Full well Max knows the friend is dead Whose cordial talk, And jokes, in doggish language said, And Glory, stretched at Burwood gate, The chiel from Skye, Lets from his shaggy Highland pate Well, fetch his graven collar fine, And rub the steel, and make it shine, There of thy master keep that sign, DOVER BEACH* The sea is calm to-night, The tide is full, the moon lies fair Ah, love, let us be true To one another; for the world, which seems 30 72 So various, so beautiful, so new, 84 Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sca meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith 10 20 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Where ignorant armies clash by night. THE LAST WORD Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said! Vain thy onset! all stands fast. Thou thyself must break at last. Let the long contention cease! They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee? Charge once more, then, and be dumb! CULTURE AND HUMAN PERFECTION* The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and 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 it. No serious man would call this cul Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's ture, 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 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 From the first chapter of Culture and Anarchy (1867), entitled "Sweetness and Light." in a good sense as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is always 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 certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in my judgment 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. SainteBeuve 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 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 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 which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu1 says: "The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to 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 stand to describe it. But there is of culture another view, in which not 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, 1 A French writer of the 18th century, author of the celebrated philosophical work on The Spirit of the Laws. This phrase, derived from Wordsworth, has been given wide currency by Arnold. See Wordsworth's Supplementary Essay to his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. 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 as 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 perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily 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 of it, there is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson2: "To make reason and the will of God prevail!" Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be over-hasty in determining what reason and the will 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 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 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 on acting and instituting, even 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. This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching 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. And is not the close and bounded intellectual horizon within which we have long lived and moved now lifting 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 then it was of no 2 Thomas Wilson, Bishop of the Isle of Man (d. 1765). aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what perfection is, and to make it prevail; but also, in determining generally in what human perfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion with that which culture, culture seeking the determination of this question through all the voices of human experience 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,-likewise reaches. Re 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 inex-identical tricably 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 wonderfully yielded; the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, not that people should obstinately refuse to allow any-ligion says: The kingdom of God is within thing but their old routine to pass for reason you; and culture, in like manner, places human and the will of God, but either that they should perfection in an internal condition, in the allow some novelty or other to pass for these too growth and predominance of our humanity proeasily, or else that they should underrate the per, as distinguished from our animality. It importance of them altogether, and think it places it in the ever-increasing efficacy and in enough to follow action for its own sake, with the general harmonious expansion of those gifts out troubling themselves to make reason and of thought and feeling which make the pecuthe will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is liar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human the moment for culture to be of service, culture nature. As I have said on a former occasion: which believes in making reason and the willIt is in making endless additions to itself, in of God prevail; believes in perfection; is the the endless expansion of its powers, in endless study and pursuit of perfection; and is no growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of longer debarred, by a rigid invincible exclusion the human race finds its ideal. To reach this of whatever is new, from getting acceptance ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and that for its ideas, simply because they are new. is the true value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it; and here, too, it coincides with religion. The moment this view of culture is seized, the 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 happiness to go along with or his misery to go counter 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 character of culture becomes manifest. The mere 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 caricature and degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame and disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity because, in comparison with this wider endeavour of such great and plain utility, it looks selfish, petty, and unprofitable. But the point of view of culture, keeping the mark of human perfection simply and broadly in view, and not assigning to this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism assigns to it, a special and limited character, this point of view, I say, of culture is best given by these words of Epictetus1: "It is a sign of àquia," says he, that is, of a nature not finely tempered,-"to give yourselves up to things which relate to the body; to make, 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 formation of the spirit and character must be our real concern." This is admirable; and, indeed, the Greek word eúqvia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive 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 Battle of 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 the deepest human experience, does not only enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the 1 See note on Arnold's sonnet To a Friend. the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweet-Greece did not err in having the idea of beauness and light."'