battles. Of Homer you could not say this; "Tunstall lies dead upon the field, ments 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 us, to the ideal, to perfection,-to beauty, in a 5 word, which is only truth seen from another side?-nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to 10 heroes not mine; only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties! what example could ever so inspire us to keep down the Philistines in ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us from that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines 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 bondage of "was uns alle bândigt, das Gemeine!" She will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn upon 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 which this queen of romance has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after we are gone? "For not in the hands of Diomede the son of Tydeus rages the spear, to ward off destruction from the Danaans; neither as yet have I heard the voice of the son of Atreus, shouting out of his hated mouth; but the voice of Hector 15 the slayer of men bursts round me, as he cheers on the Trojans; and they with their yellings fill all the plain, overcoming the Achaians in the battle."-I protest that, to my feeling, Homer's performance, even through that pale 20 and far-off shadow of a prose translation, still has a hundred times more of the grand manner about it, than the original poetry of Scott. 4 Well, then, the ballad manner and the ballad-measure, whether in the hands of the 25 old ballad poets, or arranged by Chapman, or arranged by Mr. Newman, or, even arranged by Sir Walter Scott, cannot worthily render Homer. And for one reason: Homer is plain, so are they; Homer is natural, so are they; 30 but Homer is sustainedly noble, and they are not. Homer and they are both of them natural, and therefore touching and stirring; but the grand style, which is Homer's, is something more than touching and stirring; it can form 35 characteristics which mark the English spirit, THE CELTIC SPIRIT (From The Study of Celtic Literature, 1867) Let me repeat what I have often said of the the character, it is edifying. The old English the English genius. This spirit, this genius, balladist may stir Sir Philip Sidney's heart judged to be sure, rather from a friend's than like a trumpet, and this is much; but Homer, an enemy's point of view, yet judged on the but the few artists in the grand style, can do whole fairly, is characterised, I have repeatmore; they can refine the raw natural man, 40 edly said, by energy with honesty. Take away they can transmute him. OXFORD some of the energy which comes to us, as I believe, in part from Celtic and Roman sources; instead of energy, say rather steadiness; and you have the Germanic genius: steadiness with (From Preface to Essays in Criticism, First 45 honesty. It is evident how nearly the two Series, 1865) No, we are all seekers still! seekers often make mistakes and I wish mine to redound to my own discredit only, and not to touch 50 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!" And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchant1 Byron, Childe Harold, c. iv. st. 141. 55 characterisations approach one another; and yet they leave, as we shall see, a great deal of room for difference. Steadiness with honesty; the danger for a national spirit thus composed is the humdrum, the plain and ugly, the ignoble: in a word, das Gemeine, die Gemeinheit,1 that curse of Germany, against which Goethe was all his life fighting. The excellence of a national spirit thus composed is freedom from 2 Tübingen University, which had a faculty on natural science. The enemies of the children of light; hence, those opposed to culture. "That which binds us all, the commonplace." 1 The ordinary, the commonplace. whim, flightiness, perverseness; patient fidelity For dulness, the creeping Saxons,-says an however well it may do for the Cymri, will never do for the Gael, never do for the typical Irishman of Donnybrook fair. Again, M. Renan's infinie délicatesse de sentiment qui carac5térise la race Celtique; how little that accords with the popular conception of an Irishman who wants to borrow money. Sentiment is, however, 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 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, 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 emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our word gay, it is said, is itself Celtic. It is not from old Irish poem, assigning the characteristics 25 gaudium, but from the Celtic gair, to laugh; for which different nations are celebrated: For acuteness and valour, the Greeks, For excessive pride, the Romans, For beauty and amorousness, the Gaedhils. and the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is the more down because it is so his nature to be up-to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring away bril30 liantly. 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'hôte will not readily believe this?), the Frenchman has the more developed organs of respiration. That is just the expansive, eager, Celtic nature; the head in the air, snuffing and snorting; a proud look and a high stomach, as the Psalmist says, but without any such settled savage temper as the Psalmist seems to impute by those words. For good and for bad, the Celtic genius is more airy and unsubstantial, 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 emotion and excitement; he is truly, as I began by saying, sentimental. We have seen in what sense, and with what 2 A religious historian of France. His essay on The Poetry of the Celtic Races was Arnold's chief inspiration for his Study of Celtic Literature. 3 Gentle little race, naturally Christian. Proud and shy, outwardly awkward and embarrassed. 6 Sentimental,-always ready to react against the despotism of fact; that is the description a great friend 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. Bal Infinite delicacy of sentiment which characterizes the Celtic race. 6 Psalms, ci. 7. (Prayer-Book version) "Whoso hath also a proud look and high stomach, I will not suffer him." 7 "Monsieur Henri Martin, whose chapters on the Celts, in his Histoire de France, are full of information and interest." Arnold. ance, measure, and patience, these are the eternal conditions, even supposing the 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 perfectly, because he has never had steadiness, patience, sanity enough to comply with the conditions 10 under which alone can expression be given to the finest perceptions and emotions. The Greek has the same perceptive, emotional temperament as the Celt; but he adds to this temperament the sense of measure; hence his 15 make progress in material civilisation, and also has not patience for. So he runs off into technic where he employs the utmost elaboration, and attains astonishing skill; but in the contents of his poetry you have only so much interpreta5 tion of the world as the first dash of a quick, strong perception, and then sentiment, infinite sentiment, can bring you. Here, too, his want of sanity and steadfastness has kept the Celt back from the highest success. If his rebellion against fact has thus lamed the Celt 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 to form powerful states, is just what the Celt has least turn for. He is sensual, as I have said, or at least sensuous; and here he is like the Greek and Latin races; but compare the 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 the comparatively petty art of ornamentation, 20 talent the Greek and Latin (or Latinised) races in rings, brooches, crosiers, relic-cases, and have shown for gratifying their senses, for so on, he has done just enough to show his procuring an outward life, rich, luxurious, delicacy of taste, his happy temperament; splendid, with the Celt's failure to reach any but the grand difficulties of painting and sculp- material civilisation sound and satisfying, and ture, the prolonged dealings of spirit with 25 not out at elbows, poor, slovenly, and halfmatter, he has never had patience for. Take barbarous. The sensuousness of the Greek the more spiritual arts of music and poetry. made Sybaris and Corinth, the sensuousness All that emotion alone can do in music the of the Latin