certain extent, . . . the princi-
ple of community in property was recognized." O. B.
Frothingham's Transcendentalism, p. 164. The experi-
ment lasted from 1842 to the burning of the Phalanstery or
large common dwelling, in 1S47. Among the members of
the community were George Ripley, Charles A. Dana,
Minot Pratt, and for a time Hawthorne. Cf. Haw-
thorne's notes of his experiences at Brook Farm in Froth-
ingham's Transcendentalism, p. 171.
287 : 20. — Dissidence of dissent. Cf. 163 : 5.
290 : 11. — What if thou ivert born. See Sartor Resar-
tus, bk. ii. ch. ix. : "I asked myself : What is this that,
ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fum-
ing, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of ?
Say it in a word : is it not because thou art not happy ?
Because the thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently
honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for ?
Foolish soul ! What Act of Legislature was there that thou
shouldst be Happy ? A little while ago thou hadst no right
to be at all. What if thou wert born," etc. Arnold's con-
trast between Carlyle on the one hand, and Augustine and
Epictetus on the other, is open to misconception. Carlyle
expressly admits in a passage directly following that quoted
in the text, that " Blessedness " is the highest good of
human life, — a Blessedness won through self-denial and
" Love of God "; it would not be easy logically to distin-
guish this Blessedness from the delight or happiness which
Epictetus and Augustine admit as legitimate ends of
human action. The pursuit of happiness in any Epicurean
sense, all three moralists condemn. Still, the force of
Arnold's contrast remains unimpaired in so far as Carlyle
more than the other two moralists fails to portray the
actual pleasures or the golden self-possession of assured
spiritual life.
290 : 13. — Act we must. Cf. St. Augustine's account of
the Roman Goddess Felicity in the City of God, bk. iv.
348 NO TES.
chap. 23 : " For who wishes anything for any other reason
than that he may become happy ? . . . No one is found
who is willing to be unhappy. . . For there is not any-
one who would resist Felicity, except, which is impossible,
one who might wish to be unhappy."
290 : 15. — Epictetus. Cf. the Discourses of Epictetus
(Higginson's translation), bk. iii. chap. vii. : " For it is
impossible that good should lie in one thing, and rational
enjoyment in another." The underlying purpose of the
Discourses is adequately to define " rational enjoyment "
and to distinguish between the rational and the irrational.
" The only way to real prosperity (let this rule be at
hand morning, noon, and night) is a resignation of things
uncontrollable by will. . . Mindful of this, enjoy the
present and accept all things in their season." Bk. iv.
chap. iv.
293 : 4. — The paramount duty. Cf. bk. iv. of the Excur-
sion, where the Wanderer expounds to the Solitary the
dependence of life on Hope.
"We live by Admiration. Hope, and Love ;
And, even as these are well and wisely fixed,
In dignity of being we ascend."
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