* The cupvýs2 is the man ty, harmony, and complete human perfection, who tends toward sweetness and light; the so present and paramount. It is impossible to ápýs3 on the other hand, is our Philistine.+ have this idea too present and paramount; only, The immense spiritual significance of the the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, Greeks is due to their having been inspired because we have braced the moral fibre, are with this central and happy idea of the essen- not on that account in the right way, if at the tial character of human perfection; and Mr. same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and Bright's misconception of culture, as a smat- complete human perfection is wanting or mistering of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after apprehended amongst us. all, from this wonderful significance of the Greeks having affected the very machinery of our education, and.is in itself a kind of homage to it. NATURAL MAGIC IN CELTIC LITER- The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry. Far more than on our freedom, our gave it population, and our industrialism, a better gift still, the gift of rendermany amongst us rely upon our religious organiza of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling ing with wonderful felicity the magical charm tions to save us. I have called religion a yet spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in romore important manifestation of human namance. They have a mysterious life and grace ture than poetry, because it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and wit! greater there; they are Nature's own children, and masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of utter her secret in a way which makes them a human nature perfect on all its sides, which is something quite different from the woods, wathe dominant idea of poetry, is a true and inters, and plants of Greek and Latin poetry. valuable idea, though it has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human nature perfect on the moral side,-which is the dominant idea of religion,—has been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other. The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which 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 surpassing interest and instructiveness for us, though it was, as having regard to the human race in general, 2 "Well endowed by nature." rowness. 5 John Bright, a Liberal statesman, who had 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 the Celts. Magic is just the word for it, the magic of nature; not merely Latins had; not merely an honest smack of the the beauty of nature,-that the Greeks and soil, a faithful realism,-that the Germans had; but the intimate life of Nature, her From On the Study of Celtic Literature (1866). WORDSWORTH* touches like that, showing the delicacy of the Celt's feeling in these matters, and how deep"But turn we," as Wordsworth says, "fron ly Nature lets him come into her secrets. The these bold, bad men,'' the haunters of Social quick dropping of blood is called "faster than Science Congresses. And let us be on our the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth, when the dew of guard, too, against the exhibitors and extollers June is at the heaviest." And thus is Olwen worth's poetry. The poetry will never be seen of a "scientific system of thought" in Wordsdescribed: "More yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin was aright while they thus exhibit it. The cause whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer of its greatness is simple, and may be told quite were her hands and her fingers than the simply. Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsblossoms of the wood-anemony amidst the worth feels the joy offered to us in nature, spray of the meadow fountains." For loveliness it would be hard to beat that; and for fections and duties; and because of the extrathe joy offered to us in the simple primary afmagical clearness and nearness take following: the "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 he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold! a shower of snow 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 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 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 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 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 magicalized by the romance touch: "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 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 aptitude. ordinary power with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it. The source of joy from which he thus draws is the truest and most unfailing source of joy accessible to man. It is also accessible universally. Wordsworth brings us word, therefore, according to his own strong and characteristic line, he brings us word "Of joy in widest commonalty spread."1 Wordsworth tells of what all seek, and tells Here is an immense advantage for a poet. of it at its truest and best source, and yet a source where all may go and draw from it. Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that everything is precious which Wordsworth, standing even at this perennial and beautiful Wordsworthians are apt source, may give us. to talk as if it must be. They will speak with the same reverence of The Sailor's Mother, for ter harm by such lack of discrimination. Lucy example, as of Lucy Gray. They do their masGray is a beautiful success; The Sailor's Mother is a failure.† To give aright what he wishes to give, to interpret and render successfully, is not always within Wordsworth's own command. It is within no poet's command; here is the part of the Muse, the inspiration, the God, the "not ourselves. ''2 In Wordsworth's case, the accident, for so it may almost be called, of inspiration, is of peculiar importance. No poet, perhaps, is so evidently filled with a new 1 The Recluse, line 771. 2 Arnold elsewhere speaks of deity as the "tendency not ourselves that makes for righteousness." From the Preface to The Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and edited by Arnold (1879). In the passage just preceding, Arnold deprecates the attempt to make Wordsworth sponsor for any complete philosophical or social system, such, for instance, as a Social Science congress might dryly and dismally quote and, discuss. Swinburne thought otherwise. See his Miscel lanies. |