made Rome and Baiæ, the sensuCelt has done; the very soul of emotion breathes ousness of the Latinised Frenchman makes in the Scotch and Irish airs; but with all this 30 Paris; the sensuousness of the Celt proper has power of musical feeling, what has the Celt, made Ireland. Even in his ideal, heroic times, so eager for emotion that he has not patience his gay and sensuous nature cannot carry him, for science, effected in music, to be compared in the appliances of his favorite life of sociawith what the less emotional German, steadily bility and pleasure, beyond the gross and developing his musical feeling with the science 35 creeping Saxon whom he despises; the regent of a Sebastian Bach or a Beethoven, has ef- Breas, we are told in the Battle of Moytura of fected? In poetry, again,-poetry which the the Fomorians, became unpopular because Celt has so passionately, so nobly loved; poetry "the knives of his people were not greased at where emotion counts for so much, but where his table, nor did their breath smell of ale at reason, too, reason, measure, sanity, also 40 the banquet." In its grossness and barbarouscount for so much,-the Celt has shown genius; ness is not that Saxon, as Saxon as it can be? but even here his faults have clung to him, and just what the Latinised Norman, sensuous hindered him from producing great works, and sociable like the Celt, but with the talent such as other nations with a genius for poetry, to make this bent of his serve to a practical -the Greeks, say, or the Italians,—have pro- 45 embellishment of his mode of living, found so disgusting in the Saxon. And as in material civilisation he has been ineffectual, so has the Celt been ineffectual in politics. The colossal, impetuous, adventur duced. The Celt has not produced great poetical works, he has only produced poetry with an air of greatness investing it all, and sometimes giving moreover, to short pieces, or to passages, lines, and snatches of long 50 ous wanderer, the Titan of the early world, pieces, singular beauty and power. And yet he loved poetry so much that he grudged no pains to it; but the true art, the architectonices which shapes great works, such as the Agamem who 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 non or the Divine Comedy, comes only after a 55 has been constantly slipping, ever more and steady, deep-searching survey, a firm conception of the facts of human life, which the Celt The art of the master-builder which enables him to plan and execute great works. more, out of the Celt's grasp. "They went forth to war," Ossian says most truly, "but they always fell." CULTURE (From Culture and Anarchy, 1869) but always in machinery, as if it 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 5 machinery? what is wealth but machinery? what are, even, religious organisations but machinery? Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things as if they were precious ends in themselves, and If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious perfection, general perfection and perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances,-it is clear that culture, instead of being the frivolous 10 therefore had some of the characters of perfec tion indisputably joined to them. I have before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the greatness and happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping 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 mankind. And this function is particularly important in our modern world, 15 the mouths of all gainsayers. 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 England say what he likes?"-Mr. Roebuck per sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless 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 and more so. But above all in our own country has culture a 20 petually asks; and that, he thinks, is quite weighty part to perform, because here that mechanical character, which civilisation tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix 25 what men say, when they may say what they them, meet in 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 30 civilisation in esteem with us. The idea of perfection as a general expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unre like, is worth saying,—has good in it, and more good than bad. In the same way the Times, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that everyone should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever strained swing of the individual's personality, 35 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 coal. Everyone must have ob our maxim of "every man for himself." Above all, the idea of perfection as a harmonious 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 40 served the strange language current during the our intense energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will 45 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 doing in the end good service if they persevere. And, meanwhile, 50 we excite love, interest and admiration. If the mode of action that they have to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought to be made quite clear for everyone to see, who may be willing to look at the matter attentively and 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; 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 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 England were swallowed up by the sea tomorrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the love, interest, and admiration of mankind,-would most, 55 therefore, show the evidences of having possessed greatness, the England of the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and our industrial operations depend him forever. No such voices as those which we heard in our youth at Oxford are sounding there now. Oxford has more criticism now, more knowledge, more light; but such voices as those of our youth it has no longer. The name of Cardinal Newman1 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 difficulties which beset men's minds to-day, a solution which, to speak frankly, is impossible. Forty years ago he was in the very prime of life; he was close at hand to us at Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works for material advantage are 10 mingham; he has adopted, for the doubts and directed, the commonest of commonplace 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. 15 Oxford; he was preaching in St. Mary's pulpit Never 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 every Sunday; he seemed about to transform and to renew what was for us the most national and natural institution in the world, the Church of England. Who could resist the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of 20 charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in its spiritual standard of perfection, to 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 25 effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness 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 silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music,-subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: "After the fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and welfare are proved by our being very 30 and chances of this troubled, unhealthy state, rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts THE VOICES OF YOUTH (From "Emerson," in Discourses in America, 1885) at length comes death, at length the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision." Or, if we followed him back to his seclusion at Littlemore, 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 in when he was tentmaking 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-nigh forgot 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 them that loneliness, more cheerful that severity, 50 and more bright that gloom, than all those aids and appliances 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 day, Forty years ago, when I was an undergradu- 55 ate 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 possession to 1 One of the great leaders of the Oxford movement. Newman became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and thereafter spent the greater part of his life at the Oratory at Birmingham. He died in 1890. The University Church at Oxford. 3 Newman's residence just outside of Oxford. |